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The teacher’s strike must have made them to through one of the hardest moments of their career.
Most were having an out of money experience due to that small matter of September pay.
But spending a whole day doing literally nothing yet teachers are very hardworking proved to be a tall order. But teachers devised ways of killing time:
1. Sema ka Selfie Teachers had enough time to keep pace and in touch with modern technology. Many updated their profile pictures across social networks. The analogue discovered selfies, but then they took the discovery to low levels via taking selfies with cows, boda boda and chicken!
2. Confirming genetics Teaching is demanding and with the syllabus pressure and mean grade anxiety, means teachers spend all their lives in schools leaving Miss Mboch taking care of everything. The industrial break gave ‘owners of knowledge’ a chance to ‘baby sit’ while attempting to confirm if truly maskio ni yangu or it was ‘joint effort’ with jirani.
3. House of Lungula With a lot of free time at their disposal, some teachers played ‘home and away matches.’ No assignments, no books to mark, no record of work and no schemes of work.
4. No calls, WhatsApp only
Teachers enjoyed their free time creating WhatsApp groups to gossip and find out if Sossion had bowed to pressure. There were updates by the minute from them. Never mind some updates were obsolete memes dating back when Moses Kuria walked out on Hussein Mohammed!
5. Facebook chatter boxes
Being free meant logging to Facebook with torrents of bile and insults directed to the Teachers Service Commission, and without a Facebook prefect, their online noise was deafening.
6. The choir and Mother’s Union
Many teachers found time to join choir practice and active participation in Mothers Union activities and Women’s Guild too.
7. Mpango wa Mwalimu Mama could have thought that the senior teacher of Nyasore High School had been invited to the village shopping centre for a day time banter, but in reality he mostly went to see ‘mpango wa mwalimu’ in a neighbouring school where the mpango lives.
8. Fans of ‘Mama Pima’ Who said second generation drinks have been eradicated? Coupled by ‘mizinga’ and ‘makali’ the ‘Tornados’ of land could have malizad our teachers had the strike continued for a month. Most teachers in rural Kenya visited ‘Mama Pima’ at an outlawed joint where they are in ‘kitabu ya deni.’
9. Boda boda operators Did you know that most bodaboda motorbikes, especially in Kisumu, Nyeri and Kakamega are owned by teachers? Many made endless rounds kutafuta unga during the strike to make extra coins to make up for that not so small matter of September salaries. Others revived their green houses, backyard shambas and balcony farming.
10. Gazeti sio ya nyama
Teachers are very good at reading. The newspaper then came in handy as most spent their dull days reading papers and watching Njata TV while discussing what would make headlines the following day. They even do mental cartoons, imagining Wilson Sossion as the education CS and their accounts overflowing with their hard-earned coins.
