Drama, culture shock awaits teachers as schools reopen

Choices have consequences and teachers across Kenya must be prepared to deal with a new crop of students once the strike is over. Students and teachers have acquired strange behaviour over the strike period. The thrill of singing, dancing and pleading for attention from State House by banging empty sufurias has excited many of us. A number of shoes have ended up at the cobbler’s for repairs too.

Having spent months on ‘holiday’, many students may not meekly entertain talk about discipline and school rules, especially after seeing teachers engage in all sorts of weird antics during demonstrations.

Some boys are likely to report to school wearing studs, sporting weird tattoos, while talking and walking with the swag of hip-hop stars from American or Jamaican ghettos.

Don’t be too shocked if you get a whiff of something stronger than a cigarette as you stroll by the boys’ toilet — or even the girls’.

The ‘can’t pay, won’t pay’ school holiday bonus could inspire a ‘can’t read, won’t read’ attitude. Having seen you banging empty sufurias with spoons and defying TSC’s orders to go back to the classroom, your once obedient students may not jump as soon as you tell them to. More graffiti will be splashed around. The flower reverently referred to as a ‘weed’ that is too ‘holy’ to be stepped on is likely to decorate many toilet walls.

Your students have spent many weekends in jam sessions where the ‘herb’ liberally passes from lip to lip. Indeed, don’t create a scene if you find a caricature of yourself on the boys’ urinal wall drumming a sufuria with a spoon while hopping up and down on one foot.

Street demonstrations

At Meta Meta, there are whispers that Annette loaned some teachers’ welfare money to the ‘Donatta and Twins enterprise.’ Donatta had borrowed the money, at an interest, to buy a container of sufurias, spoons and vuvuzela’s. She had hoped to sell the merchandise to striking teachers and make a killing.

The court, however, killed that dream when it ordered a freeze on street demonstrations. Schola, the gossiper-in-chief, claims that Donatta had put all her savings into the business.

Her attempts to get an emergency loan from Mwalimu National Sacco have been unsuccessful since her pay slip cannot accommodate another loan. The welfare fund also carries our special lunch contributions. We may have to put up with students’ murram (githeri) when we get back to school.

Thunder, the miser, who incidentally finds it extremely taxing to part with a coin for the hugely subsidised lunch contribution, is mad. Based on revised calculations that he has circulated to colleagues via our WhatsApp group, he argues that we should eat kienyenji chicken for lunch thrice a week.

Jezebel, the school cateress, is also angling for more pay. “Hawa ma mode wakiongezwa mshahara lazima wanione. (These teachers must pay me more if they get an increment),” she was heard saying. She gets a monthly allowance from the lunch kitty, and because she considers it too little, she compensates herself by ‘taking away’ raw chunks of meat or pieces of chicken.

Schola, whose telescopic eyes do not miss the little things, swears that Jezebel’s handbag appears heavier on such days. She could be right. Jezebel cuts the chicken into such small pieces that only people like Aeneas, who has relatives among some chicken-loving folk, can tell the mother limb.

Okonkwo had promised the PTA and BoG that Meta Meta’s mean grade would improve this year. I don’t know how he plans to fulfill that promise, when we have spent most of the time away. Subjects like physics and biology are yet to cover the syllabus.

Schola our princess of ‘muchene’ claims that the county director of education had threatened to have Okonkwo demoted if the school’s mean grade didn’t improve. So much is at stake and Okonkwo will be demanding a pound of flesh from us!