By Ted Malanda

While everyone is going bananas about the length of school skirts, a scandal of monumental proportions is going on at the Department of Defense (DoD).

Just last week, they advertised a weird tender in the newspapers. I’m shocked that civil society activists have not sprung forward to condemn what amounts to blatant human rights violations.

First, the people at DoD want someone to supply spaghetti. What’s going on here? Our boys are built for war, not a beauty contest and it’s sacrilege to feed them on that sissy stuff. What they need, and in gigantic amounts, is sembe — ugali. And not that rubbish that is bought in shops. It must be ground in a posho mill to ‘catch’ the stomach properly.

In the same manner, the tender for supply of white bread is clearly in bad taste.

A lad marching to Kismayu with a rucksack full of bombs and  associated crude weapons needs serious breakfast in his belly. Something like a big plate of githeri washed down with thick porridge and a calabash of cold water mixed with gunpowder. Not bread and tea. That is food for shopkeepers.

But what was that madness about ‘supply of unfertilised eggs’? Where I come from, such eggs are referred to as ‘foolish eggs’. I’m outraged that the Commander-in-Chief — a champion of free primary education — is allowing our boys to be fed on eggs that never went to school. This athletic country is not short of cockerels to run marathons after hens and educate eggs for our boys to eat. 

Something else caught my attention and that is foot powder. Frankly, I have no idea what that means. But I suspect it’s some medicinal dust our boys smear between their toes to ensure fungi doesn’t germinate on account of spending three days stuffed in jungle boots.

But why must our boys wear jungle boots anyway? The Al Shabaab seem quite comfortable running around in torn slippers so we have no excuse to stuff our boys in jungle boots.

Meanwhile, does anyone know why Ugandan soldiers wear gumboots?

And there was something else in that tender document that miffed me. Why in the name of God would our boys need mosquito nets?

Does anyone at DoD seriously imagine that a mosquito would have the guts to bite a soldier armed with an M16?

 

Cheer slow runners, jeer slow learners

All these decades later, I still have no doubt in my mind that my high school Chemistry teacher should never have been allowed near a classroom.

He was a sadist. He hated children and definitely slept through his Education Psychology courses at the university. How else would you explain his conduct?

Whenever he brought back test papers, he would begin by telling us how, in his assessment, we were the most idiotic bunch he had ever had the misfortune to meet. And in his view, he always sneered, we were just wasting our parents’ money.

Shame

 “Anj by je way, jish papers are in orjer,” he would end in his peculiar manner of speech, like his tongue was half glued to the roof of his mouth.

That was the moment we dreaded. If he began with Chris, we knew the papers were arranged from best to last.  And if he began with a name I shall not mention, we knew he had arranged the papers from worst to best.

It was not enough for him to humiliate the worst student by making everyone aware of the fact. He would go ahead and say, “Anj you! You are jusht ijiot and ushless!”

We all averted our eyes, sharing our classmate’s shame, silently enraged because we knew how hard he worked, how determined he was. His genetic wiring was simply not configured for classwork.

Kindest soul

Incidentally, he was the gentlest and kindest of souls — an organised and responsible chap who was also a senior school prefect. Even better, he was the meanest cross-country runner in the school and seniors whispered that they hadn’t seen a better 1,500m runner in six years. Yet that Chemistry teacher thought he was “ushless”.

I bet he never watched cross-country. If he did, he would have noticed that whereas Chris, who was the sharpest chap around, always panted in last, the man who couldn’t define an atom always roared into the school gate a mile ahead of his nearest rival. And you know the hilarious thing? The school reserved the loudest cheer for that struggler, Chris — running beside him,  urging him on!

That has always fascinated me. At the Olympics, as soon as the Kenyans and Ethiopians have raised adrenalin in the stadium in their characteristic effortless sprint to the finish, everyone sits back and waits for some poor runner from a God forsaken country to pant half dead to the finish line.

Celeb

He may have been lapped six times by Kenyans, but remember that in whichever country he hails from, he is a celeb. Poems are composed in his honour and women become weak in his presence.

Unfortunately, at the Olympics, he comes last — by a mile — yet the world erupts in cheer for his bravery, fortitude and fighting spirit.

Why then don’t we cheer the lad who scores 13 per cent in Chemistry?

Lest you forget, he fights harder to make that meager score, unlike the genius who breezes through the exam and hammers 89 per cent without breaking a sweat — like David  Rudisha.