Kenyans and their peculiar habits

While my son was a candidate at last year's KCPE exam, I didn't bother to send a nervous text message to the number given by the exams council. I didn’t bother rushing to the nearest cyber Cafe to check how he performed, either.

It's not that I didn’t give a hoot. It’s just that I knew, from experience, that every parent, child, aunt, distant uncle and whatnot would be doing the very same thing all at once, causing the gizmos to jam, which is exactly what happened. And I knew it would be worsened by the same parents sending more text messages and attempting again and again to log onto the KNEC website, when they knew all too well that it was futile, making the whole circus even worse.

Anxious candidate

My reasoning is that whether I checked that day or the next or even a whole week later, it wouldn’t change the facts, wouldn’t undo or improve how the lad had performed.

But the whole thing reminded me of days gone by when I was the anxious candidate. The minister, good old JJ Kamotho, would announce the results. Then Provincial Education Officers would travel with the results to their provinces. District Education Officers would travel to the province headquarters to collect their results. And only then would headmasters visit the district education office.

Mobile phones

That would be a maddening two days after Kamotho had released the results. So anxious pupils would camp at the school waiting for the headmaster, who would take the better part of the day to travel 25km to the district headquarters. When he returned, there being no photocopiers, he would have to rewrite the results by hand.

Unfortunately, the headmaster would pin the results on the door just after you had slipped home for lunch, giving ample time for a naughty village vagabond to rip the list to shreds, mostly because he was leading from the bottom.

Yet now, the whole country goes nuts because they can’t access results five minutes after the minister’s announcement. More amusing is that in a month’s time, when KCSE exam results are announced, the whole nation will reach for their mobile phones at once and get shocked when the network gets jammed. Humph.