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Students sitting national exams sometimes shake inside their bone marrows after coming face to face with those small-time cretins called invigilators.
They appear fear proof as they hand out exam papers after reading the riot act touching on snoring, scribbling outside the answer sheet and most importantly, that treasonable behaviour of employing unorthodox tactics to pass unfairly.
One ‘bad eye’ directed your way and your future might be bleak, even if they mistake the scratching of an itchy groin as a search for answers.
Here are 10 types of invigilators in Kenyan exam rooms:
1. The sniper
This one is a sniper capable of stealthily gunning down an exam irregularity from a student attempting to smuggle mwakenya (illegal notes) to wrestle down difficult questions.
But the sniper perches on vantage positions where armed with experience battling cheats, they can see, smell and sniff before catching you red-handed, with your mwakenya suffocated between your thighs.
2. The slow coach
He always comes late (after going to the wrong exam room) and is even slower handing exam papers, as if their fingers have arthritis.
They are also often confused and slow in dealing with student queries, like wrong exam questions and there is that student whose hand has been up for 30 minutes and the invigilator has not spotted it!
3. The resigned
This breed long resigned to the belief that even in the presence of KDF outside the exam room, students will attempt and the lucky ones will manage to ‘steal.’
They thus are least bothered with what students are doing as they snore in one corner of the room in between announcing, “I’ll know if you copy. Ata mimi nilikuwa mwanafunzi!”
4. The slay queens
Their grammar is singular and stringent. Their dressing concise and like women of means, their sweat is perfumed.
They will remind students to open the windows as they turn up their noses as if students stink like a herd of goats.
5. The living dead
These ones are extremely exhausted as if students struggling and others acing questions nauseates them. They hand out question papers, answer booklets, read out exam requirements then amble out like kanjo askaris at the bus station.
They then find a suitable corner where they sleep, only to be woken by mosquitoes or a bad dream followed by fast-paced striding around, purposely.
6. The phone addict
When the exam starts, these breed fish out their smartphones and dive into the sea of social media, checking out udaku on Kilimani Mums or rummaging through nudes on sizzling Telegram channels as they fire arsenal after arsenal of political opinions on Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp.
Occasionally, they will laugh at online jokes while jutting their heads to shout, “Silence!” before diving back to the sea.
7. The GSU
They treat exams like riot scenes where students might gang up and steal answers. Up in arms against such a scenario, they descend into the exam room in troops of four and go on to dismantle class formations, demand that students empty their pockets, switch off phones, dump any written materials while enforcing exam brutality.
8. The drunk
They speak and the violent words of deceased bottles of beer, glasses of whisky and sticks of cigarettes run out of their mouths and punitively descend on you, ensuring you forget all answers.
Their hangover is what the doctor ordered for students who are out to cheat.
9. The sweethearts
They are mostly women who love students as they do their gossip. They lend pens to students whose biros run out of gas. They notice those who are pressed and those who are feeling dizzy.
To them, there’s life after an exam and don’t care two hoots if you ‘dub’ from your cleverer jirani in class. To students, sweethearts are a darling.
10. The loose bladder
They can’t sit in one place. They are always leaving the exam room to answer phone calls and sometimes calls of nature. Others appear like they’re battling diarrhoea, frequenting the toilet before leaving again.
But there are times they leave only to return five minutes to time…and yet you needed more answer sheets!
