Do you remember that fateful day in 1973 when we woke up to a school-wide strike in Njiiri School?
I remember hurrying down from Nyakiambi 1 for the breakfast scramble, only to find a huge questionnaire at the dining hall glass windows.
“Has the Mwea irrigation system dried up?”
“Have chickens embraced family planning?”
I don’t remember the question on potatoes…. but it had to do with the state of the road to kinangop through Gatare.
Anyhow the experience now stands out in my mind due to the contrasting styles of leadership that came out in our (then) current headmaster, Kagume, and, later, BG Maina (Ngano) as they each handled the spats of rebellion from a bunch of teenagers.
Kagume shut down the school, sent us home and made a big do of its re-opening: a radio announcement, a fancy event graced by a top gun from the Ministry of Education, a Mr Munuve (was he one eyed or that’s just my wild imagination?)
I remember Kagume and Munuve towering above us, parents sitting in rows on the dining hall forms at the parade ground and us on the grass, each one next to his parent. The only part of Munuve’s speech I remember was, “The first thing I would like to tell you all is that strikes are illegal” which Kagume translated, “ùndù wa mbere ùrìa ndingìenda kùmwìra nì atì sitiraiki kana mùgomo nì irigù!” We howled — the boys, not our parents. My mom reached down to strike me for the show of disrespect.
But it was our day. We won big time. We got back our eggs and rice and potatoes and Kagume got transferred (I was to meet him many years later when as chair, Tana Water Services Board I sat across the table with him to sign a lease for his wife’s property in Nyeri, which we were taking up as an office. I was shocked how short he was).
Then in form two, when another strike formed up, I soon learned the difference that leadership makes. Ngano did not declare the rebellion a school-wide strike. He brought in the GSU and used divide and rule tactics that saw only a section of the school (I think only form twos) sent home.
When I got home that time my mom asked, “What happened?” and I answered “a strike,”
“How will you know when to go back?” Mom asked.
“They said we should go home and come back with our parents,” I replied naively.
“Ai!” She said, “Then I will take you back after I am done with my bean harvest!”
I did my best to suppress my delight at the prospect of an extended karaza (no class attendance).
Three days later Mom and I were in the deputy’s office. Mr Mng’abwa asked, without expression, “Ndio, Mama, nimsaidie aje?” (Yes, mama, how May I help you?). Mom said I had told her there was a strike in school and that we were to go home and come back with our parents.
Mr Mng’abwa’s face grew 10 years older from surprise. “Kijana,” he said, glaring at me, disappointment registering in all his gestures, “is that how you went home to lie to your mother?” Then he softened his tone and conspiratorially said to Mom, “Angalia Mama. Si kuna watoto kwenye zile madarasa?” (Look Mama, aren’t you able to see there are pupils in those classes?)
My mom came at me with words and fists. Mr Mng’ambwa had to come to my aid…. Through his intervention they agreed that I only get let off with four strokes of the cane.
“Now, young man,” said Mr Mng’abwa after he had caned me, “do you want to go back to class or home with your mother?”
Mom opened up her scarred palms wide and dared me, “Yeah. Your choice! Abandon school and come let me teach you how hands get to be this way!” She said angrily.
“I would like to go back to class,” I answered sheepishly, properly cut to size.
“Very well. Go and see off your mother to the gate, then come back for your clearance.”
Clearance it was. Turned out to involve uprooting an entire stump of a humongous pine tree, which took me and my 120 classmates the better part of a week… For a useless strike and Most of us never even got to know what it was all about or who had organized!
I did learn from BG an incredible leadership lesson: never to deal with a mob; always divide it up — to one individual if possible. An MI6 retiree who fought behind the lines in the Falklands, in Iraq and against the IRA confirmed it. He told me that eight MI6 guys could easily ruffle up a city the size of Nairobi, and he had enough personal experiences to back up his claim.
And from Kagume? That magnifying small things amounts to only one thing: a display of your personal insecurities.
Haron Wachira 