My desire to ensure environmental sustainability.

Point blank on environmental issues.

Wednesday 10 June 2015

Born a Sufferer! Live a Conqueror! Die a Victor!

PART ONE
Thanks and ululations fill the village. The sun has yet another responsibility to accomplish. You have passed the first transformation headed to the next. The well kept palace with a 24 hour CCTV surveillance has been destroyed! First few months and many days in the new world prove difficult. Thickly woven materials around your body replace the comfortable warm placenta. The lactic liquid suckled and soft food supplements day-to-day meals in a while. Toothless and weak jaws cannot manage tender foods. To your mum you are the raw clay that can undergo pottery to produce the most envied product on earth. She will do exactly that.

PART TWO:
There you grow strong. Feet fidgeting, as you gallop porridge from the green plastic cup. A fully engaging battle between the molar teeth and that bone an indication of strong jaws. In the oversize 'marbolo' T-shirt off to the stream carrying a 5-litre 'elianto' container. The best swimmer in the river across your shamba after an entourage of collecting firewood.

PART THREE:
Soon you will be headed to nursery school because your right hand can go through the head to touch your left ear. In bare foot, you walk for km to school and back. On your back the white school bag, a product of an abandoned DAP fertilizer sack. The chilly mornings and rain seasons a great enemy to your lice infested feet. Your next colleague gives a consolation that your feet are at least better. His perfectly produce a broccoli picture! Somebody accidentally steps on his fingers and the bell ringer has free time around- the painful cry sets the whole school into attention.

Sometimes a cup of water sees you through the night because the hard working woman's food basket is empty. She missed menial work today. This compels you to have numerous stops on your way to school picking sugar cane twigs to please the roaring stomach. Depending on the season, half-eaten guavas and loquats fallen along the way serve the purpose. Your neighbor's slasher misses you by an inch on trying to sneak into his passion fruit shamba. It is not your fault to get into the mess. The hungry stomach needs to feed. That is so daring!

The peaceful hen's hatchery journey cut short after three days as the eggs must be sold to pay your activity fee balance. Your fully decorated uniform alienates you from the smart colleagues. The patches represent almost all favourite colours of Kenyan tribes. Very active in extracurricular activities and of course the best in the curricular world.

Over the December holidays you to pretend the best geographer in map reading. Up the highlands, down the valleys and across the streams you will visit almost all relatives aiming to get textbooks, story books and topmarks.'Remember your cousin was promoted to class eight, so tomorrow you have to go for his class seven books,' your mum speaks in full composure. There you go across the hills to accomplish the task. You get lost in some instances but thank God you manage. I guess you would have used GPS to ease your work if it were today.

PART FOUR:
The so difficult and trying moments help you build the bridge to higher heights with hopes that tomorrow will be a brighter day. All through secondary with life reluctant to improve financially, socially. . .still traumatizing moments. Sharp sun rays penetrating the thatched roof gaps create a sigh of relief every morning.Your cherished matress is that skin from the family cow that was poisoned by the jealous-for-notning neighbour. Since then no few coins from milk. It was the only cow left after a series of dead of calfs and their lovely mothers. You very well know who did it! He has no apparent reason for this cow genocide. In fact he started with the dogs and chicken. The chicken your grandma gave to you when you visited her last christmas! God forbid!

The prayers, songs, homilies from clergymen, bible sharing with friends keep you going.The persistent guy as always you achieve academically. Your are headed into great heights; to conquer the unconquerable, achieve the unachievable and accomplish the dream in great honour of the Almighty!

PART FIVE: 
There you find yourself in campus. That 'life is up there' phrase a very great driving force and inspirational day in day out. Social, religious and political shocks too hard to absorb. Financial life another hell on earth! Back from the mess/mabatini, your roommate is feasting on chicken/chipo, hamburger. . .anything delicious, expensive and hard to get. Colleagues outings the order of the day. I guess your best outing is that visit to your long lost distant relative of yours at Kibera. What a reunion! Once in a while you will get friends. Others genuine and others with ill intentions. Your wit manages to filter them out.

Running and panting across the street to repair your friends laptop. It crashed in your hands when you were typing that 'must type' assigment. The lecturer is a no nonsence person. He will take ages to get back the assignment marks. Worse of all, he will make sure your transcript has achieved the equality rule of accommodating the disabled; and for that reason, he will give you an undeserved 'D'! You are the chief consultant on the class timetable, assignment deadlines and postponed classes.You have been very humble through campus life excelling in all helpful fields.

You have proved your critiques wrong. Those who always had you in the news for all wrong reasons. They said you cheated in your final exams to book a place in that institution. You wonder why your transcript can't prove them right. You are on long holiday for a few months, they say the in disciplined guy has been expelled from campus. You greet the old men in a salute because you are in a hurry, they confirm their fears on how spoilt campus people look down upon them. As one philosopher once put it that that you may not be able to stop people from having a bad perception about you but you can keep them from being right about it, you endeavor to apply that.Trying to suggest an improved way of looking into things, the child is getting beyond boundaries. Culture and traditions do not allow such practices. They insist that what they found there forefathers practicing will always be right. Surely, even quaint traditions? Out of date farming methods? Unsustainability? It is very ironical that the very people are feeling on the upgrade that their clan has learned children.
* * *
Some think education is just but an accolade to make you famous. Education is beyond that! It empowers people. Education is a poison to poverty, laziness, social evils, foolishness. It opens golden gates to development, prosperity, sustainability, fair and equitable sharing of resources. Thanks to the Almighty that most people are getting these facts in their fingertips.
* * *

Powers to read empower the young guy. You are back to the village to transform acquired knowledge into someting useful. Those project proposals go through as expected. Some development enemies are still against your project implementation. With cooperation from most people, you succeed in setting the community water project that has helped in irrigation and domestic uses. The community is producing surplus agricultural products for sale regionally. The underway village electrification will ensure that no family will be suffering to get paraffin in their lanterns. Your schooling siblings, cousins and neighbours will be studying to saturation because lighting is no longer a problem. Your grandfather will be listening to his favourite local radio station all through. Dry cells era will be a history.

You decide to partly fund that neighbor's child through high school. Don't forget he is the very person who was a nuisance during your childhood and schooling days. Those chicken and cows he poisoned! You never held a grudge. This brings a great reconciliation between the two families. Surely, what can't you do? You are really confirming the power of education to those development enemies. With that spirit, everything will be a dream come true. The SUFFERING child has transformed into a CONQUERING intellect, and will indeed, die VICTOR!


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