First Day

So there I was in my new primary school. It looked funny. It smelt funny. The other kids, the color of the walls, the odd looking, odd sounding teachers, it all confirmed my deepest fear: mum and dad finally had decided to get rid of me. Not that I blamed them. That stunt with my mums vinyl collection had left the house silent indeed. And that was after the experiment with the stereo. They had sworn by terrible gods and even more terrible ancestors that the TV would be behind razor wire. Permanently.

Mum and dad shouldn't curse like that...its not good...

"Kinuthia!"

I jumped. We were all assembled, single file by class, at the central area of the school, a sort of cul-de-sac if you will. The towering classrooms seemed to be glowering down on us, making us feel even smaller. The Head-teacher (what was her name again? Washer? Wisher? Ah..Wachira..Mrs Wachira) was reading out the register of all the new entrants (read convicts) into the institution.

"Kinuthia?!"

"Urr..I'm here..ma'am"

A snigger rippled through the crowd. Calling a teacher 'ma'am' was extremely unusual in this part of the world. You couldn't blame me for that. First my parents send me to a cream-of-the-crop British school, then throw me into this hell hole. Curses. They must have found out what happened to the cat...

Mrs Wachira gazed at me with obvious disdain. Curses. Making enemies on the first day of ANYTHING was bad luck of the worst sort in my books.

This was not going to be easy...

I forced myself to concentrate on the goings on. A difficult task considering I was only 6 years old with the attention span of a fruit fly. Again, not my fault. No one had done any research on the possible connection between 7 hours of TV a day and ADHD that long ago.  I gazed at her until my neck ached and eyes watered. A fat lizard crawling on the wall a few feet above her caught my eye. I could envision a myriad of delicious outcomes should it have lost its grip, none of which would be favorable to her.

My slingshot....darn! Mum had performed a full search of everything that I had packed into my knapsack. She had found the slingshot. And the water gun. The boomerang too. She even took away the marbles! For sweet Pete's sake, what damage could one child do with a sack of marbles? That incident with her rear view mirror had come back to bite in a big way. How was i to know glass doesn't bounce off glass? I was 5 and a half! What would I know?!

The mood of the other students changed. I looked around wondering what was coming next. A lanky upper primarian with dark curly hair and simian proportions walked up to the podium. The headmistress whispered a few words to him. He nodded seriously and intelligently, then turned to face us.

"Therefore now no condemnation for there is no condemnation in my heart..."

And immediately the kids burst into a horribly discordant retort which i later learnt was the head teachers favorite song. For an excruciating 5 minutes I had to attempt to follow what was meant to be a hymn. All things considered I did pretty well. That trick i learnt the first (and last) time mum and dad took me to church: Simply repeat "The cow jumped over the moon" to the tempo of whatever song (smiling and nodding occasionally) and none but the most observant can tell that you have no idea how the song went. This particular song, however, troubled me. For a few seconds i couldn't tell why, until i remembered my dad telling me that the process by which blood traveled in the body was called condemnation. I was sure of it.

I looked around me. Poor malnourished, brainwashed fools. When push came to shove I'm pretty sure they would be begging for condemnation in their hearts. I kept mouthing the song though. Dad had also told me that "You never rock the boat that bites you son" and I was not going to do that. Not on the first day of school. I was going to blend in with this sorry lot. Even if it killed me.

The song ended abruptly and it was time to go to class. We were herded like sheep to the direction of a particularly evil looking, damp,  mould smelling, cavern-like building. I sighed. Only 7 years, 300 days, 6 hours to go.

This was not going to be fun...