This is what you don’t know about this boy. That when I “met” him some time back, he had just been kicked out of school and he was back home in Majengo slums in Kitui with his grandfather. He was standing at the very precipice of doom and ready be a part of the narrative of hopelessness that surrounded him. I hosted him here and you all went gaga about him, and encouraged him and told him to get his ass back to school; that he had a more promising future than he imagined. What you don’t know is what that did to his self-esteem. He felt that someone actually cared. A whole legion of strangers cared. You cheered him on, with your words of encouragement and you told him he could write, which is what every budding writer wants, no, prays to hear. His life changed. He got a sponsor for his secondary education. He went to a better school. And stayed in school. He sat his KSCE exams last year.
His results are out and I will let him reveal his scores to you himself. He’s standing behind the door, with his hat in his hand because he feels he didn’t do his best. I honestly thought he would do much worse and I told him as much. Before writing his piece, he constantly asked me, “What will the Gang think? What do you think they will say?” He told me that he is willing to go back to fourth form to give it another shot. I don’t know about that.
Joe Munuve is at this beautiful but crucial point in his life where he needs direction and a hand. That he has a promising future as a writer isn’t in doubt. He wants to do literature. He wants to write. But he needs to write more. He wrote this story from a cyber, which means he urgently needs a laptop. Most importantly he needs to go study what he loves. His sponsor might not be able to continue with the sponsorship going forward because her circumstances have since changed. So if you have ideas (read, some money under your mattress) please feel free to weigh in here. Anyway, let me bring out Joe.
Joe… this way please, and don’t look so sullen, for chrissake, this is not a eulogy.
***
I have been at the coast for close to a month now and I am still looking for the ‘raha’ in ‘Mombasa raha’, a near impossible task by all indications. All I have known is heat and more heat. This morning is different, though. It’s cool and breezy.
The cold, like the soft touch of a red lipped damsel, lightly caresses my skin and I feel the hairs on my arms stand. I have a slight shiver, a tremor that stems from the thought of the future and takes root in the gloominess of the day. A chill that has nothing to do with the weather. My palms are shaky and sweaty. My phone slips. I duck and catch it before it hits the water then lean back and stare at the sea once more, watching as the foamy waves crash against the rocks, disintegrating into a thousand drops that fill my vision with a haze of blue.
I have come to cool my heels at the beach. I thought it prudent to get my KCSE results at sea. There is something about the sea at dawn. An overwhelming ambience that stirs the pacifist in you. Makes you want to put on purple robes and go help Kony find inner peace. There are only a smattering of people around at this hour; a paunchy mzungu jogging in the sand and weather-beaten fishermen bringing their boats to shore. I wonder what they think of me. Human judgment is always close at hand. From where I sit, I can clearly see that there is no hope for the white guy doing rounds in the sand. What with his spilling gut, pouches of skin hanging from his massive belly and matted white hairs on his chest, he has as much chance of getting fit as Alek Wek has of passing for a mulatto. When he casts me furtive glances, I wonder, is it my complexion he’s gaping at or does he somehow know I am a spineless blighter waiting for his fate to be determined by a bloody text? What right do I have to judge his efforts anyway?
That jolts me and propels me with an unknown but welcome courage. I quickly send my index to the number provided.
KNEC got their machines fixed alright. Damn reply comes way before the delivery report (people with my type of phones know what I mean). I click it. Nothing. Click it again. Nothing. Run a finger all over the screen which in turn remains, unresponsive. Chinese phones choose the weirdest moments to hang. I can see the reply on the notification bar and this only serves to intensify my irritation. I am tempted to throw the damn thing into the water and watch its lifeless body being washed back to its oriental origins. Mockingly, the phone unlocks and all my previous irritation mutates to a sickening anxiety. I look at the content of the message, look away and then look some.
I have scored a B- of 58 points or so the text reads. This cannot be right, I think. Disbelief engulfs me. But it is misguided disbelief. I can already feel that familiar headiness that comes with crushing finality. There is no mistaking the Spartan wording characteristic of bureaucratic accuracy. That is my grade.
WhatsApp messages stream flood my phone in a chorus of beeps, beeps that knock on my brain incessantly. I make a mental note to change the goddamn tone later. Peeps are posting their results on the school’s WhatsApp group. D’s, D’s, the occasional C. It’s serious. And it’s bad. This is failure. This type of flopping, though, is something I have not encountered. I post mine too. Talk to the guys. Memes flow in. Everybody’s failed but that as a fact is quickly swept under the rug and the somber atmosphere is infused with the off handedness and deceitful humour of group mentality. At first we comfort each other, finding solace in togetherness then the chat trickles to a few isolated messages of poor souls trying to put brave faces which in time dissolves into nothingness.
The phone’s silence, just like it does for the others, forces me to ponder my results. I recall how I came onto this platform and left red stains of my lust for a good grade all over it. My own words come back to haunt me. I like to think of myself as intellectual and somewhat mature. Just as a matter of fact and not in a cocky way. This, however, is one of those moments when life throws something at you that reduces you to a helpless kid. The straight path that I thought I was following has drifted off to a dead end and I am at a loss at what to do. My grade cannot take me to campus, not on the government basis like I had hoped for. I look upwards to the heavens and all I see is my dreams flying away.
The thought of all that I have lost stirs up images of how it all happened. Something does not click. I took the exam. I have taken many exams. Four years of dealing with exams has left me with a knack of approximating my score. How could it be that of all the exams I have taken in high school, I was to get the lowest grade in the final one? I feel robbed. Question marks pop into my head. Business, CRE and Biology questions float about; papers that I did and handed over with a smile. My initial disappointment slowly gives way to anger. It feels good to have something to lash at. It breaks the fall. My sponsor calls and I reflexively pick up the call then go dumb. What to tell her? She is a formidable woman. How do you begin to explain failure to someone who, by virtue of where her career has advanced, has made very few mistakes? The talk is good though. She tells me not to beat myself up, I have done well.
The call sobers me up. I realize that it is not a situation to cry foul over. Who would listen anyway? Who would believe that my efforts were worth more than a B-? How would I begin to explain? To what end? I am not sure what exactly it was but something went on during the marking. If I was none the wiser I would have pursued it to the end but unfortunately, we live in a country with minuscule integrity levels.
The tide rises and falls. I feel at one with the sea. Blue. I glance at it hoping to find the answer to the question I must answer soon. What now? The sea glares back. I turn to gang.