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Finding My Rhythm!
My nursery school experience is one I do not often talk about,a kid should not be able to recall how their teacher had a psychotic break in the middle of a lesson ,went into coloring a bunch of books in a frenzy while screaming and had to be carried out , I did not feel so terrible though,this was the same teacher who told me not to sing the national anthem during morning assembly as she was lost on where to place my voice, I was too off key.
This blew my one chance of making friends as an awkward kid.I wasn't accepted in the little boys and girls choir club ,and that was pretty much the only thing we had going on in that school.The whole episode about a teacher losing her wits infront of the class did not sit in too well with the parents ,so before I had made any meaningful connections,I was off with my first bag ,crayons and evenly spaced exercise books to another school.This was not just a nursery school,it consisted of a lower and upper primary too.
My adventures were just beginning,I thought it was going to be a lovely rosy experience but this school had the toughest bunch in it,I immediately stood out as I was able to read ,albeit with some difficulties a few english sentences here and there,the cheerfulness I displayed when raising my hands in class did not work on my favor,I learnt that there was a way things were running in this school and I was not being a good fit.My new school mates praised illiteracy,this were young kids who thought life was out of school and were just passing time .
Reading or even speaking a bit of english alienated me further from making any meaningful connection or friendship,I had to acquire a tough exterior somehow while still maintaining my grades to avoid any trouble with the old lady at home.I labored so hard to make new friends but it seems the kids knew right away I was a bit apprehensive.My resolve towards bullies was pretty simple as I had one objective in mind,turn foe into friend,and the process involved giving in to their demands with a smile.
The first encounter was around lunch hour with Jamila ,a girl who should not have been in class one.Jamila towered even over our mathematics teacher ,one could always spot the tremor in Mrs Wanja's voice as she called out Jamila's name while going through the register.Jamila asked for my shoes and socks without flinching ,I knew they did not fit her so that confirmed the suspicion that she could have been having a family outside school or was possibly running a business for second hand wares,I gave lady Jamila the brightest smile ever and proceeded to give her my new shoes and old pair of socks.
Back home my mother was infuriated and also worried about my slothful like nature but this gradually went to rage when I came home without school uniform the second week and the last straw was when I walked back home with a polythene bag holding my books having given out my first bag as well.My mother had had enough ,I could tell from my burning ears after she'd pulled them for so long trying to understand what submissive demon had possessed me into giving out everything she was buying for me,she was also worried I was a bit slow.
I had to toughen up ,luckily my cousin Ibrahim and his friend Baraka joined around the same time.With the two I found company and got a bit of respect around school,but it was not enough ,this was all revealed when Jamila towered over us one day after class ,took all our erasers and books and left.A front of three ,and we still got bullied,it was time to think of concise and effective ways to get some respect around school,but outside Jamila's turf of course.I saw in Baraka and Ibrahim friends but I was an outsider in their friendship bond.When they talked me into after school street fighting,I did not ask why I as a female was the fighter and they,two males were managing me.
So we got to watching indian movies in video cafes to learn a few moves and in a day I was ready to take on the world.The mechanism was simple ,Ibrahim and Baraka would get into trouble with someone,to weasel out of it they would throw in a challenge,a fight, and the prize was just respect .They'd meet me outside my class after school,we would then proceed to the back of the school and I would immediately be thrown in to the ring.The first few fights were peanuts ,I was in the best form,thin and fast and throwing in a few shah ru khan moves here and there I would have my opponent begging for mercy in no time at all.
I became quite popular as a result and in class three I was completely unafraid to raise my hands in class or speak english , but that was till the day we challenged Atman who had sat on Ibrahim's desk and refused to budge.With growing tenacity ,I walked into Ibrahim's class just before the lesson started and told Atman about the pain that was about to rain down on him.I should have observed Atman clearly I understand that now,Atman like jamila seemed the type of guy or kid as I was unable to discern later who would not be going home to do homework but in a certain degree to solve real life problems like rent,or issues like was the gardening hoe returned by the neighbor,or trouble himself about financial issues and the rising price of a loaf of bread.
Atman was all muscle,muscles were bulging throughout every visible part of him.It did not last long ,one minute I was holding my fist defiantly the next I was face down in the middle of the desk with my legs up in the air,my promoters had taken off and were nowhere to be seen.I went home looking like I had been fished out of a muddy pond,mom took one look at me and took me off to a private school-yet again,another unsuccessful attempt at making friends.
The private school covered what remained of my upper primary years,I was fast tracking into the puberty phase .I had some vague notions of what a private school would be like ,ideas we had passed around in my former schools while walking home when the big new school buses for private schools with english names printed across carrying all this bright faces would zoom past us.We thought to ourselves that the kids must have been born in big hospitals with fancy doctors and the first stream of words they heard were probably bunch of english words.
Fancy we thought,this were a different type of people who only conversed in this words we see in text books,fascinating!I was thrust into yet another environment that I did not fit in,I remember my new class gasping as I read an english statement with the knowledge of the school I was from,a mish mash of tenses. I rose through the ranks slowly in this new establishment by doing a lot of homework for people but it all paid off as I was chosen to be a head girl,attempt at making friends yet again ineffective because power tends to push people away.
Mother says she was worried about me for quite sometime,I was always colliding with bicycles while going to the shop,losing money,forgetting change,zoning off and creepily staring at people ,and my mouth would go off and say the wrong things in a family reunion like aunty Letifa's late night meetings with the village chief which would come as quite a surprise to her husband.So I treaded on looking for people to fit in with, I did not find that escape in high school as the zoning off and staring into space became a topic and people would allude to me when conversing about characters that were not quite okay in the head,the straw that broke the camels back was when I attempted a dance during the entertainment hour in my third year.
I let the beat completely take over me and started gyrating and convulsing to it,I moved like a white girl they said while laughing so I let dancing become a private affair while showering.I was made to feel awkward all through and it happens to date,but I always celebrated the fact that I was different and I was always convinced that there had to be a breed of people I would fit right in with.I have felt like a box was being designed for me at each stage and I was expected to fit in.Growing up,I had to explain myself to my peers why I enjoyed reading,but at some point ,books became my only solace,and my adventures were restricted to my wandering imagination.
I went camping recently and a picture was taken of me on top of a tree,I spent the next two days on social media being asked by people what brain malady had overtaken me and made me climb a tree.I was shocked,that even as a twenty six year old I was put on the stand to validate my actions as if it was any ones business.I spent so much time growing up trying to fit in to the idea of normal ,what everybody expected of me ,but at each step I was amiss because I was either not tough enough,my hips were too narrow or my ideas too wild.But I stopped trying to fit in a long time ago,I learnt that life is that big dance floor and as I let go and let the rhythm of life overtake me,no matter how absurd my convulsions and gyrations may seem to others ,when I open my eyes I will find some people close to me.
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