8-4-4, The Salient Tragedy; A Mockery

Heeeey…. Think this is a bit early? Well, Yeah… Let’s say I’m trynna make up for last week or just maybe, actually to say the truth… its excitement! So I’m going to say this once, because I’m not so proud of it but I enjoyed every single second of it… If anybody is just about near 4^th street, kindly call 911 or is it 999? Coz I just hit 8-4-4 in the nuts! And she collapsed…. That quite really got me surprised!

Yes, you guessed right, I just finished school…you can imagine, 20 years of my life has been spent in school! You could say my happiest, sour and bitterest moments have been in these years. And Hell yeah, I will treasure them, remember them… I fell in love, broke hearts, antagonized, worshipped even, impressed, got disappointed, regretted but also got a shot at self-discovery within these two decades.

I think High school was the epitome, there was this ‘game’ we had christened ‘Kuchek Logo’, (I must seriously attribute this legendary term to some dude called Chura or ‘Frog’). You see, where I went to school, there were endless funkys ranging from sports and drama to musicals, which spanned the better part of the weekend. As such almost every other weekend the school was throngs of oestrogen-hoarding beings, this augured well with the testosterone-infested mortals whose default impulse was to ascertain the logos of their presumably picturesque patrons were in place. You realize where the school logo is usually placed right? Good, now you get it? Oh boy, those were real good times.

Some older friend even told me that it was the best period in my life! And I would agree, I have made a great deal of friends in the last two decades that I think making better friends than they would be utopian, dreamy even.  

They’ve been good times, aren’t they? If you still at it I bet you might be highly inclined to lash out at me… like this last exam I casually handed back at my don. Man, I thought first class was a possibility… I had this overwhelming feeling that I’d be crowned, (I know what you’re thinking, like

this overly ambitious idiot! It’s an illusion boy) but you can’t really convince me that you’ve never thought of yourself as the best in something! As in, that time you couldn’t shake off that feeling that you are so good at it, or rather have put so much effort at it, or it comes naturally to you, or like Mwangi, whose ego screams at him “you must be the best”. All am saying is that, it’s perfectly normal to want that shining crown of perfection even if it’s in the most obvious thing or undervalued skill, like playing a game of draughts!

How one exam can change things? Spending virtually a whole day summarizing a thousand pages of pdfs, benchmarking with several ‘mobile revisions’ from classmates and sending the vital good luck prayer from above only to walk into the exam room and find the quick-witted, self-proclaimed Aristotle fellow lifted questions from a space fate-probability prototyping lecture from Mars. I was screwed from the offing.

“8-4-4 is no joke” some common purported infallible wisdom has it. Quite agreeable to the casual onlooker this is. To the student drowned in the murk that it presents, this is a grim reality that is inevitable and source of untold disquiet and to quite a number, terror. I remember some friends in high school who had perfected the art of doctoring their result slips. Man, the creativity that goes on in that level, is astounding, or should I call it bravely, or maybe ‘daredevilness’, well, clearly there isn’t such a word. 

One managed to sneak into a teacher’s office and plucked a couple of pages from the results register, the other easily got a rubber stamp of the institution made and the most valuable was the calligrapher (and they were quite many), he almost effortlessly duplicated the lecturer’s handwritings and signatures producing exact replica of result slips save for elevated performance of the clever would-be-scholars! Wait, I forgot they also did the same with the permission chits, allowing unlimited number of outings into town. Problem arose when the enthusiastic careers master introduced an academic ‘clinic day’ for teachers, parent and students to review progress. But that’s a story for another day.

Whoever came up with this gobbledygook idea that administering a sitting examination is the best way to determine who asses the internalization of taught skill must have been high on some seriously illegal stuff. Why should a two-hour engagement be used to declare me excellent, good, fair or poor at something I have something I have been learning for over three months? Or in the case of lower levels eight years and four years respectively? If the aim was to test memory they our brainy educators have tremendously succeeded. But then, really, where does memory count in execution of real tasks, save for stage plays and recitations? Even best-selling movies involve several rehearsals, dry runs and multiple takes. Hell, even newscasters read from auto-cues (some haters actually call them run-of-the-mill screen-reading bimbos!)

I hate average, I seriously detest that term. And to think that some average (pun) mortal would label me as such, more even in a document that is supposed to assure my survival in this twisted, unfair and super-competitive world of job seeking is seriously sickening. That the very system that is used to tag me such is based on a flawed assumption of the normal curve and the more appreciable notion that hierarchy is inevitable is so very unwelcome in my world. Media talks of the average citizen (mwananchi), we talk of the average girl (in terms of beauty), average height, wealth, health and even the cliché preposterous average life! An defective concept that continues to serve the egotistic interests of a few effectively playing off our capabilities, egos, aspirations and our cherished albeit subtle needs for recognition and self-achievement.

Even more depressing is the fact that we have fallen four-fold for this indoctrination to the extent of becoming hapless tools of its legitimation. Whoever said that you are an average citizen just because you do not a position of power and influence in government? Or because your bank statement reads far below $100? You are actually exceptional, incomparable and outstanding (never mind that these words might actually mean the same thing!) but the point is, you have influence, among peers or even your kids, you have achieved quite a lot that nobody has cared to document and even those instances that you feel like shouting ‘Serikali saidia’ you still muffle it up and find a way out. Ooh, not to mention you’re unpredictable! The difference between you and the glorified ‘extra-ordinary’ pseudo-leaders and tycoons is that you chose to remain incorruptible and honorable (we actually call them that!!), or they had some situational advantage that didn’t come your way. Calling you average is sheer insult.

I won’t talk about average beauty, the unjustifiability is too obvious.

So, 8-4-4 dear, I hope (honestly I don’t) you are safely recuperating at the asylum I recommended, that is if they got my message. Don’t worry, they will patch you up just fine. Kindly, don’t take this personal, don’t you try to get emotional, it’s not your fault, blame your very implementer (FYI, he was high!).

It is such a pity that after attaining sovereignty, our so respectable forefathers chose to adopt the colonizer’s education system and in some way hoped that it would work for us, as if we had no history! Before they came we had formal teaching system of soft skills and apprenticeship for blacksmiths, iron smelters and other specialized skills like wine-making that was actually more relevant to our needs.

You see, when Europeans introduced formal education in Kenya, or generally in Africa it wasn’t really that they were generous. It was a means to achieving their selfish end of training Africans in manning local administration at the lowest ranks and to staff private firms owned by Europeans. Not only do we continue to train our youthful population in largely literary professions that do not reflect our economic needs but our very ‘learned’ people continue to scramble for employment opportunities in foreign owned firms like Deloitte and PWC (Yeah, I too have applied for internship). At this, I must regrettably say Europeans are quite a clever people!

The tragedy is that Europeans and other Continents for that matter (and from wherever this insane system was borrowed from) don’t train there students in a style even remotely similar to ours. Their children abilities and interests are matched with their training such that one can become a successful athlete or football without giving a heck about what hydrocarbons mean. It is unheard of that one is prevented from pursuing an engineering course because some Agricultural course, history or religious education course lowered his mean grade!!

Indeed the colonial afterbirth is what we are grappling with.

Oops! I realize I have said too much…..but then I confessed I’m wordy here (click)

I’ll be sending you the E_vites to my Screw8-4-4 bash soonest (how we always find reasons to party)…. Just follow this blog via email… I could just book reserve for you that VIP seat!

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