When I was six years old, I joined class one, and was so excited to begin a new year away from home, at least away from the bosom of my nanny. I found myself among hundreds of older children, in a school that was beyond my comprehension.
Prior I had attended a small, intimate neighborhood
kindergarten, where swings, tires, and dirt mingled with porridge, mattresses,
and classes. I particularly remember the mind-numbing repetition of numbers and
alphabets drilled into our essence. The constant:
“Again,”
“a..e…i..o...u.”
“Again.”
And so, it went. I was happy to be done with that life. This
promised to be a whole new world of experience.
I loved being free, bubbly, and happy. I was a plumb happy
child. All I wanted was to break things, jump over things, and move around unrestricted.
My class one teacher thought otherwise. He preferred me to
be docile and obedient. And unlike in kindergarten, where we sat on a bench, he
wondered why my backside was wasting a good seat. I had the memory of a
goldfish, and kept forgetting his instructions, and progressively that ticked
off Mr. Kariuki. Turning him, on the third day, from an affable Dr. Jekyll, and
into a dark, evil, and destructive Mr. Hyde. I thought of him as Captain Hook,
the Peter Pan villain, since he had a foot deformity that made him limp.
It became his singular joy to impose his brunt on one happy
juvenile world that saw, felt, and heard no darkness. Overnight, my small world
turned upside down. He would cane me for the slightest infractions. I sensed he
relished putting me in ‘my’ place. I was the ‘sum’ total of all the evil he had
experienced, and needed to be corrected. While I knew no other way but to be joyful.
He knew of ways to tame a young boy like me.
Something changed; at least the bridge that connected to my
world crumbled. And I remember the day it did.
In class, I sat behind a pretty young girl called Priyanka. She
had the loveliest flowing hair I had ever seen. And it was all held together
with a hair clip that dazzled against the morning sun. I never knew it was that
delicate, or maybe I wanted to touch the hair and understand why she was so
gorgeous. But I broke the hairclip, and soon enough, Priyanka, the darling of
the class, was crying irreconcilably. And I, the monster, needed to be punished.
I remember trying to put it back
together, but my clumsy hands made it worse. It didn’t help that the teacher
had been yawning earlier as we did our homework.
What happened next was a masterclass in breaking a child. I
was beaten severely, called names that served only to demean, and then
summarily given the hairclip and told to go and not come back without my
parents and a new hairclip. While all this happened, the class was silent. They
could do little but look at me like young children normally do. Scared, but
also happy that it wasn’t them receiving the canning. I remember wondering why
I was being beaten so severely.
My mother listened to my words, with quiet wisdom, and then
went ahead and bought the hairclip. She then took me to school the following
day. I never heard them speaking. It was something I now respect my mother greatly
for. They spoke out of earshot while I went into class.
Their ‘talk’ resulted in fewer memorable beatings from then
on. But the bridge had crumbled. Every time I wanted to do something ‘fun,’ a
cold sweat would rise, and a knot would form in my chest. There is nothing as destructive
as self-censure. He had created the Pavlov dog. With time, I became quiet,
withdrawn, and stupid. I never paid attention in class; I preferred to live in
my world, unable to cross the bridge.
Until I discovered by accident a library that was near my
school. And for a moment, my world became richer, with creatures and characters
I brought into that dark, dreary world. It came alive with the books, and the
cartoons I loved to watch every evening after school from 4 pm. A place I would
retreat to.
“Edwin, why are you not like your sister?” The words would
come from my class teacher as he handed me my report card. I was dead last in
my class. I always put on a happy face while the embarrassment and shame burrowed
deep.
My sister was an exemplar, a poster child for success. She would
end up at the best girls’ school in the nation. I, on the other hand, lived a vicarious
dreamy world. I had accepted my lot to become the clay that Mr. Kariuki molded
at the tail end of a whip and demeaning words.
Two years later, I was standing at the edge of my world, and
I looked up, and a shameful experience forced me to dive across the ravine and grab
the edge of this other world. I had been jolted back to reality. From then on,
I wanted to ‘show them’, ‘prove to them’ that I must be respected.
There is something that jolts us, be it painful or shameful,
and we decide to change.
In less than a month, I had a new pair of spectacles. I had
been as blind as a bat. I moved from the back of the class and sat near the
teacher. And from then on, all my
teachers considered me their favorite.
Was it because I saw them differently, or was it because I
saw myself differently?
Before I was indifferent to being the last in class, I didn’t
care how much my classmates called me stupid. The reality was that I had been
straining and constantly had headaches, due to poor eyesight. I had a last-in-class
mindset until I was publicly shamed. That incident jolted me out of my stupor
and self-pity. I desired to become top
of this class and this new mindset took shape almost immediately.
As soon as I got my spectacles, I did a miracle; I was able
to fill in a multiplication table chart that no one else was able to solve in
class. The class was left aghast as I stood at the blackboard and went ahead
and did it with ease.
What had happened to the guy they called names? They wondered.
As the exams came, I went from being dead last in my class to number 15. A radical
ascent. But I was not done. At the end of the school term, I had become number
8. I remember celebrating it in my mind, and my mother not saying much, but smiling
at me. I craved for more words, but settled for what I received. The characters in my mind walked away, saying
they would do more, be more. “We will make them respect me like they do my elder
sister.” I was a nine-year-old with big dreams of podiums and platforms I would
rise on.
Young boys deeply crave their mother's affection.
It was at this time that I visited my elder sister at her
new school. A nine-year-old being swooned over by his sister's schoolmates. Being
taken around the school, being treated with respect and kindness, and being
asked questions that I responded to quite well.
“This brother of yours is intelligent,” said one of her schoolmates.
I was floored by these words. These were the most intelligent high school girls
in the nation.
When I got back home, I had a strategy, and that would get
me to a podium finish. Words had given me a new outlook; a superior view, starved
of the limitations I had placed on myself.
I became more attentive in class, and in class four, I went
on to become the third in the whole stream of more than 200 students.
For the first time, I was called to the podium and awarded. That
changed everything.
From then on, there was a link between effort and acclaim.
This would keep me strongly motivated in the things I did and the goals I had. The
fuel for me was to avoid the shame that had always been my constant companion.
A trauma had been the wellspring that drove my
determination.
A genius stroke was when my mother transferred me to a new
school. I was done with the old faceless enemies that I projected into the
world around me. In this new environment, I had a strong drive to prove that I
was someone worthy of respect. All I had to do was work myself to a sweat, and I
learned to even enjoy the slight headache that would come from overinvesting in
study.
What did I crave? The attention and adoration from people
seeing me get the prize, rise up the podium. And this manifested as I went from
class 4 to class 8.
I remember selecting a national school, where I hoped the
same streak would follow.
Unfortunately, I had moved from a small pond into a lake.
The people I met in my high school were the leviathans from across the nation.
I remember in high school first term results barely being able to stay top 70.
It was pretty humbling.
My reality crumbled. What I had defined myself as was in
question. Was I even that intelligent? I felt anxiety, rage, and different negative
emotions dammed up in me, and I didn’t know how to process them. Everyone was
working so hard and diligently, and the more I worked and got my signature
headache, the more my results stayed average.
There were people in that school who barely even studied,
but their results would be extraordinary.
“I am not good enough,” was the conclusion I arrived at. Old
wounds that I had buried and not treated resurfaced; a sense of inadequacy began
to surface in the throes of adolescence. Rebellion came naturally. The fear of
failure and the need for control paralyzed me. My mind exploded with new voices
of negative self-talk, and without knowing it, I started to self-sabotage.
My first two years of high school were me being deviant and
trying anything I came across, except hard drugs (I truly thank God for that). I
also started living in my head. I would be with my schoolmates, but I never
really wanted to be there.
Music was a haven; it had always been for me. Introduced to
roots and culture at a young age, followed by Rock, R&B, and Lingala, my musical
palate only expanded, and settled on Rap music for the duration of my high school
years. I leaned in and became part of
that subculture. I imagined my pain expressed in the music.
I think rap music embodied the rebellion of many youths
around the world. The American neighborhoods experienced it viciously. We half
way across the world, felt the isolation, and pain of emotions unexplained, and
voices misunderstood.
I had been my support system, now I felt the pang of
loneliness and craved for a support system. We may say family provides support,
and that is true in meeting our basic and emotional needs. But as a teenager, I
wanted to belong, to feel like my efforts were appreciated, that my voice was
being heard by people who saw the world the way I did.
My parents did not understand what I was going through. They
loved me, but they didn’t get me. Few people held me accountable for my actions.
I was a confused teenager putting a brave face and talking big.
I craved for a mentor; I craved for guidance. But I was
unwilling to listen to just anybody. One had to earn my respect. The person whom
I ended up looking up to and thinking of as a mentor ended up leading me on the
wrong path. Thankfully, I woke up from that slumber. High school passed, and they
were not my best days. I was mainly a confused young boy, looking for a way.
My university years were no better initially.
I came to my element in my third year of university, and it
was mainly by chance. I had been asking myself why I was comfortable trying to
look a certain way. Why am I not driven or desiring to explore my potential? For
the most part, I had been playing a broken record of trying to fit in.
Wisdom screams from all around. It’s the fool who is deaf
to it.
I was in a class of exceptional people. Some of them,
through sheer grit, had gotten scholarships to the university to do the same
course. I would observe one who would go to work and still study alongside us
and come at the top of the class. He was highly respected, and I looked up to
him. In my first and second years, I would look at my average results and just
be ok, like everyone else.
I had been a fool, not willing to listen or see.
I had made a promise to myself; I would never cheat in exams.
Others did and frequently so. But I noticed the exceptional people never did. They
had a moral code. I had the same, but I had no teeth to match. I was all bark
and no teeth.
The only way I could make up for that was if I had a stellar
performance in class.
I looked at the exceptional students and noticed they were
always attentive in class, present, and invested in what they were learning.
They were disciplined, respectful, and each had their style of study. I had to
find my style to meet my goals.
As the months rolled by, I had a meeting with myself.
“Edwin your dad is not minting money to get you in this
course, why are you pretending to not care?”
“But I don’t care, no one cares!” a voice would say.
“What kind of nonsense is that?” Another gentle but firm voice
would say.
“But I am never asked how I am and what I want,” a voice
would say.
“Yet when you wanted to do this course, money was provided for
your study.”
Silence.
“Edwin, stop joking, you are coasting through university,
and you will have a mediocre result. Step up. You and I know you deserve to get
top marks in your studies.”
I sat with that thought for a few months.
It was almost by chance that I landed on mnemonics. I loved to
doodle, to keep myself present. When the lecturer was giving notes, I would do a
doodle or mnemonic to remind me of what was said. I started asking questions to
keep my attention in class. I then started asking myself questions to discover
more, which piqued my interest. When the ‘CAT’ was due or the exam was around
the corner, all I needed to do was look at my doodle, and all the knowledge would
arrive at my fingertips.
“Wow! This is incredible, let me see if I can use it during
exams,”
At the first exam, I used this method of recall. I
remembered vividly even what the teacher said.
When the results came out. I had gotten full marks. Mine was
the top score.
I was shocked, I moved seats to the front, and started
giving the teacher my attention and focus. Mnemonics took center stage. In the
first term of my third year, my score was first for most units I took. And that
went on for the rest of the year and my fourth year.
Did it change my life? Yes! I was taking charge of my life
and harnessing my potential actively. I was not pitying, blaming, or acting up.
I was taking responsibility and proactively taking action. No one was coming to
save me. Once I started seeing things this way, I became more energized and in
tune with myself. I found myself having
a clearer picture of what I wanted to do, and wouldn’t take anything less.
But even as I say this, I must acknowledge that in life we
move from season to season, from having perfect focus to habits leading us to
be out of focus. From where we are purpose-driven to years later, where you
find yourself having made concessions for comfort.
We must always be vigilant.
I started working when I was 21 years old, and there are
many stories to prove that there were instances of overcommitment, negative self-talk,
burnout, failure, fear of failure, and lack of skills that were present when I
was unable to meet my goals.
But one lesson I want you to go with today is that you are
human, not a machine. You exist in the ebbs and flows of life. Your goals must
be tied deeply to a sense of self-awareness, a clear understanding of why you
value certain things, and to what end you value them. You must understand what
role you are trying to ‘play’ in society and to what end, even as you seek to
achieve your goal.
All in all, may you have success in the goals you set for yourself.
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