My sister Linnet was enrolled to class one and me to class two. I was very much welcomed by other pupils who were just like me. I immediately felt as if I belonged to this place. I felt at home simply because, even though I had no uniform, no books and no nothing that could have made me look like a pupil, my fellow pupils were in the same state too. So I had no reason for worrying. The bell rang and I was told that that meant that it was break time. We all went out in a small field in front of the classes. After a few minutes of confusion, we were told to make a line and we were given this wonderful yellow porridge. The old pupils nicknamed it “Glondu”, oops! I don’t know what the name means or which language it came from. So don’t even ask me. I was convinced that this porridge was nutritious, some other pupil told me the ingredients and I was surprised. He told me the porridge contained ground omena(others call it small fish). What! To be honest, I have never heard about that. I was surprised but do I say? As we finished taking this sweet porridge, the bell rang and we all went to class again. There was no much of learning because we had no books, but teachers came. Some of them told us stories about their lives and how they have made it, just to encourage us, others taught us the bible just to inspire us. I was very much inspired by the motives and good heart of these wonderful new teachers. In life I have had so many practical teachers before I joined school, but the difference between these new teachers and those practical ones is that; these new ones taught you on how you can strive, thrive and make your life easy while the practical teachers all they did was force you in doing things which could not in any way develop you as a person. In fact others were in a position of manipulating you and making you suffer. My first day in school made me see the difference between the two and I have learned to avoid the practical ones at all costs if they are not adding any value to my life. Am the author of my life so I have to choose who to include in my book of life very carefully. From then I have learned that the friends you choose determines your life so much… choose the wrong ones and all you will be doing is wrong things… choose the right ones and all you will be experiencing is favours. Bad friends are taking you nowhere, so drop them as quickly as you get that chance to do so. Good friends are a gift from God so keep as many as your life space can allow. Somebody can ask “how can you differentiate between a good friend and a bad one?” so simple. A good friend is the one who is always there for you in both good and bad times. In good times you enjoy together. In bad times you encourage one another… these are the qualities of a good friend. Whereas a bad friend is one who is there only in good times. When the bad time comes, they are nowhere to be seen. A bad friend will never want to see you prosper in life. Whenever you make a step forward, a bad friend will work day and night to bring you down, just to make sure that you stagnate like him/her. Avoid these people if you have some in your life. They are not worthy keeping. Run away from them as fast as you can.
As these nice teachers were continuing to encourage us, the bell rang meaning it was lunch time. We aligned ourselves again. This time round we were served with a sweet lunch of ugali together with sukuma wiki and in it they included unpeeled potatoes. At first it seemed awkward but I came to appreciate its nutritious value. The bell rang again and we went to class. Teachers came but this time round they came to inform us to come with exercise books tomorrow. At 4pm, the bell rang. This meant that we were about to go home. But before we went we were served with food again. They did all this because they knew that there were some of the pupils whose parents were unable to provide food. What a way to start school! I enjoyed it, not because we ate food and all, no, but simply because, in this world of ours we still had people who cared about humanity. There were people who saw others not in that particular day or that particular life span but those who saw what these people were to become in the long run. They never saw us on how we were dressed or how we looked. Am meant to believe that they looked at us on what we were to become in future. I am where I am today because of the good will and generosity of this kind of people. I call these people makers of the nation.
After we finished eating, we parted ways. On our way home, my sister and I overheard some neatly dressed pupils say, “Hahaha! Look at those, can you imagine they are from school?” one of them asked the other, “what! You must be kidding, look at them, they don’t have uniform and books, how do you know that they are from school?” the second one asked. The first pupil answered, “I just saw them come from that gate, look at that name over there, can’t you see that the school is called Calvary Evangelistic centre?” I was so embarrassed, I wished the earth to open and shallow us alive so that nobody can see us. But it didn’t, so we just had to persevere and walk as people followed us with their eyes. At one moment I hated going back to that school again. Remember that I was just a standard two kid, so you can bare me witness that, overcoming such a humiliation was not easy. To make the matter worse, these pupils were our age mates. You know how kids can react at such a situation. Can you imagine a scenario where you have a rich neighbor who buys for his/her kid presents each and every day and you don’t have even one?… and mark you you are all playing together and this kid doesn’t want you to touch his/her toys. That is how we felt. Imagine it is our first day at school and people are looking and judging us. We struggled to walk but we were not able to overcome these judgmental eyes, so we started running until we reached where my mother was doing her business. We told her all that had happened. I even forgot to tell her the good moment we had had at school early in the day. I thought that she was going to change mind and take us to a school where pupils wore uniforms and carried these big bags on their backs walking in an academic angle. I have come to understand that when we are kids we will never understand how hard our parents are working just to make sure that our life goes on. All we know is to complain to the same parents or even tell our friends the secrets of our homes: oh! My parents refused to do this, oh! My parents refused to do that. They are trying, can’t you see that? Grow up!
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