For most East African parents, strict learning conditions is what they believe to be ideal for the proper academic excellence of their children and boarding school is the answer.
Total isolation from all worldly distractions and deprivation off all the luxuries and wants is what it takes to excell academically. Atleast thats what our parents believed.
i was fortunate enough to be taken to boarding school at the age of 8. That means i started taking care of my self, living on my own (not literally), planning my finances , budgetting my expenses, missing out on the daily luxuries a little girl supposed to expereince at 8 years old. As if that was not enough, my boarding school was in a foreign country.
i say fortunate because while i was in school, we had children in boarding school as young as 3 years old. i wouldnt speak for their parents as to why they took their children to boarding school, far away from them at such a young age, but as for my parents, they did everything and anything they knew that was best for us, atleast to East African parents standards and understanding. i started off in a primary boarding school in Nairobi, kenya. My young brother started at 4 years.
THE JORNEY TO SCHOOL.
Beggining of a school term for me wasn't always exciting, infact i dreaded that time. i always said we were going back to prison, atleast that is what it felt like, because the moment we entered through the school gate and confined within the school boundaries, next time i would see the outside world would be after 3 months, except for very few occassions "golden moments" when we were allowed to go outside, say for a school trip or a saturday evening hike.
days prior to going back to school would involve:
-Quality time spent with family, friends and loved ones.
-Binge eating on all the favorite foods that i will miss while in "prison".
-Binge watching Television, favorite shows and music. atleast to catch up with the rest of the world and have something to talk about with the rest of the kids at school.
-Shopping, lots of shopping. i would always require everything new while going back to school for the next term (semester). This was mainly because, life in boarding school was not easy for a little chap like me. The older students would always take advantage and steal anything and everything from the little ones. i mean even underwear. By the time the school term is half way, i literally would have nothing but only 1 uniform left, 1 un matching pair of socks and no underwears. solution for this was to knit names onto every item one owned with a needle and thread. But even this kind of labelling could not help much and the theft never seized.
Journey to school would be an 18hr journey from Dar es salaam to Nairobi, with 15-30 minutes stop overs at some major cities along the way and about 3 hours at the Tanzania- Kenya Boarder in Namanga.
we would leave Dar es salaam at 5am and arrive Nairobi between 10pm - 12 midnight.
We were quite a number of kids going to the same school from Dar es salaam, so our parents formed some sort of bond and association, they appointed 1 parent to accompany us each trip going and returning back at the end of the term. We were about 12 kids.
Arriving Nairobi at that time, only meant we would go to school the following morning. The best thing for us to do at that time was always feast on kenyas famous chicken and chips. (You havent been to Kenya unless youve eaten their famous friend chicken... kenchick is what they call it.
The weather in Nairobi is usually chilly in the night time so a hot cup of the famous kenyan milk tea and maandazis (local/swahili doughnut).
After our dinner feast, we would usually roam around the city, but then again its not very safe to do so at that time of the night, so we would do so around the bus stop area or just sleep inside the bus or the travelers transit lounge as we waited for the morning time.
Mornings mostly started early, as we would have couple of runs to do around town before heading to school. We would usually start the day at 6am and , freshen up and then have breakfast.
Like true East africans , breakfast would include chapati ( the east african version of the indian flat bread roti, safati, shabaati or rosh), mandazi , eggs , and ofcourse the milk tea.
After that we would run around to buy new unifroms, pay tuition fees in the bank and do last minute shopping. We would then board on a MATATU ( Nairobi's loud, vibrant minibuses) and be on our way to school. This journey always seemed the shortest and saddest although it lasted about an hour. i just hated going back to 'prison" THAT MUCH.
Stay tuned for part 2.
And thanks for reading.
Xoxo.
Magz.