In 2008, following the post-election violence, my sister and I joined St. Patricia Memorial Academy, one of the best primary schools in Rongo, Migori region at that time. We were both in grade five. The school boasted of quality education, but it was not reflected in its infrastructure. The buildings were old, windowless, floorless, and poorly planned. In simple terms, the school was an eyesore and not well-built.

When we enrolled in the school, my sister and I stood out as cool kids. Stella was a well-dressed, soft-spoken lady with class. Boys thought she was super beautiful, which she was and still is. I was a neat, well-dressed young man with good writing skills, and well-spoken. We were disciplined and had a unique habit of greeting and receiving things from the teachers by two hands while bowing down. We even said thank you after being flogged, which was ridiculous.

One incident that I’ll never forget from those early days of St. Patricia was when I got punished for writing a good composition. I had written it so well that it was beyond the writing skills of a grade five student. Instead of congratulating me, they decided to punish me and make me write another one. I was disappointed, and I wish they had a plagiarism checker back then. Long story short, I wrote an even better composition, and the teacher responsible had to apologize to me and my dad, who was a senior education officer at that time. He didn’t strip them of their powers, though he could have. Instead, he warned them against doing something like that again. My dad believes in understanding and listening to both parties and didn’t want to act rashly.

Despite the challenges, I enjoyed my stay at St. Patricia. The school made me brave and naughty, and I loved the freedom it offered. On Thursday afternoons, we used to sneak away from school to swim in River Misadhi. It was a welcome escape from the nonsensical debates that often ensued during that time. Seriously, who cared about arguing whether a teacher was better than a farmer or vice versa? A good fraction of boys from my class joined me, and we had fun swimming in the river. Those were good days, and we were doing our internship on sneaking out of school.

Our adventurous spirit did not stop at swimming. We ran away from teachers and even confronted them when they were too much. We took without permission mangoes from people’s farms, and I became good at researching and finding the farms with good yields. I was a great market researcher, and we executed our plans. Ronny and Allan were good at finding banana farms, and we also ran off with unripe bananas and hid them in the thickets around River Onyife. We waited for them to be ripe so that we could dig in and enjoy the contents. Arnold, aka Nyangoma, was good at finding bitches that had just given birth, and we would find a way to get beautiful puppies from them. We did all these for fun, and we enjoyed it. The most interesting part was when we were caught, and we needed to escape. They couldn’t catch us; we were fast, slightly faster than an airplane, and slightly slower than lightning. That’s how I could describe our speed. Those were fun times.

At St. Patricia, we also had beautiful girls. Victor Juma was always winning them, and I envied him. I didn’t know how to talk to a girl, and I would literally cry when a girl I did not want was put to sit beside me. I would remain completely speechless when a girl I wanted was put to be my deskmate. When Cynthia Atieno, the slim, beautiful, and soft-spoken girl, was put to sit next to me, I felt happy, anxious, and confused. I liked Cynthia; she was a bright lady, very shy yet very tactical. I admired her from afar, yearning for her despite my complete lack of understanding about relationships or how to be a boyfriend. I was clueless about what it meant to have a girlfriend, what was expected of me, or even what to do. Unfortunately, I never found the courage to express my feelings to her until we both left St. Patricia. It’s a regret I carried with me, and I vowed never to let such an opportunity slip through my fingers again. Nowadays, I go for it! I have never seen Cynthia since then, and I don’t know how she looks like or who she is now. She escaped my mind too after some good time.

My experiences with my boys were just us being boys and enjoying it while it lasted. However, my teachers and parents took it as indiscipline, and I had to leave the school. My sister and I had to go to St. Benedicts Sony, where I could be monitored more. However, this story is not about St. Benedicts Sony Academy in Awendo, so I won’t tell its story. That was it at the school next to the stream, St. Patricia

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