THE ALLURE OF THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT

This article was written in loving memory of my primary school days at Busara Forest View Academy (BFVA) Nyahururu.

 Spare the rod and spoil the child!!!





“The following students to meet me outside the staff room immediately!” roared Mr. Okello the deputy headmaster in his usual stentorian voice. The dining hall suddenly fell silent, so silent that one could hear a pin drop. We all looked nervously at each other. Although it remained unspoken, we each wondered who had crossed Mr. Okello’s path this time and silently sent a prayer to the heavens that none of us were on that sheet of paper he now held in his hands. 

It was your typical Sunday evening at the Mountaintop View Academy, a private boarding primary school located at the foot of Mt. Kenya. The school was founded fifteen years earlier by Mr. and Mrs. Karingithi. Mr. Karingithi was hardly involved in the direct running of the school. He was a cut-throat business man and the school was merely one of his many business enterprises. He was a tall, slender man with an obtuse view of life. All the speeches he had made at the annual prize giving day since I joined the school two years ago would put to sleep even the most convivial person. Mrs. Karingithi on the other hand, a short, voluptuous, light skinned woman quietly approaching her sixties, was the school principal. She was known for her iron-clad rule and aside from Mr. Okello, was the most feared administrator in Mountaintop View Academy. For the past four years, Mountaintop View Academy has produced top students countrywide in the class 8 national examination. 

Sundays were the best days at the school with minimal amounts of time spent in class doing prep time. This day unlike other days of the week did not begin with the morning prep time. One was free to wake up at any time provided they were ready for breakfast at 7.00am. After breakfast at 8.00am the dining hall would be converted into a place of worship. This was done by stacking all the tables in one corner of the room and using the remaining space to arrange the benches in a theatre style seating arrangement. The manual labor for this transformation was as a school tradition done by Class Seven (7) students. This year I am in class 7. The morning service usually started at 8.30am and was conducted by Pastor Antony Karingithi, the principal’s younger brother. He was one of the associate pastors in a local church in town called The ‘New Faith Believers Chapel’.  It was also not a coincidence that he was our pastor. Rumor had it that the school pastors received a monthly stipend of 10,000 Kenyan shillings and the Karingithi’s liked to keep business in the family. They were certainly not the most philanthropic people either.  

After the morning Sunday service with ‘Karingithi Junior’, (the name we commonly used to describe Pastor Anthony), tea would be served at 10.30am. The hours between 11.00am and 1.00pm were spent in class having prep, revising and ensuring that we continued to churn out top students annually in the national examination. Sunday afternoons at Mountaintop view Academy were games time where we would participate in all kinds of sports whether you liked it or not. You would need to be on your death bed to get a pass to miss out on Sunday games. Mr. Kiptoo, the games master was quite the sport enthusiast. He would make us run a marathon, outside the school to the surrounding villages and back. We would then participate in the ‘Olympics’. There was the long jump, high jump, short put, javelin, 100m, 200m and 400m races. We would then play different sports such as hockey, football, netball and volleyball. I guess with a school population of about three hundred and twenty (320) students in the boarding section this was indeed possible. All students from Class Five (5) to Class Eight (8) were expected to board. The only students not boarding were those in nursery school and in Classes One (1) to Four (4).  Supper was served at 6.00pm and evening prep was between 7.00pm- 8.30pm. With the exception of class eight (8) students, we were all expected to be in bed by 9.00pm on Sundays.

On this fateful Sunday evening, we were all assembled in the school dining hall having our supper when Mr. Okello made his dramatic entrance into the hall. Mr. Okello was an enormous man. He was about 6 feet tall, well built body (we all suspected he must have been a body builder in his earlier years), dark complexion and he kept his head shaven bald. He also maintained a goatee on his chin.  He hardly smiled and when he did laugh, his laughter could be heard miles away. He was known to give six of the best for his punishments. Those who had paid a visit to his office for disciplinary action swore that they could hardly sit properly for an entire week after the visit. In my two years at the school I had been quite lucky not to have visited Mr. Okello’s office. 

Mr. Okello proceeded to call out a list of students who were to meet him outside the staffroom. ‘Eric Mutisya, Mary Muraya, Tom Omollo, Anita Kitsuri,...’and on he went. It struck me that most of the students on that list were my class mates. A few were in Class 8 but Class 7 students dominated that list. ‘…Travis Kimuri and finally Bella Makena’, he ended. There were 20 names on that list; 10 boys and 10 girls. My heart skipped a beat. Did he just say Bella Makena! I was on the list!.

Mr. Okello matched out of the hall and those on the list timidly got up and followed him out. The murmuring in the dining hall resumed. Those we walked past on our way out gave us pitiful looks. The cold July wind hit my face as soon as I stepped out of the dining hall with Anita Kitsuri right beside me. Anita was my best friend. We had reported to Mountaintop View Academy two years ago. We were then two young, naïve eleven year olds excited to be joining boarding school at last. We hit it off immediately and were thrilled when we were paired off as bunkmates. In matters disciplinary, we were not exactly saints, but again neither were we the school rebels. We had gotten into our own share of trouble in the past but not once had we made it to Mr. Okello’s disciplinary list. It was therefore safe to assume that this was bad. This was really bad.  I wasn’t surprised to see that Travis was on the list. Travis Kimuri, thirteen years old, five feet, four inches tall, chocolate complexion, slender built, Class 7 bad boy, too cool for school attitude, my desk mate and my first crush! 

Travis joined Mountaintop last year. He was born and bred in the city. Being an only child to extremely busy and high profile parents, Travis was what we’d call, ‘born with a silver spoon’. Before joining Mountaintop, he had been expelled from his previous school for pushing his class teacher down a flight of stairs. The said teacher fractured her ankle and Travis was immediately expelled. In his defense, the said teacher was such a bully and Travis was simply protecting his friend from her wrath when she accidentally fell down the stairs. Because of his parents’ high profile nature, (his mother was a high court judge and his father was a politician, a Member of Parliament representing Nyasini constituency, the same constituency where Mountaintop View Academy was located) Mrs. Karingithi was quick to admit him to the school. 

 

The day Travis walked into class with our amiable class teacher, Ms. Kelly, I was busy threatening Moses to keep his itchy fingers out of my mathematical set. I had just found him using my protractor which clearly had my initials B.M. marked. Moses was my front desk mate with a reputation of ‘borrowing’ other students’ items and claiming them as his own. My previous desk mate Swale Abdi, had just two weeks earlier dropped out of Mountaintop view Academy and moved to Arusha, Tanzania where his father had landed a lucrative job. As it was, I was at that moment in time without a desk mate. Anita sat next to me during prep time but during class hours I had to make-do seating at the back of the class as the lone ranger.  Naturally then Travis became my desk mate. Ms. Kelly asked me to share my notes and text books with him until he was issued with his own textbooks. I can’t quite pin point the exact moment in time when Travis quit being my very annoying desk mate to the boy I now had a major crush on. Perhaps it was during our annual class trip in May this year when he shared his lunch with me because clumsy me dropped hers, or perhaps it was that time last month when he ‘rescued’ my English text book from Moses or maybe because lately he was being super nice to me or maybe it was that time I turned thirteen last month and officially became a teenager with irrational emotions. The bottom line is for the past two months; Travis Kimuri had become my every waking thought. 

We were now all standing outside the staffroom, shivering in the July cold. I thought it was strange that Eric Mutisya, goody two shoes, never in trouble and Anita’s crush was on the list as well. It was all very strange of course, until Mr. Okello explained why we were all there…

“It has come to our attention, that you are all involved in romantic affairs and relationships. Instead of using your time to study hard and do well in your national examinations, you are busy writing love letters to each other!’ Mr. Okello said looking at all of us repulsively.

We gasped in shock and terror as we looked accusingly at each other as though one of us had betrayed the rest. I thought Mr. Okello was over dramatizing the whole situation. Seriously, who used terminologies such as ‘romantic affairs’ anymore? Besides we were 13, 14 year olds stuck in a mixed boarding school, what did he expect? The whole scenario was laughable to say the least but none of dared to even smile.  It all made sense now. The people in the list; I knew Tom had a crush on Anita and had just last week written her a secret admirer note personally delivered by his desk mate Mary. We had laughed about it in the dormitories because we both knew Anita liked Eric instead and he liked her too. I knew this of course because I had personally hand delivered Eric’s love note to Anita during our class trip in May. She couldn’t stop giggling all the way back to school.

Mr. Okello asked us all to kneel down and walked into the staff room (most probably to fetch his cane and deliver six of the best). I shuddered at the thought as I went down on my knees. How had our names gotten to Mr. Okello? Was there a snitch in the class? I had not even confessed my ‘undying love’ to Travis yet? So how come he and I were on the list?

Mr. Okello got out of the staffroom. He had blank sheets of paper in his hands and of course his cane. My fears were indeed valid. He separated the boys from the girls. He gave a blank sheet of paper to the boys and another blank sheet to the girls and asked us to write down all the names of other people who were in relationships like the 20 of us.  None of us dared make a move. I mean we were not exactly snitches. Mary started crying saying she wasn’t in any relationship. Beatrice joined her. Soon even the boys were refuting the alleged claims. All this while, I kept wondering what the big deal was. We had not done anything wrong.  

“Shut up!” Mr. Okello shouted at Mary and Beatrice. I rolled my eyes in exasperation. 

“Bella, did you just roll your eyes at me?” He asked in a rather calm and chilly voice.

“No, No Mr. Okello, I did not” I mumbled as my face turned red in embarrassment for being singled out of the crowd.

“Stretch out your palms” He said to the girls and we each received six strokes on our hands. 

As expected Mary and Beatrice begun wailing even before it was their turn.

“Bend Over” He said to the boys and they too each received six of the best.

“Now run to class and report here tomorrow after assembly for further punishment!” he shouted as we scampered to the safety of our classes. 

NB: To my readers;
The characters used in this story are purely fictional