Somebody had advised me to take up art as a fourth subject to increase my points tally and I went to see Kadi early in 5th form. She asked a lot of questions but finally agreed. Later I was to realize just how lucky I was because there were other prominent fifth formers who had the same idea but were firmly denied the opportunity.
We were in the same class with guys like Gerald Walker of Mitchell, Chege and Obonyo of Speke. We would frequently find ourselves in the same room with sixth formers like Ombura and Murungi of CF. Those two guys were such talented artists that they made me feel completely out of place because admittedly I was not a paintbrush guy.
The whole point of taking art was the fact that there were a number of papers in the final A-level exam that did not require too much artistic talent and besides Kadi was a prominent member of the national art examiners in those days. And so it was a sneaky way of getting an extra principal and some extra valuable points which would come in handy in the competitive rush to get into campus.
There was of course a price to pay. Kadi would drive me as hard as she drove the other guys and she had no qualms about embarrassing anybody in front of rabbles. In those tough times I have Gerald Walker from our year to thank. He was the top artist in our lot and would frequently get Kadi doing uuuuuhs and aaaaahs of delight which was extremely rare to achieve under her critical eye. Gerald would help me out when the going got ugly with Kadi and I remember one particularly difficult challenge we had been given to do an abstract painting (which incidentally was Obonyo’s specialty) that had me in serious problems.
But what I remember most about those art sessions were the “political analysis” sessions provided mainly by Obonyo and Chege. The whole thing was of course delivered with plenty of sarcastic jokes that were hilarious even when I was the butt of the jokes. We would all be working quietly in the room when Obonyo would suddenly say something like; “Kavila I see you have intensified your campaigns for head of school, the way you are campaigning somebody would think you are after Kanyi’s job… slow down Jahaa..” Naturally everybody would burst out laughing which would attract Kadi’s attention all the way at the front of the class and she would come into the room and look around suspiciously and make some remark that would cause even more laughter. Chege’s humour was quieter but just as effective and his one liners would sometimes have me in tears of laughter. Walker just laughed, that crazy infectious laugh of his that was closer to a tee hee than a real laugh. We all had a lot of fun in art class, I tell you.
But on the political battle front it was no laughing matter. Looking back now I know that all four of us wanted to be HOS and naturally we all had our different tactics. Here I can only talk about mine.
Even as naïve as I was at the time I knew that historically those who had earlier had brothers who had been school prefects started out as front runners. Two of us had and I was not one of them and so I knew that I was starting out with that big disadvantage. Apart from what I had achieved in games, which some of my colleagues had also equalled, I knew I had to come up with something extra.
Matters were made more difficult for me by the 1982 prefects who were influential enough that year to have some say. I have always had a gift of sensing things and what people are feeling towards me and I could sense that most of them felt very strongly that I was not up to the office. I was to be proved dramatically right late in 1983 (I shall talk about that later). But even before that my mentor Sam Olago hinted regularly without betraying the trust of collective responsibility he had to his fellow prefects. One thing I have to say about Sam is that he was determined that the honor come to Kirk which had not happened for well over a decade. He was a real Kirk patriot.
I decided that I was going to use the few opportunities during the meetings with the headmaster to raise issues that I felt would attract the right kind of attention I wanted. Something that was of concern to him as a manager of the school. I zeroed in on the water problem.
Now in those days we had an interesting water problem. Block 2 and one other block I don’t quite remember never had a shortage of water but the rest of the school and especially block 5 (Mumia and James) used to have such serious shortages that many seniors would come to Block 2 regularly just to shower. Guys in lower forms wouldn’t dare because Kirk was known to be a house of serious bullies who would have no qualms about embarrassing you even if you were in third or fourth form. And so I guess our neighboring house Mitchell had many more showering visitors than we did.
And so in one school prefects meeting with Kanyi when we got to the any-other-business segment I spoke and trying my best to keep my voice calm suggested that if houses that had an abundance of water could quit wasting it and maybe we also tried a kind of rationing programme houses that were in need would get a little more water.
For some technical reason whose details I don’t quite remember the rationing idea was not possible but Mr Kanyi jumped on the idea of a campaign to cut down on wastage.
I have to admit that even after his response I was still not sure whether or not I had scored any points on this one.
What I did not know then is that whatever effort I put in then would not have mattered much because there was another much bigger “political” issue that was on the headmasters mind. Something that was of great concern to him and something that would give me a huge advantage.
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