LAST WORD
On Undistinguished Scorecards
O
chieng was furtively listening to
a socialist broadcast by Mwalimu
Julius Nyerere on his father’s world
band radio on some short band frequency
he had read on a communist pamphlet that
mysteriously appeared on their desks every
beginning of month.
The reason for the surreptitious behavior
was because his father had found him
reading such a pamphlet earlier and had
confiscated it forthwith accompanied by a
stern warning that he did not want to ever
see such communist nonsense in his house.
He had gone further to interrogate Ochieng
on where he had found the pamphlet and
had gone to school to report the matter to
the missionary headmaster who proceeded
to have an emergency parade to warn all
students to immediately hand over all the
pamphlets in their possession.
Interestingly neither Ochieng’s father nor
the Irish headmaster bothered to explain
what the issue was but Ochieng knew that
for his father to have gone to school the
matter must have been serious enough to
warrant this unusual behavior.
Ochieng could never
figure out why
teachers and parents always committed the
same mistake, If you want your children to
stop doing something or to not attempt to
do it the worst thing to do is to ban it as it
becomes a must do activity.
So of course by then, curiosity had been
aroused about these innocuous pieces of
paper and Ochieng and friends wanted to
know what the fuss was all about. Since
having the pamphlet was taking a risk to
have a whipping they all resolved to listen
to the short wave band indicated on the
paper.
Soon Ochieng and friends formed a secret
communist club, although they did not
know what communism was and the only
requirement was for those who had radios
at home, a rare luxury then, to listen to the
radio and share what was being broadcast.
It did not take long for Mwalimu Julius
Nyerere to become the favorite of the
secret group purely on the basis of fact
that he spoke funny Swahili, not like
what was being taught in school and
he had a high pitched voice that one of
Ochieng's friends mastered and mimicked
to perfection.
But above all Nyerere was a teacher and
in those days there was no greater calling
for an African to aspire to than to hope
to one day become a teacher and savor
the adulation that teachers received in
the community just above the priests who
The priests were needed to colonize the
minds of the natives, for them to aban-
don their ‘primitive” ways and find the
light and way to heaven. The teacher
was needed to teach the basics of read-
ing and writing to enable a creation of an
employable semi-skilled workforce
94 MAL30/19 ISSUE
often were also teachers.
Through the broadcasts it had become
apparent that the communists had little
regard for religion and anyway the priests
in Ochieng’s locality were celibate and
a life devoid of a family was still too
strange a concept for the African to
understand and appreciate.
Ochieng and friends had therefore set
their minds to be teachers and change
the world since that was the only career
that then seemed to open doors to the
mysterious world of the white man who
had informed them that civilization came
through Christianity and education.
It is instructive that a country will
educate the class of workers that it needs
to be able to achieve its development
or economic goals and in the run up
to independence what colonial Kenya
needed was priests and teachers.
The priests were needed to colonize
the minds of the natives, for them to
abandon their ‘primitive” ways and find
the light and way to heaven. The teacher
was needed to teach the basics of reading
and writing to enable a creation of an
employable semi-skilled workforce.
Some visionary independence agitators
like Tom Mboya had foreseen that
independence would come to an
unprepared country and they were
already busy organizing for the famous
air lifts that shipped plane loads of
students to the United States to train the
manpower independent Kenya would
need.
Not to be outdone the Communist
bloc also contributed to the manpower
development as they also shipped