LAST WORD
On The Year That Wasn ’ t
Peter was in form two when
Ochieng joined high school and the trepidations of being a mono were soon assuaged when it became apparent that Peter was not interested in harassing the newcomer but was more intent on protecting him .
Somehow they seemed to hit it off immediately and actually formed a friendship that transcended the school guardian relationship . This guardian angel made it easy for Ochieng to transition smoothly into high school routines and face common challenges with equanimity .
It was not difficult for Ochieng to admire Peter since he was a respected member of the school , at the top of his class and an accomplished soccer player , his talent and skill set him apart from the rest of the hoi polloi and gave him a special status in the school even though he was not a senior .
Then in third term Peter vanished , he did not turn up in school at the beginning of the term and Ochieng ’ s enquiries as to his whereabouts bore no fruit and Ochieng had not only lost his guardian and role model but his friend too , it was sad .
Then surprisingly Peter reappeared the following year and the school decided that he would have to repeat the year since he had missed a whole term . Ochieng never did get a straight answer as to where his friend had been the whole third term .
Peter was now Ochieng ’ s classmate and although this should have made Ochieng happy to have his friend in the same class , Ochieng was ambivalent and noticed that a certain dullness had invaded Peter , he did not laugh as easily and seemed to prefer being alone most of the time .
Peter had lost his joie de vivre and did not pick another mono to mentor and surprisingly his class grades suffered as he did not really seem to care much even though he was learning stuff he had already learnt . He even stopped participating in sports .
In the middle of second term Peter vanished again to never be seen again and to this day Ochieng wonders what happened to the one person that had made his first year in high school a joyful and pleasant experience .
Ochieng was therefore in a position to comprehend the general dismay of the students when it was announced that due to the Covid-19 lockdown that had seen all schools closed , this would result in students repeating the year 2020 .
When the coronavirus saga began with the dramatic incidences in Wuhan , Ochieng along with other Kenyans had not imagined that an interesting news item from an unknown town in an unknown region would have such a devastating effect here .
The psychological impact of repeating a year was less onerous than the logistical disarray that the missed year would create in the education sector . So an announcement , obviously without much thought was made that transitioning students would resume school to enable them sit exams . This decision was made without taking into consideration where the transitioning students would transition to if the rest of the students were still at home .
What was originally seen as a localized problem in China and of course we had heard of previous flus like the bird flu that ravaged the north but hardly had any effect in Africa , so everybody thought that the problem would be contained at that distance as had happened in the past .
How wrong everybody was and before long the whole world was going into a shutdown mode in an effort to contain the virus . The horrible specter of the 1918 Spanish flu was suddenly real for the whole world and the world went into an emergency mode .
Interestingly no one saw this flu as a long-term issue since the world was confident in its medical advances and was upbeat that an inconvenience in the
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