I had no idea how bad our English was until I traveled two hundred kilometers to my ‘home’ of the next six years – a high school deep in Central Province. First off, in OlKalou, none of us used our first names, or baptism names as we called them. We were Kikuyu names through and through. My primary school certificate had only two names. My middle name and my fathers name.
I knew I had a baptism name given to me when I was an infant but that name had never featured anywhere in my life so far. I later learnt that my teenage sister had picked out the name for me. It could have been from a novel she read or she had a friend with a similar name, who knows, and I never thought to ask. That is how unimportant that name was to me. To make matters worse, the name was not common back in the day and most people in my family could not even pronounce it properly. That gave me more reason not to use it, because I did not want anybody making fun of me because of a strange name I had no use for. Makes sense, right?
Here I was now standing in line at an admissions office in a strange high school far from home with a green metal box containing items I would normally not own. Things like nightdresses. Who in their right mind slept in a maternity like funny looking nightdress? What was wrong with the dress you were wearing already, which was comfortable and warm against your body? Anyway, I was about to find out.
I had other strange things like shoe polish and brush, toothbrush and toothpaste, knee high socks, two pairs of bedsheets, two blankets, two towels, a pillow and two pillowcases and so much more – all meant for one person? You would think I was going to open a shop with all that stuff. You can imagine how confused I already felt. I knew the life I was entering that day was nothing like I knew and understood in my comfortable and familiar surroundings in OlKalou. I was frightened. I was losing what I knew and understood and now I was thrust into a wilderness I knew nothing about. The school complex was huge. It was clean and well organized with perfectly manicured lawns, nicely trimmed hedges, tarmacked roads with beautiful trees on either side and paved walkways with flower beds on each side.
You would think I was glad to be in such a beautiful place, serenity and order all around me and plenty of shopping in my green box. Instead, I felt strange, confused and scared. A fish out of water kind of experience. To make the situation even more intimidating, my father was by my side waiting in line, an interaction that normally never happened. We had always maintained a very healthy distance between us and that suited me just fine, but now here we were, uncomfortably standing shoulder to shoulder.
Told you my life had been turned upside down. You better believe it.
