Lesson In The Hard Way-Encounter with a fresher in my fresher days

"I've come from very far; from deep inside real troubles." It's as if he is no longer himself. It was some kind of an informal appointment I had struck with him after he had previously asked me to be calling on him so he could tell me his bygone tribulations. Knowing damn well I didn't entertain tales that would offset me into instant dizziness, I just went. He was glad to see me.

"I used to push ass-carts, cut grass from deep inside thickets, wake up at dawn to milk several cows and later on, during the day, do what the prodigal son did that pumped sense into his noodle." He was obliged to ensure the swine had a well-balanced diet, each day.

"Why?"

It was the Devil of indolence and crude obstinacy and not himself that had inspired his vile situation. The Devil confided in him to abandon school once and for all time and to inform his father thus.

Could the old man adhere to such a serious contention said in jest? Considering the privilege he attached to education, more so in the higher circles of learning and the fact that his son was the only one in the entire clan, who had the potential of making it to the higher atmosphere of learning; this was pure nonsense. The mzee could not hear of it. The son too could not hear of it. Even after being subjected to the sting of the stroke on his natural seats, he remained indifferent to what his father liked: education. Since he couldn't make do with more of the strokes, his father resolved to get a helping hand from some askaris. The son eloped from home for a month, in which time; he ended up in the jungle of miseries and hard life.

How he could allude his experience to that of the prodigal son and fail to derive a lesson of significance from it, I failed to make out.

In his new life-system, he swallowed bhang smoke to make his life real. The more he had a puff at it, the more he cherished his new accomplices' common nonsense indoctrination on educational slavery.

When life proved too real, he had some options to consider: suicide, more bhang, more hard labour, but one sounded right to his tortured conscience. He would recite the decision before he went homeward bound.
"Father, having defied your noble conservatist rules and views on higher learning, I hereby present myself before thee for remission. Please, show me the path on which you want me to tread." His accomplices were sad to have so lost a devoted member of their ganja club.

He bitterly learned to value what his father valued. So, he is now happy that he is pursuing a degree course in Community Psychology rather than biding his time in a remote village on a neo-modernist black settler's farm undertaking odd jobs for a 'hand-to-mouth' remuneration. Even so, everything seems quite a fantasy to him. It's an odyssey of fairies he had learned to contend with.

He now hands me a cup; rather, a mug of tea. Courtesy, isn't it?

Joshua Masinde