”Mona, Mona, Monaaaa!” a woman’s voice cried from far downstairs.
”Eish, that’s probably Mom. She’s started her favorite job again!” I said to myself, changing my sleeping position to the right then pulling back up my thick white cotton blanket. ”It’s Saturday, bwan! No school, so what do I have to rise and shine at this time for? And it’s cold anyway, so lemme first enjoy the warmth of my full bed mattress and forget those constant Xs and Ys we have to consistently find in math, as if we’ve lost them.”
Ko! Ko! Ko! – someone’s footsteps getting louder and louder as they approached my door. I quickly pulled my blanket all up over my head.
Knock, knock!
”Please come in…” I said in my blankets.
”Hey, Uriya! Get off that bed fast. It’s almost seven a.m., the time for your classes!” Mom said.
”Classes? On Saturday? We don’t learn at weekends, Mom! And you well know that, nah! So lemme get some more sleep, breakfast later!” I said from below the blankets.
”Which Saturday are you talking about! Uriya, stop your nonsense. It’s Friday, so don’t mess with me this morning, oh! Hurry up! And clean up all this mess in here. Your clothes are all over the place, as if vendors are selling in here.” She opened the white curtains, and so did the same to the black-framed windows. Then the wooden door creaked shut when she left the room.
I immediately pulled off the blanket to get out of bed. One second, I was in the dim quiet blanket of mine, where everything was soft and dark and then, bam, bright and loud sunlight hit my brown face like a splash of warm water. I squinted; my eyebrows pulled together like someone had turned a Tecno Camon 16 flashlight straight into me. Slowly my eyes adjusted though. “Why did she do that to me?” I squeaked. My day hadn’t even begun and it felt like it was already ruined. “What’s this pestering. Phew!”
For a moment, I just sat on my bed. Then I took my phone from the wooden drawer on my left to check the time, as I never believed her words. I found out it was Friday morning, seven thirty. And classes started at eight a.m.
”Wait a sec,” I said. “I’ve not even worked the math homework, and cleaning school toilets won’t work with me. And going to school every day? Na-na-na!” I had two choices: accepting to be flogged at school and cleaning those useless toilets, or just going to play football and forgetting about my problems for a while. Unlike any other Form 1 student, I chose my happiness.
”Hey, Uriya?” she screamed from the kitchen. “Next time, I’ll come up there with cold water and that thick whip!”
”Lemme just go to see Joe,” I said to myself. I had promised we’d play football near the Longwe River today, thinking it was Saturday! And even if I went to school now, I’d be punished for not working that confusing X-and-Y homework. It is what it is. School would always be there, even next week, so I decided to run fast before Mom noticed.
I kicked the duvet back off the bed at a lightning speed and launched out of my bed like I’d been electrocuted by our Chinese toaster. My feet hit the cold white tiles before my brain even caught up. No stretching, no second thoughts, no nothing. I pulled on my blue T-shirt and Barca jersey shorts, slipped on my blue Nikes that were near the bed. It felt like the day was running away and I was chasing it. I left everything in my room as it had been, except for the duvet, which was probably starting a new life on the floor, and my pajamas, which were up to who knows what below the bed.
I slipped out of my bedroom window and jumped. In my landing, I had to make sure I didn’t make any swish or crunch in the dry lawn. So I crawled on all fours and then tiptoed to get past the white walls of our house. I had to make it to the other side, as my room was at the back of it, just a meter away from the stone walls of ours. Finally, I made it to the black gate. Mission accomplished. My heart was done racing. My whole face glowed with a smile.
I grabbed the thick latch and slowly pulled the gate open because it always creaked a lot. I put my right foot out first, then my face. “Who is this guest in this morning again. Eish,” I complained in a low voice, as I’d seen someone’s feet standing outside the fence. Brown leather sandals, with the right foot tapping, as if she’d been waiting for something to do wrong. “Wait a…! I think I know this green kitenge with blue flowers!” I said, then quickly looked up at the torso. “Mom!” I immediately froze. She stood with her arms crossed. My eyes couldn’t blink for a second. The world had just played a magic trick right in front of me. My mouth became a little open, as if it was trying to say, “Wait… what? One second, I heard you back in the kitchen… How is this possible!” But no sound came out.
All this time, she was just looking, not saying anything, as the leaves danced in the breeze, while I kept wondering what’d been happening under my watch. I felt betrayed by the world. I’d felt like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible only a second prior. Then, bam, I turned out feeling like Tom, who always fell for Jerry’s tricks.
Mom just raised her index finger at me. Then she pointed inside the fence. I understood and ran back in. Back in my room, I put on my uniform and then sat on one of our black sofas in the living room, waiting for my fate to reach me.
A minute later, Mom entered through the red wooden door, calmly, as if nothing had happened. Her brown sandals clicked on the floor. With every step my heart raced fast and my tachycardia worsened. I could hardly breathe and my short-sleeved shirt was drenched wet in sweat. I felt my end had come so I closed my eyes firmly so I couldn’t see where slaps or foot-kicks would land.
Then there was total silence. No slaps or kicks. “Look here, uriya!” she said. Uriya is a Somali word that refers to a boy or a man. I opened my eyes. She was sitting on the sofa opposite to mine. The thick black whip was on the glass table. We used to call it a kiboko, a casual Swahili word for whip, derived from the word hippo in Swahili. It was made from a black car tyre. The more I looked at the kiboko, the more I felt like crying. I tried to look as innocent as our cat Jolly but I failed. My eyes were already full of tears. My hands shook, and my palms were sweaty. I couldn’t stop thinking how unbearable the pain would be on my skinny body.
Mom was just staring at me. Then – bam! – she started advising me. Oh, in life, school is important… Oh, we’re meant to experience suffering to experience joy… Oh, school makes us stronger and intellectual, and bla-bla-bla! I wasn’t listening. I couldn’t stop staring at the kiboko. I blamed myself. Why in the world had I thought it was smart to boycott school?
Then – bam – she told me, “Go to the dining table, eat your breakfast and go back to sleep.”
“Huh?”
”Didn’t you hear me! Eat first, then go back to bed. You’ll not go to school anymore until next week!” she said.
I got up and ate at the dining table, while sometimes jamming like old CDs used to. I didn’t trust Mom would let me be without a flogging just like that. I gulped down the tea and my sandwich fast, though I had no appetite. “Will she call me afterwards for flogging time too? Or will she just surprise me anytime from now?” I said to myself. Once I finished eating, I ran back upstairs to my room, cleaned it, and arranged it, all willingly. And still, she didn’t flog me.
A day passed by. Then some more. To this date, I am still waiting for that kiboko to do its work. Because I can’t believe that seeing the kiboko was the real punishment, keeping its picture in my brain as a warning and serving as a preparation for my future. I’m no longer thirteen, and life has already been giving me whips but I stand strong against them, just like I looked at the kiboko while having my breakfast.
Since then, when people say, “The only one who knows you is you,” I always reply with a firm “NON.” Some people on this very earth know you even better than you know yourself. Some can even read your next moves. To this date, I don’t know how she managed to get out of the fence ahead of me. And funny enough, I have not come to understand what the job of the kiboko was, that kiboko that is stuck to my brain.
