mkenya mvumilivu

After camping outside state offices for days without yielding results, Jack and his colleagues had to eat a humble pie and accept the painful fact that they had been retrenched and no office can revert that cruel and barbaric act by their former employer.  

After the long tiring and stress-filled journey to the village, jack enters a local supermarket to buy bread and ng’ombe (usiseme maziwa) and after giving a one hundred note to the teller, the balance was few coins which since they were not available, because other customers hawakuchomoa coins he was given some sweets.

After arriving at his home, Jane, who don’t know Jane, the village cnn, the lady who was Andrew’s mpango wa kando , Andrew the man who stabbed his wife to death then hanged himself, that is according to orphaned John, their nine year old kid who is still traumatized by events of that fateful night. Back to Jane, Jane narrates to jack the where bout of his wife Naomi.

Apparently Naomi accompanied a caravan of villagers who had to travel to a region far away from the village to bring back Martha, you see Martha had tried to narrow the ethnicity bridge and made the decision to get married to James, though her elders had rejected her branding her as a rebel and a traitor, their worries were confirmed when she sent a message home complaining of a cold welcome and mistreatment by James’ people.

Unfortunately they were involved in a road accident that killed 13 people on the spot among them Naomi her wife.

How will he break the news to their 13 year old class seven kid who opened school last week? How would their son take the news? Will it interrupt his education?

For once jack feared that it was a curse or he and his family had been bewitched. Just before he could answer the questions, their son appeared. Isn’t he in a boarding school? What was he doing home less than a week after they opened? Which school sends pupils home at these late hours of the day? Had he learnt about the accident? About her mother’s death?

The truth of the matter is the son had not learnt about the news, in fact, he had been sent home in the morning and was held up in a certain political where mheshimiwa was mobilizing watu wetu against watu wao.

Apparently, the son had been sent home since he hadn’t cleared the tuition fee which according to the minister of education was abolished and according to the headmaster, tuition was voluntary in his speech but compulsory in the newsletter sent to parents during closing day. Though the pupils lost three weeks at the beginning of the shortest school term when the teachers had abandoned their tools and went to the street chanting “no chalk without cheque,” and there will be election interruptions in their school calendar, what can the school do? It has bills to pay and staff to pay and the government sends money towards the end of the term.