The Lost Ball

“Who lost a ball?” Mr. Wambongo asked after greetings which often followed an unimpeachable protocol involving us shooting up and saying ‘welcome to our class.’ Mr. Wambongo had a queer way about himself. He strolled around the school compound with his hands behind his back. He would crack a joke or two with you, a joke you never forgot. One such joke was the reason soldiers are required to to be physically fit. He demonstrated it using the one metre ruler, where he mimicked a limping soldier walking in combat with the ruler as a gun. The other joke was how he used to refer Maji Maji rebellion leader, Kinjeketile Ngwale. He pronounced Kinjeketile by ‘Englishizing‘ ‘tile’ which sounded as Kinjeketyle. One day he dressed down Mike for pronouncing it as he often joked about. I remember the stern look on his face as he said ‘kijana una mzaha.’

What struck me about Mr. Wambongo was that he was never pretentious. He punished you and you didn’t keep it in your heart or mind. Almost certainly, you deserved the punishment. But not that Sunday afternoon, after we had just had a helping of rice and beans in its usual minute ration. Kapserere food couldn’t even sustain a rat for a week. It’s a miracle we survived there.

Food aside, Mr. Wambongo strolled to class that day with one intention – to make me in particular never forget him. I admit he was a good teacher. I was a little gutted when he left unceremoniously. He had asked about anyone who had lost a ball in an unusual drawl. It still rings in my head as I write this. Dickson, discounting the fact that his name has a dick in it, shot his hand up. It’s like he had missed raising his hand up, considering the fact that, academically, Dickson and I never missed a flogging.  

We did not know where the conversation was leading to as Mr. Wambongo expertly guided it as though it were boat on a treacherous part of the river. I do not know how it led to who was playing in class, but it suddenly turned to a football team being named. Dickson by the way didn’t even know how to kick a ball, at least in the proper way. The captain was named, who in turned named the next person, and it went like that until I was named. Victor Kiptum named me. That’s what I remember very clearly. In fact I can even see him turning, as if seeking my approval and then spitting out my name. Because I had never learnt how to snitch, I calmly told Mr. Wambongo that the team was complete. It had Radovan Kimutai, Victor Kiptum, Kelvin Kipkoech and I, Brian Rop. We may have been more than four, details escape me now. It not being an exam, I can confidently say that we were four.

It turns out we were wanted in connection with broken spectacles. We were then taken to Mr. Wambongo’s office upon which our names were entered in the infamous black book. Infidels. Degenerates. Contemptible junkies. An afternoon that had promised to glide past like it has done for ages was suddenly covered with an ominous gloom. A novel that one had promised himself to tackle suddenly had to wait there, naked as we attended urgent disciplinary matter which we completely had no clue about.

I do not remember whether Mr. Wambongo gave us a beating but I damn well remember that we were given a punishment to wash the classroom. We were in class seven at the time, and forming the bulk of the team during our usual match between class seven and eight, it might not surprise me, had opta started taking stats, that it was the day we got walloped. You know, like the 8 – 2 drabbing Man U gave the ever lowly, under talented Arsenal.

We took our punishment without complains. We scrubbed the class clean within twenty minutes and with very little amount of water. Then we casually walked out and crossed the road by ourselves –which was a mistake punishable by death. No pupil was required to cross the Eldoret-Ravine road alone, you had to be supervised. Again, quite casually, we changed and hit the field like the players we were.

It turns out, as we mused, that we had been used to sanitise someone’s negligence. Her name was Sandra. She had broken her glasses or even lost them, and there was no way she could break the news to her parents without risking third degree burns from her parent’s ire. There had been talks that we’d even buy the goddamn spectacles. To the extent of my knowledge I do not know whether our parents were informed.

As we mused, quite bitter at the injustice, there was absolutely no way a ball, kicked as it was supposed to, suddenly developed a brain that told to go, open Sandra’s desk, break her spectacles and calmly fall down like nothing has happened. Our bitterness would have frozen a loaf bread. We completely had no clue about those spectacles.  We were victimized, period. Because we were children of lesser god’s, at the time.

Right now I am not bitter. Given Sandra’s position, I do not know how I would have broken the news to my parents. Man, my eyesight would have fixed itself. As they say, sometimes, the end justifies the means. I hope it did, Sandra.