KAGECI, MY CAREER AND I

After class on Friday, the teacher told us to go and think about our future careers. Walking home, some already knew what they wanted to be: doctors, pilots, engineers and safari rally drivers.

Evans, the boy from the big house, wants to be a astonot. He says astonots go outside the world. Why would he want dying as a career? That name is not even good, it is not in the spelling book.

My big brother wants to be a doctor that cuts out people’s minds. He read it in a book called “Gifted hands”. What do hands have to do with minds? Anyway that’s him, wanting to be the things with big names. I don’t want to be the common things that the rest want. I want to be unique.

I went home, changed and went to fetch firewood. On Saturday morning, we filled the water tank near the door with water from the river. After that, we played hide and seek and swept the compound. Then we went to the church in the afternoon to practice the songs we’d sing in Sunday school.

Sunday after church, we found a small car at home. A small black one. That made loud funny noises when we touched it. My brother called it alarm ; he knows too much. Mother called me from the kitchen shed and told me to take a Thermos and serve the visitors tea. It was my big sister.

The one bigger than my brother. She is the one who lives in the Nairobi. I want to look like her. Wearing pretty dresses and my hair done in those in those beautiful ways. She was with a man. She told me he was called Matt but kept calling him ‘Beb’. I called him so and they all burst out laughing. She asked me the usual questions ; what marks I got last term, the name of our teacher, the colours of the rainbow, the national anthem … I asked her if she knew Isaka’s cow had drowned. She said no. Odd. I thought everybody knew. Matt didn’t talk much. He was holding this black thing that looked like pastor Lukah’s bag. It was plugged to the electricity though. My sister brought the electricity last year. She tells me that in Nairobi, even the roads have electricity. I’ll go there soon.

I asked my sister what Beb was doing was with the black thing, she told me ; first, she was the only one who was allowed to call him Beb and second, the black thing is called a laptop and is a small computer. I know what a computer is. Our headmaster has one. Even the doctor at the dispensary, but theirs are big ones. She told me that Matt works in his computer, he writes things in there and people pay him. Then she gave me the name of people like him.

I told Kageci the name when we went to buy salt. Kageci is Isaka’s daughter. She is not good. Even my mother says, ‘That girl of Isaka is not good.” She is my friend but she is not good. She hides things, she doesn’t even share her rubber and sharpener.

When my sister and Matt left yesterday, I was still remembering the name. My sister said she would be reporting to work today and had to go. I cried. She said she will come for me after schools close if I become number one. I told her that we would be closing on Wednesday and she told me to remind mother to call her and tell her my marks.

Today in the morning, while going to school, I asked Kageci to remind me the name I told her, because that is what I want to become when I grow up. She said she could not remember, because it was a hard
name.

When we got to school, our teacher read our numbers. I am number one. I almost ran out to go and tell my mother to call my sister. Then the teacher told us to each stand up and say what we careers we thought about over the weekend. Everyone said correctly except for me. I said I wanted to write things in a computer so that some people would read then others would pay me. Our teacher frowned and asked me if I wanted to be a secretary. I said no. She shook her head and said I wasn’t serious. Then Kageci stood up next.

She sits next to Njuguna, who sits behind me. Njuguna was not in class that day.Kageci said she wanted to be a blogger, the teacher asked her what that was and she started explaining … but I wasn’t listening; I was almost crying, tears were at the doors of my eyes but I did not let them out because I knew the others would laugh at me.I was crying inside.

A blogger – that is what I want to be! Kageci stole that! I don’t care though, I’m going to Nairobi and she is not.

@ Ngartia