Thread by @CSakwah

STORY THREAD

In 2009, my school camped in Narok to participate in the Rift Valley Provincial Music Festivals. We did not expect to walk into a den of the infamous high school funkie bullies, the Njoro Boys. The school had an unrivaled pedigree of causing mayhem and fighting

other schools during fankies. Nakuru High, as I have come to learn, bore the largest brunt of Njoro Boy's unbridled energy and militarization of school functions. That year, it was our turn to have a taste of their medicine. We did, and it left a sour taste in our mouths.

Maasai Mara Univerity was the venue where the performances were held. We lived at Narok Boys High School, for two weeks. We first encountered Njoro Boys in the building which we were assigned as our dorm for the time.

We shared the building with other top boy schools from Rift Valley province; Nakuru High, St. Patrick’s Iten, Kapsabet Boys et all. There were smaller schools as well, like St. Antony’s -Kitale: my school’s arch-rivals.

Our sleeping position in the dining hall was sandwiched between Njoro Boys’ and St. Antony’s sleeping position.
On the third day of the event, my friend lost a unique pair of shoes in the hall. He left the unique pair of shoes, one which he only wore during funkies,

by his mattress to take a shower. When he came back, he found his shoes missing from where he had left them.
He asked around from my schoolmates, none of us had taken them. And most of us were outside the hall taking our breakfast when the pair disappeared.

Our first suspects were the St. Antony’s Boys Kitale; our rivals, we never saw eye to eye. We despised and loathed them. We thought they tried so hard to be as cool and smart as we were.
‘It must be those despicable rascals from St. Antony’s boys,’ my friend lamented.

We backed him. And vowed to teach them a lesson if we found them with the shoes. We walked to their dirty and begging-to-be-washed school bus to confront them over the same. They denied having knowledge of the existence of a pair of shoes like the one we were describing.

We let them be and vowed to keep on searching for the shoes, especially from schools that shared the hall.
We arrived at Maasai Mara University at 9 AM. Immediately, my friend and I embarked on a grueling shoe-searching mission.

We walked around the vast Maasai Mara university compound, staring at students’ shoes like madmen. We got leered at by some boys, some chased us away in suspicion of harboring intentions of stealing their shoes.
‘Those shoes cost me my entire pocket money, bro.

We must find them.’ We spotted Nakuru Boys in the company of Naivasha Girls. They looked too cool to be thieves, maybe. They were all dressed in a pair of the ugly Toughee shoes.

We spotted Kabsabet Boys dancing to Antony B’s Real Warrior song and Elephants man’s Gully Creeper that was playing from their school bus. They must have seemed okay, trying to blend like the rest, but deep down inside their heart,

I knew they wished the DJ played some kiptindinyoo or Samantha by Kenene International. The search returned negative.
Just when we were about to give up, around noon, we spotted the shoes on the legs of a Njoro Boys student. He was flaunting them like they were his.

He was standing tall while surrounded by more than 8 girls from different schools. He was narrating something to them, something funny that was cracking them up. He was tall, with big jaws, broader shoulders, and long arms. He was handsome, I must admit.

A bandana with a skull drawing hung on his head.
More surprising, this guy was also dressed in my school’s sweater. He had stolen the shoes and a sweater from us. We agreed to confront him.
My fuming friend walked to where he was and tapped on his back.

The tall brute lowered his face to stare at him as a giant would.
‘Can we talk to you?’ We had agreed to ask him aside, away from the girls, before confronting him. To save him from blushes he would receive if the girls learned that he was a thief.
‘Who are you?’ He asked.

‘We would like to talk to you.’
‘You and who?’
‘My friend over there,’ he said, timidly, while turning to face me.
‘I am busy,’ he dismissed my friend and went on entertaining the girls.
My friend walked back to where I stood. His shoulders were downcast.

We held another small meeting and agreed to confront him as a unit, the two of us. On that occasion, I was the one who tapped on his shoulders. He lowered his face and stared at me. His eyes were intimidating, searching, and scrutinizing.

The scare in his eyes made me understand why my friend was intimidated. I have never cowed next to another man like that moment. But we had numbers, two against one, and we were determined to walk away with our shoes whether by fire or by force, by crook or negations.

‘You stole my friend’s pair of shoes,’ I accused loud enough for the ladies to hear the theft accusations.
‘And we want them right now,’ my friend added. We announced his crimes loudly and hoped that the girl knowing that he was wearing stolen shoes would get him ashamed

enough to release the shoes. Or the fear of being stoned by a mob for theft would force him to give up the shoes to its owner. He turned slowly and faced us.

‘I have heard you, young boys. I picked this pair of shoes in the hall in the morning. I know that. I will return then in the evening. Now leave me alone,’ he hissed with a commanding tone, more so like an angry and officious person would.

He turned to the girls, who seemed not bothered by the revelation that the goon they were listening to was a thief.
‘As I was telling you, on that day, the Njoro police tried to contain our school’s strike…’ he started narrating again.

‘We need the shoes right now, now.’ my friend said.
‘Nitakufinya, bro. Najua ni zako na nitakuumiza ukiendelea kunisimbua.’ He said with rage in his eye. The girls got annoyed that we were disturbing their alpha.

One of them, from Moi Girls Isinya, had the audacity to ask the name of the school we attended.
Intimidated, bullied, subdued, alphaed, my friend said, ‘St. Joseph’s.’
‘St. Joseph’s Rapongi?’
‘No. St. Joseph’s Kitale,’ my friend corrected.

‘Oh, there is another St. Joseph’s in Kenya apart from Rapongi,’ one of them said.
‘I have never heard of your school.’ That was more insulting, especially when it came from a girl whose only famous thing about her school was the word Moi in the Moi Girl-Isinya.

Our school was a top tier, we deserved to be known everywhere in Kenya.
We had gone to pick our shoes but only left with bruised egos, shattered pride, and tattered confidence. We walked back to seek reinforcement from our schoolmates.

We managed to get 10 more students to accompany us to pick one pair of shoes from one block. No way he was going to resist an attack from 12 guys.
My schoolmates were charged, angered, and kept on saying and assuring, ‘ako wapi huyo mwizi tumuone war. Viatu lazima atoboke.’

Closer to the culprit, I stopped and pointed my finger towards the guy, ‘ndio ule pale, in our sweater.’ I was still too intimidated to get closer to him.
My schoolmates dashed towards him, ready to pounce on him. The number did not seem to scare him an inch.

He placed two fingers into his mouth and whistled. Out of nowhere, suddenly, a park of men in gray pants and sweaters came running towards where their leader was.
They had bandanas on their heads, hands, and around their necks.

Some had the Islam arafat scarfs around their necks and heads. They were taller than any one of us was, and built equally. I wondered if they worked out in their school. Two of them had hockey sticks, at a Music Festival.
They didn’t talk.

They just walked around us, moving from one of us to another while staring us into our eyes, with pulled faces and their hands in their pockets. They sized up, one by one, daring us to throw our first punch. At that moment, a crowd had formed around the scene.

The thief wasn’t bothered. He went on narrating to his girls about how the Njoro police officers have never contained them whenever they go out on strike and other stories about his school’s escapades.
This is the day I started having trust issues with girls.

Even after the revelation that the block was a thug, they still cheered on him and even insulted us, the aggrieved one. One of them even called us farmers for the mere fact that we came from Kitale- that brown-teethed girl from Maasai Girls.

When staring into our eyes didn’t work, they started nibbling our ears, and other forms of provocation to get us more charged. Luckily for them, our music teacher came screaming at us. ‘What are you doing here, yet you are supposed to be on stage in 20 minutes?’

She dragged us away, stopping a full-fledged war. Bwana, we would have cheered those brutes alive and boiled them for supper.
That was not the last time that we had an altercation with that school during the 2009 Music festivals. A few days later, they were on our necks again

, trying to choke us because of our girl school, St. Brigid’s Kiminini.
At night, that thief came back into the dorm and shouted from the entrance of the hall, ‘wale vijana wa uniform ya brown, kujieni vitu zenu. Na kesho mkiacha hapa viatu, make sure you brush them.’