Following the cold reception I received upon returning to school after a long recovery, I planned to travel to Nairobi this weekend and face the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) leadership head-on. I was ready to even meet the TSC CEO, Nancy Macharia, look her in the eye, and ask her a simple question: What is going on?
I wanted her to explain why even junior teachers were ignoring my orders. If you remember, the day I returned, I had called for a staff meeting that everyone ignored.
I wanted to know if Kuya was the substantive HOI or if he was just acting in my absence. I wanted to know who would appoint Nzomo as acting deputy, yet there were so many other qualified teachers, including Lena, her bad hair notwithstanding.
I talked to Pius the Sunday before I booked the Msamaria Mwema night bus. “Do not come to Nairobi before you exhaust all local means. Do not go to the county offices before you clear with the sub-county office,” he advised, adding that he knew how the government operates.
I decided to heed his advice. Even before going to the sub-county, I decided to again try to assert my power in the school. On Sunday, I wrote to the staffroom WhatsApp group calling for a meeting the next day at 9am.
Whenever I wrote such, I would receive responses, mainly one-word replies like noted, sawa, or ok, but this time there was no response.
No one turned up for the meeting. In fact, teachers were not even bothered by my presence. They avoided the staffroom as long as I was there, except Lena. I asked her if she had read my message calling for a staff meeting. “Which message?” she wondered, and I could tell she was genuine.
“Oh, Kuya created another group and asked us to exit the other one, so you were speaking to yourself,” she said. Indeed, when I checked, the group had only me and another number that Saphire owned at some point. If you know Saphire, he has a new number every three months.
Later on, as I was leaving the school, I heard Nzomo laugh with other teachers at tea break. “Why remove people from a WhatsApp group and give them a reason to complain when you can exit the group, leave them there alone, and form another group?”
The next day, I was at the sub-county offices. The sub-county TSC director was a friend who had once admired me. She loved how I dressed and generally looked. She greeted me when she saw me and asked how Mwisho wa Lami was doing.
“Well, I don’t know, and that’s what I have come to discuss with you,” I answered.
“Well, we will talk. You wait here,” she said as she entered the office. I waited and waited. Several times I peeped into her office, and she would tell me that she was busy and that I should keep waiting.
At lunchtime, I was so hungry I left to have a quick bite – it did not take me 20 minutes. She came out at around 2.30 pm.
“You are still here?” she asked. “I came looking for you at around 1 pm and was told you had left. Looks like all was okay.”
“No, madam, I had rushed for lunch,” I said.
“Oh, lunch is that important, I see,” she said. “Anyway, see me tomorrow. I have to rush somewhere.”
“Why can’t we talk now? My issue is short…”
She cut me short. “Your issue is not short, Dre, and if it was important, you would not have gone for lunch. See me tomorrow at 11am.”
I was there the next day at 11 am. I waited and waited. That day I did not leave for lunch. Other HMs, all my juniors, would come and see her and leave me. At 2.30 pm, Kuya arrived. He pretended not to see me. He was ushered into her office a few minutes later and spent about 30 minutes there.
To my shock, as he left, the sub-county director of TSC opened the door for him, told him goodbye, asked him to take good care of the school and closed it behind her. I kept waiting. I waited and waited, and an hour later, I was told she had left. I wondered how, and that’s when I was told that she had a back door. “She had asked that you come back tomorrow.”
I called Pius that day to express my frustrations. He told me to rest on Wednesday and go to the county office on Thursday. I did exactly that and was in Kakamega early Thursday morning. That was a bigger office, and getting help was a problem, but two officers I met referred me back to the sub-county TSC director. “This is a matter to be resolved at the sub-county level. I don’t know why you have brought it here.”
As I travelled back home, I remembered one person who understood the workings of TSC like the back of her hand. I called her.
“Hello, Dre, how have you been?” Bensouda greeted me gleefully when I called her. “How is the school taking you? Have you taken it to the next level you kept talking about that I never understood?”
I told her that it was in progress but that I was facing some challenges.
“I know, kuja tuongee kesho,” she said.
I visited her the next day at her home. She was excited to see me.
“Umekonda sana Dre, kumbe ni ukweli Elkana karibu akumalize?” she asked as she warmly and tightly squeezed me. I actually disappeared in her tight hug. She seemed well-updated with matters at Mwisho wa Lami, even as I explained to her.
“Wewe relax,” she said. “It is not the best time to start making noise. Just wait for Kuya to make a mistake – which he will – and you pounce. Everything is about timing,” she said, adding that her contacts in TSC told her that Kuya was in good books and I wasn’t.
“So what do I do?” I asked.
“Are you still getting a salary? Have you been fired?” she wondered. “Tulia. You are not the only one eating free government money.”
“But how can I relax when no one seems to want me at school, at the sub-county office, and the county office?”
“What’s wrong with you?” she asked again. “The Swahili saying goes, ‘akufukuzae hakwambii toka,’” she told me. “But when it comes to TSC, the correct saying is ‘Asiyekuambia toka hajakufukuza.’ Relax!” I relaxed, took the juice and groundnuts she had prepared for me, and forgot all my problems. I left her place late at night that day, very late. Relaxed!
