My bullying lessons started much earlier in life.
I was moved to another village school at ten years of age under difficult circumstances. My mother had gotten an accidental snakebite outside our humble home and ended up being hospitalized for months. Then, my father lived far away in another village, tilling the land. It became impossible for him to manage us from a distance, and he had to relocate us.
Life was hard from the start. There were new friends to make and new things to learn, like grazing cattle. Communication in the school I joined was difficult in the sense that most people spoke Kamba, a different ethnic language from mine. The stress of isolation from my mum had taken a toll on me, and I would wet my bed and smell pee every morning. Allergies dominated my life, and a yellowish, sore, runny nose was my trademark. And the bad boys in my class marked me and made me a victim of their bullying for one whole year. It was a horrible experience.
This made me long to go to a boarding school to escape the stringent chores and harsh treatment in my school. I longed to drop the drab, dusty brown school uniforms and don the pink shirts and black shorts like our affluent neighbour’s kids. I wanted to own a toothbrush and wear underwear. I hoped to speak English and share classrooms with those beautiful, long-haired girls in black leather shoes and white socks. The ones I would occasionally see when we made a seasonal tour to our church parish. Unfortunately, my parents could not afford it.
Joining secondary school was a prestigious and life-changing affair.
The metal box and a padlock that I longed to possess were all to be mine. I would own a toothbrush and a towel, wear underwear and shoes every day. I would escape farm chores and grazing cows for a whole three months. I would take a guaranteed car ride in those battered Peugeot 404 or face-me Datsun matatus every other month.
My feet would lose the cracks and become supple. Wearing shoes every day would transform my toes from a web-like structure to a well-aligned and decent shape. My skin would soften and lighten from escaping the hot blazing sun. I would start speaking English and gain admiration from girls. But little did I know what was lying in wait.
My new school was famous for the wrong thing.
Joining it made me think that I was enrolling in a citadel of academic prowess, just like everyone in my district knew. Landing there within a few hours made me realize that it should have been famous for cruelty more than academic excellence.
The bigger boys started prowling even before our parents left. Immediately the parents and teachers vanished, they landed in droves. They started asking intimidating questions and forcefully taking away our precious personal possessions. Each and everyone one of us was taken away by one of them, to become their slaves! This was a formal system, well known and condoned by teachers. It was a horrendous institution, unfit for any form of human development.
They took almost everything that mattered to me.
My possessions, my independence, my fundamental rights, my dignity. When I look back, I always feel that this was not a place inhabited by human beings. The boys were so beastly that I felt so scared and wanted to escape and forget school altogether.
It was not a school but a bastion of bullying.
The year would see us suffer. We would be physically beaten while demeaning insults and hateful language was administered. We slept on the worst beds and spaces and day-in-day-out, washed their dirty clothes and utensils. We cleaned awfully filthy toilets in the night. We were never allowed to enjoy entertainment or sports. Unless one appeared like a townie whose pocket money and its trappings were worth some respect. Rural folks like me had the worst of the treatment, the vulnerability of our backgrounds notwithstanding.
The food was horrendous, but anything edible in it would be forcefully taken away. We were left to scramble for some mediocre ‘soup’ full of weevils at the bottom of the self-service pot. Nobody cared, especially the teachers. In the first term in this school, I almost died of hunger. Only survived on tasteless porridge and some tiny portions of the worst food I have ever eaten in my life. If starvation never killed me, then, it is unlikely to be the cause of my death.
This has not changed much today.
It is evident that Kenyan schools still practice bullying beyond acceptable global trends and is worst in what we perceive as prestigious national schools.
Throughout my adult life, I have listened to the perspectives of my agemates on the necessity of isolating kids and taking them to rural boarding schools. It has all been about building resilience and making them more robust in life. It is a silent approval of bullying as a necessity in developing children’s character by educated Kenyan middle class. This always shocks me.
Bullying stealthily weakens character contrary to what we expect.
Isolating children from family never strengthens them. Bullying and hardship at a tender age has no meaning in modern parenting. Bullying and isolation steal confidence, stifle development and instil fear that has caused problems in adulthood. Exposing a child to bullying when one can avoid is negligence of the highest order.
Bullying instils trauma and affects mental health in a very forceful way. At times it causes scars that are difficult to heal. Studies have shown that bullied people more often than not underperform at school and work and are at risk of all manner of psychological distress, including negative thinking, depression, and early death by suicide. There are high chances that they will have no spouses or be earning less than expected at the age of 50 years.
Bullied children are likely to suffer low self-esteem and detrimental social phobia. They could probably end up with diminished trust and socially withdrawn. It eventually leads to health problems, alcohol and drug abuse. They are likely to turn out to bullies to their wives, children, coworkers, and other people. In other words, bullying builds losers and degrades society in one way or another.
Why do we get educated and never learn in our society?
Looking around, I see so much brokenness in the society around me, that points out to childhood bullying and isolation as a critical cause. From what I know, we hold this ritual so real in our communities to the extent that those who protect their children from this foolish system are considered most unwise. Spoilers of their children!
There is an inherent and nonsensical belief in our society that one cannot make it in life unless they are subjected to some form of involuntary suffering. That what I went through in the way of becoming, so my child needs to face the same. Total crap! I was the son of a peasant, and mine is not. My parents did not have a choice, but I do. There was little knowledge about the health and social effects of bullying and isolation, but we are no longer that ignorant.
I have spent years clutching the bitterness of bullying.
I have never understood why it is an acceptable thing in our society. I have been hanging on it so much such that any attempts to enjoin me in old boys association of that school have never borne fruit. I never even want to visit it for any reason. I do not even easily visit public schools because they give me that nostalgic experience of bullying and other forms of maltreatment.
Of course, I have been blamed for not doing anything about it. But how many problems can I tackle in Africa during my lifetime? There are so many of them, and the only way to make a meaningful contribution to our society is picking one and committing fully to it. That is what I have done, and I believe I will have served my purpose to the world.
I salute all those who have taken action to change this situation.
I know some of my close friends who have tackled it head-on. I know teachers who in this day and time cannot tolerate that kind of behaviour. I know many educationists and social activists who do a good job every day to change this situation. But we still have a long way to go.
The unfortunate thing is that bullying is taking new forms. We have bullies in workplaces and on our Facebook pages. Our children may not be in boarding schools but being online exposes them too. However, we are a more alert and legally empowered society than the days of my schooling.
Even as adults, we come across many social psychopaths in the name of tweeps and bloggers who command thousands of cheering followers, especially when they discredit and maliciously hurt other defenceless people online. We find them heroic when they attack people we hate and do not even know much about. It just tells you how our society endorses bullying, even amongst the elitist.
However, many people, I being one of them, have chosen to not pay an audience to such social dysfunctionality disguised as heroism.
We all need to stop this retrogressive and disempowering malpractice.
Like Neil deGrasse Tyson, the famous astrophysicist, writer, and science communicator says, “For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: know more today about the world than I knew yesterday and lessen the suffering of others. You’d be surprised how far that gets you.” This one has been on my radar for a long time, and resisting the urge to perpetuate it has gotten me far.
Having been a victim of severe bullying in two critical stages of my childhood, I thank God for giving me the wisdom and opportunity to pursue my healing and taking bold actions to safeguard my adult self and future generations from this malpractice.
I hope you keenly reflect and see that some experiences that may have ought to toughen you, destroyed you mentally, emotionally and spiritually. But empathy for oneself and taking actions to heal is vital.
That way, we will have made the courage to correct the family and society perceptions and impacts of bullying.
In the words of activist Randi Weingarten, “You can’t be against bullying without actually doing something about it.”
