An eraser I never owned…
These may have been moments in my life that I should have taken to the grave. But what use are life lessons if we cannot unveil the cringeworthy moments that made us who we are? After all, for the prodigal son to return home, he had to come to terms with his errs and set a path that would be the opposite of his past. So let’s laugh down memory lane.
I had the fortunate privilege of attending a school that perhaps was beyond my parents’ pay grade at the time. But they had the best interests at heart. Exposure at the private school, 10 shillings away from home, that we could hardly afford, was more important to my parents than attending the public, overcrowded school close to home. I always had two cornrows; salons were not very affordable back then. And my school headmaster always took it upon himself to remind me that my fees were unpaid whenever he met me in the hallway. I dreaded those encounters in the hallway, especially under the stares of classmates... “Look at her, trying to belong where she doesn’t fit”. Like an orange in a garlic clove. A misplaced thing.
Meals; let’s not relive the trauma. Busara and mandazi for lunch felt like christmas that I still despised because everyone else had packed lunch. I remember our class prefect laughing at me as I tried to hide from my mum, who had sacrificed so much to bring me that food. It was all she could afford, and I didn’t want her sacrifice mocked.
So when opportunity presented itself, I did anything a person craving to know what the good life looks like would do. A classmate of mine had a really simple eraser, the plain white kind. But it was thicker. I knew, if only I had it, it would last me a lifetime. And I had to have it. So I ‘borrowed’ it when she wasn’t looking. I suspect someone else saw me, because the teacher was adamant in searching all our bags. And there it was, in my polythene bag, right beside my over-diluted orange juice and a mandazi, the eraser. I remember the laughter. I remember the shame. And though I was sad that the eraser wouldn’t come home with me, for a brief moment, I had known what it felt like to have — to not need to borrow.
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Unlike our politicians, I was caught. And punished. And I stopped before it became a habit. But not before I raided my school mum’s biscuits in her absence — because what was hers, I thought, was ours. She forgave me, graciously. But I also learnt: if I ever wanted to truly own something, I had to earn it. My life wouldn’t be an accumulation of erasers I didn’t own.
Lack can make you do unthinkable things.
In those moments of what I consider cringe moments in my life, I learnt the value of honesty and working for something with my all. I fully embodied it into who I was becoming. Into who I am. I worked and studies to survive in campus. After graduation, I moved into an empty apartment and stayed three months with no furniture. No mattress for a month, just a blanket laid on the floor. But there was no going back home because that meant giving up. And so, I stayed. I needed to earn my eraser.
Today, I take life one day at a time. And I hope that one day, my older self will find my younger self, head bent in shame over a stolen eraser, over borrowed dignity, and whisper:
“It is because of these moments that you learnt to do the unthinkable. To be cringe. And in time, to be great.”
