Little man has homework!
Little man today came running out
of his playgroup çlass-room’ literally flying waving an exercise book in his
hand. I wasn’t very amused because my understanding of playgroup did not include
homework or anything so academic. His teacher explained to me that since he
seems to be more interested in what the older kids are doing in Kindergarten 1,
they allow him into the kindergarten class when he wanders in and gave him a
book for ‘homework’ just like the older kids to boot. His teacher/minder
reasons that if he is interested, why not. So he has daily ‘homework’ which is
mainly to scribble.
So we get home, play and shower
and settle down for homework before dinner. Out comes the book, out comes his
snack box… out comes his extra set of clothes. There is no pen or pencil. I
know I bought pencils recently, and crayons. I look all over the house. No pen,
no pencil, no crayons. How now does a whole house with 3 adults and 2 children
lack a writing implement? Exasperated I ask the house-help if she may have seen
any writing implement as she does her cleaning.
‘Ángalia kwa mitungi’, she says.
We have these 20 litre containers where we store water in case of a water
shortage. Many homes in Nairobi have some sort of emergency water storage or
the frequent water shortages that plague our so called modern lives. Anyhoo,
looking into the mitungis lo and behold, broken pencils float near the top and
long sunk pens with tell-tale ink stains are at the bottom. Fragments of crayon
are all around and inside the mitungis. Was sure I had pens, pens, pencils and
crayons. Now that I know where they have ended up, I can’t help but wonder how
little man is strong enough to break the pencils and how he managed to separate
the pieces of a pen.
Meanwhile, the star of this
piece, little man, has found some color pencil somewhere and has done his
homework… on the wall.
