The day seemed longer than usual. My focus had shifted to the one shilling in my pocket. It was worth an ice cream. The school allowed venders to sell ice creams by the gate. It was vital under the scorching sun. I wasn’t worried about getting punished for what had happened during the day’s PE class. Besides, PTs had no authority to punish pupils, so I guess that is why the PT with whom we had locked horns never followed up. The chances of meeting this mysterious teacher were extremely slim. So my mind was free to focus on interesting things. It was the frozen colored and flavored water. They still exist today, usually packaged in slim polythene bags and then air-sealed at both sides. I preferred the dark-red ones. They tasted like berries, toned down with a distant passion fruit flavor.
Usually, we used to get the money from my stepbrother’s elder brother. At the school, there were only the two of us from our large family and relatives. My two elder brothers had been transferred to another school in the rural areas. I never missed them, probably because they had been transferred before I joined St. Mary's, or perhaps I had a stepbrother who helped evade possible trauma. Life was really tough, but we seemed to enjoy it with my new brother, who was only slightly older. We knew how to ensure we could almost always afford ice cream. Sometimes we shared if we had only one bob.
Bro preferred other colors. I never paid attention. I think he chose brown, which could be because it was chocolate-flavored. I don’t know what blue or yellow taste like, but who cares? As usual, we placed them in our bags. We used to take them as juice after they had melted completely, unless we were sharing one. It was easy to break it into measurable pieces or even take equal bites when it was still frozen. We took it immediately when sharing an ice cream because it was small already. Besides, who could trust the custodian? The source of the money was not attractive either. Our patience to hold on until we got the juice version of it depended on trust, which we could only afford when we could buy one for each of us.
The money for buying us ‘snacks’ was hard to catch. It mainly came from my brother’s elder brother. He was working as a shoe shiner and repairer in the nearby town. The school was only about a kilometer away from the town center, where Big Step Bro and Mzee (dad) worked, but home was in the opposite direction. Just 100 meters from the school gate was the main road that connected the town with residential areas and the nearby rural villages.
Mzee did not trust us with the house key, so we were supposed to trek all the way to his office at the town center. Take the keys and head home. This means we always saw the school gate three times a day. By the time we were going past the school from the town as we headed home, most of the children would have had their lunch at home and started playing. We would have walked for more than 2 kilometers regardless of the weather. We often took off our school uniforms around 3–4 in the evening.
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