The Return of the Cane: A Hustler’s Narrative

Make no mistake about it, if caning is re-introduced in Kenya this will only be for children of hustlers. Dynasties don’t cane their children. As an experienced educationist and a hustling son of a hustler, am willing to stick my neck and declare, the cane is simply a tool of terror.  It might deter a few from some devious activities, but it does not inculcate morals. I was a victim of the cane right from primary school to high school. Teachers were really cane-happy. This is one reason I would not support giving teachers guns as has been suggested by some. There is no telling what trigger happy teachers could do with a gun.  I suspect some of my teachers used the cane “kutoa stress” ama “kutoa lock” as the imbibers of Chang’aa and other toxic brews are wont to do. This is the only way I can explain a teacher waking up at 4.00am so he can be at the school gate to cane kids who had walked barefoot for kilometres, probably having had no breakfast, and braced mist and fog just because they were five or ten minutes late. It’s the only way I can explain Mwalimu Kīiru asking us to lie down on the grass and caning us repeatedly by asking us to join the queue on the other end, after each round of caning, so that he had no idea whom he had caned, when and how many times.  That is how my classmate and friend, Nyaga wa Manga, got so traumatized that he lost his speech for a week. To this day, Nyaga talks with a stutter. Our only crime was doing what boys do, being fascinated by a tipper emptying stones at a nearby construction site. We were not burning schools.

 

How else can I explain Njung’e wa Mungai? This was our deputy headmaster and discipline master in high school. The man was bulky. No competition with lanky underfed schoolboys. He walked with his hands hanging by his sides like a boxer. He used the cane, but his hands were even more lethal. He deceptively held his arms behind his back as he talked with you but moved them with lightning speed to connect with both sides of your face in a double slap. That is how he earned his first nickname: combiner. After such an encounter, you just had to see stars. I used to always put my hands on my face defensively whenever I talked to him.  You did not have to have committed a major crime for him to slap you. We also nicknamed him “Wamanane” because sometimes he fetched boys from their beds after midnight just to go and cane them for some misdemeanour. 

 

If Mūkoya Saisi is reading this, he will remember our common encounter with Wamanane. I was playing truant or “cutting classes” in a place we used to call the “lower field” at Kagumo High School in Nyeri.  I personally wouldn’t have called it playing truant or cutting classes.  We had no English teacher and I wanted to read my James Hadley Chase in peace. I took leave from class because I found it too noisy. I went to the lower field and lay on the grass behind some bushes with a copy of my James Hadley Chase. Mūkoya Saisi was in Kīmathi House also “cutting classes”.  He belonged to what we then called the ‘maze’ class. Kids from rich families who had attended posh schools and called each other “maze” in a posh accent. They would afford “grab” which meant home delicacies delivered over the weekend in blue Mercs with tinted windows. They consumed that in the course of the week while the rest of us contended with “murram” aka boiled maize and beans (Gītheri) with a touch of weevils. Those days sheng was for a few privileged kids from city schools. I understand Mūkoya had just put the kettle on to fix himself some brew when he learnt that Njung’e wa Mūngai was at the door. He panicked, jumped from a first-floor window and ran like hell for his dear life. Njung’e gave chase. Unfortunately, Mūkoya ran into my hideout and inadvertently smoked me out. Both of us were caught. Njung’e took us to his office for an extremely generous helping of the cane. The man had biceps that suggested he could squeeze water out of stone. When he wielded the cane on the back of our bare thighs, the cane made blood clot marks. We spent the next few days receiving sympathetic inspections by our classmates awed by the savagery of Njung’e’s caning. 

 

I can identify with my former teacher at Moi university, Dr. Kafu. In a recent TV interviewed on this matter, he said the cane produces bitter people. It might just be trauma experienced in schools  produces the kind of people that set the Kiambaa church on fire. People who have grievances against society but are not quite sure who offended them. I was bitter with Wa Manane. This was not discipline. It was violence. I spent many hours thinking how best to pay him back. None of my plans materialized.  I had no access to a reliable weapon and an appropriate opportunity. By the time I was leaving school I had made peace with him, but I never forgot the injustice. I would not wish the experience on any child. 

 

Unfortunately, I did not learn much from the experience. I taught as an untrained teacher and administered the cane enthusiastically.  I did not know better. As teachers we were almost competing on who was best at terrorizing the students into submission with the cane.  I highly regret the experience and if I meet the boys and girls who suffered in my hands, I will happily apologise. I now know better. I went through Dr. Kafu’s reasonable and merciful hands at the university while studying for my bachelor’s degree in education. I learnt a different word to use in place of punishment. Reinforcement. There is positive and negative reinforcement. If a child does well, you reinforce it by giving them something good or something they like. If a child does something wrong, you withhold the good thing or something they really like. Yes, children must learn that there are consequences to their actions through positive and negative reinforcement but not being brutalized. Discipline in schools can be achieved but not necessarily through terror.

 

I would hate Kenyan schools to deteriorate to some levels I experienced as a supply teacher in West Yorkshire, England. I visited some schools that were prisons for all practical purposes. Access to classes was through gates with passcodes to ensure the students could not leave the school without authority. While inside, however, the children had unimaginable liberties from an African perspective. They studied if they wanted and just lazed about if they chose to. I encountered students with such bloodshot eyes I was constantly afraid for my life. I tried to encourage one of them to pay attention to schoolwork so he could improve his future and he said “nah, man, there is more money in drugs”! A Caucasian fellow supply teacher told me how one student had head butted him at a bus stop. The teacher was helpless. Nothing other than a pointless pep talk could be done to the student. I don’t want our schools to move in that direction, but the students should be treated just like adults. If we don’t cane adults who err, though our policemen sometimes do and we condemn them, we should not cane children either, but we must find a humane way of enforcing negative reinforcement for children who won’t toe the line.