Outsmarted in High School

When I reported to Starehe on 17th January 2002, I was so eager to start learning and top my class that I complained to my brother Paddy, who was in the school then, that we were being held in the assembly hall for too long.

You see, admitted students reported to Starehe on different dates, so the school administration held us in the assembly hall while waiting for the other students to arrive before we could be split into different streams.

When we were finally split, I was put in a stream called 1F. And guess what! I ended up at position 32 out of 35 in our first term. And I could easily have been the last had I not scored an impressive 96% in social studies.

During the long holidays that followed, I read like a demon, aiming to make a quantum leap in our second term: from position 32 to 1. And I remember focusing on math, biology, physics and chemistry.

But alas! I only improved by five positions in the second term. And even though I continued to climb the ranks as the years wore on, I didn't manage to beat five classmates in my entire high school career. One of them was George Yuka.

Some years after finishing high school, I enrolled at the University of Nairobi to pursue a degree in economics and political science and met Yuka, then an actuarial student at the university, from time to time.

Once when I found him playing pool in one of the university residential halls, I engaged him in a conversation during which I asked, "What did you guys eat at Starehe that made you so bright?" He laughed my question off.

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Also check out "Classmates' Shenanigans".