My Earlier Days As An Aspiring Artist

This picture of me here captured one of the nostalgia painful years of my school life back in Std 5 over 22 years ago. A maths teacher walks into a classroom full of learners and asked who the artist is in the room? All learners pointed at me with much enthusiasm and confidence to match.

 He looked at me and said: 'Mfana, are you sure you can draw serious stuff?' To which I replied yes. He was a teacher every learner feared and at times, despised. I thought it was a great moment for me restore my dignity from his countless humiliations exerted upon my direction. Mind you, then coporal punishment was in its mightiest. Each time he punished the classroom for making noise, the whip from his hand became rigoriously firm when it landed on my head, in my hand or at my behind. It is as if he made sure I felt the whip hundred times. He ordered me to come up with two notices/posters of NO SMOKING wherein I drew a cigarette burning and cross the line over it. He directed that I should put one behind the door and the other on the cupboard door. I gave the project the best of my abilities. 

After I completed the first one whilst busy working on the second one, he left the classroom and guess where he went? He went to the male teachers who used to smoke because he was non-smoker. He particularly chose to approach a strict teacher by the name of Mckenzie, a teacher who smoked countless cigarettes at a go. He said to him: "Mckenzie, there's a boy in my class who thinks he knows everything. Now he just made a drawing of 'No Smoking' and placed it behind the doors of the classroom and cupboard. The Late Mckenzie, may his soul rest in peace, approached our classroom fuming. Luckily it was few minutes before break. He entered the classroom and looked exactly behind the door as he closed it, angrily tapping the poster off the door and inquired who did this nonsense. All the class of about 50 learners turned their heads and all manner of gestured at me. He told me that he started smoking long before I was born and that I had no right to dictate his smoking habit. As his anger gained momentum, the bell saved me because it bellowed for break and learners quickly rushed out of the classroom. It was a bad day for me because I was made to offend a teacher. I didn't even enjoy break that day. I timed Mckenzie for his regular visits to those women who sold snacks at the gate, I gathered courage marched to him.

 I asked him to forgive me for what I have done and he hugged and kissed me and apologised for being furious towards me in front of my fellow learners. He told me that the teacher in question came to and delivered the message which made him feel humiliated. Mckenzie offered to give me A2 cartridge papers, crayons, coloured chalks and pencil as a renumeration and encouraged me to persistently do art. The rest is history.