This week, I attended one of my children’s sports day, which was also their closing day. The event was to run from 8.30am to 1pm, but of course, nothing in Kenya starts on time and ends on time – sorry, I could not help belabouring the point I made last week regarding time-keeping.
Moving on, in every such event, there are two types of parents. The first group is made up of the self-contained ones. These are the parents that tend to sit quietly and do more observing than talking.
They are less likely to know other parents, are reluctant to mingle, and are unmotivated to participate in any activity. They only do so when singled out, since they are quiet happy to remain on the same spot until the event concludes.
And then there is the outgoing group, even though I use the word outgoing for lack of a better word that aptly describes them. They are a complete opposite of the first group. They are rowdy, they are loud and will volunteer for any and every activity.
By the end of the event, they will have made friends with their fellow loud parents and they will be easily identifiable by their dirty clothes and pieces of grass in their hair, having taken part in tug of war, football, running, potato and sack race, falling down repeatedly in the process and laughing about it. In a nutshell, they come to play, literally.
At the risk of being pelted with stones, the self-contained group tends to be judgmental about this group, they frown on their merrymaking and loudness, which they may view as showing off…
That said, the air was different this time round. It is as if every parent that attended this event had been looking for the time and place to let off steam, to unleash their inner child, to forget their problems.
Almost everyone there became a heckler when competing teams took the field – each parent was wearing their child’s house colour. There was red, (vultures), green (eagles), orange (peacock) and blue, though I don’t recall which bird the colour stood for.
In my time, a ‘house’ was simply red, yellow or blue, there was no time to get fanciful.
But I digress. You should have heard parents, even yours truly, singing that song those in my age group used to sing during sports events at school – ‘hatutapiga kelele…’ at the top of their voices, as our children looked on in awe, probably seeing us in new light. Laid-back and capable of having actual fun.
It was quite a revelation for them. There was even an ingenious parent that had carried a vuvuzela, and when the women’s teams fell with a thud during tug of war, we all laughed until we ran out of breath, though the real heckling happened when the winning team was announced.
Some of us demanded a recount, and threatened to hold maandamano if the servers were not opened.
Reflecting on that day, it occurred to me that we Kenyans have had an especially tough couple of months, what, with the rising cost of living – skyrocketing food prices, unaffordable fuel, impending school fees increment, unaffordable health care, and now the impending taxes, which will bite off another chunk off the pay of salaried Kenyans.
With all this, and more, weighing down on many of our shoulders, it does not hurt to take advantage of any chance we get to unwind, to exhale, to forget the challenges that need tackling at least for a while.
