The element 'Mwalimu' could not be locked.
Teachers were behaving as if Kuya did not exist. I was not surprised when he asked to see me last Wednesday. We met in the evening, after everyone had left school.
When Apostle Elkana, the Revered Principal Superintendent of THOAG (The Holiest of All Ghosts) Tabernacle Assembly; and Hitler, Mwisho wa Lami’s eminent entrepreneur and industrialist in the alco-beverage sector, brokered reconciliation between Kuya and I, we all looked forward to peace in Mwisho wa Lami and is environs; peace that would enable us to focus on the development and progress of our school.
But less than two weeks later, that peace is still elusive. It all started the other week when teachers who were opposed to Kuya being made deputy, led by Mrs Atika, took every turn to remind him that he was not deserving of being deputy and that he was an absentee teacher when the rest were working.
They opposed everything he came up with. First, they shot down his idea of holding staff meetings in the afternoons instead of mornings. They then rejected his new timetable and told him that they would not participate in his plans of starting to prepare the school for junior secondary school next year.
“Hosting JSS requires us to have new classrooms, laboratories among other resources. What has a teacher got to do with that? That is government work,” said Alex.
The teachers also ignored the new timetable that Kuya had put in the staff notice board and continued using the old one, which many of them had memorised and liked.
In short, teachers were behaving as if Kuya did not exist. I was not surprised when he asked to see me last Wednesday. We met in the evening, after everyone had left school.
“Dre, this thing is not working,” he said.
“What thing?” I asked him.
He listed to me the initiatives he had come up with as deputy that had all come to naught.
I asked him if he was unable to be an effective deputy.
“I always tell people that it is lonely at the top, but I am surprised that you are struggling to make things happen. You are more experienced than Mrs Atika and Alex. Yet when they acted, they had more success than you,” I told him.
“You know that is not true, Dre,” he said. “I am highly effective and I know what needs to be done. I just think that you are talking reconciliation during the day and fanning disobedience at night.”
“How now?” I asked him what he meant.
He told me he suspected that I was inciting teachers to disobey him; to stop recognising him as deputy.
“Are you accusing me of insubordination? Am I not, as HM, interested in the smooth running of the school?” I posed.
“I know you are interested in the success of the school, but you are also human. You do not want competition,” he said, but quickly corrected himself. “I mean that you do not want people who may challenge your position.”
“What do you mean ‘competition’?” I asked him.
“Let us not lie to ourselves,” he responded. “You know I am the most experienced teacher in this school. And if there would be a competitive process of hiring a HM, I may successfully challenge you.”
“How would you beat me when you cannot get anything done as the deputy?” I asked.
“It is how you appointed me,” he said, adding that it was a roadside appointment.
“What do you mean when you say it was a roadside appointment? We did it formally in a staff meeting. You want it announced on the radio?”
“That is the problem. It needs to be in writing,” he said, then added a new set of demands he wanted fulfilled for him to keep the peace.
“First, you must formalise my position by writing a letter to the TSC sub-county director informing him of my appointment. And you must order all teachers to obey my instructions,” he said, adding that we must reshuffle teachers and appoint new prefects. “Thank you, Kuya, but you know some of the requests you are making cannot be done, at least not by me,” I replied.
I went on: “I am not the appointing authority for deputy head. It is TSC who appoints, I was just giving you a headstart.”
I asked him why he wanted changes in the staffroom and the prefect body.
“The teachers and prefects are your appointees. They owe allegiance to you and do not listen to me. I need people with whom I can work,” he said.
“In short, you want to have your cronies in different positions in the school?” I asked him.
“Not really,” he said. “I just want to have it running smoothly so that we can move the school to the next level.”
“Listen, Kuya,” I started. “I did not choose the teachers in this school, nor did I choose the students. I need you to know that this school was running smoothly even with your opposition to everything we did.”
“It may have been smooth but it was moving in the wrong direction,” he said.
“The direction doesn’t matter. What matters is that the school was moving somewhere, right now there is no movement.”
I told him that he needed to prove himself as a leader by finding ways of getting things done.
“If there is no change within a week, I will have no option but to drop you and appoint an acting deputy who can get things done,” I said as I left him in the staffroom and went home.
I was not going to babysit Sospeter at home and Kuya at school!
