(Part 1)
“Go to school, work hard, pass your exams, be competent ; everyone will want to work with you.”
So I kept telling myself. “Its the only way to get out of this life.”
Growing up, things haven’t been easy . I was born and raised in a place where most people would not find ideal. How we lived through our days was by God’s Grace. No meal was guaranteed but the Lord delivered, the roof on my head wasn’t guaranteed, but God delivered. Nothing in my life was guaranteed, but the Lord delivered. The only thing that I thought was my ticket out of this life of unsurety was what my parents, my teachers and my friends kept telling Me. “Work hard in school, be a doctor, the government will employ you and you will be able to serve society.”
What music to ones ears, right? That I could bargain with reality. All I had to do was work hard? Well, that wasn’t hard to do. I was so full of hope that to add into my motivation, I added lyrics to the song…
“Sacrifice it all. Your time, your energy, your effort. As long as you can give it your all, Give IT!. Its the only way to be of value enough to escape this life.”
Young as I was, I always admired doctors. The white coats, the respect they were given, their professionalism. How could anyone else ever think of being anything else but a doctor? Pilots were good and all, engineers, maybe so but doctors…now that was quite the people. They studied the body, how the heart pumps, the neurons fire, the pupils swell open. They knew how to kill but chose to save lives. Such nobility, I thought, could never be achieved in any other profession. Such honor. Such power in a profession.
And this was the beginning of my life’s mistake.I later learnt in life that though the profession was noble, honorouble and of pure intention, the people practicing it were not necessarily so.
I was a man on a mission. 😂.Thinking of it now, I sometimes regret the sacrifices I made to get here, but maaaan did I work hard. I was lucky enough to get to a national school in highschool. Back then it was one of those ” wonder” schools that most parents used to brag about unlike what it has been reduced to today thanks to the inability to increase capacity while simultaneously overstraining the capacity it currently possesses ( nobody realizes it but things like these do a number to the mental health of developing students in such a school ). Funkiez, letters, usual teenage notoriousness, I missed out on all these since I was busy working towards acing my KCSE all through highschool. I needed no distraction and for sure I never entertained any. 4 years of unparalled focus, undetered and unwavered, for I had to keep my dream alive. I had to possess the title “Dr” before my name and if I had to sacrifice everything in my youth to get there, that was what I was to do.
Lo and Behold! 4 years were through, I got a letter and to University I went. I took the auspicous course in Pharmacy. It sounded like a great gig. I didn’t have to open up bodies and accidentally kill someone, I would instead give them what they need to get better, make sure they took what I gave them properly, basically get paid for being a human chemistry Encyclopedia without the blood and the screaming and the general disturbances of peace. To top it all off, I would bare the title “Dr” infront of my name (Scam number 1) . All I had to do was be precise in my information and that was it? .
“This is IT!” I remember I told myself as I set foot in campus grounds for the first time. “Remember what you have left at home. People are counting on you… You cannot fail. You did 4 years. What is 5?”. So I used the same strategy as I did in highschool, the first year, no “funkiez”, no distractions (now I think about it, no life) for the sake of the mission. This time being a Pharmacy Degree of the highest GPA I could get. It worked in the first year…before life started hitting Me up. Second year in, I could see an insurmountable difference between me and everyone else. I was paying for my lost teenage years of socializing in highschool and it showed. I KNEW NOTHING of the real world. I didn’t get why people partied, I didn’t get why people were coupling up, I didn’t get why people were doing “campus things”….I didn’t get anything.Between me and a Homo habilis that had lived in the forest alone for years and was just dumped in Campus, there was no difference between us as far as Emotional Intelligence was concerned. My IQ was obviously high as it is generally for anyone taking pharmacy, but my EQ was basically non-existent. Let’s just say that two years in of understanding why Campus was Campus didn’t go so easy on me. I was an outsider looking in, someone everyone misunderstood and would in most cases make fun of, it never bothered me though since I had a mission and everything and everyone else was a distraction. “Because, ” I thought “Pharmacy is worth it, despite it all.”
It wasn’t all bad however, since I realized that my seclusion wasn’t necessarily a disadvantage. Because of it I feel as though my priorities were clear, what I stood for was sure and there is nothing as good as trusting oneself in every situation, even when you are wrong ( a man is a man always, we aren’t right all the time, despite our conviction). Sometimes, when people ask “How I got this way.”, I tell them to try close to a decade of being secluded while being sorrounded by people and see what happens to them. These are good traits in anyone but a naive boy like I used to be. Every con, thief, police (for the boy child, they are more or less the same thing) and sales man could smell the naivete in me…stories for other articles.
After several hiccups on my path including battles for justice and being broke in campus, I finally made it through the supposed 5 years ( but, it is usually never just 5 years in Kenyan campuses anymore, is it?) and graduated. But getting a taste of servitude in the profession and actually getting paid for it wasn’t going to be that easy. Apparently, University was the easy part. I was informed that there was an animal by the name “Board Exam” that needed to be slain.The beast was armed with questions all through the campus years of study that demanded I strike it with correct answers in one clean swoop. Unlike the usual papers I am used to, this monster was to be done by all students everywhere in the country that desired to be put to work. Hence, competition. “Ok!” I said, let the training begin.” The warrior inside me studied, day and night. Woke the cock that crowed and burnt that oil through midnight…just for one day of a straineous mental workout. It felt my brain sweat after the paper since my weight was obviously cut to half in that exam.I suppose those papers carried half of me literally. I didn’t care though, I would get my ounces back, plus some while on internship.
I finally had an opportunity to serve my nation, after passing my exam. I can’t express now how I felt back then when the ministry sent those letters to my relatives box mail, who I used to borrow the address for things such as this. I was so excited, so enthusiastic, so bright and full of energy….looking back right now, I should add more adjective to that list….so stupid.😒. Had I known what I know now….We had a short number of days to gather signatures and I worked on it asap. I had to get into debt to make it all happen , after all, the government would help Me out on end month. So I thought…then I will pay the money back. And true to that word,the government never disappointed. After my first month, my account got money for the first time in my life without me having to put my hustle money in there ( I had several part time jobs in campus to support myself. After all, at the time, being a boy-child, who was I to call when I had to eat?). I shouldn’t digress from this point…for the first time my account had money put in through somewhere else. What? 😱! I don’t know about everyone else but I had anxiety and a hint of confusion and doubt that first week. I had to keep confirming that this was true. Even the bank attendants got tired of my consistent checking .I knew I would get something, and people used to claim it would be some amount but this was unbelievable. My account had something! It finally had a salary. After paying all my debts of course I had to celebrate on my own as I usually do every time I achieved something small. So I entered into Galittos in town for the very first time in my life. I actually had disposable income to afford a smoothie, on my own. Before then , I always used to see people younger than Me go in there in couples and groups as I passed by coming from my part-time campus jobs and I would tell myself “One day man….keep pushing, but one day, you will get in there. And you will belong.”
You should have seen how I walked in that establishment that evening. To everyone else this was where they came to get lunch and hang out but to me, this was Kempinski. My fruits of my sacrifice were finally ripening. I remember that I spent Ksh 350 painlessly getting liver and rice and a Ksh 350 banana smoothie that I had always long-suffered for. I don’t care how cheap people took that meal, I felt like a King. Just to emphasise on how I was feeling, I just had to seat by the balcony upstairs. I just had to…and so I interrupted a couple idling at the seat that I wanted since they were obviously done with their meals and were indiscriminately groping each other in public (I don’t disapprove. What they were doing was none of my business. But, here was a customer that needed that chair, everywhere else was taken.No apologies) so I just sat next to them and they did the rest. I was on my own now. I opened that transparent slide door window and let the cold air in. It was 7 pm and the City was beautiful. Noisy buses underneath, people seemingly like ants from above running up and down minding their own business. And here I was. Fulfilling a promise to myself. That “One day”, had finally become “The day.” and I can tell you for sure, I have never had a better moment than that back then. Dreams seemed to be coming true….
Hmm……..
Dreams.😐
By Dr. Oxymetazoline.