On the two-acre piece of land stood a school with ten classrooms and a staff room with a field that allowed pupils to engage in extracurricular activities. The land was sloping towards the east where the sun rose shining its bright rays on the whole school compound except for the crops that were in the North-west part of the farm. Adjacent to the crops was a pile of deep-rooted rocks and boulders that sat on the land in a haphazard manner. The boulders provided rest areas where pupils engaged in small talk about teachers and themselves. It also allowed the pupils to get a direct hit of the sun during their breaks before the sun became hot during lunchtime.
Besides, the farm and the boulders stood a line of brick-walled classrooms that ran from nursery to class six with one empty room that acted as a store for the school. Just after class six was the parade grounds that had beautiful flowers manicured to read the motto of the school and the name of the school. Saint Michael Primary School had a staff room next to the parade grounds as the other two classes stood by the staffroom. These were the senior classes with expected minimum noise and more input in education but expectations weren't always met. On the West side of the parade was a small rocky hill that led to the adjacent Catholic church where pupils held their masses and their end of primary school parties.
Among the rocks in the hills stood various trees that fed teachers with different fruits for each season all year long. The rocks had small parcels of land that allowed the growth of kales and Napier grass for teachers.
The school had a total of one hundred and twenty-five pupils spread across the various classes with a decrease in number as one ascends to the higher levels with at most eight teachers. The highest number of pupils to ever finish class eight successfully was ten and that was five years ago. Among the ten pupils, seven were boys and the rest were pregnant girls.
It was at the end of the second term close to August when schools would close early as the year of festivities were here. The festivals were to start just after the schools close as drums could be heard from a distance. More instruments could be heard daily as the closing day approached. Pupils would no longer concentrate on classwork and so teachers saw it fit to allow them to play the whole as they make the end-of-term examinations. They had a lot to do in such a short time and as such their overshadowing presence was gone.
The pupils anticipated the frenzy that came with the festivals but to one girl it was a year that she was to fallout completely with her family.
Maria was in class five at the age of fifteen, not only had she repeated a few classes, but she had also started school late. Her multicolored uniform stood out among the pupils who wore uniforms of various material but of the same navy blue color. She had tried coercing her mother into buying her a new uniform but everything new fell under the support of the father. He disapproved of her attending school which saw Maria sneaking out of the compound every morning and sneaking back every evening.
Maria was slowly outgrowing her classes as she was years ahead of them. Her adolescent body made her shy in front of other pupils and in doing so she assumed a brooding posture. When walking her shoulders would always lean into her chest as if in a bid to hide her sprouting breasts. She wore heavy woolen sweaters to hide her ever-changing body.
At home, the posture remained the same but she was more active with the house chores and talking to her mother. Keenly her mother would listen to her stories as they plucked vegetables from the farm. She was tired of having to listen to her ever since she came back from school. Maria didn't get that as she went on and on about events that took place in school while her mother accompanied her pauses with momentarily 'ohs' and 'ahs'. They would pluck the various vegetables and sit down under the Mango tree to prepare the vegetables for supper.
Maria was born in a family of five children. They were two girls and four boys. Her elder sister had been married five villages away. She always came to visit during the last days of the second harvest of the year. This was her sixth year in marriage and she had five children already. From a distance, the children seemed of the same age as some were just months apart with the last one being a year later than the fourth kid. Each year she came to visit them, she was suckling a baby and the next year it would be the same. She was really working hard to fill the earth and being a mother of the nation.
Her four brothers were two years apart which made the first two undergo circumcision at the same time. The younger ones were to be circumcised this coming festival. Maria looked forward to the festival. She looked upon all her brothers as they were both ahead of her. The younger ones were done with primary school, first, two had attended high school and migrated to the city.
On their two-hectare form, Tom, their father had ensured he touched on everything that meant food for the family. The land was subdivided to accommodate maize, millet, sorghum, beans, cassava, sweet potatoes, and bananas. Closer to the compound was the banana plantain farm surrounding the vegetable farm. The plantain was surrounded by a thick line of Napier grass. Around the perimeter of the whole land was a fence of cypress trees which was well pruned to prevent any effect on the crops within.
In a year, they planted maize and beans twice while the millet and sorghum were cultivated once a year. The cassavas and sweet potatoes were planted on a need basis. The vegetables ranged from kales, tomatoes, onions to the local delicacies like okra and cowpeas. Working with her mother on the vegetable farm was always fulfilling and full of freedom. The sons and their father looked after the cattle and sheep while working on the main farm. The division of labor was smooth and dictated by Tom.
When harvesting the crops, the sons would be helping their father as Maria and her mother prepared the granary and food for them. The normal routine for any working day was a tea break at eleven in the morning and then a lunch break at two in the afternoon. They started the day at six in the morning to capitalize on the cold weather before the sun sets in and hit them.
Maria shared everything that happened in her life with her mother. She shared the hate she reserved for her father for allowing her sister to get married before going to school and for being a hindrance to her joining school as early she was able. The sneaking around to go to school was her mother's idea. Her mother covered for her whenever the father would be curious. Being a family on their own compound, most of the events in the compound were kept within the family. Nobody saw it fit to ask her father why she was letting her daughter go to school.
More and more parents were beginning to warm up to the idea of having their children go to school. The normal life of birth, growth, duties, family, and death was to be disrupted with a new norm. Spending at least fifteen years of their early life in school ensured the future parents wanted for their children. In the whole village, only a few people had managed to go past class five, the few who went up to class eight dropped out before doing the national examinations. Those who pushed past the limit were only five in the village among them Tom's sons. One of the five was in college while the rest were in the city, looking into jobs that presented themselves easily.
Maria's dream was tied to travel to the big city where her brothers had been for the past four years. Education had taken them places and she wanted more of that. She was okay to have a family of her own but she was to travel to the city first. To experience first-hand the stories she had heard about the city, the beauty she saw in magazines, and the mystery she saw on those who came back from the city. The sophistication they carried and the charisma they had. A flair of the command followed then as if they had been baptized anew. She knew the best way out was through her education.