Clean shave: The Villager's first suspension from school
Self inflicted Jordan hairstyle got him gated for a whole year
It was the year 2000 and The Villager was in form 3 at the great Nyeri High School aka Kavau (never allow anyone to convince you that other nickname existed).
The Villager wasn't notorious in school and so he had a relatively clean record besides being a serial culprit on the noisemakers list. In fact he only got caned once and guess for what - noisemaking.
Anyway, The Villager managed to 'sneak' in a suspension into his file because no one should leave High School without having been suspended - it is in the Constitution and don't argue with The Villager.
So how did The Villager get suspended?
Due to what The Villager often refers to as rapid follicles eruption, his hair grows a little bit too fast. He came up with a method of keeping it neat in the weeks before midterm and end term. The method was simple, comb the hair and then use a Gillette razor shaver to trim the edges. It worked very often until this fateful day - a Thursday night.
The Villager claims that he cannot really recall what was to happen that weekend but it must have had to do with either some girl schools coming through or he was going to some girls' school. Being a member of the drama team and the press club, The Villager rarely spent weekends in school. Other being a serial noisemaker, he was also a serial trips attendant. As was the routine, the hair had to be sorted that Thursday in readiness for the weekend but little did The Villager know that he would spend it at home.
In the process of using the shaver, he pressed in a bit too hard and ended up shaving a portion down to the scalp. The only solution now was that The Villager had to shave the entire head to the scalp aka Jordan. Jordan was an actual hair style borrowed from the famous NBA player and legend Michael Jordan. It was hated by both the parents and teachers of teenage boys in the 90s and early 2000s.
Everyone laughed, slapped The Villager's bare head as they wished even at the Friday school assembly where all hell broke loose. The Villager spent the entire almost 45 minutes squatting with a sweater covering his head in order not to attract attention. It is still never clear how the headmaster - the boys used to call him Bomu (he joined the school just after the 1998 Bomb Blast in Nairobi and had the habit of appearing from nowhere) - saw his shining head and shouted his name as the boys left the assembly asking The Villager to go visit his office.
The Villager awaited his turn as Bomu handled other visitors - mostly parents of boys who had either been suspended or were to be expelled.
When The Villager went in, Bomu offered him a seat, opened his file which was already on the table and sought to understand why The Villager had shaved his head clean. After a lengthy conversation, Bomu wrote The Villager a suspension note telling his parents; "your son shaved his head and we suspect he is either using drugs or associating with bad boys. Please bring him back to school when his hair grows."
The Villager was escorted, by the deputy principal - the boys called him Kahiti (kahyena) sue to his short legs - to the Twiga Lower Dormitory which was his residence to pack a bag. He left the school and while walking to the bus stop wondered what he was to tell his parents. He got to Nyeri town and went straight home, still covering his head with his sweater and changed this to a cap later.
That afternoon, The Villager explained to his mother what had happened. In a very uncharacteristic style, but after confirming that The Villager was not doing any drugs, she gave him some money to go to a barber and ensure that the remaining patches of hair were shaved to ensure that the hair grows uniformly.
On Monday morning, The Villager dressed up in his uniform and got firm instructions to go to his aunt's salon and wait. The Villager's mother worked as a civil servant and had to go tell her boss that she had an “emergency” lest she too landed a suspension.
When they got to the school, the Watchman - it is still unclear how powerful that guy was - checked the suspension slip, examined The Villager's head and directed that they walk straight to the principal's office.
Another wait ensured but not for long. The Villager's mother went in first and spoke to the principal for what appeared to be like an eternity. When The Villager was called in, he found the two laughing and having tea and was taken a back when Bomu told him to kneel down. While kneeling, he was lectured about his grades especially in Mathematics and Geography.
The meeting then agreed that since The Villager was remorseful and would work on his grades (not because the hair had grown back - which was the reason for suspension), The Villager was free to get back to school. However, he was gated. When you got gated in High School, it meant that you cannot participate in any extracurricular activities outside school.
Gutted, The Villager went back to class and life moved on. Being gated meant that he could not get new girls to write letters to and he would not be getting any letters from girls for the rest of the year. The only other girls that would write him letters were those he went to church with but he also spent the entire holidays with him and thus there was not thrill in their letters.
But that's how The Villager joined the bad boys club (and earned some little respect) by acquiring the first suspension.