LET’S GO ON A TRIP

Today, we are taking a trip. I promise it won’t cost you a thing, other than some brief minutes of your day.

I was walking to the stage in the morning, it is quite the distance. I have the option of taking a motorcycle to the stage, but I like using the daily walk for exercise and meditation.

I was walking when my primary school bus passed by me. It always passes by that route every single day. However, rather than feeling the same, it was a bit different today than last week. The bus triggered my trip, the trip we are taking. You guessed right, it is a trip down good old memory lane.

My school had several buses. The ones I recall mostly are the blue buses (Kikuyu one and two), the karinde one bus and the green bus (Thogoto one and two buses). I was carried by the Thogoto one bus for most of my lower primary, then switched to the Thogoto two bus from upper primary (when we moved to upper school). Then I became busless in class eight because of tuition and super early classes. I started using public transport to school. So at this time in class eight, I’d illegally board the Kikuyu two bus or Thogoto two bus with my friends, when we’d get off school a bit early. We’d save a coin which was worth the risk of punishment.

It’s been almost nine years since I’ve really thought about primary school and what it really meant for me. Now, the thing about me is once a chapter is gone, passed, I’ll shut that door and all its memories until my mind decides that it is time to recall all that. Somehow, my brain decided today had to be the day.

I now realize I do have good memories of that school. Like the school trips, okay I need to go on a trip to get over trips because I’m seeing myself starting to trip over trips. However, as I take this trip, the one thing that hits me is how happy I was, the child in me was.

You may wonder, why on earth would you even be happy in primary school. That place was my happy place, at the time. Seeing as most of my childhood was spent in that one school, with those teachers, in the same school buses, with the same classmates and in the same classrooms and school fields. Most of my childhood, I realise, rotated somehow around that school. Which is not a bad thing.

So, why was I triggered, or am I triggered? As we grow up, we tend to be a collage of all these previous aspects of our past. The way I hold my pen is influenced by my educational archnemesis, if you ask him he’ll probably tell you the same. The way I write is an accumulation of my English teachers from way back in class two up until class eight. The way I talk is probably from the strictness of the school in language and behaviour, trust me most of my classmates are as eloquent or even more eloquent than I am.

Most of us, me included, tend to forget these parts of our lives that played a role into who we are somehow. We rarely take time to look back and acknowledge the role that the past played into moulding us. I may have closed that chapter, but it is still an important part of my life and of my journey.

As the memory of a short, skinny and tiny little Miss Karanjah laughing while seated at the window of that green bus (bus ya green or Thogoto One😂) fades out into the back of my mind once more, I’m glad I took that trip. More than that, I hope we can embrace these parts of us, and love them for they are special to us.

My trip is over. It’s time to head back to reality. Until next time, stay safe my lovely reader.