“Those who are assigned duty around Jamhuri dormitory should collect those papers. There are many papers loitering there”, the entire high school assembly burst out in laughter as the teacher on duty, Cation, uttered those words.
“Papers loitering!?,” we wondered aloud.
But Cation was not to be cowered by the slip of the tongue, being a Chemistry teacher, English was not his forte.
He earned himself the nickname Cation because of his insistence for his students to differentiate between Cations and Anions.
The nickname stuck.
Teachers had nicknames and those who didn't have one probably led a plain lifestyle that never elicited notice from students.
Aristotle was a burly Biology teacher who brooked no nonsense from any student. He was feared.
The origin of his nickname was his insistence that Aristotle the famous Greek, was his friend.
“There is this good friend of mine, Aristotle whom I like very much...,” he would thunder in a Biology class and thus thus his nickname stuck.
No student ever wanted to collide with Aristotle. He would beat you mercilessly.
Therefore no student ever called him Aristotle within his earshot, such a move would earn you straight admission in the nearby mission hospital.
One day a fairly new form one student was sent to staffroom by a fourth form student to go and shout in the staffroom that Aristotle was wanted outside.
The young man was saved by several male teachers after it became apparent Aristotle was bent on killing him. We always doubted his “born again” credentials.
There was also Mtimule a Kiswahili nickname aptly named after a kiswahili teacher. We always suspected that Mtimule smoked banned substances because of the way he carried himself. He would enter the classroom and walk around for about five minutes without uttering a single word.
He would then, without warning grab Musyoki's left ear and pinch him for a whole minute.
“Kasyoki unafanya wengine wapige makele?” he would ask Musyoki.
We never really knew why he always chose Musyoki neither did Musyoki.
This phenomena started in form one and ended when we left high school. Mtimule would sometimes go to to the assembly ground and stand there as if addressing students only that students were in classes observing him with amused looks.
Piriton as her nickname suggests always managed to make the whole class doze off moments after she entered the class.
The English teacher would never bother to wake anyone up. She would go on teaching the less than five awake students as if everything was normal around her. A class had over 50n students.
There was Sucrose or Soko as we called him. This Deputy Headmaster and biology teacher never pronounced Sucrose correctly hence his nickname.
Soko was loved and feared in equal measure by his students.
No one had a grudge against him and he always had his way. Once a student would resist caning (caning was still legal in those days) he would suggest that they fight a bare knuckled fight.
One day a student opted for a man to man fight and he had to jump through a window to escape Soko's jabs.
Soko always wore a suit and a tie. I am yet to meet a student who ever came across him without a suit and a tie,
Mtiki, every time this revered name was mentioned it elicited fear from all students. It belonged to the Principal. This veteran former English teacher (he had stopped teaching when we were admitted) was held in high esteem because for his masterly of the queens' language.
He never shied away from using the language to tell us off.
He once called a student a “foolish buffoon who resembles a devil's incarnate”
