And some of us still grapple with heavy eyelids around that time of day, wherever it may find us. Some of us are still on the road to becoming. We became what we had dreamt of and what we had not planned: physicians, lawyers, bank tellers, mothers. and bellies now warm, half the class would be dozing let it be known that I was not alone.Īnd yet we survived, passed our Form 4 national examinations – I even managed an A in History – and left boarding school for the unregimented world. This was when the sun was high in the sky, the sea breeze gentle, and teenage sleepiness in its prime. It did not help that History was scheduled for immediately after 11 o’clock tea and maandazi. Leaning against the classroom doorpost in her pleated purple polka dot skirt and round-rimmed spectacles, she wasn’t even supposed to be lecturing in Swahili. But who could blame me? She described the Mau Mau uprising as though she had been there personally and was now recounting it to grandchildren around an evening fire, call-and-response style: Mau Mau waka-? Wakajificha msituni. Disbelieving of the potency of her presence, my teacher implored me to find something else to occupy myself with during her lessons – read a novel, draw something, do anything, just please stay awake. I am reminded in such suspended moments of one of my secondary school History teachers, whose very essence evoked Hypnos himself, the Greek god of sleep. How can it be that when it feels hours have passed, a glance at the clock reveals that only a few minutes have lapsed? The devil is a liar. Yet here I was, in my hour of desperation, willing the brew to awaken my brain. I can still enjoy a good night’s rest after a cup of tea, while coffee only serves to upset my stomach.
Caffeine has never had much of an effect on me. I returned to my desk with a mug intentionally made black and extra-strong, sipping it with relief as though it were medicine for my sleepy soul. As for me and my East African kinfolk, we turn on the kettle at the slightest excuse – or none at all. My penchant for tea, particularly a cup well-sugared and milked, has been called into question many a time by those upon whose nations the British did not do a colonial number. So I succumbed after a brief but valiant struggle, lulled by the heater at my feet and the humming of the building’s ventilation system, mouth ungracefully agape as I slumped in my swivel chair. I was in my chilly Boston office when slumber found me, unrelenting in its mischievous need to drag eyelids down. Today was one of those days, so grey that the quiet cold ushered in sleep uninvited.
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