Beating with muiko

During my days as a child, there was no detention or grounding. My teachers dealt with vibokos and my parents with slippers and miiko (wooden spoons) and belts. In today’s world, that was child abuse. I fail to comprehend where I would be if I did not get these, but then again, both the teachers and the parents were very poor communicators and never really expressed what they expected clearly. Beating was the only way of being heard.

They always spoke in riddles, and sometimes they would mean the opposite of what they actually expected. Take for instance:

Before my mum leaves for work, she’d say things like ‘ngore mutharurukaniitie nyumba ihana kiara (let me find the house in a mess looking like a dumping ground), or ‘ngore mucinite nyumba’ (let me find the house on fire)’. If anything was a mess when she came back, as a cop, we saw the real her at work.

When I had my son, some of these disciplining came to mind. I wanted to bring an upright child who obeyed, not argued with me like I had seen with other children. At one year old, he had discovered the matches, and somehow knew how to light them. One day, rather than smack the back of his palm, I decided to proof a point. I lit a match stick and handed it to him. Very excitedly he held it until the flame burnt him. He really felt pain coz 12 yrs on, he’s not played with matches again.

He was ok with food, but at a certain age, almost 2, he’d spit it out and throw tantrums. At this stage, I introduced a muiko (wooden spoon). He knew what a muiko was. I smacked him with it on his bum, and there after, I’d just have to mention muiko for him to do what he was being told, including eating. He even learnt to hide them whenever he found them lying about, and I just kept buying them. He’d throw them in the bin, hide them under the bed, the sofas, everywhere.

By the time he was 3, I had smacked him 3 times which he never forgot. To send him to bed, I’d get muiko, and pointing the bedroom, I’d say ‘to bed right now’. If I put food on the table, I just had to put muiko by my side and say ‘eat your food’, and I was assured that he’d eat everything. Funny enough, he never saw me cook with it.

One day I put food on the table, and the phone rung. I was still holding the muiko as I went to pick the phone. My son finished his food and then went to play. He came back 20 minutes later and found me still on the phone. It was my turn to taste the muiko. He quickly went to the kitchen, got another muiko and whacked my bum really hard and pointing to my now cold food said ‘mummy, eat your food’. I had no words.

Before he turned 3, he went to nursery school. I’d drop him on my way to work and pick him up on my way back from work. It was always a fight getting him from the classroom, as it was so much fun, and being an only child, he’d dread going back to the house with no other children.

One evening, I pulled up at the gate to pick my son as usual. I noticed a police car parked inside the compound, and wondered what would have happened. As I got close to the classroom, the class-teacher and the head-teacher accompanied by a police woman approached me. I panicked. Was my son alright. Before I could utter a word, the police woman came to me and asked,

‘Are you master Maua’s mum? I nodded. ‘We’ve got every reason to believe that you abuse your son’.

‘What’, I asked.
‘You need to come with us to the police station and we’ll sort this out’.

Where’s my son, I kept asking

‘He’s with a social worker and will be at the police station’, I was told.

‘He’s only 3; you have no right to do this?’

I was taken to the police station where I was quizzed for almost 4 hours.

This is what had happened: my son’s class was playing with kitchen toys. The teacher picked up something and then asked the children,

'what’s this'

'a spoon',

'what’s it for'

'eating'.

She went on and on until she came to the muiko.

'What’s this?'

'A wooden spoon'.

'My son goes, no it’s a muiko. My mum calls it muiko'.

'No, it’s a wooden spoon, tell us what is it for'.

'it’s for beating bum bum'.

This was repeated at different times in different places and the answer was the same.

‘Does your mum beat you on the bum?’

Yes, when I’m a bad boy.

The class teacher reported this to the head teacher who repeated the same things and finally had to call social services who involved the police. They did whatever they had to do and the last option was to wait for me.

I called my brother who was to act as the guardian. I figured my parental rights were temporarily withdrawn that day.

In a separate room, my son was being interviewed, and I was being interviewed. It was my word against a 3 yr old. The problem was, at that age he did not know how to tell a lie. So whatever he said was taken into account.

After almost 4 hours of hell, in his own way, his own words, he told of how I had beaten him only 3 times, and how I had used the muiko to threaten him if he did not do the things mummy wanted him to do.

Those 4 hours were very terrifying, and at some point I lost it, just imagining social services taking my son away from me. I think there and then I decided to never beat him again. It's lie, coz I still did, once more, story of another day.

Think of this when next you beat a child. I guess I was lucky, several have not.

It taught me to embark on other techniques, grounding and denying the things children like most. For my son football, tv and designing football gear on the computer mean so much. Grounding for me means no TV, play-station, game-boy, psp, computer etc. When the sun is up high, he’s thinking of playing football, or when Arsenal is playing, he thinks he can take ownership of telly, I send him to his room. Through the window, he watches as his friends are playing or listens as neighbours are cheering. Next time he, he thinks twice going against my rules.