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.

Agony analyst

A long time ago there were magazines called Drum, True Love, Step etc. I remember nicking from my uncles, just to read the agony aunts. Here is the a dot.com Agony analyst.

I got this forwarding and I couldn't help but share it.


Letter 1

Dear Technical Support,

18 months ago, I upgraded to Girlfriend 1.0 from DrinkingMates 4.2, which I had used for years without any trouble. However, there are apparently conflicts between these two products and the only solution was to try and run Girlfriend 1.0 with the sound turned off. To make matters worse, Girlfriend 1.0 is incompatible with several other applications, such as LadsNightOut 3.1, Football 4.5, and Playboy 6.9. Successive versions of Girlfriend proved no better. I tried a shareware program, Slapper 2.1, but it had many bugs and left a virus in my system, forcing me to shut down completely for several weeks.

Eventually, I tried to run Girlfriend 1.2 and Girlfriend 1.0 at the same time, only to discover that when these two systems detected each other they caused severe damage to my hardware.

I eventually upgraded to Fiancée 1.0, only to discover that this product soon had to be upgraded further to Wife 1.0. While Wife 1.0 tends to use up all my available resources, it does come bundled with FreeSexPlus and Cleanhouse2006.

Shortly after this upgrade, however, I found that Wife 1.0 could be very unstable and costly to run. Any mistakes I made were automatically stored in Wife 1.0's memory and could not be deleted. The mistakes then resurfaced months later when I had forgotten about them. Wife 1.0 also has an automatic Diary, Explorer and E-mail filter, and can, without warning, launch TurboStrop and Multi-Whinge.

These latter products have no Help files, and I have to try to guess what the problem is. Additional problems are that Wife 1.0 needs updating regularly, requiring ShoeShop Browser for new attachments and Hairstyle Express which needs to be reinstalled every other week. Also, when Wife 1.0 attaches itself to my Saab 93 Convertible hard drive, it often crashes.

Wife 1.0 also comes with an irritating pop-up called MotherInLaw, which can't be turned off. Recently I've been tempted to install Mistress 2008, but there could be problems. A friend of mine has alerted me to the fact that if Wife 1.0 detects Mistress 2008, it tends to delete all of your Money before uninstalling itself.

Please Help


Letter 2

Dear Systems Analyst,

I recently upgraded my program from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0 and found that the new program began unexpected Child Processing and also took up a lot of space and valuable resources.This wasn't mentioned in the product brochure. In addition Wife 1.0 installs itself into all other programs and launches during systems initialization and then it monitors all other system activities. Applications such as "BoysNight out 2.5" and "Golf 5.3" no longer run, and crashes the system whenever selected. Attempting to operate selected "SaturdayChampionsLeague 9.3" always fails and "Saturday Shopping 7.1" runs instead.

I cannot seem to keep Wife 1.0 in the background whilst attempting to run any of my favourite applications. Be it online or offline. I am thinking of going back to "Girlfriend 7.0", or install Mistress 2008 but uninstall doesn't work on Wife 1.0 program. Can you please help?

.... AND THIS IS WHAT THE ANALYST SAID:

Dear Customers,

This is a very common problem resulting from a basic misunderstanding of the functions of Wife 1.0 program. Many customers upgrade from Girlfriends programmes to Wife 1.0 thinking that Wife 1.0 is merely a UTILITY AND ENTERTAINMENT PROGRAM.

Actually, Wife 1.0 is an OPERATING SYSTEM designed by its Creator to run everything on your current platform. You are unlikely to be able to purge Wife 1.0 and still convert back to Girlfriend, as Wife 1.0 was not designed to do this and it is impossible to uninstall, delete or purge the program files from the system once it is installed. Some people have tried to install Girlfriend or Wife 2.0 but have ended up with even more problems. (See manual under Alimony/Child Support and Solicitors' Fees).

Having Wife 1.0 installed, I recommend you keep it installed and deal with the difficulties as best as you can. When any faults or problems occur, whatever you think has caused them, you must run the C:\ APOLOGIZE\FORGIVEME.EXE Program and avoid attempting to use the *Esc-Key for it will freeze the entire system.

To get the most out of it, consider buying additional Software such as "Flowers 2.0" and "Chocolates 5.0" or "HUGS\ KISSES 600.0" or "TENDERNESS\ UNDERSTANDING 1000.0" or even Eating out without the Kids 7.2.1" (if Child processing has already started).

DO NOT under any circumstances install "Secretary 2.1" (Short Skirt Version) or "One Nightstand 3.2" (Any Mood Version), as this is not a supported Application for Wife 1.0 and the system will almost certainly CRASH.

BEST WISHES

Technical Support

Just a pair of trousers, have mine.

It was the last day of term a.k.a. Closing day. It was a day when we boasted our worldly possessions, mainly our flashy home clothes ( we had to decide a whole month in advance) and the whole term’s savings, which added up to about Ksh10.00, at most Ksh30.00. This was a fortune considering bus fare was only 50 cents.

My younger brother (he is 4 minutes younger than me) and I had shared lots of things including clothes. You see, they called me Wanja Kihii, and I only claimed ownership of 2, maybe 3 dresses, for special occasions. The rest were boys’ clothes and were shared between the two of us.

Sharing was not a problem, until my brother got circumcised and ‘became a man. He decided his things were his, including the clothes that had bore his title, ‘men’. But I was not ready to give up the title ‘Wanja Kihii’ just like that.

This closing day I had eyed a pair of jeans, so had my brother.

So this Friday morning, I woke up first as usual, prepared myself and got the pair of jeans first. For this day, and this day only in the whole term, I anticipated leaving home before he woke up.

Too late, he was up before I was completely ready to leave. I was having breakfast when my brother caught up with me. Seeing what I was wearing, he demanded I take off his clothes. As usual, we fought. It is this fighting and shouting that woke my grandfather, who was visiting.

He intervened, and my brother went about justifying himself. They were his clothes alright, but why couldn’t I wear them. Because men do not share clothes with women, only boys did.

My grandfather felt sorry for me, and to sort the whole problem, went into his bag and came back with a pair of trousers. The waist must have been a 40 something, but otherwise very new.

‘You’re fighting over just a pair of trousers, have mine’. Mubuto tu nigua muraruwira, kee uyu wakwa.’

He said it with so much sympathy, that I felt so humiliated. I took off the jeans. My brother had for once won.

I went to school a very sad girl, despite having saved Ksh23.00 to spend on goody goodies, and a short trip to Pop-In and Cameo Cinema.

That was the end of sharing.