The Alliance: A century of shaping dreams

It was a dream come true, walking through the hallowed grounds of Alliance High School (AHS) to start “A” levels.

It was a dream deferred for four years after choosing the school as a second choice in primary school. But this dream slowly turned into a long nightmare. 

Emulating relatives, I dreamt of becoming an engineer to design jet fighters. They overflew our home as we grazed cattle on the Rift Valley escarpment overlooking the Happy Valley.

Making toys further convinced me I had a knack for engineering. The conventional wisdom was to join a technical school, the shortcut to engineering. I joined one, Kabete Technical School in Upper Kabete. 

It was my first time in the city. I still recall a signboard near Uthiru: “Welcome to Nairobi, the Green City in the Sun.”

Where did it go? The bus stop to school was EN, a curious name. Later, I found EN was short for Native Industrial Training Depot (NITD), the original name of Kabete Technical School, now National Polytechnic.

I encountered a double-decker bed and a flush toilet for the first time. But githeri and uji on the menu were surprising. In the city? That was village food!

My nightmare in the technical school started with the timetable. Biology was missing. Chemistry and physics were lumped into the physical sciences.

A whole day in a workshop filing took me by surprise. We used files to sharpen knives in the kitchen and in butcheries, not in a national school in the city!

The curriculum was dull. Technical work, including carpentry, made me feel like I was taken back to the village!

Games, sports, and performing arts were never emphasised. No school trips. I realised lately I was in an academic gulag. That was why it was EN? 

By the time we were choosing our technical majors in form two, it was clear in my mind that I would not spend the rest of my life in the technical field.

To prove it, I turned down a job offer to join Mumias Sugar Company in Form Two. That would have made me a prisoner of what I did not like! Kenya once had a golden age: a job at age 16!

The escape from an academic gulag was through good grades, I figured out. Why not return to AHS, my second choice in primary school?

A classmate used to boast of visiting his brother at the school. Without photos, he described how beautiful it was.

I finally got there for the “A” level. The school was more beautiful and orderly than Kabete. It was a real bush!

I spent the two years there mourning. Alliance had an “A” level. Kabete did not. I would have benefited from the mentorship of older students for four years!

And the evidence was on the noticeboard, the admission list to top universities, including abroad. 

Religion was central to the new school, not to my former school, which did not even have a chapel! I loved morning work in the new school; it reminded me of growing up in the countryside, milking cows, feeding them, and the great cycles of life, from planting to harvesting crops.

Over the weekend, one could leave the new school for a walk. And there were many activities, including trips and other schools visiting.

Interacting with girls, including in debates, movies, and sports, made me wish further that this were always my school. I got my first punishment for failing to get a pen pal from the neighbouring school, Alliance Girls! Games were compulsory: hockey, basketball, football, swimming, tennis, table tennis, and volleyball, among others.

Guests, including cabinet ministers, frequented the school to inspire us. The only guest I remember in my former school was a psychiatrist.

AHS was never dull. Its rich curriculum and history were always paired with the threat of a tie test. There was even a foreign language—French.

And an exchange programme with a US-based school. Alliance was an academic paradise. Even the teaching staff was different. Kabete had Asian teachers; Alliance had Ugandans, who taught me physics and chemistry. 

I had academic nightmares, too. We studied physical science, a mixture of physics and chemistry, in Kabete, yet I had to study pure sciences at the “A” level. I titrated for the first time in Form Five. I came across the mole concept in Form Five. This encounter made me see chemistry as a first cousin of witchcraft. 

Curiously, one of my chemistry teachers and a maths teacher at Alliance would later become my classmates at the postgraduate level. The maths teacher then became my student. Names withheld for security reasons. 

Another nightmare: I slowly discovered Alliance was not an ordinary school; it was not for hustlers. Traffic jams in Alliances were common on opening and closing days.

My father owned a bicycle. Socio-economic misfit added to my academic woes. The head teacher, Mr Mirichu Wagitu (Wags), and Rev Fred Welch (Contra) seemed to have understood my plight.

I frequented their offices. They made my life liveable for two years. “Wags” gave me my first job, collecting mowed grass in his compound for Sh120. Lots of money; a return ticket to my village in the White Highlands was Sh90. 

As my days at AHS waned, I wondered if its graduates appreciated how lucky they were. It must have been a trauma to leave Alliance for another school.

On my last trip home after Form Six, I felt I had finally fulfilled my dream and overcome my fears. How would my life have turned out if I had gotten to Alliance in Form One? 

After studying physics at the university, I finally exorcised the last ghosts of technical school. I shifted to economics and journalism, with The Standard hosting me for the last 20 years. Asante Sana.

At Alliance, my first article, a poem, appeared in the defunct Kenya Times newspaper. It was a poem. AHS was intellectually stimulating; I read George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

The long and winding academic journey can’t stop me from celebrating the school’s centenary. In my leaving certificate, Mr Wagitu wrote that I was a student of high integrity.

That statement carries more weight than my PhD certificate. Let’s now wait for the bicentenary anniversary in 2126, long after our feeble bodies have crumbled into dust.