The College of Tears by Stanley Mungai (red white royal blue txt) 📕

them from time to time to allow them to stick to the pages. Soili started to even gape at the fingers and swallowed hard every time the lady licked at them. As she came to the end of the list, she looked up at Soili and whispered almost to herself, “I can’t find that name.” She checked and re-checked but even Soili could see that his name was not on that list.

A shot of despondency ran through his entire system. He felt the world beneath him crumble threatening to gulp him down to the Hades below. The ambiance around him seemed to be pressing firm against him and he involuntarily took in a deep gasp that caused a stifled shriek to escape from his already open oral cavity. A miniature thread of perspiration ran from his armpits shuddering his body with its wintry temperature, causing him to shiver despite himself. He knew the drill. It would be a lot harder to get his name back on that list than to shove that Biblical camel through the eye of a needle. The red tape required to just right a gaffe that one person made would be used to choke him from the eminent ceremony if he did not paint it green as early as now.

He moved from one agency to the next; from the registry to the dean’s office and back to the principal’s. They all seemed to be laughing at him. No one could explicate how the name got omitted from the list when the names were being transferred to the ultimate pamphlet to be read in the graduation ceremony. They seemed to be blaming a phantom escritoire who was opportunely not there and her cell phone was also conveniently off. No one denied the fact that an error had been committed; the predicament was to own up that error. No one wanted to face the gigantic vice-chancellor to elucidate why a last-minute name was being added to the booklet for the graduation. The chancellor office was twenty kilometres away and it required a two-day notice for one to be able to secure a rendezvous.

Now that someone had to pay for the mistake that was committed in the dean’s office, they had to find a sacrificial lamb. This sacrificial lamb had to meet certain credentials and conditions. One of these was the fact that, that name was not to find its way to the list no matter what as the vice-chancellor would want an explanation. The other prerequisite was that the lamb had to be without blemish and as far away as possible from any campus office or staff. These kinds of considerations left Soili as the solitary creature between the devils and the hearty meal. He was going to be sacrificed.

Seven in the evening and he was standing at the principal’s office; the senior most authority at campus level. The old man just looked at him without feelings and said, “There is nothing I can do. You just have to wait for the next graduation two months from today.”

Soili didn’t say a word. It was no use trying to get these people to understand what was going to happen after this kind of a verdict. He had nothing to say to them. After a moment he decided that they were broken vessels leaking nonsense. They would not be there when he tells his friends to travel back the hundred and more miles back to where they had come from because there would be no ceremony. They would not be the ones to tell his father and mother together with the rest of the clan to eat the food they had prepared for the party because they were not going to travel to the capital. They would not be the ones to eradicate the speculations from his guardians that he had been kicked out of the graduation ceremony because of unpaid fees, indiscipline case, or failing to achieve academic credentials to graduate with the rest of his classmates.

He left the campus with a curse stuck in his throat. He was wondering who to release it to. The entire college? No, that would be unfair to that psychology lecturer still inside who had counselled him the time when Haizec Kai told him that she had found another man better than him and he had gone without food for days before the don could reach out and help him. The principal? He did not know what to do with the principal because although he had not omitted his name from the list he had the power to have it back there; power which he was too a coward to use. The dean? Yes, it was her office that refused to own up the mistake. She was the one that deserved the curse. He decided to leave the matter to God to exercise judgment in his own ways. He had read from a Bible sometimes back that ‘Justice and Righteousness are the foundation of his throne’.

Friday 9th September 2011, the graduation day. Soili is seated in front of his workstation at work doing some accounting for a court case in which a national corporation has failed to pay the arrears to the company that he works for. He is supposed to establish how much exactly they owe Waithaka Motors (K) Ltd. He knows that all his classmates including the ones he had beaten in class were at the graduation square. Some of them illegally because they could part with a few coins to have their names on that list. He had seen it that day when they refused to correct a mistake. A dude that had a punitive case was on the list. If there was anyone he should be taking to court, it should be those greedy cowards.

He had appeared like a liar. He had been sacrificed for what he did not do. Three months after he left the college of tears, it still reached out at him from his desk in the office. His father called him umpteen times to make sure that he had not failed. A friend or two called him to curse him aloud for inconveniencing them. A relative disowned him. A tear rolled down his manly cheek and despite his every effort to conceal it from the secretary seated across him, she still noticed it and gawked loudly attracting attention in the entire office. None of them had university education. They hardly understood how difficult it was to just graduate from The College of Tears.

 

Imprint

Text: Stanley Mungai
Publication Date: 08-12-2014

All Rights Reserved