LIFE BY LOUIS: Of exam fever back in the day

If you have just sat for your KCPE exam in 2018 you are one lucky character. You have come around when the previously ferocious monster has been tamed and become a docile domestic pet.

I sat for the exam when it was just three years old after its predecessor called CPE had been retired from active service.

In its formative years, KCPE was one full mouthful of subjects. Today, a pupil wakes up one morning and decides--sometimes under the instructions of a new species called a career master--that they are not in the mood to study for certain subjects. Back in my day, we were not afforded that luxury.

UPHILL TASK

The largest monster was a buffet referred to as arts, craft, home science and music. I suppose the examiner was facing a severe shortage of examination papers because he lumped all these subjects into one big paper abbreviated as ACHM.

You came from describing the difference between a mural and a wall painting in arts, to defining a marionette as a string puppet in crafts, to distinguishing a well done back stitch in home science and finally drawing a G-clef in music.

As a result, attaining a respectable grade in such a paper was always an uphill task. Personally I never distinguished between a G-clef and an F-clef. I drew whichever came to mind because I could not comprehend why they were making singing such a complicated affair. After all the best singers in my village were the men who were always singing about their goats at night on their way from the shopping centre after having one for the road.

FEVER

But if the examinations were tasking, the period preceding the examinations was even more difficult.

The fever started way back in second term of the final year when we sat for the mock exams. We were made to believe that the mocks were very close relatives of the final exam and the two exams spoke intimately to each other.

As a result, the outcomes of the mock exams already pre-determined which grade you were likely to achieve in the final exam.

The mocks were also used for allocating index numbers which were used as our identities in the final exam. If you performed well in the mocks, your index number was among the first in the list and this gave you bragging rights as a person who was destined to perform well in the final exam.

Subsequently if you performed poorly in the mocks, your index number betrayed you as a person who was likely to see dust when the final exam came.

SUCCESS CARDS

The other apparent measure of success was the number of success cards you received. The competition for numbers was so fierce such that some wily pupils sent success cards to themselves in order to boost their numbers.

If you were lucky to receive a musical card, and this could only happen if you had very close and rich relatives permanently residing in Nairobi, you were considered Harvard university material.

Those who received just one plain card--the kind that had a photo of a couple holding hands next to some bougainvillea flowers or with KICC lurking in the background--could already see failure facing them come the final exam.

There was a flurry of intense activities a few weeks before the actual exams. Owning a clip board was a luxury reserved for families that probably also owned a black and white television set and a frying pan. You therefore borrowed one well in advance from such a family.

If you were lucky, you also got an Oxford geometry set which most of the times was not fully equipped.

There was also a specific HB pencil for shading the multiple choice answers and for writing compositions, and this one was compulsory to have even if it meant your parents escorting one of your prize goats to the market for sale.

REHEARSALS DAY

A day before the exams was the final rehearsals day. We encountered replica exam sheets for the first time. We were taught how to shade the multiple choice questions, write our index numbers and to be neat and tidy.

We also carried our desks to the nearby river where we scrubbed them with sand paper and broken pieces of glass until they shone. The whole essence of this was to ensure that we did not scribble some possible answers on the desk for our referral during the exams.

Finally, the day came and unlike today, the affair was not as militarised and dramatic.

Some of us saw armed policemen at close range for the first time on that day. However, they did not linger outside the door with cocked guns during the exam, but instead appeared during delivery and picking of the exam papers.

We did not have the privilege of having the main headmaster of the country leaving his big white house on the hill at dawn to come and give us words of encouragement.

There were no ceremonies after the examinations. There was work to be done in the farms, and some of us had more serious matters ahead to deal with including facing the knife and becoming junior men.