We all at one time had people or characters we marveled at their unique /amazing abilities, their unique body features especially tall men; in childhood they seemed way too tall, giant like even( I guess how village midgets see things aka Midget Eye View).
In my school our legend was known as ‘Choginda’, I always thought that was his real name. I found this mzee when I joined primary, he was our only bus driver and I figure he must have worked there for a lot longer before I joined. ‘Choginda’ was just a corrupted version of the the famous rally driver’s name Joginder. I later came to appreciate the origin of this name.
In our school, which had a boarding school and day school for younger kids from within the locality, we had a bus. A BUS! This was when other kids in rival schools were trekking kilometres to school barefooted and with “tailor-made” back packs(mostly jungle green color or blue) going to a mud walled school with no electricity. This school bus was an old Isuzu(I guess, mimi sio makonika) truck with a body built on it, to look like a real bus, yaani ilikua na ile kichwa separate inatiltiwa inakaa imeona noti ya hamsini chini ama kadi haija scratchiwa. This was the bus, later rebranded as the high-school bus;[ATTACH=full]240455[/ATTACH]
[SIZE=1](I don’t own the rights to any pics attached herein) [/SIZE]
This beast could achieve mad speeds(max 80kph)!! Kikikiki, in that age that was the fastest contraption of its size we had actually been on board. That it was commandeered by a former long distance truck driver, made it even more awesome. Choginda could cut corners, out-manauvre potholes like a ballet dancer and never once(while I was in that school) gut stuck in mud on any access road. There was a chant we had come up with /I actually found it ongoing as a tradition, it went like “Choginda eehhhhhhh…! Choginda aaaahhhhh…!” We would invoke this chant whenever we wanted him to overtake a vehicle or sluggish trucks. It actually worked wonders, hapo unaskia ka engine rev na acceleration noma, tuna wacha mzee amejaza taksin ama dose kwa mdomo(used to wonder what those men always keep chewing) akitukazia macho huku aki enda as if in reverse tukimpita. Inside all manner of rowdiness wound keep on. Seats zilikua tu long bences made of cushions and covered in mackintosh one on each side, end to end. In the middle were two seats back to back and end to end too/facing away from each other,hehe you can imagine no seat belt and all that room, you could roam the whole bus, change seats whenever you like. Trouble came whenever we had long trips like a Mombasa tour hivi, wueh.
Choginda in person was a very calm, quiet and amiable guy. He loved smiling, ile smile mtu hutoa hadi macho zinakua squinted. He was a bit short and rotund for an adult and too dark for a Kalenjin, and was soft spoken. But I hear he was tough as nails; legends were spoken; one that I recall with awe/pkus a pinc of salt is how one time he was doing routine maintenance on the headteacher’s salon car, sku izo kama wewe ni mfanya kazi wa shule pia mwalimu mkuu utamfanyia kazi zake binafsi. So as he was under the jalopy raised by a not so trusty jerk(jerkit), the support suddenly gave, the car was suddenly pinning and crushing Choginda. He stayed in that state for a survival short while until someone came by and noticed something wasn’t right! He was rushed to hospital after being extracted from underneath the crushing weight and came up with a twisted intenstine, was surgically treated and discharged some weeks after recovery. “Bana, ingekuwa mtu mwingine ange kufa tu ivo! Gari ndogo ikulalie kwa kifua?!! Utaenda Banaa!”
What I know for a fact though is that this Man needed no gps, map or roadside direction. He would take us from A to B without any unnecessary stopovers or diversions, stopping only for meals, refueling and occasionally for a bladder on the brink of bursting, kama ni usiku unaenda nyuma; open a window, unajaribu kuvuruta ‘ninii’ ikue ndefu kidogo, aim through the window and you are relieved. Kama ni within East Africa, Choginda is your man. Outside E.A contact KQ.
Memoirs From a School on The Hills. [ATTACH=full]240455[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]240471[/ATTACH]