• • The introduction was very dramatic. I still remember that day like it was yesterday. He just appeared one early January morning, unannounced like a flash flood in the dreaded Suguta Valley. He was tall, dark, and slightly built. He entered the classroom, took a piece of chalk, and scribbled something on the blackboard - WESKOS. 

    Without uttering a word, he then proceeded to write some questions on the board, gave us 20 minutes to answer, marked them, and started the drill. The drill was, for every question failed, you get two strokes of the cane. He then left the classroom one hour later leaving us bewildered rubbing our aching buttocks and wondering who the hell is this guy. Just like that. 

    We had just joined class eight. Life was good. We were naughty boys living the times of our lives. Simple, nice life full of abundance or so we thought. Not until he happened, and our lives would change forever. Our days were spread between herding cows, swimming in the river, or hunting for rabbits on the weekend. Then Monday you'd trek the stretch to school barefoot. Woe unto you if you lived far or came from some road that had murram along it. It felt good to finally get to class eight, do your KCPE exams, and join high school. Nothing existed beyond the village in our naive innocent minds.

    I came to know later that WESKOS was the initials of his two names. He was called Wesley Kosgei. He had just graduated from Shanzu Teachers college and had been posted to our primary school. He was going to be our new science teacher. The introduction came later, but the man didn't need an introduction. He was the introduction by himself, unapologetic and sure to the end. He didn’t make any excuses, not that he had to anyway.

    And so did our roller coaster of a year start. You found him already in school very early, 6:30 am, and you'll be dead meat if he had arrived early than you. Not that he came from the same village where the school was, No. He jumped some rivers, passed by several other primary schools, whistled through various sleepy villages, and may have been chased by some randy dog to get to our mud-walled, jigger-invested earth floored primary school. Using his Pythagorean theorem and many other scientific formulas he drilled on our thick heads, he must have covered around 10 to 15 Kms to get there, and in Nandi, it does not rain – it pours for the better part of the year, and when it rains, it gets muddy – real thick black mud signature of the very fertile Nandi Hills. 

    We would start class early. They were fiery sessions. The cane would land on you any time, and for sure there was no way his class could end before it landed on you. He called it heshimu ukuta which meant you touch the wall, look up and receive your strokes of the cane. And boy, the man could give it to you, as if the cane was technically and specifically built for your tiny buttocks. They would come fast and hard crashing on your one-thousand times patched-up short which you had tried to hide or stuff in some papers or boxes between the short and underwear (lucky if you had one) to absorb some heat. Crying or moving as they landed was a much bigger offense. That drill around the continuous assessments involved a postmortem of the exam, question by question. Then each person would say if they got the question right or wrong. If you failed that question, you would go to the front, heshimu ukuta and receive yours. Two fine strokes for each failed question.

    We had round tests, a consortium of five nearby schools that had come together. It was called KATEKIMUCHE. We would sit for exams all day; the teachers will mark them as we feasted on boiled Githeri with a 97% to 3% maize to beans ratio. Then the results will be announced, and then brimstone, fire and rain will be let loose, and our hapless tiny buttocks would be on the receiving end of torrential beatings from all the teachers from the five schools. But yours truly Mr. Koskei was not yet done with you. Once back in our school the following day, the drill would start again- the question by question postmortem, you fail, you heshimu ukuta and receive yours.

    And the days dragged by, they just refused to move and save our embattled buttocks. They were hard, harsh times. In our virgin minds, we were sure of just two things in our lives. One - the sun will rise from the east each morning, and two, lazima utaheshimu ukuta. And as sure as the sun rose, so was Mr. Kosgei. That was a constant, not a variable. The man never missed a class, even the Saturday ones. You'd pray that the guy could get sick, or even have a date so that he doesn't come but alas, he was always there as the rising sun that rose across the Nandi Hills serenading the rolling green hills and tea plantations while announcing to you that a new day had broken, and you had a day with Mr. Kosgei, and there was no way the day will end before you heshimu ukuta. 

    There is a saying that goes that for every dark night, there is a brighter day in the morning. We prayed to our God and gods. The proverbial light at the end of the tunnel eventually came in the name of KCPE, which we did, aced it, and started new phases of our lives. We dispersed and went various ways, each embarking on the journeys to wherever life has brought us today. We grew old, got jobs, married, got families, and basically, did live.

    So last evening, as I burned the midnight oil hacking Python code to power machine learning algorithms for early-stage disease detection, I thought about how it all started and what had prepared me to be where and whom I am. I went back to the foundations, to the basics, to restoration of factory settings. I sat and appreciated how the foundations that Mr. Kosgei worked so hard build, like a mason setting up the hard rock base for a house with nothing but hard work and sheer dedication, chip by chip, block by block. That is the science he drilled into my thick head that laid the foundations for my data science career. My late father used to tell me that it may not make sense to you now and that one day, you will understand. Now I understand. I thanked Mr. Kosgei in absentia, went down on my knees, and said a little prayer for him. I also thought of the other lessons I learned from him, lessons about life that he didn’t teach me in class but I learned from him. In him, I learned that when dedication, determination, hard work, and confidence meet, we acquire wings, fly, and become angels. Just as Gates Snr drilled on Bill Gates on the essence of showing up, rising early, being on time, keeping your word, giving your 100% to whatever job your hands land on-those are the same virtues I learned from Mr. Kosgei. He gave his all, he gave 110% to his teaching to ensure that we had a bright future. The man worked like he was possessed with some urgent and heaven-sent energy banish stupidy from our thick heads! And one thing I know for sure, that the determination that Mr. Kosgei oozed, that sheer willpower that was his trademark will get him through this.