Army-Wormed Terms

Tooth and Nail

by Mazuba Mwiinga

Army-Wormed Terms

Funny how terms change; Battling with seasons for having a reason that resolved on the usual calendar days, Junior could not take it – leaving home after a five star five long weeks of none stop tireless gig of playing antics all over the city, was such a fuss he could not come to terms with.

In his usual cosmetic way, he consistently attended Sunday school in an effort to slow down the days of his holiday through his Sunday school prayers.

Little did I know that in fact his thinking was so ludicrous to come, think of it, just as the worms were busy praying for the rains to pour cats and dogs on the smelly scented chemically decorated crops so as to continue feasting on nature’s most deliciously God given food.

He flanked so casually as we walked to intercity to catch a long route bus to another city that just brought him memories of the previous year where passing maths was as easy as mastering the two times table and stood the chance of another term in a fresh grade.

Biting his fingers naughtily as he put his foot on the bus stairs as slow as an infantry of army worms smilingly stalking entry into his grandfather’s maize crop, it looked like Kaguta’s fossil  Presidential guard combing the area for an enemy of the state.

The long holiday was a short journey of a hundred terms flying high and low on the escalators of any Mall that brought sense in his already pizza corrupted mind. Well he redefined his termly holiday saying that if UNZA could postpone the opening month from October to January, it was then right for schools too to move the dates from four weeks to at least four months. He vehemently argued that what was good for the gender must be good for the geese. After all if intellectuals could be given so much time to play hide and seek at home, why couldn’t toddlers at primary school not having the same privilege.

I was not so much into picking debates with computer aged-generation for that was such a crap of thought for me, but with his holier than thou vestige-thoughts, he could not shut up until he exhausted his little chagrins packed in his minion grey matter, labeling me a taunted old fashioned writer who couldn’t even know that everyone else was pushing terms staying at home, for it was the best ever time to regain childhood.

He opined that if army worms could extend their eating habits from their barrack grass to enemy lines of maize crops, why couldn’t his term move from four weeks to four months expressing that, resting was biblical,God given  for one to find better recourse after a tensely hard-earned working period of creating wealth for thoughtless creatures.

All I knew was that he was already carried on the bus and to me that mattered most; everything else was his own mental squabbles he had to deal with on his journey to school where I knew he was going to learn the lessons of madness the hard way.