Free One Day I Will Write About This Place by Binyavanga Wainaina Page B

best schools in the country. I apply to Alliance High School, Ciru to Alliance Girls. In the district mock exams, I am third in the district, and first in our school; Ciru is second.
    Mrs. Gichiri calls me in to her office one day. She is my English teacher. Mrs. Gichiri. She is worried that my compositions are too wild. She says I should concentrate, keep them simple. She is sure I will do well. Like your sister, she says, beaming for the first time I can remember.
    A few years ago, President Moi announced that he was going to restructure the education system. The kids who are a year behind me will abandon the British-­style 7-­4-­6 system and do a new one, called 8-­4-­4, that is supposed to introduce more practical education.
    CPE is our national high school entrance exam. All papers except English composition are graded by a computer. You only use your computer-­issued number. You do not write your name on the exam sheet. Your school is only a number. This way, it is unbiased.
    It is scientific.
    When the results come out, Ciru is the top student in our school. I am fifth. I am not happy. I expected better. But—­we are both among the top twenty students in our province, Kenya’s biggest province. Relatives call from all over the world to congratulate us.
    One day a friend of my father who works in the ministry of education calls him and tells him that he has not seen our names on the list for any schools. After the test results are out, head teachers from high schools across the country meet and select students, strictly based on merit. National schools, usually the best schools, pick the best students from each province. This way the whole country is represented in the student body. Then there are provincial schools, and district schools, day schools, and, at the bottom, there are what we call
harambee
schools, schools built through community contributions.
    The terrible curse of the past is that it always starts right now. Hind­sight will pull facts to its present demand; it is the dental brace that will reshape your jaw, your resolve. When hindsight desires enough, it obliterates uncertainty. All the selected past becomes an argument for action.
    And the tribe was made flesh, and dwelt among us.
    Neither Ciru nor I is called to any school. No school at all. Rumors are spreading everywhere. We hear that lists of selections, long reams from a science computer, were taken away; that names are matched to numbers, and scrutinized, word by word, line by scientific line, for Gikuyu names in a secret office by Special Branch people.
    Kenneth B. Wainaina. June Wanjiru Wainaina—Ciru’s full name. Unfortunately, I do not use Binyavanga—maybe that would have caused some epistemological confusion.
    Gentlemen, we can rebuild tribe. We have the technology.
    These names were crossed off lists.
    In Rift Valley Province, Kalenjins get places in the best state schools. Baba and Mum argue. She is trying to get us into private schools. Baba says no. For the first time in my life, I call somebody because he is a Gikuyu, as I am properly discovering I am. Peter. An old friend and classmate. We call each other, whispering about other friends, walking through each person’s grade, his tribe, the school she is going to.
    Measuring. Networks light up all over the Rift Valley. This is happening! Let’s stand together. Phone calls, small meetings. Quiet lunches. Promises. Soon, Peter and I are in the same school.
    I have never heard of Njoro High School. Most state high schools in Kenya are boarding schools. It is eighteen miles away, and I never knew it existed. It is a district school. I never thought I would end up in a third-­rate school, a low, low idea. Ciru has never heard of Kapropita Girls Secondary School, where she has been called. She is told the school has no tap water. Girls fetch water from the river. When people ask which school I am going to, I keep quiet.
    There are some new high schools now, with the best