I remained in the same school for secondary, so there was none of that spectacle for me at that level, and by the time I went to a new school abroad, I felt too old for drama.
Anyway, I wasn’t alone as there was one other new boy at the school joining on the same day. As such, we stuck together before we got to mix and mingle with our classmates, many of whom had known each other for years.
I know that as I write this, most schoolchildren are already on their December holidays, but I am also aware that a few forward-thinking parents have already begun planning for the back-to-school season to beat the January rush.
School begins next month, and the first week of January will see the usual crowd of stressed-out parents scrambling to buy new books and uniforms. I got to thinking about the first day of school after catching a snippet of my favourite breakfast show in Cape Town, where they were announcing the winner of their First Day Fly-In competition.
The competition will enable one child to make an unforgettable entrance on their first day of school, arriving by helicopter. The radio station also throws in a first-day party for the child’s class, a clever way to get all the kids to feel involved.
Arriving at school by helicopter for the first day can be seen as a rare, extravagant display of wealth, custom-made for viral social media posts and creating a buzz about extreme wealth disparity. However, it would appear that in the radio station’s case, it seems to be all about creating memories and spreading good cheer.
Listening to the clip, I couldn’t help thinking about the unintended consequences of such a grand entrance. I don’t know what schoolchildren are like these days, but in my day, there would have been some who made it their mission in life to tease and embarrass the kid who arrived with such fanfare.
Such behaviour would have been driven by jealousy or envy, but I remember some children were just mean for the sake of it.
Reporting on the first such event organsied by the radio station nearly 20 years ago, my old newspaper, The Cape Argus, reported that the kids who won that competition, a pair of twins, arrived for their first day in Grade One “in true Hollywood style”.
“The six-year-olds arrived by helicopter, landing on a netball court as excited pupils, staff and parents broke into applause,” the story went.
“Instead of the usual first-day tears, the high-flying twins could not stop smiling, and when the school bell rang, both rushed to class.”
***
It has been a sad couple of weeks for my circle of friends and me in Malindi. Our friend Maggie Bashford made a sudden exit from this life after she suffered a massive heart attack.
Maggie was one of those rare people who were universally loved, not just because she was easygoing and fun but also because she gave of herself tirelessly to her friends and the community at large.
A UK citizen, she moved to Kenya just over a couple of decades ago, and one of the first major compassionate interventions she made was taking legal guardianship of an 18-month-old child whose mother had sadly died.
She treated the child as her own and, even after the guardianship ended, continued to be involved in his life and see him through further education. She was also the driver of a programme by a women’s charity delivering sanitary pads every month to the Malindi women’s prison.
Maggie also took on several other causes, looking after several elderly people in Malindi and ensuring they had medical and financial assistance.
I could say a lot more about this wonderful human and her cheerfulness, efficiency, wit, natural modesty about her good works and so on, but space does not allow. All I can say is she will be greatly missed, and we are poorer for this loss.
