Photo: The Star

Statement over teachers' strike as Kenya union officials walkout of the negotiations early July.

When I grew up, teachers were middle class. I remember Mrs Mtam- basere who taught me in second grade who would always be neatly turned out and would calmly tell us the difference between a 'doing word' and a 'naming word'(Hey. It was Zimbabwe. It still has one of the best education systems in the continent).

I remember Mr Toro in seventh grade who used to pinch our cheeks when we got something wrong and yell as he pinched our cheeks, "You swine! You sarsaparilla. An enemy of a friend is an enemy therefore negative plus positive is negative."

For those who are not mathematically inclined minus being a negative and plus being a positive -5+7=-2. I have been thinking - and talking about it to Tops - of Mrs Mtambasere and Mr Toro in the last two weeks. When I was growing up, these two teachers were considered middle class.

They could get car loans on account of being teachers. They had mortgages. They had situations where people talked to them with respect. I remember Ticha Tonge, the headmaster of the local school in my mother's village was considered an expert on everything. But things somehow changed. And I realized this a few years ago. Back in South Africa, my cousin got married to a teacher.

Buti (that's brother in isiXhosa for you all) Sicelo was a head of department in history and arts. But Sicelo would generally be at school only four or three days a week. He would complain of suffering from gout or 'sugar' the other days he was absent. That was because Sicelo was not earning enough and on the one or two days he was absent were the days he would moonlight. How do I know this?

I know this because Sicelo, as a teacher, was not getting enough money to cover his housing allowance. Sicelo was staying in my home. Me.

A starving artist. In 2010 after the World Cup, we had teachers (and nurses, and doctors) go on who had worked in Kenya with the US Peace Corp and then had returned many years later as an academic doing research. The fellow had come from an upper middle- class Black American background and while doing his research in Kenya had ended up meeting one of his resource people at one of the upmarket country clubs around Nairobi.

My friend ended up being very offended when a group of people at the club began looking down their noses at him when they realised he was a Black American and immediately pigeon-holed him as "either an athlete or a rapper" refusing to appreciate the fact that he was an academic.

It was while thinking of all these matters that I remembered the pastry incident that ripped through social media in Kenya a few weeks ago and the weird black on black racism at certain hotels across Kenya where black staff treat black guests as if they were trespassers and less than their white guests. Not to mention our deep seated tribalism that comes to the fore just before, during and just after every general election.

Now that I think about the whole situation rationally, the Black Americans should remain just where they are and in the words of Ira Acree, a US pastor who said: "Many are disappointed today, we are devastated from what we like to call a punch in the mouth by the judicial system.

We will fight back. Not with violence but with our voice. With discipline, with dignity and with restraint." At the end of the day, injustices will occur and there will be problems for us all wherever the hell on earth we are. We need to find our own creative ways to live with it and challenge it and survive it. That's life after all, or at least life as we know it. strike because they were not getting their just dues.

The media set up an organisation where people could volunteer their services in the different departments. What was interesting about the hotline was that hundreds of thousands of people volunteered. Retired teachers volunteered to teach students for continuity's sake but also realized the teachers needed to stay on strike because they did not earn enough.

There was no way the government could hope that volunteers would be avail- able forever. Retired doctors and nurses did the same.

One of my disappointments with Kenya has been conversations with people who tell me that teachers should just be happy to have jobs.

At Sh20,000 per month for those with many years experience? Many teachers,nurses,doctors have more than two children so one wonders, what are the costs for healthcare, food, transport and, because we are African, our parents asking for funds? Where are these people supposed to raise their children if they can't ac- cess mortgages on their salary? And a two bedroom apartment in Donholm is KSh20,000?

And Donnie is not one of the upper end neighbourhoods anymore. And teachers borrowing money from their students for transport...and this is okay with the Teachers Service Commission and the presidency? This should not be a manifesto...but I am making it one.

I dream of an Africa (wherever we are) where our teachers earn more money than 349 members of Parlia- ments who did not go to school as long as teachers did. I dream of an Africa where the people who educate our children do not feel the need to sell tomatoes, oranges or ask for a lift from the parents of their students because they earn enough money. In South Africa. In Zimbabwe. In Zambia. In Kenya.Or in Ghana. What the hell is wrong with us? We show preference to politicians and we wonder why our best brains leave because we do not appreciate them?