August holiday, a time to celebrate the nuclear family

By T Michael Mboya

tommichaelmboya@gmail.com

In the towns of Siaya and surrounding counties August is unofficially celebrated as the Month of the Nuclear Family.

As far as I am able to tell, the commemoration is not the result of deliberate social and moral engineering. There was no baraza decision to launch it. It just happened. Well, not in that instantaneous Abracadabra! manner that the last sentence suggests. It stealthily grew out of the school holidays that fall in the month.

These days the August school holidays run for, at most, three weeks. The break is often further shortened by a week or so of either school-organised remedial classes for the weaker students or privately arranged extra tuition classes for everyone. That further shortening is, of course, explained by the fact that the break comes before the third and final term of the year, the term in which the national examinations are held. The brevity of the holidays often discourages parents from hosting their children’s school friends and school going members of the extended families for the holidays.

The impending national examinations also motivate parents to closely monitor their children’s studies, especially if they are (a class away from being) candidates in national examinations. Not infrequently, the observation translates into a sort of isolation of the child to allow him or her the time and space to concentrate on the books. The net result: parents spend more quality time with their school going children in August.

The parents also have more time for their children in August out of a variety of other reasons. There are no ‘national’ days off from work for workers in August. I am here thinking specifically about the Christmas-New Year week in December. The absence of such a general leave of absence means that working parents remain in the towns where they work. They see their children at the end of the work-day. For the men, August is also part of the break in the English Premier League season. Their weekend afternoons are free.

Add to the above reasons the following facts and you see how the celebration takes off. In that part of the country, August is usually the tail end of the first harvest season. The ready availability of affordable food is a significant enabling factor for celebration. And with it comes some good feelings.

The secondary school going boys with their healthy appetites – if their parents’ complaints are to be believed, they threaten to eat their families out of their homes – cannot do much damage.

The appetites become yet another source of family banter. But one will say, the December holidays come on the heels of the second harvest season in Siaya County. Indeed it does, but the December holidays last an average of six weeks. Together with it’s being the month of festivities, the prolonged holidays make December ideal for the gathering of extended families. In fact, a majority of the inhabitants of these towns will have gone to the village to celebrate Sikukuu with extended family.

To go back to the economic factors that make possible the celebration of the nuclear family in Siaya in August. In August the new financial year of the biggest employer in the land – the government – is settling in, and it is possible for workers to get soft loans when they need it. These loans come in handy in emergencies, but it is reassuring to know that they can be accessed. For most workers, however, the fact that in most schools in Kenya the third term school fees is the most reasonable is relief enough. It is clear from all this that the fact of school going children being at home on holiday is not a sufficient condition for the celebration of the nuclear family. If it were, then, there automatically would be three months of the Nuclear Family in the year: April, August and December. And it would be country-wide. But there is something about the eighth month in Siaya…Happy August holidays to all school going Kenyans!

The writer teaches Literature and Popular Culture at Moi University