TEACHERS ASSAULTED BY COLLEAGUES IN SIAYA

Kenya has turned into a striking nation with every professional itching to take that infamous walk into the street brandishing placards and chanting solidarity slogans. From doctors in screaming white overalls to teachers wielding stones, strike is the new swag.

This is too common a picture, Kenyans are no longer surprised. We are used to the violent face-off between the police and stone-friendly teachers.  We have witnessed the police teargasing the restless teachers who run around helter-skelter and watery-eyed but still intent on hurling stones at the men in uniform.

We are even used to teachers getting cornered and clobbered mercilessly and the retaliation game of stone throwing and name calling from both parties continues until some sensible soul calls off the ‘bloody’ strike.

A shirtless teacher who was assaulted by colleagues walks away in shame

Kenyans have seen all these madness and lived through it all, but the recent teachers’ strike that commenced on the 3^rd of Monday has shocked all of us. Just like a child who has learned a new trick, the teachers have taken their antics a notch higher.

The thought that the government had adamantly failed to honour their 1997 Agreement (300 % salary increment) and was carelessly throwing it in their face was too much to bear, and they felt more betrayed that some of their colleagues had the audacity to boycott the strike.

And so they decided to strip them naked and parade them in the shameful glare of the always curious members of the public.

Over 20 head teachers in Siaya County were exposed to a public ridicule and embarrassment when they were stripped of their clothes and beaten senselessly by their ‘juniors’ on Tuesday as the teachers’ strike entered its second day.

 The head teachers were sitting the mandatory Kenya Education Management Institute Examination at a certain secondary school when they were attacked by an angry mob of unruly teachers.

The teachers turned hooligans accused their superiors of betraying them by boycotting the strike to sit an important exam and saw it fit to punish them for their ‘errant’ ways.

More drama unfolded when they unapologetically stripped some of the school heads amid cheers from other teachers before frog marching them into town.

In the full glare of the dismayed public and the hot sun, the teachers marched on undeterred and unshaken, ignoring the desperate pleas from their victims or the shame they were exposing them to.

Even the pupils they teach in class had to see them shrinking away in absolute shame as they were harassed and assaulted by their own. It was no longer a conflict between the teachers and the police but between teachers and their own colleagues.

It is disconcerting that the people who have been entrusted with the responsibility of instilling morals and good values into the children of the future are going against their principles. Talk of professional hooliganism. Or is it a case of all is fair in….and WAR?