One of Them: An Eton College Memoir by Musa Okwonga

Author:Musa Okwonga [Okwonga, Musa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Personal Memoirs, Social Science, Discrimination, Social Classes & Economic Disparity, political science, General
ISBN: 9781783529681
Google: P48mEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Unbound Publishing
Published: 2021-04-15T23:29:46.376801+00:00

HE CARES TOO MUCH

There is one schoolboy I know who is obsessed with politics like most boys my age are obsessed with football, and I think it strange that someone should be so interested in power so young. I have already come to think of politics as dangerous. Whenever my family discusses current affairs in the country of my heritage, the routine is the same: my grandfather sits in the furthest corner of his living room, and his children, including my mother, sit in a semicircle around him; there is then a pause as I, my siblings and cousins are ushered out, and then the adults talk until the early hours of the morning. We all sit in the kitchen or on the staircase, bored but with no choice other than to wait until our parents are ready to give us a lift home. None of us ever so much as eavesdrop at the living-room door; we have too much respect for what is going on behind it.

When my grandparents arrive in the country, it is never fully explained what they have run from; each year I get more of the picture – a death of a relative here, a disappearance of a friend there. At first I am frustrated, and then I realise that they are merely making an effort to protect me. They would tell me more, but they are worried I will get too emotional. Take the example of my great-uncle. He was due to be executed, and the night before he was set to face the firing squad he escaped his hotel, where he was just about to have the last supper of his life with his executioner, and fled over the border disguised as an imam. My family don’t want me to know those stories yet and I won’t hear this one until I am in my early thirties. They don’t want to fill my head with politics; they want me to study.

That is why when I see my peer at school talking about politics with the joy that I talk about sport, I am a little unsettled. These are people’s lives, I think. The boy rants about several things that make people roll their eyes, but I always listen carefully. He hates the European Union with a startling passion at a time when I am barely aware what the European Union is. That boy, I think, is too intense about these things, he cares too much. Maybe his family always ask him to join all those conversations about politics that I am not yet invited to. Later, at university, I will see him standing outside the student union building, complaining loudly about the same subject. No one is paying much attention to him. I go over to him and swiftly realise how much pleasure he takes from irritating whoever stops to listen, so I get on with my day.

At first it is striking, given how many Etonians go on to become politicians, how few of them talk about it as a future career.

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