- Hillary Muhalya reflects on Eunice Musila’s decision to confront mistakes she made as a rebellious student.
- Musila says she organised two Form Four strikes before an arrest forced her to sit KCSE outside school.
- Her search for former principal Susan Musimba highlights maturity, accountability, forgiveness and the lasting consequences of indiscipline.
More than two decades after leaving high school, Kenyan woman Eunice Musila is searching for the principal she once regarded as an adversary. She is not looking for her to settle an old score, reopen an old confrontation or justify her actions as a student. She wants to apologise.
Musila has publicly confronted an uncomfortable chapter of her youth, describing her younger self as “super arrogant” and rude. As a Form Four student, she says she played a leading role in organising two major school strikes.
The second strike had serious consequences. According to her account, she was arrested alongside other students involved in the unrest. The students were subsequently required to sit their Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examinations outside the school.
At the time, Musila was a teenager caught up in the emotions, frustrations and defiance that can accompany student unrest. But more than 20 years later, she looks back at those events through entirely different eyes.
What once may have appeared to her as resistance now forms part of a past she feels compelled to confront.
Her search for her former principal, Susan Musimba, is therefore about much more than locating a person from her school days. It is an attempt to confront a version of herself she no longer recognises. Musila has said she wants to apologise to Musimba “from the deepest part of my heart” and ask for forgiveness.
Musila says she once “hated” the principal. Today, she wants to find her and ask for forgiveness.
That transformation captures one of the most powerful realities of growing older: maturity can change the meaning we attach to our past.
When youthful defiance meets consequences
Teenagers often make decisions without fully appreciating their long-term consequences. Peer pressure, anger, the desire to be heard and hostility towards authority can turn an ordinary disagreement into a confrontation.
A school strike may last a few days. A disciplinary incident may occupy only a few hours. But the consequences can remain embedded in people’s memories for decades.
For school principals and teachers, student unrest is never simply about rebellious teenagers. School leaders are entrusted with maintaining order, protecting learners, safeguarding school property and ensuring that education continues even when tensions rise.
Students, on the other hand, may see administrators as barriers to their demands without understanding the responsibilities carried by those in authority.
It is often only after leaving school that the two sides can begin to see each other’s perspective.
Musila’s experience is a reminder that accountability does not always arrive immediately. Sometimes it takes years, experience and painful self-reflection before a person is able to acknowledge that they were wrong.
An apology made decades later cannot change what happened. It cannot cancel an arrest, reverse a disciplinary decision or erase the disruption caused by a strike.
But an apology can accomplish something else: it can acknowledge responsibility.
A search for forgiveness
That is why Musila’s search carries significance beyond her personal story.
Kenyan schools continue to deal with student unrest, indiscipline and conflicts between learners and administrators. Every generation produces young people who test boundaries. Some later look back with regret; others never revisit those moments.
Musila’s decision to revisit hers offers a different possibility — that people can grow beyond the mistakes of their youth.
She says she has reconciled with her parents and is seeking a fresh start. Finding her former principal appears to be another part of that journey.
For Musimba, if Musila eventually finds her, the encounter could also be deeply meaningful. The student she once disciplined is no longer the teenager who stood before her. She is an adult capable of looking back, accepting responsibility and asking for forgiveness.
There is a wider lesson here for educators, parents and students.
Discipline should not merely be about punishment. Education should ultimately help young people develop judgment, responsibility and the ability to reflect on their choices.
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And when former students eventually discover that they were wrong, society should leave room for genuine accountability and reconciliation.
Because the ghosts of strikes and recklessness do not always disappear when the school uniform is removed.
They can follow us into adulthood, waiting for the day we become mature enough to face them — and courageous enough to say, “I’m sorry.”
By Hillary Muhalya
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