Success Cards

Exam time brings around the success card season. If you’re in boarding school and have many relatives, you’re sure that every mail day will bring a fresh batch of success cards of all manner. Kenyans don’t wish people Good Luck; they wish them Success. Apparently, good luck means you really don’t deserve to pass that biology practical but success means you’ve earned the grade you go.

Kenyan success cards can be bought anywhere from the newspaper vendor, to the high-end stores.

These highly coveted cards are displayed in various ways: Hang over a sisal string strung across the dorm room, propped up on the window sill, or carefully filed into a folder for a guided unveiling to anyone who cares to see.

The cards can be scented, doused in the floral scents of jasmine or fumigated in the every popular Game of Paris cologne.

There are a couple of varieties of success cards:

1. The always safe, vase of flowers, where roses, tulips, carnations are front and center, in full bloom. This type of card usually comes from older relatives like aunts, grandparents, church deacon, or parents. Teachers are known for favoring this card. They’ll send a couple to their most favored students with positive messages.

2. The happy couple that’s somewhere in Aboreturm or near the beach. They are seated on the grass, feet streched before them, ever so innocently leaning into each other. Sometimes there’s a bottle of Fanta off to the side indicating this couple has just finished a picnic and decided to share their joy with the world by posing for a cheap photo. These are sent by wannabe boyfriends or girlfriends, that ndugu who told you God told him you were his future wife, or the cousin in shags who spent hours dedicating a poem to your success on the inside of the card.

3. The religious card with a cross, Bible, or other religious symbol. In it are verses of the holy books exalting the value of hard work and banishing to hell any thoughts of cheating during exam time. The church pastor, lead kayamba player of the choir, and your parent’s friends usually send you this to keep you faithful.

4. A musical combination of all card. This one is the most prized. Not only is it the thickest to accommodate the battery, but it’s the most expensive. It’s especially appreciated when it’s from a boy or girlfriend, soaking in floras scents, and peeling out tin-music nobody can recognize.

It really doesn’t matter who sent the cards, what they smell like, or what they look like In the end, it’s HOW many cards you receive that shows the other students everyone is wishing you success.