We had something called Junior-youth at our church back in the days (it's probably still there). It was a group made up of pre-teen kids basically twelve years and below. Being in junior-youth was the coolest thing in church and the dream of all Sunday-school kids. Sunday-school was made up six year olds and below, so graduating from sunday-school to junior-youth was a big deal. Parents didn't seem to understand this because they used to refer to all of us as sunday-school and they'd get annoyed when we kept reminding them the difference. Well, being in junior-youth had its benefits. We would perform skits in the adult-church, derived from Bible stories. We would dance to Rose Muhando songs and present a Shairi. Every Sunday we had like one hour to do all that in the adults' church and it was a great feeling for us and our parents. I mean, despite the confusion between Sunday-school and junior-youth they would be so proud to see us performing. Infact that would be the subject of discussion the whole week until we performed again the next Sunday. My favorite part was the Shairi presentation. We would recite a Shairi with like seven stanzas, so seven people would recite one stanza each and we would say the last line of every stanza in unison (it was always similar in all stanzas). After like, the first three people recited, the whole church having learnt the last stanza would join in and say it together with us. By the time the last person recited, it would be like a song already. Those junior-youth Shairis inspired me to write my own. I would therefore like to give a virtual standing ovation to our teacher Thairu Kiongera. He would write the shairi during the week and deliver every stanza to it's respective recitor and meet us on Saturday for a rehearsal for free. (I hear nowadays churches pay they staff). God bless you teacher Thairu Kiongera I wrote my first shairi book and poem book when I was fifteen. Am not sure whether I'll ever share the shairis (they don't sound so good😂) but some of the poems are really great and I've compiled them into a series called A MEMORY CLOSER. Click the link below to download the poem books. Leave a positive review https://www.instagram.com/p/CZVOmfEoV9A/?utm_medium=tumblr