Gituamba went up - the good kind

Some schools warm up slowly. Gituamba did not. By the time the first battle category opened, the crowd had already decided this was their day, and every competitor who touched the mic got the kind of reception artists tour years to earn.

All eight battle categories ran - music, dance, spoken word, poetry slam, comedy, drama, news reporting, and the modelling runway. The runway, directed by Synapse Models, went through cultural wear, creative wear, cosplay, and professional wear before the day closed with the crowning of Mrs/Miss of the Institution, presented by the school's leadership alongside Eugine and Lucy.

Between battles, the Urban Pods ran through the day - picked from our five themes to fit what Gituamba's students wanted to talk about most. The Mind Your Mind sessions filled up first. They usually do.

Before pack-down, the tour and Delo Greens Movement put trees in the ground with the students - the part of every stop that outlives the event by decades. The full episode feeds into Urban News on Urban Gang Tour, and the gallery from the day is already live.

Gituamba closed the hat-trick: Koinange, Loreto Kiambu, Gituamba - three schools in eight days. The bus barely cooled down. We like it that way.

"The principal told us the school had never sounded like that. We told her: that sound was always in there. We just brought the speakers."