The ghosts of Bunyala

18 OCTOBER 2015
I saw the woman with a full belly and I asked the king, “who’s she? ”
The king, after throwing a glance in her direction answered me with a calculated vehemence, such that his lips twitched melodramatically, “That woman, that’s your future! ”
The land of the dead had such austerity that awakened the hairs on my body, yet at the same time was a labyrinth of complexities. When I arrived, I was told I was dead; the blood on my polyester shirt; sputtered when I landed on that concrete floor,was proof enough. I still could smell it’s freshness like I had just fallen off that seventh floor, yet it’d been three months. Now the king said the woman with a full stomach was my future and my head spun in wonder.
Do the dead have a future?
The great King Ndombi of Bunyala held my hand and led me by a river.It was actually a stream-thinned and choked by reeds. We sat by the bank where I had a fine view of the woman who was my future and the other ghosts who were tilling a farm. The King dipped into his breast pocket and removed a royal flute. He, for a moment, stared at it with a strange glint in his eyes, savored it,consumed in it’s glory, then put it on his lips and blew a melody in it.
It was a fine melody. It had a lulling sensation on me and I swear I saw a Tilapia jump from the river and dance in ecstasy. For a moment I saw me, in my polyester shirt, on top of that balcony. I felt the soreness in my throat. Maybe from the crying, maybe the heights just had that effect on my throat. Maybe.

I had the drill in my mind, I’d been practising it since when I could remember.
“Breath. Just breath. Everything is going to be okay. In a moment. Just let go.A new life awaits. Breath.”
Before I stepped off the railing on the balcony, I saw Ma.She was at home, laying the table for lunch. In that moment, Ma’s face shone with an articulate radiance as if a huge floodlight had been cast on her. She was humming her happy hum, the one she would do when I came first in class, or that day when Pa brought her a fancy dress from Nairobi.
Then the next moment she was on stage, a clown in a pantomime, the audience laughing boisterously at all her movements. I was part of the audience and by God I longed to be on stage with her. I wanted to join in her hum, to feel the peace she felt and drink from the bountifulness of her joy.
I jumped. I was in the air. I was a feather, carried away by the breeze. I was shrinking into oblivion. I hit the concrete floor. Then I died.
When you’re dying, your life doesn’t flash before your eyesight-that’s romanticist bullshit. But there are regrets that haunt you in your final moments . All the people you let down. All the things you could have become if you had one more chance.
I asked the King, ” The woman, my future, why has she a full stomach? ”
“Those are the contents of your life. ”
“You mean like the blessings that are bound in my future? ”
“Blessings?” he retorted, “Who’re we kidding!Those are the bad things that you’ll go through. The blessings are in that small pouch she has in her hand.”
The king plays his flute again. It’s a slow tune I’ve heard before, before I died. It is Ma’s tune. I look at the woman who is my future’s hands, they are empty.

The king sensing my unsettledness, leaned to my ear and whispered , ” Do you know who you are son? ”
I didn’t.
‘You are a ghost, a ghost of Bunyala.”

She was perfect. Perfect in every way

They had a child. And she was perfect.Perfect in every way.

November 10, 2015.

The lecturer’s voice is a hoarse rumble, driving him between two worlds, one of the present, where he’s an economics sophomore, and to the other world, the one that seemed more real, more vivid to him. In that world he was a man, or rather, learning the tender tenets that make up the fabric of manhood. He was a heartbroken lover, and struggling to survive too-juggling between school and two jobs just to make ends meet, but the ends seemed determined to repel. He always tried, he knew he had to, especially after she had blankly delivered the news; arms-at-akimbo, her face contorted into a capricious expression. Then there was the text message that had beeped his phone, lighting it up blue.

The lectures’s hoarse voice. Back and forth. Back and forth.

The locus of a particular ordinal curve and the budget constarint represents the level of highest satisfaction.

 

September, 2014

She was beautiful, she always would be to him. Her features were what he could describe as striking, and striking they did him when he first saw her. They were classmates but only begun to talk during the second semester of the first year. Yes, he was shy, his friends kept teasing him about it, listing down a voluminous list of girls he had a crush on according to them. But he knew where his eyes were, the apple of his mouth(in his dreams), the pearl of his eyes; one who sent shivers rippling down his spine, palpitations drumming his chest cavity. In class, she would always catch him staring at her and he would blush sheepishly, then she would toss her hair to one side of her shoulder leaving him confused. Was it reproachful? Encouragement? Well, time would tell.

Time did tell. One Saturday evening, uneventful as most of his weekends, the Nyeri cold biting his feet begrudgingly, she had come to his house. His roommate, a queer Kamba guy who loved yellow sweaters and green shoes(they all do, these Kamba’s. But in their defense, their women are smashing beauties, so they can wear whatever they want and no one will give a shit.) was in the bathroom taking a shower( or smoking weed, no one cares as long as his sister is a smashing beauty). She met him at the door and looked petrified, stopping for a moment to stare at him as if she was a tourist savoring the sight of a world famous statute

“ Hi”, she mumbled, then extended her hand to him.

He shook it while he was mum; dumbfounded.

“You live here?”

He didn’t get a chance to answer, Musyoka came from the bathroom, a towel covering the lower part of his body, while the chest laid bare.

“ Umefika kumbe? I see you have met my roommate.”

“Actually we are classmates,” she said

“Oh, that…Tom, your classmate here is my bae. I call her HPP. I don’t even know what it’s supposed to mean,” he said and laughed brusquely at his own joke-or lack of it.

 

So, HPP became Musyoka’s girlfriend, and it hurt him as much as he felt he was to blame. She came numerous of times, during weekends and sometimes on weekdays and he would have to look for somewhere else to sleep to give them their privacy(It’s called being exiled. You are not in college till you do this to your roommy.) He had almost given up but one day she came, Musyoka was not around and he’d told her so dismissively. But she remained and started making small talk. Then it had gotten deeper and deeper. Then he told her. She had always known.

“ Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“I don’t know, I was afraid. You are too good for me.”

“I’m not that good.”

“Hell you are.” At this,a smile broke between her lips, then melted at a happenstance. “It’s not really about you. It’s on me. I don’t think I could be good enough for you. I couldn’t give you what you deserve.”

“What do I deserve?” she asked intently; her forehead forming wrinkles. Silence. “Just for the record, I don’t think I’m too good for you.”

Then they went inside and made love. He thought it eccentric that she had been so easy to give, but he didn’t care anymore. They made love and slept and woke up and made love again. A few weeks later, Tom would be so in love with her that he could give, or take anything for her. She loved him too,alot, in fact she bore no guilt when she broke up with Musyoka.

 

June 15, 2016

 

He had seen her. Four times from afar. Twice calling her, but she simply quickened her steps and disappeared to whatever diversion that presented itself. His calls went unanswered for two months now. He had even gone to her home town to look for her to no avail. Three months had crept by since the message lighted up his phone, and it had shattered his heart more than anything. He had replied but his texts never got delivered. He got to the brink of sanity, the very precipice of reason and felt he could do something crazy to himself. He printed out the message in large fonts and stuck it on the ceiling board, so that he could look at the words every time he lay on his bed. Then he cried himself dry. Massive heaves of emotions rippling his soul.(When a man cries it is not a sign of weakness; it is recognition of the fact that we are just human)

The emotions, Rippling. Heaving. Back and forth. Back and forth.

 

Can’t keep it Tom. Getting rid of it.

 

June 16, 2016

She saw him and quickened her steps. He’d just been in an OR class but shot out of the class when he saw her passing by the window. He finally, caught up with her at the entrance of Heroes Garden and took her by her hand. She wanted to repel but relented; out of civility as people were passing by.

“HPP, we need to talk”

“Talk about what?” It caught him out of guard. He had not taught much about that. He stood askance for a moment. HPP started walking away.

What did they have to talk about? Definitely not about her beauty. His favorite writer; Kim Edwards words would return to him then:

What is beauty? Is it found in form? Is meaning?

He could see what the abortion had done to her. Her silky hair had lost its lustre. Her dark skin was a shade darker and paler. The two months she’d been away from school had thinned her as if the goddess of the womb was angry at her.

A few paces later, HPP turned to him, “Tell me, what do you see now when you look at me Tom? What do you see?” Then she’d turned and went off.

Tom had wanted to shout to her, to the whole world, “I see a woman.Beautiful and perfect. Perfect in every way.”

But instead, he’d swallowed a hard chunk of bitter saliva.

 

the spirit of Baba

Mama said she saw Baba’s spirit in the banana plantation. Adorned in a red flowing gown-she said, and fireflies danced around him you’d think they were small sparks of hell fire.Baba’s spirit was wriggling on the ground, it’s two icy circles glowed with mystery and he was moaning loudly. His toe nails-long and charred; dug dip into the soil, clutching the grains and sucking life out of them. mama said all these things and Musa, her new husband sighed.
“ummh.”He murmured before heading to Mama’s bedroom.
“Ummh.”Mama reciprocated then followed him.
Mama was always cynical, even before Baba became a spirit. She would be wary of Baba’s alcoholism, or the brawl that would ensue between them when he arrived from his drinking spree, or the fact that his brothers would take away the land once Baba died. But when the old man eventually kicked it, she carefully tucked away in her velvet suitcase all the land papers.  Then she concertrated on crying her eyes red and resting her head on Musa’s shoulder. He seemed to offer unrivaled solace.

That was then.Now Baba spirit was wailing loudly, spitting vengeance like a gory ghost of the sea.

*******************************************************************************************
That night, I crawled to the banana plantation with all the stealth i could master, like snake slithering on wet grass. Owls howled ominous and monkeys sneezed incessantly out in the forest and I knew the spirit of Baba was coming. Then I saw them; two shadowy figures mumbling beneath their breaths. I sharpened my eyes and opened my ears widely-I couldn’t let this chance to see him, even if ephemerally; dwindle to oblivion.
I heard the two voices
“You should’ve listened to me. We should have burnt his body”
“No Musa. It was all a mistake.Now his spirit haunts me”
I rose up and sauntered off to the house. In the cover of darkness, in the warmth of my blanket I wept silently.
The spirit of Baba had not yet arrived.

Looking for Abby

Searching, looking, never finding.
Am at the gutters again. This time for a different reason though. Am searching. Searching for my daughter. Two men standing in the dark alley leading to the gutter whisper under their breath. They are looking at me. They are staring.
“Look a dat bitch Jahn.” The one with red eyes and puffy eyelids growls.
“A see her, ma niggar. A see that bitch.” the other one with mushy beards retorts.
“What, you gonna take her down or a take the bitches ass down?”
Am scared. Am scared of men. Am scared of men with red eyes and puffy eyelids and mushy beards. I scurry off to the other end of the alley. The side where there’s light.
Now am in the city, in the middle of a street. It is on the highway. The roads are enormous snakes that wind on and on. Am in the middle of the road. Am entangled in a web of roads, intertwining on and on.
Screeeeeech!
The car stops in front of my nose. The smell of burnt rubber constipates the air. They stare at me. They are two-a woman and her daughter. I run. I follow a street, Redemption Street. That Street led to my master’s house. Maybe he knew where my daughter was. Maybe he knew where Abby was.

 
Master must be angry. He should be. I left without informing him. The front door is closed. Stench hits my nose from the garbage bin next to the door. Stale meat. Putrid bones. I hear voices, unfamiliar ones. Then an engine revves and a car takes off. I see her. Abby.
Am running. Chasing. Crying.
“Mummy…”Abby is calling, crying.
I know the car. I have seen it before. It is running, whirling on the highway. My mind is running, whirling.Turmoil.Labyrinth. It is the executioner’s car, the fumigator. But why? My master?
Am searching, looking, never finding.
The master, he loved Abby. He always loved his dogs.

AGNES

TALES OF THE SILENT

Now, guys, this is a Guest Post by Austin Arnold, whom you might remember from this interview [ https://ianreal.wordpress.com/2014/09/18/i-am-a-work-in-progress-austin-arnold/ ] as one of the main reasons I even took up writing in the first place. This is a chap who literally used to mark my essays as a kid.

 

Austin is one fellow who prides himself in wearing many hats; at least that’s what he says. He will go M.I.A on you for two weeks and when you finally reach him and ask him where the hell he was and what he was even doing, Austin will give you a resounding sigh and reply, “I’m a busy man Baba!” And you will let it slide because he called you Baba.

 

The good ole’ bloke started blogging around a year before me but towards the end of last year till now he’s been a little held up with other…

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I had a wife

I had a wife
I lived. I died. Then I lived again.
I had a wife. But they took her from me, they were twelve. Twelve muscular men snatched her from my grasp. I spent twelve years mourning over the loss, am still mourning.
I live on, I will die someday. One day.
I was twenty when I met her. It was one of those dry seasons the winds howl ominously and the birds whisper in low tones. The war was on and there were talks of victory in Nairobi. The fighters had killed a Whiteman in Naivasha then retreated to their hideout in the thick forests of Kerinyaga. The governor, with powers vested upon him by the crown in England, had declared a state of emergency. The white soldiers and the black home guards-in their khaki shorts had set out for the forest to stop the freedom fighters. They were terrorists to them.
Those were many miles away, in Kerinyaga, Nyeri, Murang’a and Nairobi. I was here, in Bunyala.It is 1952 and the winds are dry. Women from all the seven villages of Bunyala flock our home. My father; being the first teacher in all of Bunyala, owned a water pump. It was the provenance of all that traffic to our home. They would come, some with babies on their backs and the water pots meticulously balanced on their heads. Chatting about this and that then punctuating every sentence with a giggle. Women.
That’s when I saw her. Mary Nastanje.
She was waiting for her turn to draw water. I saw her. Her smile, it was magical. Radiance emanated from her milk white, well-spaced teeth. Her breasts had that adolescent firmness that would make any man kill for her. Her nipples stood stalwartly against her green lesso. I knew I had to get her. She was thirteen, ripe for marriage. I did get her.

“You…yes you. Come here!”
There was piousness in her calculated strides. I was disappointed her long Lesso did not allow me to see her legs all the way. It was 1952 and girls still had morals. Girls still lived by the tribal tenets.Beauty and goodness. Nothing that was not supposed to be seen was exposed.
“Why you are overlapping others on the line?”
“Mwalimu, I have not overlapped. It was my turn.”
“I saw you overlap. Wait, are you doubting my eyesight?”
“No teacher.Never.Your eyesight is the second sharpest on the planet.”
A smile lingered on my mouth. My father’s had to be the first.Cool.Why did people always to compare me to him? I was a big man too. A teacher. Teachers were big men those days. One’s knees would buckle at the mention of a teacher’s name. But that was until they knew how to strike, to protest in the streets, contort their bodies in all sorts of manners, dancing to capricious rhythms.
Solidaaaaarity foreeeeveeeer’
Solidarity forever.
Solidarity forever…
These Marxists!
“Young girl, since you think am the second best…you see that hut at the furthest end? Go and wait for me there.”
“But…”
“Go and wait for me there! Or no water for your family the whole season!”
She obliged. I could see remorse in her strides. Her sister was there, staring at me with teary eyes.
“You are her sister, right? Don’t worry, everything is in control. My sister Senti will carry her pot for you. You will also bring along another pot full of flour. Just make sure when you get there tell your elders she is okay.Tomorow at cock-crow, my people will depart for your home with a proposal.”
Done. I got myself a wife.
We had twelve children. Eleven died in my first lifetime. Cholera and HIV.One lived to ignite life into me again. To carry the mantle of the tribe.
August twentieth, 1990.I was lying in my bamboo bed. The room was hot and the air was thin. My eyes moved drowsily in their sockets. My heartbeat-faint, fainter, fainter. My wife was holding my hand but it was numb, I was not feeling her hand. She was shouting, she was crying. It was dim, an echo reverberating to my mind. I opened my mouth to talk. To tell her it was okay. Only a whisper escaped.
Faint, fainter, fainter. Then it happened. I died.
10th August, 1995.I was born again. I opened my eyes. I saw her again-my wife. When I had come of age, she revealed to me that my mother had lived me exactly the moment the umbilical cord had been cut, separating us.
My wife took care of me. She breastfed me. She took me to school. She consoled me when my first crush called me a son of a nobody. And we lived happily. Yes happy, till 2007.
December 2007.The election results were out. The man had won, apparently. Then they announced the other one to be the winner. The war started.
That December evening. My wife told me we had to make haste. Live for Bunyala because we were no longer wanted in Eldoret.We were from another tribe, strangers. We had to die. Then they arrived; adorned in green military regalia and carrying arrows and machetes. Twelve men. My wife told me I had to run, jump through the window and run.
I did.
I left her, left her for the dead. I heard her scream. It was shrill. Then an explosion. The house was reduced to ashes.
Today. I woke up with a massive hangover. It is in my bedsitter in Githurai, Nairobi. Irene is still in the lacy pants I bought her. She is making scrambled eggs for breakfast. She is from Eldoret and she is, well, my current girlfriend. She drinks more alcohol than me and does not wear anything that goes past her knees downwards! She does not know what I keep on typing on my MacBook and doesn’t care who Chimamanda is.My late wife’s photo is hanging on the wall. She is smiling. She is happy.
Live on, grandma. Live on, wife of the clan. Live on.

Being your son was the greatest honor of my life, Pa

Now he let the soil slide between his fingers and fall on the mound. The fresh bouquet of flowers lies indifferently next to the wooden cross. The words were rolling, again and again in his mind.
“Being your son was the greatest honor of my life, Pa”
He began to laugh; slowly, louder, boisterously and then turned into a crescendo. I had never seen him so hysterical before, consumed by mirth. Everyone else was preoccupied with the woman in black shades. The way they would pass by her, murmur their pleasantries then move out. Yet the old man was there, making merry at that heap of soil. He spat masticated snuff that he had been chewing at on the heap of soil, hit it three times with his walking staff, and then burst out with laughter. I looked at his eyes; tears hung beneath hiss puffy eyelids but seemed to be held back by a force stronger than gravity.

“Boy, you knew him right?”
“Yes sir, we faced the knife on the same day”
“You are convinced it was suicide?”
“I don’t know sir; he said so in the letter”
“Do you think he is in there? I mean, couldn’t he have gone to visit his boyfriend or ran off to somewhere it is tolerated, the act?”
I was silent. He was silent too. The scorching afternoon sun made sweat drip down his brow. He rubbed off the annoying liquid with his weathered palms. I had not seen it coming and when it did, it hit him so hard that his frail bones shook in their frame-the mirth. He walked towards the woman, laughing.
“You think he is in there? You make me laugh. You and all this people, your gaucherie. He has flown off, far away. He has gone, gone with his boyfriend to America.”
He sat down on a kinky patch of grass and wore a Mona Lisa half smile. People murmured under their breath. The old man’s head was no longer correct.

A wife of the clan

Have you ever gone to bed with an empty stomach? You try closing your eyes but they refuse to be closed? You roll in your tiny bed, again and again, but sleep evades you. You yawn and stretch. You get off your mat and walk towards the adjacent room; it is actually not a room, separated by a wall but a compartment shelved of by a polythene paper vertically hanged. Your wife’s compartment. The floor bites your feet with its coldness. The stench from the cow dung plastered on the floor hits your nose pleasantly and you cannot get enough of filling it in your lungs. Your wife is in her bamboo mat, sleeping. You watch as her bosom heaves with every silent snore. Kiki is on the floor, awake. She is gnawing on a putrid bone. She is a lucky one this Kiki, stale bones are a luxury this days.
Pangs of guilt cut through your soul like a double wedge on a piece of Eucalyptus wood. Here you are standing, defeated by turbulence of going to your mat on empty stomach. Yet your wife is enjoying the solace of her bamboo mat. Your wife, a woman. Women are weak beings, right? But she was an exquisite kind of woman, a strong one. She had been a strong one in your first lifetime, carrying thirteen beings from your loins in her stomach then successfully spouting them out was no mean feat. The fact that twelve of them died in your lifetime did not change the fact that she was a strong one. Three of them died of cholera, nine of HIV. The last one lived past your death and he was the one who brought you back into the universe for your second lifetime. He died when you were only three years into your lifetime. Your Geography teacher said he died of Ebola in what was the country… You cannot quite remember the country but you have suspicions it was Nigeria or Siberia.
“Otakhatakha shina musilo ewe?”
“It’s my stomach grandma, the worms speak in tongues”
“Husband, go back to sleep, tomorrow is a new dawn”
This is Africa, East Africa, Kenya, Western Kenya, Bungoma District. It is 1995 and you are four. The great hunger which since has a legendary remembrance, has engulfed the land. The winds are dry. Monkeys wail in the in Wambundo hills.

Today, 2015.Sasha nearly made you get late for your flight. She was sad you were leaving. She clung on you and kissed you for eternity before; with teary eyes made you promise you would visit her home in Detroit. These Americans and their sentimentalities! You check-in while pondering of your American girlfriend and her American ego.
They think they are the best in everything, you know
Most beautiful women, best musicians
Did you know they have even gone to the moon?
They have a black president in a sea of white men, liberalism
Imagine a black president who does not grab any land or execute the opposition leader!
Still you fancy the British more. The British-with their beautiful girls, their palatable lips, and gorgeous accent. The airplane is now in the clouds and an Indian airhostess serves you with hot Nescafe. You cannot stop looking at her round ass and a smile plays on your lips when you imagine your wife’s face when she sees what you had become.
It has been seven years. No letter, no mail. You would have whatsapped her but she did not have a phone when you left for that scholarship. Now you are a big man, your masters in International Law carefully tucked away in your velvet suitcase. You are going back home, you are going to quench the longing you have been having those seven damn years. You are going to see your wife.
An announcement, you are almost there. Nairobi is only two hours ahead. The neighbor next seat offers you rum and you gladly accept. It would help with your nerves. He is a German and you thank the gods you are not Jew.
Nairobi. Mmmh, the capital of Africa. Africa is rising boy, it is rising. The tall buildings do not awe you though. You are accustomed to the Tokyo’s, Shanghai, New York, London’s, and Paris of this planet. You do not waste any time; you board a matatu for home.
You are home at last, you thank the gods again. They made sure that some Arabic chanting psycho did not blow your brains off in the name of religion. Many people are coming out of your home. You do not understand. Some recognize you and say their pleasantries. Others just pass with their heads bowed. An old man comes to you.
“Sorry for the loss father”
Then you see them, standing stalwartly as if defying time and all the elements of life. The three graves. One is still fresh. Garlands of bougainvillea flowers spread on it, a wooden cross with inscriptions on it.

MARY NASTANJE
BORN: 12.01.1934
DIED: 12.03.2015
Only that? Rage boils in you. You feel cheated. No one mentioned that she was royalty. That her father, senior chief Ndombi was a King of Bunyala. Was that the epitaph? What about her thirteen children that maladies has crept away with?
Tears well up in your eyes but you suppress them. You will not cry, you are a man-stoic. Then you see Kiki beside the grave. She is gnawing at an old bone, the same born she was gnawing at on that night in 1995.She is sad; she is crying. You pick her up. You whisper in her ears.
C’mon, Kiki lets go to the house
The hearth is cold
My wife is gone,
The daughter of Ndombi has gone
Like a falcon she has perched
The daughter of the great wizard,
The great witch of Bunyala,
She is gone, to join her ancestors
Her thirteen children
It is a journey Kiki,
That you and I will have to walk
And follow her, Kiki
Follow the Duchess of Bunyala
The wife of a clan.

My hands shake

I hate my first name. I have always hated it. I preferred my tribal name, yet my English name stuck on me like a virus. Some enlightened geek told me that it was actually a French one but still it does not matter. The English colonized us; anything that is not African in us is Just English. There are exceptions though, the China made super highway winding its way through the city and the American spellings that Microsoft Word forces me to use when writing.
My first name always brings an avalanche of memories, memories that would rub off the smile tugging at the corners of my mouth. It would always remind me of my Primary school mathematics teacher. How he would hold a thirty-centimeter ruler in one hand, tap it loudly on his palm, walk down the corridor between the rows of benches in steady strides. He always stopped at our bench; it was the last in the back, and then boisterously shout.
“Back benchers…the class wheelbarrows. You is stupid, repeat again after what I had said!”
“We are stupiiiid!”
“Oliver why are you been the only one silent and I telled you to say you is stupid”
“I am not stupid, my Papa said so. He said my grammar is perfect, all I needed was a little more confidence, and I would beat Steven Misiati”
He would stop in his tracks and swallow hard. His eyes would dilate with rage that threatened to spout on my clean shirt. Bile would boil within him. An open challenge?
“Okay mr smarter, since you is the cleverest why don’t we play some a game. They calling it multiplication tables. I say it is the game of thrones…12 times 4?
I would stare at him blankly. Mathematics was not my plate of food. I would fidget on the bench and look around; at my bench-mates, as if the answer was plastered all over their faces.Blank.I was not the only one who always got thrown into oblivion by Mr. Mbau’s incarnations on Geometry or Algebra. In one fact, Steven seemed to be the only who effortlessly skimmed through those fractions.
“A hundred and twenty four”
My best guess. A smile would play on Mr.Mbau’s face ingratiatingly. You would think he was an angel that had fallen from the skies only that this angel had a ruler in his hands, which he swayed threateningly.
“124 my left foot! You can may see this genius of yours is stupid.He don’t knows any mathematics does he?”
Silence. Suspense hangs in the air like a West African killer virus.
“He thinks just because his father teaches at that secondary school and I in primary that now am a junior.Steven Misiati 12 times 4?”
“Forty-eight”
“Perfect. Now that is a real genius. You pretender genius you knows what I does to all stupid ones…hands on yours table!”
I had seen it coming. I would subserviently lay my hands on the table and wait for its landing.
Whack! Whack!
The ruler would land on my knuckles. My face contorted in pain. Then they would tremble-my hands.
I hated Oliver. He always reminded me of her. How she would splash water on my face before the third cock crowed. I had to leave my cotton blanket. The water was not going to fetch itself from the stream, would it? Her children had to be ready for school before seven, so I had to wake up. Leave that warm cotton blanket, riddled with old age, pungent smell, yet surviving. However, I loved her husband.
One day I came from school late. I had remained behind because Kitika had requested me to explain to him why Millie was a snake and not a girl as he had expected in that storybook. I piously tried to tell him that I had the same question when I was reading through the lines and I did not know why the writer did what he did. He was not convinced.
When I got to the house, she was waiting for me. She beat me good. I decided to run away, go, and go off far away. Then I realized I had nowhere to go, nowhere to run to. I slept on that steep hill in front of the main gate.Creakets wailed. Swallowed by darkness, alone. In the middle of the night, there were shouts. I could make out his voice, hoarse-manly. They were looking for me. Her eldest son, that same one who would throw hot water on me, found me cuddled on the kinky patch of grass on that steep hill.
“For Christ’s sake, warm the food for him”
I was seated on his cozy Sofa. Nobody else had ever sat on it; it was his, only his. But I here I was, seated. I looked at him; his mushy beards made him look like a Billy goat. He was reading a book. A songbook, war songs. She brought the food. He looks at me.
Look Pa, I can’t eat. It’s my hands, they shake.

Wambui,my love.

“What have you just said?”
“I have not seen my periods”
She repeated-this time louder. The smile that had been tugging at the corners of my mouth dried up.
My worst fears were confirmed. Beads of sweat formed on my face. My papa’s voice rung in my mind, as a dim echo at first, then a crescendo.
Be careful young man, they will come to you contorting their bodies in all sorts of provocative manners. Avoid them my son; avoid them like a plague.
With their short startling skirts,
Pointed lips painted with blood,
Their smooth voices, like honey
Will smother you.
The deep fragrance from their flesh
Hangs in the air like a vice
And on your chest like a virus.
Ignore them, boy
Their ear to ear grins, son
Ignore.

Papa’s foreboding had been confirmed in the most dramatic way. I could see him frown; his face muscles dwindle to form valleys on his face. He would continue chewing at his snuff nonchalantly, spit the charred remains on the ground, and then it would come to him-his smile.
“What will we do?”
We? Yes…us. I could not back out now. She had always been a good girl. I had met her at the dean’s office and well, there was just something about her, that aura-an undeniable charisma.
My father was at it again. This time he was seated on his three-legged Bamboo stool in his hut. Ma Turungi, his third wife was there too, blowing at the dying flickers of burning wood in the hearth. The smoke would choke her and she would cough persistently.
“Turingi, did your son tell you he will bring you a crying thing instead of the degree we sent him to get at the university?”
Ma Turingi would giggle like a shy adolescent girl. I would lower my head and close my eyes. Then I would see her-Wambui.She would be standing there askance, her hands on her waist, which I had always savored holding. Her breast would be erect against the blowing August winds. Her breasts, in all their womanly firmness were an object of admiration and jealousy from my friends. My friend Harry always made it known that he would give all his land in Kerinyaga just to hold them. To feel their firmness.
“So you have become dumb, huh?”
“I have been thinking”
“About me aborting?”
“I have reached a decision. We can’t do this Wambui, not anymore.”
Sobbing. She started slowly, her bosom heaving rhythmically with every sob. More violent. Her tears burst their banks and flowed in their twos on her pink top.
“C’mon Wambui we can’t continue doing this. We cannot just stand here watch you whimpering. We should be doing something, anything. We should be arguing over what name our child will have or go shopping for his clothes. We should…
She throws herself on me covering me in warm embrace. I hold her waist and our lips spontaneously meet. She continues to sob calmly on my chest. Our heartbeats produce a synchronized rhythm.

The graves are silent

Listen, did you hear that?
The frogs croak in the muddy stream,
The hollow winds whisper their vacuity to the dried bed of leaves
That lies in front of that mushy patch,
Did your ears capture the ominous howling of the owl?
In the coldness of the night
The crickets incessantly creak,
Indifferent to the dim rays of the moon
Yet in that mushy patch, it is silent,
The accursed lot is tight lipped
In the unholy soil, there is creepy silence,
It cuts the air into tangible fragments.
Meek, like castrated bulls they be,
Silently subservient to an imperial order,
A royal condemnation.

They watch on with apathy
As talks in the bustling city continue,
Talks;
Justice
Reconciliation and cohesion
Then they silently laugh, perhaps at their macabre
Perhaps at the tears of their beloved condemners
Their talk of love for all, no tribes, nay
In their permanent confines
Their exquisite six-inch deep mansions
They mourn silently,
They are silent.

A farmer weeds his Sukuma wiki,
Ummh! The ground is hard
Then he looks at his wife’s grave,
The winds are dry
The weeds choke his crop,
A peek again, the reeds clog the grave.
The farmer is mad
He hates; he hates them
The weeds and the reeds
The great leader in an Italian suit
And the murderous neighbor with bloodshot eyes,
He despises them, their cries
Forgiveness and justice,
No battles in courts,
No battles in real war, just peace
Yet their blood thirst left her wife in pieces,
Forgive and forget-it is an old adage.

Should I Still Go To Hell?

The wandering Nilote

Wandering Nilote

If you ask me now why I sent that message to her that night, I’ll have no answer for you. Instead, with teary eyes I’ll let you see into the abyss of my own confusion, into which I had relentlessly dug throughout my relationship with Hannah, and now I was in it. Deep down you’d see me seated at the base, limbs huddled and head sunk. I was finished.

Her father was former Boxing pro, and a cold menacing presence. He paced up and down, time and again stopping opposite me. Each time he did this my knees would wobble and thighs merged, lest I let out water from a jab that now seemed imminent. It never came, instead he would look up, stroke his beard and head in the direction his belly faced.

I was the only one seemingly rooted to one spot, Vincent had a problem settling at…

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The Capture of Dedan Kimathi Waciuri|The Untold Story

The Capture of Kenyan freedom fighter Field Marshall Dedan Kimathi Waciuri,whom the British colonialists had labelled a terrorist.He is celebrated as the father of freedom for it is his fight as a leader of the Mau Mau movement that played a pivotal role in the gaining of independence.

CREATIVE CONNEKT

On  22/10/1952 at around 6.30am Ndirangu Mau accompanied by another home guard, Njiru were on their way back to camp after patrolling the Aberdares forest the whole night.They saw a glimpse of something. A  man was attempting to cross a ditch carrying a bundle.They shouted at him to stop but he started running.Ndirangu fired and missed.He ran after him alone and fired again but missed as he disappeared into the woods.Ndirangu could hear the footsteps of his prey in the distance and followed hot on his heels and caught sight of him as he tried to jump over a ditch. He fired, and this time he caught him.
He heard his victim howl in agony. He raced after him cautiously as he wasn’t sure what condition he was in.
He was scared to death.He approached the ditch,his view obscured by bushes.His gun was,ready with his finger on the trigger.There was…

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song of the jealous woman

Young woman,
Don’t fall for my charming husband,
He is a womanizer,
Don’t fall for his ingratiating smile,
It is like ghee,
His smile is like ghee, it melts
When dawn strikes,
And the rays of the lactating sun
Penetrate the dark panes of that lodging.
Young woman I warn you,
Don’t fall for me husband, I say.

College girl
Do not be bewitched by my husband’s words,
He is a poet,
His are sharpened rhymes.
Be fooled not by his venomous spittle of promises,
It is his art,
Words on my husband’s tongue
Is butter on bread.
He is not good, college boys are better,
Do not fall for his humor; he will get you laughing
As he laughs his way to the lodging

Married woman, stare less at my husband’s Benz
It is mine.
Your saliva trickles, as his loins tickle
You want him,
His Italian suit
His genuine leather shoes
An ominous craving you have
Don’t you have a man at home?
Don’t you, don’t you?
Listen,
Listen you daughter of the goat shepherd,
Listen, Pastor’s wife
My husband’s mine,
His spontaneous smile, mine
The leather shoes and Italian suit
Listen, you pickpockets girlfriend,
He is my man and I,
His woman.

The man and the banjo

Bullets ricochet deep in the forest. A frail man seated on a goatskin in a dimly lit hut plays a banjo. A smile spontaneously lingers on his lips as his weathered fingers engage the strings in a harmonious duel.

“What has it been? Weeks, a month or two?”

Two damn months! I have counted all the Sundays the master has crawled to church.

“He could do something, couldn’t he?

Who, the master? Hell no! His bones fail him. What of his trembling freckled palms? Remember he did not paint his hair grey himself, that’s why they left him out in the first place.

“What about the Imperial government?” They are waiting for reinforcements. They will take their time. After all, they were all men. The man is consumed by the lulling rhythm of the banjo that he does not notice the girl. His senses deeply engrossed with his fingers and the glossy strings. He savored the moment with his eyes tightly shut in ecstasy. The gunshots, the smell of raw blood, the gunpowder that had constipated the air and the girl ceased to exist to him. The girl was there, she existed. Pa, I cannot sleep. I see things. I see Jonah’s boots.