When the dust of circumcision ceremonies have settled, when drunken screams have subsided in the air, when jingles and music ringing in my head have faded, it was to be a two weeks of sanity, flashbacks and hard realities. This period was at times tempestuous, sometimes hard but always with a punctuation of childhood fun.
My dad had just resigned from his masonry work with Haraka V.P Building Group. Adjusting to life with a stranger who happens to be your dad with no love lost between the two of you is not an easy thing. It was both hard and painful. Though I had my loving mom to fall to, it was not in the way of protection as it was of emotional support.
Apart from a stool that had a veneer of Formica, that we named it the ‘looking stool’ , his retirement package also included so many theological books, I was too young to comprehend some of them though. Not that he was religious and not that he was non-religious, he was simply non-committal in this area. History had it he was once a baptized protestant. I neither found any evidence of this fact in practice nor in residual effect on his behavior.
The books he brought home were of the Roman Catholic Church. His group I suspect was sponsored by the Catholic Church going by the number of Catholic Churches and schools he built, as shown from his photographs. My dad loved photographs; he had a lot of them. I saw him built Ndanai Catholic Church where I attended church at times, Kaplong Catholic Church, Abosi Catholic Church and Kipchimchim Secondary School amongst so many others I have forgotten now. From his collection I read a book on St Joan of Arc, Namugongo Martyrs (all I remember of these guys was their second names that all started with ‘sse..’) and a fellow who commanded rats out of a church. I also read of a priest who stood against a military dictatorship in some country called Al Salvador and paid with his life. I remember reading some communications from Pope Paul John II called Episcopal or ecumenical or Eucharist or other, I can’t figure out exactly what it was but most definitely it had one of the three words above. One particularly phrase I picked was, “peace is a value without frontiers.” This phrase is etched in my mind to date.
I was a voracious reader even then. I read the bible that was home every evening as we waited for our supper, not out of any religious conviction but for literary purposes that was more dictated by availability rather than choice. How I didn’t turn out to be a Christian is another irony of my life.
So, I am here trying to fit into a shrinking world made so by someone who was finding the space too small for himself too, filial relationship notwithstanding.
This friction was not manifested more than when I had to work with him. I am not sure whether I was lazy, but I doubt whether I was though my dad seldom missed a derogatory moniker to call me to suggest I was dull, lazy and sheepish. I cried at times, at times I soothed myself to accept the sad predicament as a part of my life. Very hard for a boy of around ten at the time. You could hardly say I was rude, I was obedient if anything. I was neither loud nor naughty. My temperament was always dictated by the environment: loud amongst my mates, free with my mom and subdued with my dad.
I am not sure whether mom was forced to love me more to cover for the rejection from my dad or my dad hated me for being more loved by mom. The jury is still out on this little conundrum. Even now, with the benefit of hindsight and matured cognitive abilities, it is not easy trying to unravel the mystery behind this relationship for emotions always play mischief with my endeavor. It is a teary affair .How affected my life then is obvious, how much was carried forward from that to my present life is a psychodynamic assignment. Though, I dare say, Africans are rather good in absorbing psychological shocks than many other races. I lack empirical justification on this but if our characters were to reflect the hungers, violence, wars, abuses and traumas that many an African childhood entails, we would be a continent of zombies. But we are not.
Back to December holidays.
If there is something I hated in my childhood most was waking up early in the morning to plough with oxen. This was the flip side of December holidays. Immediately after the circumcision ceremonies were over, when the boy initiates were hidden in the bush (menjo) and the girls were hidden out of view in I don’t know where, as if to ensure that all the fun I had had were wiped out of my system, it was that time again we woke up at 4 a.m. to plough with oxen. Yes 4 a.m. or even earlier!
You have hardly had a wink before a knock on the door comes, “Kiprotich, Alois, Hillary wake up now.” That was dad and the asperity in the voice meant we woke up immediately. Ouch! I had just slept and now have to wake up again, oh God! I cursed incessantly in my mind as I woke up in the darkness and groped for my clothes. Another knock and the next will be a harangue. I am dressed now and we step out. It is very cold. Oh! How I wish I had no dad! I pee and step on the dewy grass, the cold night air rushed into my body through my shorts, my small balls harden and disappear into my belly. No child should be in the cold at that time, not even those who are still but sperm in existence. Damn! It is fiendishly cold.
My brother and Hillary the cowboy went collecting yokes and a plough from the barn and arrange them. I went collecting the four wild oxen in the cattle enclosure. The grass is long and the dew reaches to my knees, almost getting to my Rotik Primary School blue shorts. I shudder. A thorn pierces me in the sole of my bare feet; Waaa! I give out aloud cry and jump on one foot, holding the hurt foot with both hands. It is dark so I search for the culprit with my right hand while my left holds the foot up. The position is precarious and I got to remove it before the pain subsides. If it’s disappeared in the frozen hard crust of my sole, I postpone the removing till when the sun would be up for better view.
I wake up the first ox Bois; it wakes up and pees too. I chase him and lie on the spot where it had slept. Wow! It is warm. Wish I could lie here till morning. The stars are twinkling in the sky, enjoying their night out while I am sad to be out that early. The frogs are quiet, even crickets have suspended their orchestra. No wonder our cat is not hunting for beetles in the enclosure, the world is and should be asleep. With this kind of ruminations, five minutes elapsed in a flash; I reluctantly lifted myself up and went on collecting the other three oxen: Sambu, Meles and Tumbo.
Fastening the oxen with the yokes was such a tough assignment. Bois ran all over the farm with me in hot pursuit till I caught up with him. I held it by the horns and made to drag it all the way but it tossed me into the air. I fell and picked myself up before I could absorb all the dew in the grass but it was too late. I was all wet. The circumstances called for crying but one condition was missing, a caring ear. I went for Bois’ horns with such vengeance it read my moods and followed me all the way till I lifted the heavy yoke and fastened it.
A kick from Tumbo was in order. Meles defecating on you was also part of the bargain. Now, we are ready to go ploughing. By then, dad was finished smoking his long cigar and stuffing his nose with snuff. We walked along the road before we branched to the farm. All the while, I am lifting the plough to spare its blade from the stones. I often lost a toe myself in the process.
In the farm, the oxen would want to graze in the long grass and maize stalks from the last season but we would not let them. I am carrying a sjambok, my brother Alois carries one too. Hillary carries a machete, to cut the Mauritius thorns overarching to the farm and to wipe the plough’s blade after every round. My dad is holding the plough firmly on the ground.
We whip the oxen, twende! (move!). They move erratically at first but we whip them to a straight line. I am at the left flank with Hillary, Alois is on the right. We shout twende Bois! We yell and sing any song. Baringo (go straight). Mostly we sang the songs we had just heard in the circumcision ceremonies. Dad just held his plough, occasionally singing his own incomprehensible songs, at times reprimanding us for letting the oxen stray from the line, at times throwing a clod of soil at me insulting that I was a slow boy.
In the edge on the farm, we would turn the oxen, not easy given they are mounted on two yokes. The word for turn was kom! Kom! This is one place we received the loudest vitriol from dad. At times Bois could sever the leather strap, break loose and run. Chasing ensues all round the farm.
Ploughing with oxen was such an ordeal. The beatings from dad was hard for me, the dew, hurting clods, cold and thorns were hard on all of us. Add the gores and kicks from the oxen and you have a perfect nightmare.
By the time the sun was up, we would have sung all the songs we knew and ploughed a sizeable field and I might have cried once or twice. Tea and left-over ugali would be brought. What a relief when I saw mom appear in a corner with a kettle and my kisiet (a container for serving ugali that is made of dry tendril fiber) of ugali. We whistled and said anoo! (Stop!) in unison for tea break. ( The language of ploughing with oxen like anoo and kom are neither our mother tongue Kipsigis, Swahili , English nor any language that I know of, we found it said and left it being said. Their etymology is still an enigma for me)
What a much needed break. Holding ugali in my left hand and a hot cup of tea in my right, we stood eating and sipping for the ground was wet and soggy. My dad alone sat on the plough, first pushing some snuff into his nose before embarking on his tea. The tea was hot but my whole body was numb with cold so I drank the first cup in three to five minutes. Dad drank his tea without ugali, left-over ugali was associated with kids.
We would plough and plough with the same incidents happening though I could not predict which was to follow which: a clod on my head from dad, an insult or a kick from Sambu. The only respite with dawn was you could see where you were stepping thereby reducing the piercing to your feet and the cold was gone.
At 8.30, we would release our oxen, with such relief. At the back of my mind lingered the reality that the following day was not so far away to repeat the same humdrum. We would go home for more tea and ugali. Physically tired and psychologically battered. The only day to look forward to was Sunday, a rest day, not out of religious observance but to rest the oxen.
We would leave next for the grazing fields. Now that it is a holiday, I am in charge of goats. I rounded up our goats and drove off to the forest by Kap Mwamba dam. There I will meet with my friends Wilson, Kiprono, Kipkoech and Wesley, along with their goats. The goats mated, and some spent the first minutes fighting each other. We would watch both spectacles before pushing them deep into the forest to allow us engage in our own games.
We decided what activities to engage in by consensus without any prior arrangement. Today we start with fishing. The tilapia fish in the large Kap Mwamba dam were rather small but it was fun catching them with baited hooks. First we would go hunting grasshoppers for baits in the grass, keep them in match boxes still kicking and embark on a fishing expedition. The fish were quite sly but we were clever from years of experience. You watched a floater till it moved deep then you lift the line out with such force a fish might have wondered what animosity you had with their clan. The unlucky fish is not only denied a meal but was made our next meal. That was the relationship we had with them. We pushed a reed through their mouths out of the gills and placed them in water, captive but alive. In case we missed the appetite to eat them, we returned them to the water. You see, we were not that callous.
We swam too. At times we took our goats to the forest near Kap Elibut so we could compete with boys from Kapswejit village in swimming. I was not good at it but Kiprono and Wesily ably represented me. I am never athletic, never was. Just a clumsy brat. Kap Elibut dam was also teeming with large catfish. If the tilapia of Kap Mwamba were clever, the catfish of Kap Elibut were wise. Those animals could never be hoodwinked by baits, they simply never touched it. An hour could go, you staring unblinkingly on the floater all the while, before it could move but just slightly. Another hour goes, and then the floater sinks so fast, only for you to swing out a large frog! What the fuck! That frog will be smashed on a nearby tree into minced meat. Shit! To wait for two hours only for a frog to turn up! One or two catches would be made in a day, definitely not by me; I was too impatient for such ventures. Those fishes were black and ugly and would not die till fried in the pan. Damn! Those black ‘bearded’ fish even made my mom ban us from using her pans to cook ‘reptiles’ again.
We sometimes played ndoto- village chess which instead of pawns we used pebbles and we dug holes on the ground instead of a board. It was an interesting game however I was hardly a champion unless when I employed some skullduggery of which I was good at. I heard guys who are good in math are good at it, but then I was good in math the other way round. At times we played draughts, times we played cards.
My favorite was a form of gambling called kikonga- involved taking turns aiming coins at a small hole dug at a distance. To participate, you contribute a coin. You win the coin that goes in but your last coin should not go in otherwise you lose everything. The higher the denominations of the coins, the further the hole aimed. It was earning and losing with fun just like in real casinos of Macau and Las Vegas. I was so good in this game I was sometimes excluded so that others may win too. I wonder how I can fair with Russian roulettes given this history.
If kikonga was such a winning situation, then hunting dik-diks was a complete anti-thesis. Our hunting CV boasts of so many birds killed, a few hares and absolutely zero dik-diks. For those who don’t know what a dik-dik is, my own village definition is: one of the fastest animal after a plane. Dik-diks are so fast, I imagine even a pregnant one.
We would chase one from the plains of Kap Elibut at 9 a.m. with our dog Kali and Jim, all the way through the swamp of Arap Buret to Kiptenden hills, 5 kilometers away. Our dogs would lose track of it only to trace it again by way of scent and we would chase it again three times round that hill till it decided to take a straight line to Kahawa hills in the land of Kisii , another 4 kilometers, with us following it, at least 3 kilometers behind it. By the time we got there, it would have rested enough for our dogs would have lost track of it again. It would be 3 p.m. then. We would call our dogs, shouting Jim! Kali! Jim! Kali!...till we could trace them. Next would be to use them to retrace the damned dik-dik again, catch up with it (sometimes we rouse a new one and that would be a different story altogether) and chase it again all the way to Koiyet another 5 kilometer away.
Our dogs would leave us behind and we would follow asking people whether they have seen two dogs and a dik-dik. They would tell us they have seen it and that some four boys were actually chasing it! Oh God, so even if it is caught some other boys would steal our game. We prayed that somehow our dogs would catch it only when we got there. Our prayers were never answered to our favor, only to the dik-dik’s favor which I think never prayed at all.
Darkness is fast falling, no dik-dik, and we are staring at 10 kilometers of bush land to our home, now a silhouette in the dusk, far away in Rotik Hills. I am thirsty, tired, bruised, disappointed and hungry. At the same time wishing that those were the only problems I had. For it will be 9 PM when I get home, my goats would have eaten all the kales and beans in the garden and gone home or worse still got lost in the forest. Rain is fast approaching. I am ruined, woi jeiso ee! (Oh my Jesus!)
The party of three boys and two dogs would set for home in quiet, each weighing the consequences of abandoning goats to chase their wild cousin all over the Division. How I wish I could be a phantom and fly!
The inevitable would have happened. Mom would have waited for me to pick milk to hawk at Ndanai Market to no avail. She would have called me in vain. Next, she would expect me to get home with the goats but the goats just got home unattended, their stomachs bulging with an overdose of her cabbages.
I pushed the door to our house gently at 8 pm to a startled silence from those who are seated round the hearth. I am nervous and scared. My dad is out drinking. No questions asked but that does not mean I am off the hook. My mom continues her cooking, casting some murderous eyes on me; I know I am in trouble.
The time between when she lifted her pan from the fire and the time the first slap would landed on me cannot be measured in seconds or milliseconds, it just happened in a flash. The next minute I would be entreating her amid cries motibiron we Paulina (please don’t beat me Paulina). Obviously those pleas landed on very deaf ears. The beatings were not the worst part of it, her tirade made me so guilty.
She told me how she struggles to feed us and how nobody in the extended family loved our family yet we make her beat us instead of containing the suffering that poverty and despise gave us. She would let go of me cursing shenzi (idiot). Guilt would send me to bed on an empty stomach, sniffing and remorseful. I loved mom and hated making her angry with me. I vowed to myself never to shirk my duties again. To date, I am yet to see a dead dik-dik yet it took all my childhood trying to catch one. I will inquire in the museum next time.
On other days when I was not silly enough to go chasing the elusive dik-diks, we would come home by 2 p.m., lock the goats in the barn and leave for Ndanai to hawk raw milk. Along the way, Paul Kibet, my cousin and a very dear friend (now deceased) would be waiting for me. We would then move from one restaurant to the next asking, ‘iyole chego?’ “ are you buying milk?” some would say no, some would say yes others would say nothing and we just construed the silence for a no. sometimes it was raining and the tea in the restaurants would make us drool. The buns on display were so appetizing but then we dint have money to buy them. My mom would have told me what to buy with the milk proceeds: tea leaves or sugar or match boxes or a pen or an exercise book or cooking fat or paraffin…what to be bought was endless compared with the pennies we made.
Paul Kibet was more ‘creative’ than me maybe because his home was not far from the market center. As we walked on the road on Fridays- a market day- he would tell me we walk on the curb on either sides of the road, in case someone might have dropped a coin. We sometimes collected a coin or two out of his wacky strategy. We would buy sweets with it. Whenever we were sure to sell our milk at a restaurant, which were not so keen on quality, we would pass by Ndanai spring and add a cup or two of water for an extra shilling or two.
On market days again, Kibet would again instruct me we wait till everybody has left the market then we would go round looking for dropped coins. We often collected a shilling or two or even more. We would buy tea and buns. My mom couldn’t stand me with any money unless what she gave me. She would say it was stolen money. A slap or two would meet your cheek till you confessed where the money came from. So, I was careful to either spend all the money or hide it from her.
There was a tractor that belonged to Arap Rob, our close neighbor. It was one of the biggest around. On Fridays, when we collected some money from the market, we would drink tea and eat buns as we waited to board the tractor home. Sometimes we would wait till 9 p.m. before it started the journey home. It was such a rare adventure to ride anything motorized, much more over a long distance. Although Kibet’s home was not far from the market, we would both board the tractor that took us all the way to Arap Rob, next to my home, and he would walk alone the 2 kilometers back to his home in the dark. All in the name of a ride! We loved especially when the tractor was at high speed and we are being shoved up and down in the trailer with sparks popping out of its long exhaust.
My mom never liked the idea of me arriving home late in the name of a tractor ride and a stern warning marked the end of it.
What we didn’t stop though was the idea of popping into bars on weekends in the pretext of hawking milk yet in the real sense we just wanted to catch a glimpse of drunkards dancing suggestively with barmaids. We would collect bottle tops to play draughts at home in the sideline of that risqué mission.
The two weeks have passed and we are up to some new adventures but wait till Monday, tomorrow.
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