My mom enrolled for Adult Education classes in the 80s, I can’t remember when exactly but I remember seeing her exercise books loitering in the house. She was not an enthusiastic learner and she dropped after awhile, only to rejoin again then drop. I tried assisting her in her homework but she could hear none of it. She laughed off the idea of her son teaching her how to read and write. I encouraged her to continue but she told she had had enough. Oh mom! She told me she would educate us so we read for her signposts when visiting far off places and prescriptions on drugs, which all along she had mustered them well: one times three, one teaspoonful and so forth.
Her teacher was one Mr. Tabon, popularly known as ‘Women Teacher’. Most of the learners who attended Adult Education classes were women, in fact all. Not that all men were literate, no. Their pride did not give them any space and their drinking did not give them time. When we came home for lunch and took care of the herding and babysitting, our mothers went to school to be taught by the ‘Women Teacher’. Our dads were out drinking or chatting in the shopping center. The success of that program is nothing big but I don’t wonna begrudge it some credit; Veronica could write her name while Priscilla could read the time in her wrist watch. My mom and aunt Raeli count themselves as having sat in a four walled classroom. That is all there is to it.
I know some people have never encountered an illiterate person all their lives. They are not complete dunces, no; they know a lot of stuff. Some can speak another language or two. Take grandma for example, she is proficient in four languages. My mom can count all her money and calculate change; in fact she has dabbled in business on many occasions.
I cannot vouch on the qualifications of their teacher but he could speak and write English, having met him in later years. The fact that he also enjoyed a fulltime employment as the ruling party KANU divisional officer , where he also mend shoes, umbrellas as well as other odd repairs, I tend to think he was very qualified for the job of teaching my mom and her ilk.
You might be wondering what is big about being an employee of a third world country political party at such a low level as to vouch for somebody’s level of professional competence. My friend, the party then, single monolithic repressive machinery, was no joke. It was the government, the state, the presidency, god and the police all rolled into one. Questioning the party was questioning the government, which was questioning the state, which was questioning the president who was GOD. Treason and heresy charges were preferred against you by the party local officials who were the police and the judge and the hangmen and cherubs at the same time. Arrest, sentencing and meting out justice was just but one item in their job description.
So you at least have a sneak preview of the profile of my mom’s very able teacher. Let me describe him in greater detail just in case you are still in doubt. When 6 p.m. caught us in Ndanai market, I used to see my mom’s teacher blow his whistle, which meant we stand at attention, hats off men, headscarves off the womenfolk, shops stop selling, hotels stop serving tea, babies made to stop crying, all forms of life to stand still, so that the KANU party flag is lowered. The black, red, white and green flag was lowered gently like a monarch’s coffin to his shoulders, folded nicely, its rope tied meticulously to the flag post, then my mom’s teacher limped to the office, lock the flag, struck a match, fish out one cigarette from his shirt pocket, smoke a puff or two then walk out of the office, look around to see who was not at attention then blew the whistle to let us resume our lives again. The whole ceremony took 15 minutes. The whistle to lower the flag in the District Officer’s office came shortly, another 15 minutes of suspended living again.
The party office served also as a place for selling party membership stamps. Every individual of majority age walked with a party membership card- ‘KANU Life Membership Card’ red in color, with a motto of ‘Peace, Love and Unity’. Much love indeed. The annual renewal cost twenty shillings, the price of a whole chicken then. Dare to default and the party ‘Youth Wing’, our version of apartheid police, would sell your cow to recover the money. My mom had that card, tucked somewhere in an old bag which she kept her eggs, ID and our clinic records. She retrieved it whenever she was going on a journey.
The party ‘Youth Wing’, a criminal gang if you ask me, went round enforcing this rule. They took one of our chickens once because mom’s membership card was soiled with broken eggs. So they had to punish the chicken involved by taking it to be slaughtered so that mom’s card had less chances of getting soiled again. They made away with our chicken, my mom was away. She was so furious but I dint know who it was in particular, just saw some red shirted buffoons whom I gave them my mom’s card to check.
Those dogs were a law unto themselves. They had rights to enter your house, ostensibly to search for illicit brews, while in the real sense, stealing your food. Illicit brewers paid them taxes, or else they were out of business. These people were loathed and dreaded in equal measure, even the police feared them, for in hierarchy, the party was higher than the state.
I don’t know what work those guys could not do. For at times, they went around rounding up people’s cows, to be sold for building schools and health centers, even in far off places that neither me nor mom have ever heard of. They took some chickens too, as payment for having saved us the trouble of having to sell a cow on our own. Whenever they were resting, they disguised themselves and embarked on furtively collecting intelligence on potential dissidents or go nabbing those who dared mention the president’s name, Daniel Toroitich arap Moi. You never mentioned the ‘hallowed’ name of the president and wake up in your bed the following day. You woke up elsewhere, in some jail or a grave.
I remember one day when these odious guys were humiliated though. On hindsight, I now know it was 1984, when one of the worst famines hit Kenya. Not that the famine ravaged our neighborhood, no. In fact I didn’t know what famine was. My mom used to tell us that famine was coming and I couldn’t figure out what it was. I thought it was a type of animal or something of the sort. I used to ask mom how famine would catch us if we hid in the house and block the window. She used to insist it would get us still. I sat every evening dreading that animal called ‘famine’. I imagined it would come through the window, I insisted we close that small window facing our bedroom early but mom refused. I used to dream of ‘famine’ mauling me to pieces in my asleep.
We were hunting birds in our farm as we looked after goats, singing along the pigeons in the afternoon sun. We loved hunting pigeons; they were so many there, since it was close to the maize mill. They scavenged for maize and millets in the mill when there was nobody, perched and nested in that part of our farm when full or waiting for an opportunity to feed to present itself. Pigeons are tough to hunt, we tried killing them sometimes and some other times we resigned to sing their tune, literally. Pigeons have various tunes, maybe depending on their moods or whatever they do when boys are not after their lives. Sometimes they sang in pairs of two facing each other with their feathers raised: Guu-guguuu, Guu-guguuu … dunno whether it was a mating song or what. Sometimes when one pigeon was all alone, it sang; Gukuruuu Gukuruuu, again, I don’t know what it symbolized. Then, when they were so many and happy, they sang what we corrupted into our mother tongue thus:
Gukuu kikwo kwondo Gukuu your wife is gone
Gukuu kiwo ano Gukuu where is she gone to
Gukuu kiwo maasai Gukuu she went to Maasai land
Gukuu kisor nee Gukuu to look for what
Kikwo kisor beek Gukuu she went for millet
Gukuuu Gukuu
They sang and we sang along for hunting them was futile, we had tried so many tricks in vain. I was not yet joined school then so all my world revolved around bird literature, goats and cows.
We were still singing with the pigeons, now atop the trees to look like them and throwing the choicest of leaves that we knew the goats loved when we heard a commotion in the mill. Women were squabbling and pushing each other with the ‘youth wing’. The squabbles and pushing continued before the women, led by my auntie threw tins for measuring maize at the overwhelmed ‘youth wing’ and chased them across the road. The three guys tried to fight back but the women were unrelenting, they were many and chased the men in a manner I have never seen before. Their arms were raised and some had picked stones. It was such an unprecedented melodrama
What’s the matter now?
When the three men were at a safe distance, the women resorted to scorn, threatening them that they would strip naked if they dared come close again.
“You manner less louts, come lick my cunt if what you licked coming out at birth did not satisfy you!”
“If I strip naked before your eyes, your little prickle between your legs will never have the appetite to touch a woman again, it will wither away like the young shoot of a diseased bean, can I do it and give you the cunt of your mom’s age mate you try?”
“We have borne you fresh young girls, what business have you chasing their old mothers? You love the wrinkles in my face? Can I show you a bigger wrinkle in the junction between my legs? Is that what you want?”
“Send your wife to come for the maize but if she has henpecked you such that you cook for her, spoon feed her and licks her feces; then in that case you are no longer a man. It is right for your ‘husband’ to remain at home as you ‘wife’ come fighting with your kind for the maize. Please come.”
I didn’t know what the matter was. Having kept the contemptuous ‘youth wing’ at bay by sheer grit and rare pluck, the women sat down and shared what looked like maize, save for the color. From the tree where we were, we just sat quiet not knowing what to make of all the vitriol that spewed from the women’s mouth. Of more interest was to know what had sparked the altercation.
When all was quiet, I noticed our goats had disappeared. We came down the tree with speed and started searching for them. Going round the bush twice, I noticed all the goats bended down in the adjoining bush, enjoying a feast of some yellow maize. What a mysterious find that was. I thought of the ogre stories and thought it belonged to the ogres of the night. There were so many sacks, lying hidden in the bush that our goats found out. Realization hit me what the women were fighting for with the men and why the pigeons were happy that day.
I drove off the goats with a struggle and ran to the maize mill to report the find to mom. She was overjoyed; it happened that the maize was free from the government as famine relief. The heartless ‘youth wing’ had stolen some of the maize and hid them in our farm and tried cheating the women that all there was was the three sacks they took to the mill. They even had the audacity to want to share it out for the women, and some for themselves.
The women were so happy they thanked me and came for the maize, shared amongst themselves and left but not without leaving me a whole sack, for being a good boy unlike the stupid ‘youth wing’.
At home in the evening mom told us the whole story surrounding the yellow maize. Even though the women were fighting for it, it was more of asserting their rights than out of want. Most homes had enough white maize to last them till the following harvest but they were pained that the ‘youth wing’ were impersonating them, taking all the maize and dismissing them as illiterate women who wouldn’t know a thing.
In spite of the spirited fight, they didn’t eat the maize, myth had it they were unfit for human consumption! One, it had a strange smell, two, even dogs refused to eat ugali made from it and three, it was said to be horse feed! No wonder our goats discovered where it was hidden, it belonged to animals.
Instead, the yellow maize, baptized sibinzi, was used for brewing local hooch. Every home invited neighbors for free hooch all year round. The womenfolk had more to celebrate for having revolted against the rabid ‘youth wing’! They drunk and toasted loudly their collective victory. Again to repeat it again some years later.
I was old enough to be in school, think it was 1988, queue voting system was at its peak, and so was the men’s dominance against women. Apart from the singing in the field, I had very little knowledge that it was an election day. We were in school and voting was to take place in our field. Men and women arrived in droves, gay and loud. They were singing, carrying aloft the posters of the candidates they were supporting. It was so much fun classes were suspended so we could watch the dance competition between the various opposing camps.
Somebody, guess the returning officer called for order, and made all the people sit on the field. Some talking followed, then three men with big posters, left the seated crowd for the far side of the field, some meters apart from each other, holding the big posters high and jumping, shouting their candidates' names and nicknames.
When the returning officer gave a signal, the men ran jumping, clubs and walking sticks raised in the air and queued behind the poster of their favorite candidate, jumping and shouting the names of the candidate whose poster they were queuing behind. The women followed behind.
There were two candidates with almost the same number of people, the men in each camp continued jumping and the women sang, taunting the women in the opposing camp. When the returning officer called for order, one man noticed his wife was in the opposing camp and ran to pull her off the other line to his side. The woman was adamant and resisted, the man struggled, the woman refused to move. There was a scuffle, the women joined in to pull the woman to their side. A man from the other side, an agent of that candidate joined to help the old man pull his wife, more men joined in. The scuffle continued. Insults was traded between the two camps, one man joined and pulled off the woman so violently her dress was torn off. A woman gave her a shawl.
Something unforeseen happened. All the women in the field that day, by a tacit consensus defected to the camp of the woman whose dress was torn off by the violent man. Husbands tried in vain to pull their wives back to their candidate but they refused, not even replying. The men threatened them with expulsion from their homes, they were unmoved. There was defiance in the eyes of the women that day; there came fear to the eyes of the men that day. Quiet returned. The returning officer counted the votes and the women’s candidate won, I don’t know who it was, my mom told me their candidate won, by one hundred votes in the whole constituency. I was so happy for mom and all of the womenfolk.
My mom told me that a woman was to run in the next election and they would vote for her!
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