December of 1990 derived me of my elder brother. Not through death but to an alienating rite of passage: initiation to adulthood. Our twins were grown and healthy, my mom still fussing about them. I was grown too so the duty of babysitting the twins fell to Leonard and Chebet whom they divided the twins amongst themselves, Cheta for Chebet and Cheto for leonard. So apart from herding and tilling and other home chores, I was free from babysitting.
Alois’ circumcision ceremony was merry and good, as befit a first born son. We had a newer and bigger house, especially built to receive the circumcision festivities visitors. Mud and grass thatched still with the jinx of two windows following us. That house was so big, second only to Bosco’s house. My dad built it with the help of a hired hand; mom smeared it, with the help of the women folk. Think it had a radius of twenty meters. Yes, twenty. In fact, the hurricane lamp that was carried forward from the ‘house in the middle of a maize farm’ was not sufficient to light it, so some parts of it were always very dark.
Visitors came from far and wide, relations and family friends and everybody else with any connection imaginable. They had enough to eat and drink though. It was such a large party, even my paternal grandfather, who was very old and rarely left his house (of his youngest wife, six in total, my grandma being fourth), attended the ceremony.
When the celebration was over, my dad decided that I go with some uncle to Trans Mara, for a visit, to break the boredom of having to live without my elder brother. I was beside myself with joy to explore that distant district, in fact more remote than our own. It was not very prestigious to my mates to visit that particular part of the country but I wanted it for the adventure and stories to tell when schools open.
So we set off after lunch for the greatest trek of my life. I was dressed in my school uniform, complete with the blue sweater. As to a second pair to change, I had the benefit of Alois’ school clothes since he didn’t need them in the menjo. And a man would not wear his boyhood clothes anyway.
The footing party comprised of Uncle David, his wife Evalyne, a boy they had come with called Kipng’etich, and a little baby strapped to Evaline’s back called Chepng’eno. It was because of this Kipng’etich boy that the idea of accompanying them arose from in the first place, I had taken an immediate liking for him and it was thought best to replace my missing brother for the time being.
From our place, we followed the road to Kaplomboi, Gorgor unto the mighty Abosi hills. All these places were all familiar to me because mom had taken me to St. Anthony Health Center in Abosi hills when I had been bitten by a wild dog some years back. So there was little excitement except the sight of Abosi Catholic church: tall and magnificent with shining glass murals. I was told my dad, a mason by profession, had helped built it, that small connection too added to the beauty.
We trudged on past Abosi Primary School and descended gradually to Olchobose Bridge, another attraction to my little self. It was such a uniquely built bridge, arched, quite unlike the one near Ndanai Secondary School, back home. I didn’t see any water passing down it, which lessened my anxiety, not used to crossing bridges by foot.
The world changed suddenly after the bridge, it was late in the evening, far in the horizon ahead, the sun was low in some clean shaved hills, devout of stones, houses and vegetations, with red footpaths dotting its slopes. I was told they were called Chemamul and Cheplakwet hills. I imagined a herd of gazelles grazing in them and all one had to do when hungry was go with a machete , cut one on its legs and drag it home downhill for supper.
I hoped we were to go towards those hills but it was not to be, we continued along the road for some time, when the sun was lost in the horizon, turning the surrounding clouds orange in color, I missed home there and then. It reminded me what we used to do at home when it happened like that: jumping up the sky and mock drawing the orange juice in the clouds and drinking with our hands. It reminded me of the swings we made in the edge of the bushes by cutting some loose hanging flexible. We would swing, kick the sky and let go the swing, and down to a dangerous fall.
Those thoughts were occupying my mind when suddenly we diverted left from the graveled road to a footpath. The path led us to Kapkoros Primary School, a miserable school compared to our own. Though new, it looked hastily built with poor quality timber and its compound was not fenced unlike ours. They didn’t have latrines; I was told they relieved themselves in the bushes nearby. What a bad state of affairs! Their upper classes were not made of bricks like ours and their assembly lines were circular unlike our which were semi-circular. No flowers, no cypress trees and zero avocado trees. I could not imagine studying in such a school.
Another strange thing hit me as we walked that land, the lack of fences. Their farms were not demarcated, even farmlands were just open. I pity the herds-boys of this place; their cows must be giving them a rough time. I was in some new place for sure. We went past Binbiniet Primary school, looking dreary like the other school we had passed and unto Kamermeru Primary School, with the same sad story in terms of infrastructure.
We walked along footpaths and paths and dirt roads till we got to my uncle’s house in Lakwenyi village at night. A mud and grass-thatched house without a compound and a garden unlike our home, was to be my new home for two weeks. All houses in that place, I came to notice later, were all the same. I was told the settlement was temporary given the land they occupied was disputed between the Maasais and the Kipsigis tribes.
I was very tired and I must have slept like a rock. I woke up the following day thinking I was home. We had tea as usual and we left for the grazing fields with my new mate Kipng’etich. I was shocked that boys went about with bows, arrows, clubs and swords hanging on their belts as they herd. It was not so at home. Herding back at home was play time, theirs was war time.
Older men had spears while men were armed to the teeth, dressed in red sheets. What a country! I was immediately out of place. I was told, the community was continually at war with the Maasais striking anytime to raid their cattle. That explained why the boys’ toys were arms rather than playthings.
Cows were held in communal kraals not individual enclosures like at home for better security at night. All the boys met at 8 a.m. and jointly grazed the cattle in the vast swathes of land without any restriction as to private land. I used to read about nomadic life in school, and never knew I was to be part of them someday.
Kipng’etich showed me the school he attended, Takitech Primary School, a timber and iron sheets school. I was impressed with one thing though: their staff room was storied. Wow! That was something. All the other things about it were the mess I was getting used to in that part of the country.
The boys in the grazing fields took an immediate liking of me. I told them stories of our place and how different we were from them. They marveled a lot especially about how big our market center was and our brick and mortar school and how peaceful we were with our neighbors, the Kissiis. I told them about our graveled roads, our cattle dip and the cars that passed our road. They were fascinated with my stories; most of them had never seen what I was telling them.
Their games were so different and dangerous. When the cows were grazing, they went fighting with bows and arrows with Maasai boys of the same age. It was dangerous and I was scared one of them could be shot with an arrow and die. I didn’t like it at all. We fought, chasing each other with Maasai boys who looked fierce; clad in red sheets, faces covered with red ochre. I didn’t like their idea of games, so I didn’t participate much, I thought it was savage.
Midday, we took our cattle to drink water, in Romocha river. It was not a big river though I wished it was big since we didn’t have a river back at home nearby. Taking cattle to drink water was such a sensitive issue there, the Maasai warriors could strike and drive away all the cattle in the village. It took more than boys to do such a simple thing as take cattle to the river. Armed men lurked everywhere to protect the cattle.
In fact once, while driving the cattle to the river, at only 500 meters away, we were forced to retreat fast with our cattle for the Maasai warriors were spotted by our advance team, hidden by the river waiting to strike. I had never known we had more than three hundred of our men hidden in the bushes around. At the first signal, the place was filled with wild men, some assisting us to drive our cattle away, some chasing the Maasai warriors away. In short, that was war. Screams were all over. I was so scared and wanted to go back home. I heard gunshots, for the first time in my life. I was told they would have killed us, little boys too. Jeez!
Surprisingly, those people saw fighting as normal, even women were not moved. Not even little boys seemed to care; to them, it was a part of their daily existence.
Sleeping at night that day, I thought maybe they would come and burn us alive in that house but I was told it would not happen. Apart from the fact that our men were always on the lookout, (in fact men in that community never spent the nights inside the house lest the cattle rustlers struck) it was said that wars were agreed between the two tribes, when to begin and when to end. So it was a game they enjoyed, dabbling with death.
Those people again milked their cows at night, unlike us who did at 3 p.m., they never took their milk to the factory either. In fact there was no road nearby at all at all. I thought them so backward; no market centre, no health center, no cattle dip, no dams, nothing. I found that place funny. What shocked me more was that they didn’t boil their milk before drinking. It was so yuck to just drink milk straight from the cow.
Their grandpa was old and he stayed outside the house with his spear long into the night, smoking his home made cigars, hidden in a clearing in the bush, watching for raiders. He rolled his homemade cigars with leaves from a certain tree since old newspapers were such a novelty there. He grew his own tobacco nearby, so he was fully self-sufficient in his indulgence. His wife cooked for us and we ate it in that bush. What was surprising was the lack of kales and cabbages. We survived purely on milk and ugali and occasional wild vegetables. I wondered why they did not bother planting vegetables.
All life in that place revolved around security for cattle and self. My playmates, when not trying to kill a Maasai boy, were practicing their shooting skills in the field. Tired with that, they went fighting with boys from neighboring villages. The injuries they sustained from such fights discouraged me from taking part in them, from day one. I would have been killed because I was brought up in a place where I rarely defended my life, more so from death.
Even the way they seduced their girls was too violent for my liking. If at all it can be referred to as seduction. Whenever there was a function in the evenings, boys waylaid girls like wild animals and made love to them, whether they liked it or not. In case two boys wanted the same girl, they settled it physically. I never approved of it and just stayed away from the whole thing. Where I came from, we seduced girls without any violence. I was so different from them they nicknamed me mzungu- white man. I could not imagine myself adjusting to that kind of life; I never even gave it a faint attempt.
After two weeks of shock and awe, it was time to leave for my home by the hills of Rotik. I left with my uncle, who owing to responsibilities of community security, I rarely saw him in my stay in his house. We trekked part of the distance to Abosi where I boarded a mini-bus home. I took home with me a club and a walking stick that their grandpa had made for me as a gift. They were so beautiful they were stolen soonest.
If to me those people of Trans Mara were rather backward, I could not help laughing when I imagined what my cousins who once came home would have thought of them.
That was 1987 or 1988. A man, riding a red and yellow motorbike, stopped the engine by turning a key at our home and dismounted with two kids, a boy and a girl, both younger than me but not by much. For once, I thought they had missed their way or something but they their father went ahead and untied a wooden box on the carrier, greeted us warmly and went straight inside the house. I pinched my brother as he was about to pinch me too and the first question was: who are these?
My mom who was cooking lunch in the house greeted them heartily and welcomed them to sit. I couldn’t quite believe my eyes. A motorbike with clean kids, dressed in nice clothes with socks and shoes (obviously not school uniform )like the people we saw in our ‘Read with Us’ textbook in school coming home as our visitors? Oh my goodness!
While still in shock, their father called us to the house. Look at what he brought us! Sweets and bread! Who are these people?
He introduced himself as Philip, a step brother to my dad, and the two strange kids as his daughter Chebet and son Kipng’etich. Really? Their names meant they were our kinsmen. In shoes and nice clothes, not school uniforms? I had never known our kinsmen could dress in such fine clothes. Never seen or heard before.
Unfortunately, the two kids did not speak our language, only Swahili and maybe English, I didn’t know because I couldn’t discern any other language beyond our mother tongue. It was a real mystery. We sat to eat our lunch with them but they could not eat with bare hands. They wanted spoons. Lunch was halted for me to secretly dash to my grandma to ask for spoons and pass them to mom by the window. I don’t remember how they slept that day because they spent the night at home. I don’t know how they met their ablution needs because we neither had a toilet nor a bathroom at home. What I can only recollect is: they had what they called a towel for wiping themselves and hair oil, face oil and so many things. They forgot a mirror at home, we fought with my elder brother for it, and it broke to smithereens.
Their dad had a camera, and for the first time in my life, I was taken a photograph. I was so scared in spite of all assurances that it was not a painful procedure. I hope that picture is not lost, I remember the two strange kids, me, my cousins Cherotich and Valentine and my brother Leonard, standing in a line, us scared of course and the two strange visitors very confident and smart. I was happy they took us only one snap. I didn’t enjoy some glare hitting my eyes, who knows, that light may kill one!
We didn’t have much to talk with those kids for we didn’t share a language, they were friendly though. Their dad told us they lived in Chepseon, past Sotik and past Kericho town, a place called Kap Kioo. It was very strange to me. The farthest I had been was Sotik and the farthest I had heard was Kericho. Anything beyond that sounded fiction.
In fact they told us their neighbors were Kikuyus , I remember him mentioning one called Mr. Nyarangi, which meant paints in my smattering knowledge of Swahili. I imagined a colorful place if Mr. Nyarangi’s name and the smart kids was anything to go by. I asked him whether it was past Kissii town because that was the farthest place I had ever been on earth, he refuted, and my imagination was therefore stymied. Somehow I knew that they could not have been living in that direction but I was looking to show off as the most knowledgeable boy in that crowd because I was the only one to have ever travelled to Kissii town.
My uncle Joel was taken ill with TB once and was consequently admitted in a hospital in Kissii Town. I remember it was called Maria Gekonde Hospital, I have never been to Kissii town since then but if I happen to go soon, I am sure to check it. My grandma, when travelling anywhere always took a kid with her as a form of tour. Very good of her. You know, kids are not charged any fares in that part of the world. So you could go anywhere accompanied by an older person free of charge.
So in one of her visits to our admitted uncle, she took me with her. I must have been very young for I remember very little from that visit apart from boarding a big bus in Sotik Town, written Gussii DeLuxe that took us to Kissii town, a tarmac road all the way from Sotik. I was scared especially by the sound that the bus made when overtaking or met another bus on the road, it went swwwaach! I thought we might topple over and die or hit the other vehicles.
She bought me groundnuts on the way which diverted my attention from the dangers to the taste of groundnuts. I had never eaten groundnuts before, imagine how I enjoyed them! My discomforts vanished with peeling them and throwing them one by one into my mouth. Kissii land is so densely populated I saw many tiny houses along the way, each with a small structure by the side, I was told they were latrines because their lands were so small there were no bushes to relieve themselves unlike us at home. They also had a lot of bananas and some plants my grandma told me were coffee bushes, for what, I had no idea.
My uncle was dressed in blue overalls, he hardly could walk but he was getting better. He gave me glucose, I thought it was sugar but it melted in my mouth so fast. I wished I could buy a sack full of that white substance! Very sweet I had never tasted anything like it before. But wait! Shock of shocks, peering through a window by his bed, I noticed we were high up above everything else, Lord! Is this what they called a story building? I thought we would fall anytime, Jesus, grandma has brought me here to die! I was so scared I sat on the floor, imagining I could fall out of the window if I stood. Leaving the room via a stair case, I refused to walk lest I fell down; my grandma had to carry me.
Before we boarded another bus home, she bought me soda and bread. Not the bread my mom used to buy us, no. Brown in color and sliced she told me it was made of millet and cut by a machine. I ate a little and hid some in my pockets to show my siblings back home. A conspiracy of time and an undeveloped memory at that time has wiped a lot from that visit.
My grandma, Taplelei Kilachei, is such a darling. (Bless her; she is turning a 100 soon). I remember she was going for a fundraiser in Litein High School, about 30 Kilometers away from home one day and she decided to take me along. Getting there, I was so excited to see a leveled playing field, I imagined myself with a real football (not the ones we made at home with old polythene) and being cheered in that field. They even had a dais where the fundraiser was being conducted. We had our meals in their dining hall, and what a large hall it was! Bigger than the government maize store at Ndanai where we held our music festivals.
What made my day though were the fluorescent bulbs hanging in that dining hall. I had never encountered electricity before. I thought it was some pipes filled with water. But why is it shining like the stars? It took some time trying to figure out till I had to turn to grandma. Her answer scared me though. I had heard that electricity kills and was even stronger than lightning. If something was stronger than lightning then it was a sufficient cause for caution. Lightning that kills pupils in Kissii every so often and even hit a tree near home to pieces? Not even the copious assurances from my grandma sufficed to salve my agitated spirits. I hated electricity, if it was stronger than lightning then it could not be my friend.
It reminds me the very first day I was driven on a tarmac road. My mom was visiting a sick relative in Kaplong Mission Hospital, some twenty seven kilometers away from home. From our home to the milk factory is a graveled road, the rest is tarmac. We were seated in front of the minibus, called Family Coach, a rare privilege that we earned courtesy of mom having a small baby, Zeddy. When the minibus stepped on the black tarmac, I noticed the trees along the road moving backwards faster and we seemed to be driven into some pool of water in front. It made matters worse that the road was actually sloping into a bridge. I asked mom why we were running to plunge into a river but she told me that the things I was seeing were just but mirages. I wonder why I don’t notice those things anymore, why again did trees stop moving backwards?
I didn’t explain why I was accompanying mom to that hospital. See, kids are not allowed into hospitals so I was to babysit little Zeddy outside the hospital as mom went visiting the sick person. I can’t remember who it was, I can only recall sitting by a roadside shack for selling boiled maize and gruel. The old mama who owned the shack, never looked up from her sewing, she went by the name Tabase.
It is rather interesting that I could remember that old mama, for when she was busy sewing, I was busy marveling at the long buses that ran on the road, to where? I didn’t know, full of people. I wished I was one of the passengers, seated with mom going somewhere. I was so impressed with the beautiful buses I had to draw them at school for my classmates to understand what I meant. I drew them complete with their various names: OTC, Keroka Express and the one we were to board with grandma later to Kissii town, Gussii Deluxe. I envied the kids who lived next to that black road. The only car that passed our road back home was the one that ferried milk for Cheplelwa Co-operative Society to the factory. It belonged to a fellow/was driven by a fellow called Arap Bii, I don’t know which is which. Everybody called the vehicle Arap Bii and that was all.
I vowed during that trip to either be a bus driver or ride buses every so often travelling the world when I grow up. I am sorry I have done neither. I think I have the genes of my mom to blame. Always staying at home, only visiting when it was extremely necessary.
Even visiting her closest of relatives was such a rarity. We just stayed home. She only took me once to my auntie Obot Selina in Kap Siongo once. That trip is memorable because my auntie loaned me a chicken, nicknamed Chemugung- meaning lame. It was limping as its leg was burnt when it was a chick. The arrangement in that part of the world was, you are loaned a chicken to take home, when it hatched, you return one grown chick to the lender, for the life of that chicken. I remember making trips twice a year repaying the chicken loan to my aunt. As a result I had a reason to visit with them and developed a close relationship with her children as a result. One of her sons gave me his beautiful plastic giraffe toy. It was my first artificial toy. It was stolen in school when I took it to show off, I repaid by stealing a pen each day in our class for the rest of that term. I believed in justice!
Save for circumcision ceremonies to my maternal uncles, visits for mom was no no. Unless maybe someone was sick. We visited my uncle Joseph one December circumcision ceremonies, where I slept early and missed a comet passing in the sky. Damn! I was told one get only a single chance to see a comet in his/her lifetime. So my chance went with my sleeping that day. I pinched mom the following day for not waking me up. We passed by his other brother Alex home after the celebrations were over, and was dazzled by a drawer he had that also served as a table. What a rare table that was! I heard he kept his documents there since he was a government Chief. Jeez, I will be a chief when I grow up so as to own such a drawer!
In keeping with our peculiar family tradition of limited visits, I am yet to visit all these places and people again. Will do so soon. Hopefully!
good work my senior bro ... bettern cherono
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