Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Memories of an African Childhood: Facing the Knife


The year is 1992.

I am in class six, very bright if the position at the end of every term is anything to go by. But then our school was not renowned for academics, so I didn’t know how I would have fared in a national exam. I didn’t know and neither did I care. Nobody cared in that school. I was such a happy-go-lucky lad. We didn’t read or anything, save for when a teacher gave us an assignment, which we did lackadaisically, because they were the least bothered too. Why should they when at the end of the month the school was devoid of teachers as they absented themselves to go for their paycheck in Sotik town, in spite of the dismal performance posted in final exams year in year out. We enjoyed their absence, to play football and ogle girls. Girls by then had some nice juts on their chests, some were covered with nice bras, and others had sharp nipples pushing their white school shirts out. Some had big boobs such that their shirts were distended, straining the buttons, showing a peek of some hard, firm tits, they looked like sweet potatoes. I felt like pinching them but who would let you?

 If you ask me, I went through my primary education like in a blindfold.  My blindfold though exempted novels and girls. I was a fan of boobs and books that talked about them. You can say I was prurient or voyeur at such a tender age but can you moralize to a twelve year old who is just responding to the dictates of nature? I didn’t have a girlfriend though. My interest went only as far as admiring nature, not exploring it.

There was talk of AIDS. A pestilence that would wipe all people who dared unzip their trousers or lowered their skirts in a manner to suggest sex, it was a real scare. Talked of in hushed tones, for sex was and still is a taboo topic, it was difficult to discern facts from myths. It was said to be in Nairobi and Kisumu cities, advancing slowly. Anybody from any big city was treated with suspicion lest he/she was carrying the AIDS bug. Girls who shaved their hair with fancy cuts were thought to be sluts and were to be avoided. Hair shaving machines had just arrived in our market center, anything new was associated with AIDS.

Hey, one of my classmates of that year is gone to the ether world courtesy of it. I am sorry for him; I loved playing some game like draughts we had carved on our desk with him. RIP-Paul Rono. I gotta watch my zip too! I should stick to games in desks not beds.

I hated math still. A visceral hatred that blinded my eyes and blanked my mind whenever any figure was written on the board. Thank God I was in a school that didn’t much care what you did with your time in there, as long as you availed yourself in school and on time. Viva! Rotik Primary School. Viva!

I read novels when our math teacher was wasting his time in our class. He talked and talked Greeks, I read and read English. All I was interested was the assignment he gave us at the end of the lesson. The topic number that is. Not that I copied from guys, no. I had inherited an exercise book from my cousin who was ahead of me, a genius in math. I called it an Oracle. When it was topic 32- Algebraic Questions or blah blah assignments in the textbook, well and good, I looked for topic 32 in my cousin’s exercise book and copied everything in my exercise book and handed it in to be marked. My exercise book was dotted with a lot of 100% in red ink accompanied by such superlatives as very good, well done and excellent. That was our school. Mighty Rotik!

I upped my game during end term exams in math. We did some joint exams called ‘mocks’, printed and all that. The saving grace was, everything was multiple choice questions. For math, I never even opened that question paper, why waste time yet I could not solve a single math problem, not even the simplest of all. What I did was get my answer sheet and go on a guesswork spree. See, the answer was either  A,B,C, or D, all I did was write A, B, C,D  then  D, C, B ,A  and repeat again and again from one to fifty. Knowing that math questions were from one to number fifty was bought at a price though. Since I didn’t check the question paper, I once gave/guessed a hundred answers instead of fifty. I didn’t know the questions were only up to fifty. Jeez!

I could finish my paper in ten minutes or less, give out my answer sheet and go basking in the sun, leaving other pupils scratching their heads others biting their nails. I used to wonder why guys were taking that long in a simple thing of ABCD, I mean, come on! If I could finish it in ten minutes, why would no one else even finish it thirty minutes later?  I enjoyed the sun till I changed to a shade and still those numbskulls were not finished yet.

After two hours or so, the rest of the class would join me, complaining that they ran short of time. I didn’t know how. They came with question papers, comparing how they did some questions. I didn’t care joining in their trash talk. All I knew was I could do without math in my life.

When the papers were marked, the highest my guesswork could earn me was 08%. That was the highest score I could get in math. Damn!

But dare me for a duel in the rest of the subjects! You would be so bruised for I scored above 90%. Nobody came near. Not a single soul. At the end of the term, I topped my class, with math sticking out like a sore thumb. 08% or even less, what an eyesore!


1992 was such a momentous year, there was talk of multiparty elections, something I didn’t understand much, we didn’t have a radio or TV at home. Newspapers were outdated ones used for wrapping beef, bought once or twice a year at home. (No. we were not vegans, beef was expensive!) There was talk of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Martin Shikuku, Kenneth Matiba, Mwai Kibaki , FORD, DP and other strange things in the neighborhood. Whenever two or three men gathered, they talked in hushed tones of how Gikuyus and Luos were scheming to steal our land and enslave our tribe, and how they wanted to dethrone our man, Daniel Toroitich arap Moi, from the presidency.

In the evening as I herded goats by the shopping center, I would join men huddled around a radio, tuned to BBC Swahili, talking and discussing the tension gripping the country, opposition rallies in Uhuru Park and Kamukunji Grounds, and the chaos and casualties as police broke up rallies while the people fought back. Nairobi, Kisumu and Nyeri was said to be teeming with opposition supporters, while our own province was sealed off as a KANU zone.

It was said that the Kisiis, our neighboring tribe, belonged to a party called FORD. There were rumors that some of our neighbors belonged to the same party too; threats were doing the rounds that whoever dared vote for FORD would be burned alive for betraying us.

I read from old newspapers about Kenneth Matiba, and Oginga Odinga. I was to vote for Odinga, had I possessed a voter’s card. I simply liked him. Tall boys and girls, hardly sixteen years, were rounded up in our school to be issued with ID cards so as to vote for Moi and defend our land. Chiefs and Sub Chiefs went round collecting names of poor people promising them land in a place called Mauche if they voted for KANU and Moi.

We were in our third term in school, politics was too much, Kisii pupils left our school. Shortly, we heard war had broken out in Molo, between the Kipsigis and the Gikuyus. Our people were angry with the Gikuyus, they wished they could be exterminated for encroaching on our ancestral lands. BBC reported people being killed and many others being displaced. We heard of tension in Nairobi.  The few Gikuyus who were residing in our small town fled. Their property was looted.

Next, we heard our people had been drowned in Sondu River by Luos on a market day. War with the Luos and Kipsigis broke out. There were reports of death and destruction of property all over. Luos left our shopping center to where they belonged. Even Peter Nyamasaria, who had been with us for decades and considered one of us fled our village to I don’t know where. Our men itched for a piece of the action too. All over people were fighting.

One morning, we heard the Kisiis have killed one of our own called Muluka in a place called Tembwo. Tension gripped the area. Kisiis did not pass our road that day. We were in school on a very hot boring afternoon when we heard women shouting in the next village called Chepkalwal, annunciating that the Kisiis were advancing across the border. We were told to run home. From the road, I could see houses burning along the border from Tembwo all the way to Simbi.

Going home, we met many excited men, armed with bows, arrows, clubs, swords and spears, running towards the common border, to defend our land, people and property. In less than one hour, there was screaming and thick smoke and gunshots everywhere. The atmosphere was eerie; there was a feeling of death creeping everywhere. When I stood on the hill, I could see smoke billowing along the border from Simbi to my right and Koiyet to my left.

That night, our village was lighted by the burning houses across the border; gunshots were loud and incessant, fueling the screams from the women. The more the gunshots, the more the screams. That night we didn’t sleep indoors, we slept out near a bush for our home was less than a Kilometer from the war zone.

In the morning, we woke up to more screams. We heard that cows belonging to a prominent man called Chepkebit had been stolen by Kisiis and that the police were tracking them with a chopper. Heard a rich Kissii man called Mwimbi has had his home broken into, looted and all his cows driven away by our men. Again we heard that a fat Kisii neighbor of ours called Osinde had been killed. We mourned our losses and celebrated the gains.

The road by our home was busy, new warriors were arriving, tired ones were leaving with bounties: mattresses, chairs, cupboards, cows, goats, clothes, machetes, anything.  The women of our village cooked for the warriors, cows were slaughtered for them. So many warrior relations passed by home for breakfast, lunch and supper. We had so many people.

A man was shot death, and was discovered the following day. A school mate called Wesily was shot in the thigh; saw him being rushed to hospital.  A week had passed yet the war was showing no signs of abating, in fact it was getting worse each passing day. We were told to move our cattle to our relations in Cheplelwa hill. The war was becoming unbearable. Houses were burnt on either side, but more on the Kisii side. I was getting fatigued from the whole thing, living in strange homes, eating badly cooked mass food, and worrying for our men.  I saw my dad less and less. We feared for him.


Thousands upon thousands of police officers arrived in our village to restore peace, at long last, after weeks of bloodshed. At last there was calm, but tension still hung in the air. We never saw any Kisii person walking on our road that year and the next. We went back to school, our Kisii friends never reported back to school after that.

Closing school that November, it was time for me to face the knife. Earlier in the year, I had sought permission to undergo circumcision from dad and mom and was given the green light. It was doubtful whether there would be enough peace for us to complete our initiation with all the politics that year, but the war never recurred. Politics continued.

We went for a tetanus jab at the health center. It was a Friday, and that was to be the D-Day. I was shaved and I did all the necessary preparations. Evening came, visitors trooped from all over. I was sung for but without the pep talks. My dad said we were a family of ‘lions’. Mom could not beat her tears to sing for me, neither did I want her to do so, it would have burst my own tear bank and reduce me to an emotional wreck. Dad was with me all through, guiding me, talking to me.

We went through a number of rituals that night after we parted with mom. It culminated with the initiator Mr. Haraka showing us a knife, cutting off a piece of meat from his palm and making the following declaration:

“You see this knife, this is what your mom and dad went through. If you want to pee, pee now, if you want to diarrhea, diarrhea now!”

After that scary statement, we left to our hovel at Cheplelwa hill, two kilometers away. On the way, my dad gave me a piece of dry wood from a Sodom apple stem to chew in my mouth till when the whole circumcision thing was over. I bit it in my molars.

We sat on the dewy ground, all huddled together, the sixteen of us, waiting for the initiator with his knife. It was me, Peter, Dominic, my cousins Robert, Geoffrey and Matthew, my friend Johnston and others whom I have forgotten their names, in spite of having spent a month with them in that hovel.

We waited for more than eternity, waiting for the circumciser and his knife. There were a dozen or so pressure lamps, lighting the whole place. Men were talking to us to ease the tension, but I don’t think I was interested in their chatter.

At 3 a.m. or thereabout, we were stripped of our blankets, ordered to sit in a line with our then very small dicks facing the east. My uncle Joel held me, facing me was my dad holding a bare sword and my mom staring, unblinking at me.

It was announced that the circumciser had arrived. Without even a warning, I heard a tearing sound in my penis, a spasm of pain spread all over my body. I looked down at my penis and it was all white. The outer skin was amiss. It lasted a half second. The circumciser had moved to the next initiate. I looked for my mom but she was retreating away, beating my dad and everybody around with korosiot ululating:

ariririiiiii! kongoi lakwenyun!, kongoi kiprotich ne kakomwa chebo iman! ( ariririiiiiii! I am proud of my son! I am proud of Kiprotich who has done us good!)

I knew I had passed the test and was finally a MAN!  My uncle threw a blanket over me. The initiator led everybody in a song that signified that we had all passed the circumcision test with courage:

Initiator: aee yaaa !
Chorus: aeee yaaa!

He repeated it four times and left to circumcise other boys elsewhere. I could hear my mom’s ululations fading in the distance. Everybody had left. There was a lot of pain in my penis. In the distance, I could see light at home, far off in Rotik Hills. I was sure my dad was about to slaughter a cow, and mom was to officially serve beer, and the celebrations to start in earnest.

 I must have dozed off. I was woken up by the circumciser, again, with his knife, to do a good job with my penis. For a whole thirty minutes, he sat cutting I don’t know where or what, washing it and cutting it again. I was writhing in pain, there was no anesthesia, it was considered less manly to undergo the cut under anesthesia. When he was done, my penis looked mangled, small and wet with blood. Ants struggled to cart away the pieces of meat that some minutes ago were a part of me. On the underside of my penis, was made something like a tap control. A handle? Dunno. But, I am a man! In a month’s time I would eat the bearded meat women told us it awaited us if we passed the circumcision test.
FINIS
                                               


Monday, December 6, 2010

Memories of an African Childhood: Adults Behaving Badly!

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!


Saturday, December 4, 2010

Memories of an African Childhood: Visits and Visitors


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!