Memories of an African Childhood: Days before Christmas

We are deep into December holidays. Schooling has been forgotten as a very distant memory, my exercise books are lost, we have used some pages to light fire, and some to smoke cigars of ash. I last bathed that last school day; dirt has made a hard crust on my legs all the way to my knees such that it is difficult to kneel without discomfort. Bathing is a chilly affair and must be avoided at all costs. In the few times I indulge my body in this luxury, the crust is so hard it could take a whole day to reach my original skin. I wonder why the crust assumes a black color. I am supposed to be chocolate in color, if not lighter.

Damn this dirt! It is ok though, I can live with it. Where do my legs collect all these dirt? Oh, have remembered, the cow-dung in the cattle enclosure and the mud from the dam when hunting earthworms for fish baits.

I will be in hot soup when school reopens, but, so will every other boy. Even the teacher’s own sons are not any better. He can go to hell. In any case, it is a long way off. I am sure mom will force me to correct the mess soon enough. Gosh! Bathing aint my favorite pastime, never will be.  Even swimming is not my thing; I lost appetite when Mbich drowned. I can swim well and that is enough, in case God decides on another deluge. Ah haa! That will be a tough one, for mom and my sisters Zeddy and Chebet cannot swim. Another flood is not probable anyway; at least that is what the teacher told us.

Tonight, there is no singing with the initiates; all is quiet at my grandma. They are off to some rituals called tienjinet- induction. In the boys’ hovel in the bushes, there is a beehive of activity; quite literally, there is a lot of arrivals and milling about. The initiates from other hovels are arriving in droves, to sounds of leather rapping, which we are now accustomed to as a form of greeting. They are carrying firewood in one arm, arrows on the other with bows slung on their shoulders. With their cream leather clothes and white ochre on their faces and feet, they again remind me of grazing gazelles, like the ones I once saw on the way to my auntie who lives in the border of Maasai Mara. These guys never walk; they are always running when going anywhere. I think it is part of the rituals.

Men are ferrying beer pots to the hovel from James’ home. I counted 36 beer pots in all. These guys are very strong, they are large beer pots and they hold the pots, two guys, from the hill all the way to the bushes by Kap Mwamba dam without resting, not even once. And the pots are round you know, it is quite hard to carry them even when empty. It is either that tradition is against resting or the motivation to reach the hovel was stronger than fatigue. Whatever it was, they rushed the pots one after the other like Safari Rally.

The initiates are making trips fetching water at the dam like safari ants too. There must be a big party ahead. I just wish I could be a big man and walk confidently there and ask what was going on.

I am just seated at home watching the goings on. You should see the arriving party. The old men were spectacular. With beer straws slung on their shoulders and walking staffs held across their back they came in large numbers. People I have never seen all my life, drawn to the free beer and maybe to the splendor of the rituals. Some with straw hats, some with baseball caps, but all in various states of disrepair. It confounds me to date why village old men love putting on caps and hats. (Maybe the answer should wait till my own dotage). With baggy patched trousers, decaying yet sturdy tire sandals, tattered raincoats, if a picture could have been taken of them, everybody this day would be unanimous that they were scare-crows rather than real people. They looked exactly like it!

The old men descend from the hill like locusts. The majority are staggering, they stutter as they greet me. There is one particular old man I disliked, he always greeted us with such derision, maybe it was a joke but he overdid it. He would ask us:

“How are you?”

We would reply as usual:

“We are fine!”

Then, quite out of the ordinary, he would retort:

“How about your snort, is it fine too?”

We would just stare at each other and laugh.

When the snort man passed, the rest of the motley crew are the friendly types. Most smile at me, I am sure they know me, for I am seated near home. Some ask me where mom is, I tell them she is gone to milk the cows. Some ask me for water to drink, I fetched for them from the house but the number soon overwhelmed me. I was forced to station a whole jerrican for them outside the house, rather than go in and out fetching in a tin.  I can’t blame them, the heat is sweltering. Maybe it will rain; maybe it is just a hot day. There is bliss written in the faces of all in spite of the heat.

It is not surprising why everybody is descending from the hill; they are from drinking illicit bootleg in the village of Takitech, along the ridge.

It is now 4 p.m. The younger men now arrive, some yelling in drunkenness already, broadcasting loudly their names, the names of their dads, moms and clans. I am sure they hear wherever they were. Unlike the older men, they carry no straws, some carry plastic tins in their pockets, others carry large metallic ones. Some are empty handed. This group does not ask for water, instead they ask for tins to go drink beer with. I gave them the ones we didn’t need but I soon ran out of spare tins. Another one whom I knew as Sosit picks a large rusty tin from the rubbish heap and went down running. A distant uncle of mine picked an old gumboot and went running.  I have never known beer to be that sweet!

All roads lead to menjo!

My mom came and picked a large bucket, normally used for milking and headed down to where everybody seem to melt, without a word to me. I knew I could not join them in the drinking, but because  mom was out of the way, I could not take the exclusion lying done. If women could be allowed there, it meant the rite was not much of a secret.  We were just kept away to avoid disturbances, or so I thought.

I immediately contrived a plan and went running to collect Kipsang to be my co-executor. We followed the swamp from the spring all the way to the bush near the hovel where the ceremony was. Nobody would have seen us for we were crouching all the way. Besides, we were in dark outfits.  Again, 36 pots of beer will knock the whole village out of their senses before long. We went stealthily by the bush, where we had laid out a trap for a dik-dik , inspected it and unsurprisingly there was no dik-dik struggling to be let go. We quietly walked all the way to a tall tree, not far from menjo, where a pigeon once had its nest. (I had laid a trap once to catch it asleep by pulling a string on the ground at night, only to pull out its young one, I was filled with pity, I had to climb the tree at night to return it.)

We climbed the bushy tree and perched on the branches, as stealthily as possible and made ourselves comfortable. We startled the mousebirds that called the place home and they made a lot of chirping noise they almost gave us out. I was breathing heavily, partly from the climbing and partly from the apprehension of having to witness something no boy has ever dreamt of doing. When the birds had quieted down or left altogether, we tied leaves around our clothes and heads and made small openings in the bush, facing the menjo. Disguised thus, nobody would have picked us, not even with a telescope.

Ouch! Mosquitoes seem to call this place their capital city; they bit with us with equal appetite as we had for watching the rituals.

For the first time, the menjo and its compound was in full view from us. Wow! The initiates were seated in the shade. Some men were heating water in a makeshift kitchen. What a thrill! All the beer pots were placed round mabwaita, men and old men were all over the place. Some were sleeping; looking so drunk I doubted whether they still had any space for the new beer.  Some stood in groups talking animatedly. Some sat playing with their tins, waiting for the drinking or whatever was to happen to start.

The din and smoke rise from the compound. Some young men are aiming targets with arrows. The initiator calls for order, all rise and group around mabwaita.  Even the seemingly dead rise with such energy I immediately retracted my earlier thoughts on their ability to drink any more beer.

The initiator, Mr. Haraka Up!  Is a respectable wealthy old man and he seems to command the same respect in the ceremony as he does out of it.  All the men are now quiet, on their knees, forming a circle round the pots of beer. The initiator and the blesser are standing in the middle, beside mabwaita.

(In traditional ceremonies generally, everybody respect some tacit rules and violation of the rules attract a curse from elders or a fine of a bull or a goat, depending on the severity of the crime. I heard it is simple to cast a spell on someone during these rituals. Elders simply sip beer with a straw and return it to the pot and your goose is cooked. In case you are there, they ask you to seek forgiveness and if you don’t they consult with each other whether they ‘eat’ you. If the answer is unanimously yes, then you are a goner. As simple as that! No wonder rowdy men rediscover some sense of discipline in this kind of stuff. )

Perched comfortably atop the branches but hidden from view, eating wild fruits, swatting mosquitoes, we watch the action unfold. The initiator shouted tich tumin! (All, quiet for the ceremony!). The din dies down. All the initiates are ordered into the hovel. The women, who all the while were squatting fifty meters away, are summoned into the compound. They kneel behind the men in a circle too, headscarves lowered to their necks like ties. The initiator sits down in a three-legged beaded stool. Dressed in a sheep skin and beaded head gear he looks like the kings we see in books at school, he holds a rough long staff, brown with age. It is called nogirwet, it signifies peace and is only carried by octogenarians and older men. If you are pointed with it, you die. The blesser –kipisio, is dressed the same too.  kipisio rise from his chair , holding a gourd-gomta, full of beer with sinendet plants tied on its neck. In his right hand he has a white fly whisk. He clears his throat, sips the beer, spit on the crowd round the circle and says the following incantation, waving his flywhisk:

Blesser: kokile tumin (I say it is a ritual)

All: tumin  ( it is a ritual)

Blesser: loet  ( a big pot)

All: loet  ( a big pot)

Blesser:  mi menjo   ( it is in the hovel)

All: mi menjo ( it is in the hovel)

Blesser: tomnenyon ( our hovel secrecy)

All: Tomnenyon ( our hovel secrecy)

Blesser: Moirbei ( is waterproof)

All: Moirbei ( is waterproof)                                       

Blesser: ir kumiat ( honey seeps through)

All: ir kumiat ( honey seeps through)

Blessser: tumtanyon ( our rituals)

All: Tumtanyon ( our rituals)

Blesser: Manailim ( unknown to Luos)

All: Manailim ( unknown to Luos)

All: Nai nandi ( known to Nandis)

(he sips some more beer and spit on the crowd round the circle)

Blesser: okot kitogutab lakwa, burgei kele burgei (even a child crib is warm, it is warm indeed!- read a woman’s uterus)

All: burgei (it is warm indeed!)

Blesser: mi kerek, mi kele mi ( it smells of childbirth, it smells indeed!)

All: mi (it smells indeed!)

Blesser: bo ng’etunye, bo kele bo ( they belong to the group of ng’etunyo, they belong indeed)

All: bo (they belong indeed!)

Blesser: Bo Kipkaige , bo kele bo( they belong to the group of kipkaige, they belong indeed)

All: Bo (they belong indeed!)

Blesser: Bo Kasanet, bo  kele bo ( they belong to the group of kasanet, they  belong indeed!)

All:  bo (they belong indeed!)

Blesser: bo kebeni, bo kele bo (they belong to the group of kebeni, they belong indeed!)

All: bo (they belong indeed!)

( he sips more beer and spits at the crowd)

Blesser: tinye ibin, tinye kele tinye ( they have an age-set, they truly have)

All: tinye( they have)

Blesser: tinye murenik, tinye kele tinye ( they have men, they truly have)

All: tinye ( they have!)

Blesser: tinye sanik, tinye kele tinye ( they have in-laws, they truly have)

All: tinye! ( they have)

Blesser: tinye koima ,tinye kele tinye ( they have hearth stones, they truly have- read vaginas)

All: tinye (they have)

Blesser: bo bureti, bo kele bo (they belong to Bureti, they really belong)

All: bo (they belong)

Blesser: ker bunyon koimen, koger ko laba, laba kele laba (may when the enemy sees them its dark and when they see the enemy there is light)

All: laba (there is light)

Blesser: kigas en nandi, kigas kele kigas (it is heard in Nandi land, it is truly heard)

All: kigas (it is heard)

Blesser: kigas en tugen, kigas kele kigas (it is heard in Tugen land, it is truly heard)

All: kigas (it is heard)

Blesser: Kigas en Chebolungu,kigas kele kigas ( it is heard in Chebolungu land, it is heard)

All: kigas (it is heard)

Blesser: mie kele mie (well, it is well)

All: mie ( it is well)

Blesser: baibai kele baibai ( it is a happy situation, it is truly happy)

All: abai ( it is a happy situation)

Blesser: kutuny kele kutuny ( they kneel, they truly kneel)

All: kutuny ( they kneel)

Blesser: set kele set (they go on a raid, they truly go)

All: set (they go for a raid)

Blesser: bor kere bor (they succeed, they really do)

All: bor (they succeed)

Blesser: king kele king (it is over, it is truly over

All: kiiiiiiiiiing!!!!!!! (it is over!)

Blesser: king kele king

All: Kiiiiiiiing!!!!!!!

The men jostle to position their straws in the pots, dipping their straws, they go quiet sipping the beer, the party has just started .The mood is ecstatic. The blesser resumes his seat, the initiator calls for attention; his staff of peace is raised in the air. Some people are still talking. He turns and looks around;

‘’which uncircumcised boy is talking here? Who is it that one to desecrate this ritual?”

All is quiet. The revered initiator then orders all the men to surrender their straws to women so they can sip too. The women place down their tins and sip, watching them in case the unruly young men snatch them away. The din rise louder and louder. An assistant initiator draws beer from a pot with a gourd cut in half, and distributes it to young men who did not have straws; they swig the beer on their knees.

Everybody is down on their knees, like cows drinking water in a dam with the initiator as sole herdsman.

The initiates, who are locked inside the reeds –thatched hovel away from view start singing, supposedly to entertain their mothers.  The women are taking turns with men sipping beer from the pots, kneeling down, just like the men. All are merry. There is enough if not too much beer. It is a real carousal.

Some men, who have little standing in society, are boiling water in a makeshift kitchen on the far left of the menjo. I can hear other men calling them loudly to add some more water in the pots, jokingly referring to them as women, simply because they were playing women’s role in the kitchen. They seem not to mind; for it is only jokes and secondly because they are just but riff raffs. For their trouble and degradation, they have a pot of beer to themselves. Even in rituals, men of means are respected and are given preferential treatment. They are seated close to the pots.

 The initiator occasionally admonish some misbehaving revelers, a look from him was enough. His word was law. No one dared go against him. The drunken young men occasionally fought, it is highly discouraged but anything small make the men fight. If blood is spilled from anybody as a result, someone would be blamed for having desecrated the ceremony. He would be made to pay a fine of a bull or a goat to cleanse it otherwise a spell is cast on him to go mad. The worst was to break a beer pot, that one was non-negotiable, even without any spell; someone would pay with his life unless he is cleansed. It was an unheard of abomination.

The initiates sing, the men and women drink.

It is 8 p.m., pressure lamps light the whole compound like it is daytime. It is getting cold in the tree but the action before us is too good to be left halfway, so we stick around. We engage in low tone conversations, for no one would spot us there anymore. The leaves rubbed around me occasionally gave me a scare, they are cold and I imagined a snake tying itself around me. Arrrrgh!

It is time for the women to leave. They are tipsy, some are outright drunk. They whip out tins of all sorts to be filled with beer by the initiator.  Once all have had their tins of beer, they leave the compound, ululating and singing their own strange songs.

Recently initiated men are not allowed to drink ceremonial beers, so they follow the departing women for a sip of their beer. The women are generous and allow some sips. The women leave in different directions for home, I could see my mom, carrying a big bucket of beer, wish I was home, I would drink with her but no, let me finish with here first.

Some women without much esteem in society, whose husbands are too old to discipline them or are widowed or simply wayward, are too drunk and stagger precariously along the way. One woman who was too drunk came towards our direction alone; I don’t know where she was trying to go. I reckon she had confused the direction to her home. Her tin of beer fell but she seemed not to notice. She bent down to pee but fell down awkwardly in a heap, with her dress lifted up, and her red panty half way down in her knees. She was about twenty meters from where we were. What a pitiable sight!

 Some two young men, recently initiated, were following her from a distance, probably to snatch beer from her. They never noticed that she had fallen for where she was lying was poorly lit by a moon whose rays was from time to time being interrupted by moving clouds. They followed her like a dog trailing a quarry by way of scent; they saw the beer tin and scrambled for the little beer that was left.

Done with the little beer, they went by the bush to pee, only to stumble on the woman. They looked dumbfounded for a while. They consulted in low tones, as if they were being watched.

Oh my goodness! The two men squatted by the old hag, yanked off her panty, one man parted her legs and held them apart as the other went on his knees and raped the woman. Oh God, I have never witnessed a rape before. The woman was muttering in her drunken stupor, not fully comprehending what was going on. I almost fell from the tree; I was feeling some sense of attraction and repulsion at the same time. I wish I could save her and at the same time participate in the sex orgy. We just kept quiet, nudging each other as I suppressed an insistent laughter; we could not dare move, lest we were found out. The consequences would have been direr if we were found than in missing the fun. I imagined the curiosity that killed the cat might have made it jump from a tall tree like the one we were perched. What a catch 21 situation!

The first man seemed to have had his fill, when he rose, the other man removed his trouser in a lightning speed and threw it aside and jumped into action. He was faster than the first, he pumped up and down with such ferocity the woman gave a loud moan, the other man gagged her mouth. All I could hear were muffled cries. Shame on me, my dick too was rising in my shorts. What a shame! But again, what a missed opportunity, wish I was a man and not an uncircumcised boy stealing glances of rituals and getting more than I had bargained for.

The two men took endless turns, screwing the woman quiet. I didn’t know whether the woman was enjoying or not but from the looks in the men’s faces, they were in cloud nine. The men were obviously tired; they have been working on the woman for almost one hour. They sat by their prey, conversing and giggling and pinching each other, maybe in felicitation. They seemed to have arrived at a conclusion, putting their trousers on; they went back to the hovel. Soon, they came back with two of their age mates, they repeated the act. Oh God, I bet the woman will die, lucky for her the men were young.

I thought the woman had swooned but no, when the last man worked on her, she cooed like a happy pigeon. So she is alive after all!

I didn’t know how some other men knew of the sex orgy down there. A dozen or so drunk men ran and scrambled for the woman, soon they were fighting for her. I even spotted a son dragging his father away from the woman, both having removed their trousers, the son overpowered the father and managed to dip his manhood in the woman, but only for a second, more men arrived and fierce fighting for the woman ensued. The commotion attracted some sober minded elders in the hovel; one came with a whip and made everybody scamper to safety. A few elders examined the woman, called for reinforcement and carried the muddled woman away. She was a mess of mud, beer, vomit and of course sperms. The sex scavengers left, laughing gaily, talking loudly how they screwed the woman as they went back to the hovel. 

On ritual nights, so many things happen. There is a license for misdemeanor. Even rape was possible, but to some drunk careless sluts of women. Not respectable ones.

After the macabre scenes, we again focused our attention to the action in the menjo. The singing goes on from the initiates but the men have started their own songs too. There is a bonfire that has been lit now. All over the field, men form small groups and sing in circles clapping hands. It is a cacophony of noise but you can make out a few words if you strain a bit. Some order seems to have been established by default:  the singers sing, the hardcore drunkards continued drinking. It was a question of choice not lack or coercion.

 Some whose systems have taken overdose are dead-drunk and lied sprawled all over the place. Some were too faithful to the drink to ever leave it for anything else, this group of mainly elders, sat sipping with their straws, talking in drunken tones. The bacchanalia seem to have has just begun.

The worst lot is comatose; some men are mixing water and flour and administering it to them in a bid to resuscitate them. Thank goodness that every poison has its antidote, otherwise free beer could kill many in the name of merry making!

The singing continues unabated, the drinking continues uninterrupted.

 I can make out one song from the cacophony:

Soloist: Werchuchok ee, aiya, werchunchok kole werchunchok kirabsoi (our brothers ee, aiya, our brothers, our brothers in the land of Soi)

Chorus: oee, aeeeee

Soloist : Mwoktosol  ee, aiya, mwoktosol kole mwoktosol kwaiyabei ee ( they fire ee,aiya, they fire inside the water- read a man fucking a woman)

Chorus: oeee, aeeeeee

Soloist: ming’in tiony ee, aiya, ming’in kole ming’in kiplekwet eee (small animal, small animal aiya, small animal is a hare)

Chorus: oeee aeeeeeee

Soloist: legen tiony eee, aiya, legen tiony kole legen tiony cheplanget ee (colored animal, aiya, colored animal is a leopard)

Chorus: oeeee, aeeeeeeeee

Soloist: tortang’ot eee, aiya, tortang’ot kole torta kwo kiplis ee (they throw spears, aiya, they throw spears inside targets- read a man screwing a woman again)

Chorus: oeee, aeeeeeeee

Soloist: kumin tiony ee, aiya, kumin tiony kole kumin tiony sigiriet (the best fucking animal, aiya, the best fucker of all animals is the donkey)

Chorus: oee, aeeeeeeee

Soloist: anyiny tiony eee, aiya, anyiny tiony kole anyiny tiony mokolet eee (the sweetest animal, aiya, the sweetest animal is a pussie)

Chorus: oeee, aeeeeee

Soloist: chi kwonyes ee, aiya, chi kwonyes kole chi kwonyes konambus ee ( she who cooks, aiya, she who cooks must touch the flour- maybe this is vulgar again for in Kipsigis language, flour also means pussie)

Soloist: oeee, aeeeeeee

The song goes on and on. Another group is singing another song but the lyrics are too hard to grasp. When one was tired singing, he goes inside the hovel to sing with the initiates. We stayed in our place till it was way past mid night. Nothing new happens, my feet were fatigued, and sleep was fast approaching. We decided to go home. Those guys were not showing any signs of tiring. We gave up.

The voice cords of those guys must have been of the most original quality, for I slept when they were singing and yelling and woke up to their songs and yells again!

The day has broken; drunkards from the hovel now pass by our home, staggering but still carrying tins full of beer again. Their dreg-caked teeth only peep in an attempt at a smile, they were happy though but more of exhausted with lack of sleep than the former. No wonder some slept on the shades along the road for the better part of the day.

The world is full of wacky adventures and an equal number of oddballs who promote them.

Memories of an African Childhood: The Initiates and Us

At least there is something new to break the humdrum: playing with the initiates. It has been two weeks since the last time we saw them, dancing their way into seclusion. How happy to interact with them once again. Unlike in their former lives, girls will be closer to us while the boys, our former playmates, cannot even let us get close. During this period, unless I am very careful, I might earn some strokes of the cane from mom by letting the fun befuddle my sense of duty. So I gotta watch out mates!

The last evening to their coming out is unusual, like the circumcision night, shouts break the eerie silence of pitch dark nights, loud and hoarse from the men and not to be outdone; shrill and sharp from the women. It is yet another day of rituals. Only circumcised people attend them, and they never let us know what goes on in there. There is no point sitting up the whole night listening to yells. We sleep.

In the morning, mom leaves for menjo with Rebecca. We follow them at a safe distance, hoping to catch a piece of the action. But what action! Near the fenced hedge of menjo , we spot all the women kneeling with their small pots before the initiator (motiriot) and the ‘blesser’of the initiates kipisio distributing mild beer  and distributing bouquets of  korosek to  them.  The initiator and the ‘blesser’ are dressed in skins and leather headgears.  Each with the mild beer and bouguets, they stand and leave for home, ululating along the way. We run ahead of them, out of view. It is chilly, I think it is 5 a.m.

Mom serves us with the mild beer -musarek. That was our breakfast for that day. Sour and a bit sugary with a little bit of a high. I wished it was real beer.

My brother nudges me and we run out of the house. Lo and behold, what are those things running along the edge of the forest?  Eiyeei kimarangojik!  (Look there! Male initiates!) Rung the chorus of small boys and girls all over the village.  Faces, legs and arms painted white with ochre and dressed in short cow skins, there they were looking like human gazelles. Jaunty, romping all over the field, hunting birds; each with a bow and arrows. We itched to join them but their handlers would obviously beat the daylight out of us.

Immediately we sprung into action. As they were sequestered in the previous two weeks, we were collecting eagle’s feathers and Sodom apples to give them in exchange for kweisisiek (hunting arrows). We knew that this would come, what with years and years of doing the same thing.

Each boy clutching his collections of feathers and Sodom apples, we evade the initiates as they went about their business: collecting firewood, water, cutting trees and hunting birds and ran to their hovel .Standing two hundred meters away we shouted obwan oib kororik- come pick some feathers.

An initiate’s hovel is often guarded by two initiates though no uncircumcised boy would dare go there even if there was nobody. (Heard there must always be somebody there to keep the fire burning, of which if gets extinguished, a goat would be slaughtered to cleanse the initiates. The fire stays burning till it is returned to the home it was taken from, upon their graduation)

We shout till something stirs in the hovel and by that we are sure to have attracted their attention. A blunt arrow is shot on our direction, we fight for it. Another and another till all of us have one each. We leave and they come collecting their side of the bargain: the apples and feathers.

We would make our own bows too and equip our armory with the arrows the initiates gave us. We start our own hunting, we can’t hunt with the initiates, they chased us away. They didn’t even speak amongst themselves as they hunt, they communicate by tapping a bow with an arrow. They were in a world of their own, not the friends we knew. Whenever they came close and recognized us, they rapped their leather clothes as a form of greeting. Us silly brats just waved in excitement.

Their form of communication really intrigued us, at lunch time; they sung their inimitable songs to remind the mother cooking for them it was time for lunch. Same thing for supper and breakfast too.  They  also sung after every meal, as a way of saying thank you to the mother who has cooked the food.

I dint know what they used the Sodom apples we gave them for. But for the girls, who were freer with us, I saw them dig a hole in the ground and build a small enclosure where they placed the apples and referred to them as ‘cows’. They ‘let’ them out in the morning and ‘drove’ them in in the evening. Haven’t known the significance of all these to date.

Ha haa! Oh my goodness! I almost forgot to tell you about the kind of miniature houses these girl initiates made. With soil, they molded small house-like-structures on the ground with boobs and bums just like girls and an entrance where the vagina would have been. They looked like weird caricatures of the pyramids of Egypt.  They made so many of them, with various sizes and heights.(Have heard claims that the Kipsigis people are descendants of the Pharaohs, remembering this lends more credence to these claims. Hey, we have the same name for gods to boot! Theirs is isis, ours is asis. Besides, our folk lore claims we came from misri, another name for Egypt.)

The girl initiates, who were being housed and fed by my grandma, were very friendly and conversational. After the two weeks, we were allowed to spend time with them. They were dressed in  beaded leather dresses with hoods that they covered their heads when walking around. Their clothes were oiled and their bodies too. I doubt whether they bathed. Think they just oiled themselves. They had bangles and necklaces on their hands and necks. They were all chubby and beautiful and happy all day. They smiled readily though they talked in low tones. Like school, any raised voice from them attracted the ire of my grandma. Hey, and my grandma is irascible even when not exerting any authority. A tough old girl that one!

Even they did not shake our hands too. They rap their leather cloths by the thighs to say hi. What a mysterious world theirs was again. Like menjo, my grandma’s house was out bounds to all boys and all uncircumcised girls of all ages. They build a makeshift shelter (kaptiriong) adjoining the house where we interacted with them. But for the first two weeks of their seclusion, no male, even a two year old ever stepped within a radius of 100 meters of that house. The women were very strict when it came to this.

There, they ruled with an iron fist, in fact, the men were a bit relaxed with theirs. If a man ever went close to that house, say even 50 meters, knowingly or unknowingly, he would pay a fine of a white heifer. That rule applied even to mad men. The women slaughtered and ate the heifer by themselves!  Or else the man in question is cast a spell to either die or run mad. A man entering the said house was unheard of but the rules stipulated that if it happened, he would undergo all the women rituals and henceforth cease to be a man, culturally and socially!

So we spent some time in kaptiriong­ with the friendly initiates. Talking, giggling and inquiring from us the tidings of the outside world, especially about their boyfriends.  They made us wooden neck chains-malingotiet, and beautiful walking staffs that were decorated with coal paintings. Behind the back of my grandma, they send with us letters and the beautiful staffs they made to their boyfriends. In return, the boyfriends send with us letters, bread and sodas that we smuggled to them.  Upon every complete transaction, we earned their confidence in return.

Sometimes when they were going to visit their fellow initiates in other homes, our grandma would send us to go with them. They never went by road; they followed the paths in the bushes. In case we met men on the way, the men gave way and the initiates would stop, staff in hand, head covered and bowed till they were out of sight. If the man was close and said hi, they just patted their cloths and that was it. The women we met on the way were greeted in the same way unless they were relations.

Evenings was where all the fun was. We would join them in singing the various incomprehensible songs that they sung after supper. I never ate their food because doing so earned one a derogatory label of cheptolong –crumb eater.

A horde of boys and girls in the village would join us to sing with the initiates every evening, save for the days they were going for rituals. The songs were varied but I have forgotten many with time, oh how time flies! Some songs though seem to have stuck with me and they are not showing any signs of getting obliterated.

 Seated on the floor with legs stretched we would sing, with them as soloists: (most of the words in the songs were meaningless or maybe unknown to me then and now. It is difficult procuring any explanation from women on anything to do with their rituals and ceremonies. I dare say impossible even with my own mom to date)

Soloist: Iyaoiya shesonderio , ae aeiya iyaoiya chesonderio keteche motiriot

Chorus: Iyaoiya shesonderio , motiriot chebobor, iya oiya chesonderio

Soloist: iyaoiya chesonderio, ae aeiya iyaoiya chesonderio kesole nandiekyok

Chorus: iyaoiya chesonderio, ae aeiya iyaoiya chesonderio nandiekyok tebenkoi

I have gone a bit rustic on this song and the worst thing is women never vouchsafe any information on songs either. Another favorite of us was another that went like this:

All: Masindanech kambot recho chebore nargagang( the home of Rachel cannot beat us because they are just blubbering ‘nargagang’)

Soloist: kesole nandiekyok (we praise our Nandis- a subtribe of our tribe)

Chorus: kebore nargagang (they just blubber ‘nargagang’)

Soloist: nandiekyok tebengoi ( our Nandis who sit upon stones)

Chorus: kebore nargagang

All: Masindanech kambot recho chebore nargagang

Soloist: keteche motiriot (we respect the initiator)

Chorus: chebore nargagang

Soloist: motitriot chebobor (initiator whose other name is Chebobor)

Chorus: chebore nargagang

All: Masindanech kambot recho kebore nargagang

Soloist: kesole taleltany (we praise the bright colored cow)

All: chebore nargagang

Soloist: toleltany kokeben (bright brown)

All: chebore nargagang

Perhaps their favorite song, because they sang it more often, was the next song.  You could walk the breadth and length of our village in the evening and hear this same song being repeated from one kaptiriong to the next. I guess it was sung just for the sake of it because I have failed all these years to discern what it means. Most of the words are mumbo-jumbo and must have been chosen for their phonetics rather than their semantics. But again you can’t know with women.

The best song of them all, of all time:

Chemareren chepsigisin oh, chemus mara litalitaro, yetwo kugonyon abanobano kimi turguin chelemindet oh. Yetwo kugonyon sira sira long’et  kimi turguin okwito kwito.

It is now 11 p.m. and we have sung ourselves to felicity. It is time for bed. We meet again tomorrow for more singing.

Memories of an African Childhood: Work, Play and Pain

When the dust of circumcision ceremonies have settled, when drunken screams have subsided in the air, when jingles and music ringing in my head have faded, it was to be a two weeks of sanity, flashbacks and hard realities. This period was at times tempestuous, sometimes hard but always with a punctuation of childhood fun.

My dad had just resigned from his masonry work with Haraka V.P Building Group. Adjusting to life with a stranger who happens to be your dad with no love lost between the two of you is not an easy thing. It was both hard and painful. Though I had my loving mom to fall to, it was not in the way of protection as it was of emotional support.

Apart from a stool that had a veneer of Formica, that we named it the ‘looking stool’ , his retirement package also included so many theological books, I was too young to comprehend some of them though. Not that he was religious and not that he was non-religious, he was simply non-committal in this area. History had it he was once a baptized protestant. I neither found any evidence of this fact in practice nor in residual effect on his behavior.

The books he brought home were of the Roman Catholic Church. His group I suspect was sponsored by the Catholic Church going by the number of Catholic Churches and schools he built, as shown from his photographs. My dad loved photographs; he had a lot of them. I saw him built Ndanai Catholic Church where I attended church at times, Kaplong Catholic Church, Abosi Catholic Church and Kipchimchim Secondary School amongst so many others I have forgotten now.  From his collection I read a book on St Joan of Arc, Namugongo Martyrs (all I remember of these guys was their second names that all started with ‘sse..’) and a fellow who commanded rats out of a church. I also read of a priest who stood against a military dictatorship in some country called Al Salvador and paid with his life. I remember reading some communications from Pope Paul John II called Episcopal or ecumenical or Eucharist or other, I can’t figure out exactly what it was but most definitely it had one of the three words above. One particularly phrase I picked was, “peace is a value without frontiers.” This phrase is etched in my mind to date.

I was a voracious reader even then. I read the bible that was home every evening as we waited for our supper, not out of any religious conviction but for literary purposes that was more dictated by availability rather than choice. How I didn’t turn out to be a Christian is another irony of my life.

So, I am here trying to fit into a shrinking world made so by someone who was finding the space too small for himself too, filial relationship notwithstanding.

This friction was not manifested more than when I had to work with him. I am not sure whether I was lazy, but I doubt whether I was though my dad seldom missed a derogatory moniker to call me to suggest I was dull, lazy and sheepish. I cried at times, at times I soothed myself to accept the sad predicament as a part of my life.  Very hard for a boy of around ten at the time.  You could hardly say I was rude, I was obedient if anything. I was neither loud nor naughty. My temperament was always dictated by the environment:  loud amongst my mates, free with my mom and subdued with my dad.

I am not sure whether mom was forced to love me more to cover for the rejection from my dad or my dad hated me for being more loved by mom. The jury is still out on this little conundrum. Even now, with the benefit of hindsight and matured cognitive abilities, it is not easy trying to unravel the mystery behind this relationship for emotions always play mischief with my endeavor. It is a teary affair .How affected my life then is obvious, how much was carried forward from that to my present life is a psychodynamic assignment. Though, I dare say, Africans are rather good in absorbing psychological shocks than many other races. I lack empirical justification on this but if our characters were to reflect the hungers, violence, wars, abuses and traumas that many an African childhood entails, we would be a continent of zombies. But we are not.

Back to December holidays.

If there is something I hated in my childhood most was waking up early in the morning to plough with oxen. This was the flip side of December holidays. Immediately after the circumcision ceremonies were over, when the boy initiates were hidden in the bush (menjo) and the girls were hidden out of view in I don’t know where, as if to ensure that all the fun I had had were wiped out of my system, it was that time again we woke up at 4 a.m. to plough with oxen. Yes 4 a.m. or even earlier!

You have hardly had a wink before a knock on the door comes, “Kiprotich, Alois, Hillary wake up now.”  That was dad and the asperity in the voice meant we woke up immediately.  Ouch! I had just slept and now have to wake up again, oh God! I cursed incessantly in my mind as I woke up in the darkness and groped for my clothes. Another knock and the next will be a harangue. I am dressed now and we step out. It is very cold. Oh! How I wish I had no dad! I pee and step on the dewy grass, the cold night air rushed into my body through my shorts, my small balls harden and disappear into my belly. No child should be in the cold at that time, not even those who are still but sperm in existence. Damn! It is fiendishly cold.

My brother and Hillary the cowboy went collecting yokes and a plough from the barn and arrange them. I went collecting the four wild oxen in the cattle enclosure. The grass is long and the dew reaches to my knees, almost getting to my Rotik Primary School blue shorts. I shudder. A thorn pierces me in the sole of my bare feet; Waaa! I give out aloud cry and jump on one foot, holding the hurt foot with both hands. It is dark so I search for the culprit with my right hand while my left holds the foot up. The position is precarious and I got to remove it before the pain subsides. If it’s disappeared in the frozen hard crust of my sole, I postpone the removing till when the sun would be up for better view.

I wake up the first ox Bois; it wakes up and pees too. I chase him and lie on the spot where it had slept. Wow! It is warm. Wish I could lie here till morning. The stars are twinkling in the sky, enjoying their night out while I am sad to be out that early. The frogs are quiet, even crickets have suspended their orchestra. No wonder our cat is not hunting for beetles in the enclosure, the world is and should be asleep. With this kind of ruminations, five minutes elapsed in a flash; I reluctantly lifted myself up and went on collecting the other three oxen: Sambu, Meles and Tumbo.

Fastening the oxen with the yokes was such a tough assignment. Bois ran all over the farm with me in hot pursuit till I caught up with him. I held it by the horns and made to drag it all the way but it tossed me into the air. I fell and picked myself up before I could absorb all the dew in the grass but it was too late. I was all wet. The circumstances called for crying but one condition was missing, a caring ear. I went for Bois’ horns with such vengeance it read my moods and followed me all the way till I lifted the heavy yoke and fastened it.  

A kick from Tumbo was in order. Meles defecating on you was also part of the bargain. Now, we are ready to go ploughing.  By then, dad was finished smoking his long cigar and stuffing his nose with snuff. We walked along the road before we branched to the farm. All the while, I am lifting the plough to spare its blade from the stones. I often lost a toe myself in the process.

In the farm, the oxen would want to graze in the long grass and maize stalks from the last season but we would not let them. I am carrying a sjambok, my brother Alois carries one too. Hillary carries a machete, to cut the Mauritius thorns overarching to the farm and to wipe the plough’s blade after every round. My dad is holding the plough firmly on the ground. 

We whip the oxen, twende! (move!). They move erratically at first but we whip them to a straight line.  I am at the left flank with Hillary, Alois is on the right. We shout twende Bois! We yell and sing any song. Baringo (go straight). Mostly we sang the songs we had just heard in the circumcision ceremonies. Dad just held his plough, occasionally singing his own incomprehensible songs, at times reprimanding us for letting the oxen stray from the line, at times throwing a clod of soil at me insulting that I was a slow boy.

In the edge on the farm, we would turn the oxen, not easy given they are mounted on two yokes. The word for turn was kom! Kom! This is one place we received the loudest vitriol from dad. At times Bois could sever the leather strap, break loose and run. Chasing ensues all round the farm.

Ploughing with oxen was such an ordeal. The beatings from dad was hard for me, the dew, hurting clods, cold and thorns were hard on all of us. Add the gores and kicks from the oxen and you have a perfect nightmare.

By the time the sun was up, we would have sung all the songs we knew and ploughed a sizeable field and I might have cried once or twice. Tea and left-over ugali would be brought. What a relief when I saw mom appear in a corner with a kettle and my kisiet (a container for serving ugali that is made of dry tendril fiber) of ugali. We whistled and said anoo!  (Stop!) in unison for tea break. ( The language of ploughing with oxen like anoo and kom  are neither our mother tongue Kipsigis, Swahili , English nor any language that I know of, we found it said and left it being said. Their etymology is still an enigma for me)

What a much needed break. Holding ugali in my left hand and a hot cup of tea in my right, we stood eating and sipping for the ground was wet and soggy. My dad alone sat on the plough, first pushing some snuff into his nose before embarking on his tea. The tea was hot but my whole body was numb with cold so I drank the first cup in three to five minutes. Dad drank his tea without ugali, left-over ugali was associated with kids.

We would plough and plough with the same incidents happening though I could not predict which was to follow which: a clod on my head from dad, an insult or a kick from Sambu. The only respite with dawn was you could see where you were stepping thereby reducing the piercing to your feet and the cold was gone.

At 8.30, we would release our oxen, with such relief. At the back of my mind lingered the reality that the following day was not so far away to repeat the same humdrum. We would go home for more tea and ugali. Physically tired and psychologically battered. The only day to look forward to was Sunday, a rest day, not out of religious observance but to rest the oxen.

We would leave next for the grazing fields. Now that it is a holiday, I am in charge of goats. I rounded up our goats and drove off to the forest by Kap Mwamba dam. There I will meet with my friends Wilson, Kiprono, Kipkoech and Wesley, along with their goats. The goats mated, and some spent the first minutes fighting each other. We would watch both spectacles before pushing them deep into the forest to allow us engage in our own games.

We decided what activities to engage in by consensus without any prior arrangement. Today we start with fishing. The tilapia fish in the large Kap Mwamba dam were rather small but it was fun catching them with baited hooks. First we would go hunting grasshoppers for baits in the grass, keep them in match boxes still kicking and embark on a fishing expedition. The fish were quite sly but we were clever from years of experience. You watched a floater till it moved deep then you lift the line out with such force a fish might have wondered what animosity you had with their clan. The unlucky fish is not only denied a meal but was made our next meal. That was the relationship we had with them. We pushed a reed through their mouths out of the gills and placed them in water, captive but alive. In case we missed the appetite to eat them, we returned them to the water. You see, we were not that callous.

We swam too. At times we took our goats to the forest near Kap Elibut so we could compete with boys from Kapswejit village in swimming. I was not good at it but Kiprono and Wesily ably represented me. I am never athletic, never was. Just a clumsy brat.  Kap Elibut dam was also teeming with large catfish. If the tilapia of Kap Mwamba were clever, the catfish of Kap Elibut were wise. Those animals could never be hoodwinked by baits, they simply never touched it. An hour could go, you staring unblinkingly on the floater all the while, before it could move but just slightly. Another hour goes, and then the floater sinks so fast, only for you to swing out a large frog! What the fuck! That frog will be smashed on a nearby tree into minced meat. Shit! To wait for two hours only for a frog to turn up! One or two catches would be made in a day, definitely not by me; I was too impatient for such ventures.  Those fishes were black and ugly and would not die till fried in the pan. Damn! Those black ‘bearded’ fish even made my mom ban us from using her pans to cook ‘reptiles’ again.

We sometimes played ndoto- village chess which instead of pawns we used pebbles and we dug holes on the ground instead of a board. It was an interesting game however I was hardly a champion unless when I employed some skullduggery of which I was good at. I heard guys who are good in math are good at it, but then I was good in math the other way round.  At times we played draughts, times we played cards.

My favorite was a form of gambling called kikonga- involved taking turns aiming coins at a small hole dug at a distance. To participate, you contribute a coin. You win the coin that goes in but your last coin should not go in otherwise you lose everything. The higher the denominations of the coins, the further the hole aimed. It was earning and losing with fun just like in real casinos of Macau and Las Vegas. I was so good in this game I was sometimes excluded so that others may win too. I wonder how I can fair with Russian roulettes given this history.

 If kikonga was such a winning situation, then hunting dik-diks was a complete anti-thesis. Our hunting CV boasts of so many birds killed, a few hares and absolutely zero dik-diks. For those who don’t know what a dik-dik is, my own village definition is: one of the fastest animal after a plane. Dik-diks are so fast, I imagine even a pregnant one.

We would chase one from the plains of Kap Elibut at 9 a.m. with our dog Kali and Jim, all the way through the swamp of Arap Buret to Kiptenden hills, 5 kilometers away. Our dogs would lose track of it only to trace it again by way of scent and we would chase it again three times round that hill till it decided to take a straight line to Kahawa hills in the land of Kisii , another 4 kilometers, with us following it, at least 3 kilometers behind it. By the time we got there, it would have rested enough for our dogs would have lost track of it again. It would be 3 p.m. then. We would call our dogs, shouting Jim! Kali! Jim! Kali!...till we could trace them. Next would be to use them to retrace the damned dik-dik again, catch up with it (sometimes we rouse a new one and that would be a different story altogether) and chase it again all the way to Koiyet another 5 kilometer away.

Our dogs would leave us behind and we would follow asking people whether they have seen two dogs and a dik-dik.  They would tell us they have seen it and that some four boys were actually chasing it! Oh God, so even if it is caught some other boys would steal our game. We prayed that somehow our dogs would catch it only when we got there. Our prayers were never answered to our favor, only to the dik-dik’s favor which I think never prayed at all.

Darkness is fast falling, no dik-dik, and we are staring at 10 kilometers of bush land to our home, now a silhouette in the dusk, far away in Rotik Hills. I am thirsty, tired, bruised, disappointed and hungry. At the same time wishing that those were the only problems I had. For it will be 9 PM when I get home, my goats would have eaten all the kales and beans in the garden and gone home or worse still got lost in the forest. Rain is fast approaching. I am ruined, woi jeiso ee! (Oh my Jesus!)

The party of three boys and two dogs would set for home in quiet, each weighing the consequences of abandoning goats to chase their wild cousin all over the Division. How I wish I could be a phantom and fly!

The inevitable would have happened. Mom would have waited for me to pick milk to hawk at Ndanai Market to no avail. She would have called me in vain. Next, she would expect me to get home with the goats but the goats just got home unattended, their stomachs bulging with an overdose of her cabbages.

I pushed the door to our house gently at 8 pm to a startled silence from those who are seated round the hearth. I am nervous and scared. My dad is out drinking. No questions asked but that does not mean I am off the hook. My mom continues her cooking, casting some murderous eyes on me; I know I am in trouble.

The time between when she lifted her pan from the fire and the time the first slap would landed on me cannot be measured in seconds or milliseconds, it just happened in a flash. The next minute I would be entreating her amid cries motibiron we Paulina (please don’t beat me Paulina). Obviously those pleas landed on very deaf ears. The beatings were not the worst part of it, her tirade made me so guilty.

She told me how she struggles to feed us and how nobody in the extended family loved our family yet we make her beat us instead of containing the suffering that poverty and despise gave us. She would let go of me cursing shenzi (idiot). Guilt would send me to bed on an empty stomach, sniffing and remorseful. I loved mom and hated making her angry with me. I vowed to myself never to shirk my duties again. To date, I am yet to see a dead dik-dik yet it took all my childhood trying to catch one. I will inquire in the museum next time.

On other days when I was not silly enough to go chasing the elusive dik-diks, we would come home by 2 p.m., lock the goats in the barn and leave for Ndanai to hawk raw milk. Along the way, Paul Kibet, my cousin and a very dear friend (now deceased) would be waiting for me. We would then move from one restaurant to the next asking, ‘iyole chego?’ “ are you buying milk?” some would say no, some would say yes others would say nothing and we just construed the silence for a no. sometimes it was raining and the tea in the restaurants would make us drool. The buns on display were so appetizing but then we dint have money to buy them. My mom would have told me what to buy with the milk proceeds: tea leaves or sugar or match boxes or a pen or an exercise book or cooking fat or paraffin…what to be bought was endless compared with the pennies we made.

Paul Kibet was more ‘creative’ than me maybe because his home was not far from the market center. As we walked on the road on Fridays- a market day- he would tell me we walk on the curb on either sides of the road, in case someone might have dropped a coin. We sometimes collected a coin or two out of his wacky strategy. We would buy sweets with it. Whenever we were sure to sell our milk at a restaurant, which were not so keen on quality, we would pass by Ndanai spring and add a cup or two of water for an extra shilling or two.

On market days again, Kibet would again instruct me we wait till everybody has left the market then we would go round looking for dropped coins. We often collected a shilling or two or even more. We would buy tea and buns. My mom couldn’t stand me with any money unless what she gave me. She would say it was stolen money. A slap or two would meet your cheek till you confessed where the money came from. So, I was careful to either spend all the money or hide it from her.

There was a tractor that belonged to Arap Rob, our close neighbor. It was one of the biggest around. On Fridays, when we collected some money from the market, we would drink tea and eat buns as we waited to board the tractor home. Sometimes we would wait till 9 p.m. before it started the journey home. It was such a rare adventure to ride anything motorized, much more over a long distance. Although Kibet’s home was not far from the market, we would both board the tractor that took us all the way to Arap Rob, next to my home, and he would walk alone the 2 kilometers back to his home in the dark. All in the name of a ride! We loved especially when the tractor was at high speed and we are being shoved up and down in the trailer with sparks popping out of its long exhaust.

My mom never liked the idea of me arriving home late in the name of a tractor ride and a stern warning marked the end of it.

What we didn’t stop though was the idea of popping into bars on weekends in the pretext of hawking milk yet in the real sense we just wanted to catch a glimpse of drunkards dancing suggestively with barmaids. We would collect bottle tops to play draughts at home in the sideline of that risqué mission.

 The two weeks have passed and we are up to some new adventures but wait till Monday, tomorrow.