tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67092994468148677712024-03-13T07:49:19.864-07:00THE EASTAFRICANPOETTHE LIFE THAT LENT ITSELF TO POETRY, AND FELL OFF ETERNITY'S TREE.
Tony Mochama, "Underwear Grows Old"Ken Gitau.http://www.blogger.com/profile/07707773491849297274noreply@blogger.comBlogger172125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6709299446814867771.post-9097301267411724302019-08-12T05:37:00.001-07:002019-08-12T05:37:05.899-07:00Slam Africa presents..<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Ab0NRy2cGlQ/XVFdV-H2gtI/AAAAAAAAA4c/SeyxTbEsHHQSOXL28UmR8FA5aKDLusoLwCLcBGAs/s1600/FB_IMG_15656129268768400.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Ab0NRy2cGlQ/XVFdV-H2gtI/AAAAAAAAA4c/SeyxTbEsHHQSOXL28UmR8FA5aKDLusoLwCLcBGAs/s320/FB_IMG_15656129268768400.jpg" width="226" height="320" data-original-width="712" data-original-height="1006" /></a>Ken Gitau.http://www.blogger.com/profile/07707773491849297274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6709299446814867771.post-59737592433516414532019-08-12T05:17:00.001-07:002019-08-12T05:17:33.302-07:00Another Tale on LGBTQ misfortunes..<p dir="ltr"><br>
My lover can only love me behind drawn curtains. The bed must not creak or the neighbours will hear us. On Friday evening, when her parents come to visit, my lover cannot love me because they want her to marry a man. We all sit at the small brown rectangular dining table beneath the high serving-hatch that opens to the kitchen. My lover and I sit on one side, her parents on the other. She sits facing her father, who is tall and meaty. He laughs like a big drum. He eats like a big drum too; his inside is large, empty and hollow. He is shoving big ugali mounds into his mouth. <br>
I think that her mother must know, because mothers see the air that mixes between lovers. Her mother must know because she is studying me like a specimen. She narrows her eyes, <br>
tightening her brow at the same time. Crow’s feet choke the mole next to her left eye. Her face is lined around the eyes, but is otherwise as smooth and deep brown as a loquat seed. Small grayish bushes peep from beneath her blue headscarf; hers is a good strong hairline, just like her daughter’s, one that extends far down into her forehead. I turn to my left, and my lover is making concerted conversation with her father, nodding, smiling, matching his raucous laughter, pouring extra words into the natural silences that occur in conversation, pouring her father wine and more wine until his speech slurs and his light brown cheeks turn pink and shiny with sweat, until his big-drum laughter grows and grows and threatens to swallow our little matchbox flat.  <br>
We are eating ugali and creamed sukuma, with kuku kienyeji that I bought at the butcher’s for one thousand shillings. I know that my lover’s mother likes avocado, so I bought ten of them, each for forty bob. But my lover’s mother does not touch them, and neither does she touch the plate of food that I served her.  <br>
When I first met her she was pleasant, jubilant even, because I had found her daughter a place to stay near the university. Over and over again, she had said, “God bless you.” After seven years, however, her genuine and earnest god-bless-yous had disintegrated into a liquid and guarded hostility, which now seeped through her narrowed eyes as she studied me. Three hours ago she had bustled in, just before my lover’s father, a dark blue mermaid kitenge hugging her hips and flaring at her calves, her hair hidden in a matching scarf, her arms laden with baskets of produce from the farm, hugging and kissing us on the cheeks and saying, “How are you, my daughters?” “My daughters, I have brought you cabbage and potatoes and peas…” “You look well, my daughters…”      <br>
My daughters, my daughters, another person would have thought that she loved me like a daughter, but I had known otherwise. I had known because I had learned to unearth true intentions, gleaning them like long translucent bones buried deep within tilapia fish. My lover’s mother had not been speaking with her mouth, from which her many my daughters had fluttered out. She had been speaking with her eyes, which had refused to surrender to the smile on her mouth. <br>
She is still staring at me, eyes equal parts curious and hostile. I think that perhaps she thinks that dreadlocks are unbecoming, even if I have pulled them up into a ladylike bun that make my eyebrows feel unusually high; even if I have clipped Magda’s dangling earrings onto my un-pierced earlobes. Perhaps she can tell that the black dress with a pink flower print that I bought for today was bought for today, and that I am not in the habit of wearing dresses.  I <br>
wonder if she can see, with those narrowed eyes, that the dress is too small, that the fabric is cutting into my armpits, that I am sweating under my arms. The food is growing cold, and white Kimbo droplets begin to float on the soup. My mind is running here and running there, out of breath, offering me one reason or another for this woman not liking me. It is trying to convince me that I do not know what she is thinking, it is running careful circles around the truth, it is telling me that she hates me for reasons I can fix.  <br>
But I know. I know what she is thinking even before the curiosity in her eyes evaporates, leaving hard hostility behind; before she flings heavy black tar into the air mixing between my lover and I, before she flattens that tar with a roaring steamroller, when she turns to my lover, smiling, full lips flattened against gleaming teeth, asking, “Mami, when you will get a husband? And a nice house?”  <br>
The skins of the unwanted avocados shine like my lover’s father’s light brown cheeks. He is drunk.  </p>
<p dir="ltr">On Friday night, after her parents leave, we hold hands and pretend that we are outside. We walk in Nairobi. Our matchbox flat becomes the large sprawling city. The two bedrooms are the suburbs. We live in the bigger of the suburbs, the one with generous pavements and many trees. We leave home and walk along the corridor, which is the highway to town. The kitchen, found just before we get to town, is Fagi’s wooden Coca-Cola box-shaped shop. We lean through the serving hatch and ask for a one-litre Fanta Orange that we put in a paper bag. We hold hands again. We imagine that Fagi says, “What a lovely couple!” <br>
Then we get to the Central Business District. The sitting room, which is also the dining room, is the CBD. The wall unit that almost touches the ceiling is the Times Tower. We look up and say, “How tall! How long did they take to build that?”  <br>
At last we go back to our house in the suburbs after spending the whole day bumping into rough fabric sofas and smooth aluminium matatu chests, into polished wooden stools and grey concrete buildings, into sweaty people and dining chairs with proud long backs, all of these fitting, as if by magic, in the small CBD of our flat. When we get to our bigger room, we lie on the same bed. If our lover’s mother were to come in and find us, she would exclaim, “My daughters!” This time, her mouth would slacken, unable to smile. Her eyes would become round, un-narrowed, because whose arm was whose? Whose skin was whose? Whose leg was whose? Our body parts would be mixed up together like pieces of meat in a stew, in a sufuria without a lid, exposed because the lazy blanket had fallen off in the middle of the night.  </p>
<p dir="ltr">The next day, Saturday, Magda is gathering water in her palms and lifting it onto her body. <br>
The wide blue plastic basin is perched on a stool, the whole arrangement a castle chess piece. <br>
First she is gathering up only as much as a dog’s tongue because the water is cold, then she is gathering up more, then I hear no more water because she is scrubbing, and then I begin to hear larger and louder water as it pours over her body, and the thirsty drain, as it drinks it up. She comes out wrapped in a white towel and asks me if I have seen the nail-cutter, and I want to tell her that it is in the second bedroom, on the desk by the window. Keep your nails short: <br>
school rule or lesbianology? But this is when Magda’s vibrating phone stirs us. It is a text from Thomas, our neighbour, to say that he is at the door. As Magda rushes to dress, I rush to mix the blankets on the bed in the smaller second bedroom, trying to make it look slept in, tossing some of the red towels that clutter the bed into the cupboard, throwing a pair of jeans onto the floor, opening the curtains. Magda and I scamper around our matchbox flat like rats; I think of green rat-poison pellets floating in a glass of Fanta Orange. I want to lie down for a bit, and cry for a bit, but I hear the sound of the door opening and I hear Magda saying loudly: “Thomas! Mambo!”  <br>
And thus, Thomas has fractured our gentle reverie. Magda is louder now, fussing over him, very much like her mother, “Sasa wewe, what will we cook for you? Do you want tea? How is job?” Her crotchet-braid weave bobs as she rushes from the kitchen to the sofa to the dining table, reheating food and setting a stool before him.  “Tom, dear, how much chilli do you like in your food?” – “Maji ama Coke?” – “I’m sorry that this is taking so long!”  <br>
Thomas glows under Magda’s uxorial light; he is smiling as he watches her shuffle about. Madga smells like Nivea body lotion, good food and three fat future children, two boys and one girl. Thomas, twenty-nine, wants to be with her, would marry her, on his thirty-second birthday, at the Holy Family Minor Basilica in town, him dapper in a black suit, her veiled in all-white, his family on the pews on right and hers on those on the left. I know all this because I trawled through the Whatsapp messages he sent Magda, all of them unanswered, arranged one after the other like rectangular stones on a stepping-stone pathway. He would marry her, but here I am. I sit quietly on the adjacent sofa. I know how to shrink myself to live. My father taught me how to make myself smaller. First, he taught my mother, then me, then my three little bald sisters, one after the other, each of us with big-big eyes yearning to be enough for a man who wanted a son but got four daughters, each next one with rounder eyes and a bigger forehead, foreheads made to look even bigger because any trace of hair was promptly shaved off. To look neat for school, my father had said, to keep boys away, my father had also said. My mother promised me hair as soon I finished high school. I and my egg head had made ourselves so small that our father could not see us. I know now that if I make myself small enough to almost disappear, I will be left alone to live.  <br>
But Magda swells up, she is swelling up now, big like her big drum father, big like her afro weaves, hiding herself under loud layers, showy like her fabulous mother. When her parents are far away in Eldoret, when Thomas leaves, when I have fallen asleep, and when all the lights are off, my lover goes into the smaller bedroom. There, with the steady, solitary and painful focus of a chicken trying to lay an egg, she peels off all those layers. Perched on her red towels and locked away from me, she prays, shakes, and rakes razors across the skin of her inner thighs.  <br>
There is nothing like Madga’s hair. It is the darkest of clays, which she moulds into many shapes. Buns, braids, cornrows, weaves, mixtures of two or three or all of these, shrunken tiny afros or picked spherical ones, wigs, hats, sometimes with her front hair showing, and finally, cloth hair – scarves twisted and bunned at the back. My hair is weak and fine, and can only grow long in dreadlocks, and even then, it never is voluminous. So Magda’s hair is even more beautiful to me, the good strong hairline, the many shapes, the balls of shed hair like cotton strewn all over the dresser. The only thing that I like more than her hair is her skin. It is darkest between her thighs, and there, on each side, I find short, black and precise scars, arranged like gills.   <br>
On TV, a politician says that there is no space for gays in Kenya. Thomas says, “I support him. Can you even imagine a dick in your ass?” He takes a slow sip from the glass of Coke that Magda has set out for him, and licks his lips. With a prodding half-smile, he adds in a lower voice, staring straight at Magda, “But I support the L. That one I most definitely support.” He is the kind of man from whose mouth sentences slide easily, ropes curling into nooses encircling women’s waists. My jaws grow hot as I imagine him masturbating to lesbian porn. He adds, “But how many letters are there in that thing again?” <br>
There is a stilted pause in the conversation. There is too much to ignore, even for Magda. Perhaps she is thinking that he knows. What would follow then would be to wonder what the implications of his knowing would be. In the end, Magda recovers from the brazenness of it all, strangling the too-long pause with a big laugh, flinging it under her loud layers, almost screaming-laughing, and saying, not even sarcastically, “Thomas you are so funny! Oh my gosh! How many letters are there in that thing!”  <br>
Marionettes are sinister because they are controlled by strings that lead up to the devil. If I were to pinch a normal person, they would frown or slap my hand away or cry out or pinch me back. But if I were to pinch a marionette, its empty eyes would just stare back at me, wooden and smiling, dancing and clapping. <br>
Magda turns to me laughing, repeating, “How many letters are there in that thing! Don’t you think that’s so funny?” Her eyes are clear and round, her mouth stiff and stretched into a smile, straight teeth arranged dutifully, kernels of white maize on a cob. Her voice is thick brown, millet porridge, rich and homely; sugary and buttery, but tinged with something bitter – very likely lemon juice, straight from the lemon.  <br>
Underneath puppets’ veneers are knives that will slice your throat in your sleep. White wriggly maggots under a lush and pretty log.  <br>
Thomas interjects, “Magda, you look so pretty when you laugh like that. Let me take a picture of you. Where is your phone? Mine’s just gone off.” <br>
I am shrinking, crawling, deeper under the bed, Thomas’ words trailing after me. I am thinking of the night months ago when Thomas had banged on the door, speech slurred, I want to see Magda, I want to see Magda, how we had put off the lights and  tiptoed to the smaller bedroom, waiting under the bed for the banging to stop and for him to leave, how the thick puddle of low thrum anxiety nestled at the base of my throat had exploded into hiccupping panic as I had heard the door burst open, as I had clung to precious Magda, under the weight of her red towels, the dusty underside of the bed choking the both of us. How my mouth had remained sewn. <br>
The next morning Madga had mopped up the muddy footprints that tracked from the door through the sitting room all the way to the corridor. He had not got to the bedrooms. I had gone out and found a serious fundi with a pencil behind his ear. He had fixed the broken door and added a new grill, with fat metal bars, standing tall and straight like askaris.  </p>
<p dir="ltr">On Sunday morning I wake up, and Magda is not next to me. I try to open the door to the second bedroom but it is locked. I feel faint, so I go to the balcony for some fresh air. On the street below, at the bus stop just outside our building, matatus snarl in the dust like wild cats. It is hot. There are hardly any trees or pavements. Then I notice that all the red towels are gone from the hanging line. I rush back to the second bedroom, and through the door I say, <br>
“Magda, are you okay? Open the door, please.” <br>
“Give me some time alone, please.” <br>
Her voice is weak and watery, like strungi, poor people’s milk-less tea. Worry makes it difficult for me to reply calmly, “Okay. How much time?”  <br>
No response. I coax some more, but not even the watery weakness reappears. I want to bang on the door. I want to scream MagdaMagdaMagda, but the neighbours will hear me. So I sew my mouth. But the trapped Magdas remain at the base of my throat, popping like fried oil. Then they are flowing downwards, still popping, burning the inner walls of my body, shaking me. I think that I should cook some tea that I will not drink, because perhaps the smell will calm me down. I am shaking as I cut open the plastic milk packet with a knife, and halfway through this, the packet slips and bursts on the floor. I drop the knife, I forget the tea, I am sobbing, sinking to the tiled floor, the hems of my heavy cotton sweatpants wetting with milk, like wicks.  </p>
<p dir="ltr">When Magda and I had talked about God, she had said, “You don’t understand. It is God who keeps me alive.” I had wondered where I could get some of this God of Magda’s. He had sounded like the beef cubes I add to potato stew when it gets too bland.  <br>
Still I had not understood. This God business had outgrown me. It was like an old sweater I wore as a child, now too small and scratchy. My God was not gentle like Magda’s; my God was like my father, whose house breathed only after he had left. But now staring at the diamond patterns on the ceiling, crying-convulsing, with milk soaking my scalp, my back, my panties, my legs, I begin to mutter, God please, God please. It is now only me, and Magda, and Magda’s good God.  </p>
<p dir="ltr">My heavy cotton sweatpants are stubbornly wet, but the milk on my cotton T-shirt is drying and sticky on my back. I am no longer convulsing but I am still sobbing softly, kneeling at the door of the smaller bedroom and trying out each of the keys in the pile I found in a basket on top of the fridge. The sixth turns the lock. The door flings open. The room is dark, the curtains are drawn. There is a smell of zinc. I switch on the light. Magda lies naked on her red towels, her dark thighs a mess of red. I kneel beside her. She is breathing.  <br>
But my lover’s mother will love her and will crush her. She will take her daughter’s heart and crush it between her narrowed eyes, between eyelids heavy and strong with love that cuts with the strength of diamonds. Magda, twenty-seven and weary of this crushing love, will grow louder and bigger to hide her crushed heart. Like an agitated turkey, her feathers will fan out, her face will fill with blood. Later she will think it unfair that a heart should bear this crushing alone. She will make her thighs bleed again. At least this is what I tell myself because even though she is lying there bleeding and barely breathing, I do not want to call her parents without her consent. But mostly, I am afraid that if they take her away, I may never see her again.  </p>
<p dir="ltr">It is like she has given birth to the devil.  </p>
<p dir="ltr">I mend her thighs. She leaves after two weeks. In the end, her mother is the person that she goes back to, tail between legs, heart in hands, wanting it soothed. After she cut herself, a quiet voice told me that it was my fault. That it was the thing that mixed up the air in between us that was cutting her. That it had grown too big for the only place in which I could love her. It had become too much, too raucous. It had swallowed us. It had shrunk me. And it had cut <br>
her thighs, every year for three years, always a few days after her parents’ visit. I stopped meeting her eyes when I changed her bandages twice a day. I stopped talking to her, responding wordlessly to her needs for drinking water, the toilet, bananas, the bhajias fried in a shack directly opposite our building. <br>
I expected her to leave. When the rain went and the sun came, my father did not fret that the rain had gone. It was time for the maize in the fields to ripen. And so after the scars had healed, like the rain, like a patient discharged, Magda put on her red maxi skirt and left with a small bag. <br>
But the house is heavy with my beloved. I cannot sleep in the bigger bedroom because her hair is on the dresser, not to mention in the smaller bedroom, where she had given birth to the devil. I sleep on the rough fabric sofa, maroon with gold-thread flowers. I refuse to touch the mixture of towels, blood and red dye in the basin on the balcony. One day I feel that I do not want to see anyone, not a soul, not even a cockroach, ever again. So I call my boss to quit my PR job where I am obligated to wear short grey skirts. He tells me he has already given away <br>
my job because I did not show up for three weeks and didn’t respond to his calls. I cook and cry. From the sofa, I begin to design websites for a living. When money gets tight, I take up Magda’s old job at a DVD shop a few minutes’ walk from the flat.  </p>
<p dir="ltr">One evening, two months later, I come back home from the DVD shop and know that Magda is back because the towels hang stiff and foul on the balcony, now a dull orange after bleeding out all their dye. I expected that she would leave, and now I accept that she has come back. She comes out of the kitchen. Her hair is gone, cropped close to her scalp. I am not sure whether her cheekbones had always been so high, her eyes so big, her irises so large, floating like cocoa beans in milk. It had been seven years of seeing only her hair.  <br>
That night we sleep heads touching, breathing each other, arms around each other. I roll over to face the other side and Magda moves with me, her nose at my nape, her arm still wrapped around me. Even though neither of us had contacted the other, I had spent all this time expecting that she would come back. So I am glad that I no longer have to expect. But I am also stifled by the suddenness of her return. I know that it is the rain’s place to come unannounced. But I also know that Nairobi November skies tend to be heavy and cloudy like grey wet blankets, ones that mother spirits wring to drench the city. The question is: is the coming of rain in Nairobi in November expected or unexpected?  <br>
It is perhaps a matter of weather in relation to climate. The weather is mercurial: in the morning it wants pink lipstick, and by noon it has decided that today is a red-lipstick day. Some days it ties its arms around me, and other days it cannot meet my eyes. If the weather is a yellow banana peel racked with black scars, then the climate is what is inside. It is the way Magda squeezes my hand under tables when I have sewn my mouth so tightly that I can hardly breathe. It is the certainty that is the great big engine that is her heart: how it runs on butter and Baringo honey, and how it warms me, melting open my stitches. <br>
Therefore, if a particular Nairobi November day appears sunny from inside the house, then what do we say to someone who goes out to the salon to flat-iron their hair, expecting that the straightness will last for at least a week and a half, and then does not have an umbrella in their bag on the very day that the rain decides to come the way that Jesus said that he would, kinking their expensive straightness? Is the coming of rain in Nairobi in November expected or unexpected? We can say, yes, it is your fault, the rain was expected, this is November, <br>
why didn’t you have an umbrella, you just go home and style your afro. We can also collect in a corner and decide that no, it is not your fault, the rain was unexpected, it has been sunny for the whole day, imagine, it only decided to rain once you stepped out of the salon, pole sana, let us curse heaven together. There are things that are both expected and unexpected, and the rain is one of these things.  <br><br></p>
Ken Gitau.http://www.blogger.com/profile/07707773491849297274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6709299446814867771.post-11675628232100748662019-01-30T11:07:00.001-08:002019-01-30T11:07:19.689-08:00Stares and Fright.<p dir="ltr">..but si when people look at me, they think me ni punk.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Yes, because you’re very pretty.</p>
<p dir="ltr">You giggle; it’s throaty. <br>
Like a laugh that won’t grow up.</p>
<p dir="ltr">You want to talk. I want to stare. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Yeah.. but you know I don’t like it.</p>
<p dir="ltr">What? Being pretty or people staring?</p>
<p dir="ltr">You look daggers at me. </p>
<p dir="ltr">What do you think? Duuh! Silly. The staring. </p>
<p dir="ltr">You slap my thigh. <br>
It stings. <br>
I perish the thought. <br>
Lucky me. My jeans are freshly scrubbed.</p>
<p dir="ltr">You sit beside me, thighs touching.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Yeah.. that’s why I pass here. My bro showed me this chuom here.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Haina usororaji.</p>
<p dir="ltr">True..this is better. I also really don’t like being watched. <br>
Now pass me my blunt.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I dab silently, I’m thinking of you. </p>
<p dir="ltr">The chemical euphoria slowly gives way to a silent calm.</p>
<p dir="ltr">You know I’ve never had sex?</p>
<p dir="ltr">Waaaah!!  I’m patronizing. </p>
<p dir="ltr">You must know I won’t believe. <br>
You feel you have to tell me, I listen.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I just feel like I should start when it’s right.</p>
<p dir="ltr">But I know Stoner chicks are kinda loose.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I don’t mean to be belligerent. <br>
I assume you understand.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Haaaaar!! Not me, I hang out with these Campo-boys but I don’t screw around.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I know. I say sheepishly.  </p>
<p dir="ltr">I believe you lie. <br>
I have trust issues. <br>
I want to sleep with you. </p>
<p dir="ltr">You’ve got your hand on my lap, my arm's on your shoulder.<br>
Friending. </p>
<p dir="ltr">I want to start the caresses that call so loud. <br>
I begin. <br>
Then I stop.</p>
<p dir="ltr">We dab in silence. <br>
You love Shashamane, and I’m loving you because you love what I love.</p>
<p dir="ltr">But we are both afraid. <br>
I was.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I fail to deconstruct you. <br>
Sudoku maestro level. <br>
I believe it’s because you get me flustered without even trying or knowing.</p>
<p dir="ltr">You said you pass through my place so that no one gets to witness your pretty.<br>
I fail to understand.</p>
<p dir="ltr">You swipe right, left, up, down. <br>
You want an Uber, I want you take a Mat. <br>
You think that’s very resourceful of me. <br>
I get the notion of sarcasm leaking through.</p>
<p dir="ltr">You took a Mat..</p>
<p dir="ltr">You headed to your Sister’s at Mombasa Road. <br>
It was Sunday afternoon. <br>
You said you'd be back in the night. <br>
I didn’t wait. <br>
I closed shop early. </p>
<p dir="ltr">You got resourceful too. <br>
You found me.<br>
You decided to sleep with me. </p>
<p dir="ltr">I’m still afraid. <br>
You still hate the staring.</p>
Ken Gitau.http://www.blogger.com/profile/07707773491849297274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6709299446814867771.post-66842593115449611362019-01-07T02:41:00.001-08:002019-01-07T02:41:33.881-08:00Haiku<p dir="ltr"> <br>
This piece of haiku poetry is very personal. You’ve got to love the brevity that leaves so much to the mind. This is one of those that can be interpreted to mean something and everything.<br>
<br>
<b>The Need</b></p>
<p dir="ltr">Nothing satiates. <br>
Voids unfilled. <br>
These are the times. <br>
</p>
Ken Gitau.http://www.blogger.com/profile/07707773491849297274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6709299446814867771.post-68048928144815882232018-12-30T02:34:00.001-08:002018-12-30T04:14:30.579-08:00Two Wives. A Short Story.<p dir="ltr"><b>Misikhu</b><b>, </b><b>Bungoma</b><b>. Western Kenya.</b></p>
<p dir="ltr">Aunty just came back from Makutano. <br>
She asked about a long lost family friend who lived around Kitale.</p>
<p dir="ltr">'On your way to Makutano maybe, I don't know.' </p>
<p dir="ltr">I promised I'd try to get to them as soon as this pesky January rain abates. I'm also embarrased about meeting Ma'Dessy;  that long-lost-but-lately-found family friend who now resides around Kitale.Now I can’t go to her home without a lady I had bragged about being my wife. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Anyway.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I told Aunty Emily I'd marry two wives; so if one left I'd still have another to hold on to. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Aunty chuckled. </p>
<p dir="ltr">She does that when she's pitying my young naivete. </p>
<p dir="ltr">'Don't get more than one wife. It's all trouble. Juzi, I went somewhere to have tea but there was none...that's what they said.' </p>
<p dir="ltr">I cut Aunty midway through her session by reaching for the volume knob on the radio. Soon "Ivo Ivo Ivo" was blaring and my head was bobbing to the raucous hip hop. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Aunty left. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Later…</p>
<p dir="ltr">'You know why I wasn't offered any tea?' </p>
<p dir="ltr">'No,' I confessed..</p>
<p dir="ltr">'She had urinated into her husband's tea.' </p>
<p dir="ltr">My jaw fell to my Adam's apple.</p>
<p dir="ltr">'They do that to be loved by the husband.' </p>
<p dir="ltr">There was more.</p>
<p dir="ltr">' I know a friend who went to a Mganga. Now as she ate with her husband; she'd rub her anus and then touch the ugali. The husband first thought it was simple ill-manners; but she did it more than twice...'</p>
<p dir="ltr">'Ehe...?' I was hooked.</p>
<p dir="ltr">'The husband locked the door and grabbed a knife...' </p>
<p dir="ltr">'Ehe...?' Aunty knows how to tell a good story.</p>
<p dir="ltr">'He told his wife he'd cut her up like a chicken. She started wailing and told it all. Now she's at her parents' home, for good.'</p>
<p dir="ltr">I laughed but I knew it was true, Aunty never lied. </p>
<p dir="ltr">There was more. </p>
<p dir="ltr">'Two wives would make you feed on filth. They'll sit naked on the dough before they make you the chapati, they'll pick the best cuts off that steak and keep it in their panties overnight; stew it then serve it to you...' </p>
<p dir="ltr">'All for the money?' I'm asking.</p>
<p dir="ltr">'Not really, she just wants you to spend more time with her and less with the other wife.'</p>
<p dir="ltr">'I'd like that..' I'm saying. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Aunty chuckles. </p>
<p dir="ltr">I still think two wives is alright.</p>
Ken Gitau.http://www.blogger.com/profile/07707773491849297274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6709299446814867771.post-60974747754706334402018-12-27T07:29:00.001-08:002018-12-27T07:29:28.774-08:00The Times<p dir="ltr"><br>
I remember correctly<br>
How could I forget?<br>
I know now why the silence<br>
Hang loud in the air.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I hated that.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I was teetotaling,<br>
Teetering, fumbling..<br>
You sipped blacks,<br>
I made do with the ciggies.</p>
<p dir="ltr">You hated those by the way.</p>
<p dir="ltr">He made you feel better<br>
I hid my face<br>
My room was messy<br>
Roaches, butts, ashes.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I figured you hated those too.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I remember; don’t worry.<br>
You were nervous, raw.<br>
It hang in the air<br>
These chemical concoctions out of our heads.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I hated him, I just couldn’t tell.</p>
<p dir="ltr">You know I wanted it<br>
I knew you wanted it.<br>
It was strange, this thing.<br>
How you devoured them.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I hated that, Lord knows.<br>
There was going to be three of us.<br>
We did business<br>
We couldn’t afford messes.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I drowned.</p>
Ken Gitau.http://www.blogger.com/profile/07707773491849297274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6709299446814867771.post-81185328303969374452014-12-12T03:03:00.000-08:002014-12-12T03:03:11.225-08:00The Assembly of the Former Heads, by Sylva Nze Ifedigbo.I lifted this jewel of a short story from the all famous kalaharireview.com.
Where the funkiest African stories are told.
“Gentlemen, we must move forward.” The Speaker said, hitting his gavel on the table repeatedly. He was screaming but his voice was drowned by the argument in the hall.
“Order!” He screamed louder, rising to his feet and striking the gavel harder. The dull sound of wood landing on wood finally got the attention of members. The din receded gradually until the hall became silent.
“Gentlemen” He began after allowing a whole minute to pass. “I don’t expect this kind of behaviour from you. If Celestials are acting this way, what makes us different from mere mortals?” He paused for a few seconds again, moving his head from one end of the room to the other, trying to make as much eye contacts as he could. Most of the heads were bowed low as if in guilt. “There must be something that differentiates us as Celestials.” He continued. “What do you think The Master will make of us if he sees us screaming like children over such a flimsy issue?” His eyes met with those of Celestial Thomas who was one of those leading the commotion and he let it linger there for a bit. “Gentlemen, we must proceed now. Members like I said before are free to use whatever name they prefer.”
“Mr Speaker” Celestial Thomas who felt the Speakers lingering gaze was some kind of accusation had jumped to his feet. “The main issue here is that Celestial Muammar is being very unreasonable. His allegation was derogatory and I demand that he withdraws it before we proceed.”
There were acknowledging shouts of “Yes! Yes!”
“I will say it again because it is the fact” Celestial Muammar said jumping to his feet too. He was a tall man with a silk turban loosely tied around his head. “All of you who retain colonial names remain stooges of the West, full stop. Tell us Celestial Thomas, why did you change the name of your country from Upper Volta to Burkina Faso in 1984? Was it not because you wanted to exert your sovereignty as a nation? What then stops you from exerting your sovereignty as an individual and use a real African name like my friend Celestial Mobutu who did not only change his country’s name but also discarded the meaningless name the Whiteman gave him when he was a baby?”
The murmurs and arguments started again.
“Order!” the Speaker screamed. They were quite a handful, the members of the Assembly. When he first arrived from the other side just over three months ago, he had been shocked to find that the African Assembly Hall was under lock and key. It had been so for over a year. The Master, he gathered was angered by the member’s inability to agree on anything and had ordered the Hall to be sealed preferring to share African matters between the European and American Assemblies for deliberations. The Speaker thought it was unacceptable that Africans could not deliberate on their own matters even on this side of life, so he led a team of two other respected members, Nnamdi from Nigeria and Julius from Tanzania to the Central Palace to appeal to The Master for the reopening of the Assembly. The Master gave one condition, that he Nelson would lead the Assembly and become responsible for ensuring peace in the House. The Speaker had accepted the task, confident that after surviving twenty seven years in jail, there wasn’t much else he could not handle. Even more, most of the members revered him back on the other side and would rally round his leadership he thought. Now, as he watched them screaming at each other, ignoring the gavel which was landing repeatedly like a carpenter driving a nail into dry wood, he wondered if he had not made a mistake taking up the position.
“Order!” he felt his longs squeeze against his rib cage. The hall quietened a bit. “I have made my ruling on this matter. Members can use whatever name they chose. You all know, I used Nelson all through my life time and it did not make me any less African than any of you here. That is my last word on this matter.” He paused as if to dare anyone to speak again. No one did.
“Now gentlemen let us proceed.” He began to read from his note pad “The main item on our Order Paper for today is this letter from The Master that requires urgent attention.”
Before he could resume his seat someone screamed “Point of Information”
The Speaker was reluctant but the House rules said Point of Information must be observed at all times and he did not want another long argument.
“Yes, Celestial Kamuza”
“Thank you Mr Speaker for addressing me properly” Kamuza said a mischievous smile on his face. “Yes, it is Kamuza now, not Hastings. All documents here and in the world before including Kwacha notes with my face, remain valid.”
There was laughter and cheering in the room.
“I want to quickly make a clarification to the House” He continued after raising a fist in the air as though he was acknowledging cheers from supporters at a campaign rally. “That future female member of this house who was defeated in the election last weekend is no relation of mine. We only happen to share the same last name....”
Laughter greeted his comment, interrupting him.
“No, no, seriously, I have to say this because some people have been coming to condole me saying Celestial Bingu’s brother defeated my daughter, some said she is my daughter in-law or whatever, making it sound like I am a failure. I have to correct this impression before it tarnishes my image and reputation. Even in death, I remain invincible.”
A section of the members began to cheer again. The Speaker looked up from the pad on which he had been taking notes. Celestial Kamuza was one of the pioneer members, the senior Heads, who sat on the front row in the Assembly as a mark of respect and who were permitted to address the Assembly while sitting. Even though Kamuza had maintained full diplomatic relations with the apartheid regime in South Africa, the Speaker still liked him. The black bowler hat he always had on and the way he spoke, slowly like he controlled time, made him very likeable. It was this effortless grace about him that had made it difficult for many during his lifetime to decide if he was an African hero, or a tyrant.
“So I guess congratulations are in order to Celestial Bingu” The Speaker said deliberately shifting the discussion away from Kamuza’s comment.
“O, yes Mr Speaker” Celestial Bingu jumped to his feet all smiles. “The good people of Malawi spoke resoundingly last weekend. They showed the great love they have for me even in death. By enthroning my brother, Peter, they showed how angry they are at how that Banda woman was rubbishing my legacy, making Malawi look like a pauper’s enclave. Now the world will see we are not half as poor as she made us look. We will start by buying a befitting Presidential jet after that woman sold mine and used the money to purchase those heaps of cloth she always carries on her shoulder.”
There was another round of laughter and cheering in a section of the Hall. Celestial Bingu shook the hands of those around him jubilantly, before taking his seat.
“Alright, let us move forward” the Speaker said feeling some guilt for chuckling at Bingu’s comment. The lady in question, Joyce had delivered a moving eulogy at his final memorial service in Qunu for which she got a standing ovation. She was someone he was very proud of but he had always known that the forces that had tried to prevent her from becoming President after Bingu’s death were going to ensure she did not retain the seat after the elections.
“As I was saying, there is a letter here from The Master.” He waved a brown envelop in the air then he stood up, put his glasses on and began to read. The letter was about the approaching football World Cup. The prayer unit of The Master’s office was being inundated with requests from people of the five countries representing Africa, requesting that their country makes it to the semi-finals. The Master was willing to grant this request but wanted the Assembly to decide on which of the five countries should be chosen.
“So gentlemen, the task is simple.” The Speaker said after reading the letter.“This is a fantastic opportunity for an African country to reach the World Cup Semi-finals. I would have loved that it happened in 2010 when we hosted but all the same, it is never too late. So we are to decide on which among Algeria, Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Cameroon and Nigeria should be chosen.” He took off his glasses and dropped them on the notepad before him. The murmur in the room had resumed.
Celestial Julius was the first to indicate interest in speaking.
“I listened attentively to the names you read out Mr Speaker, did you say these countries are representing Africa?”
The Speaker nodded.
Celestial Julius cleared his throat loudly. “I don’t know much about football but I am at home with Geography and from what I know, that does not seem like a fair selection to me. The West alone has three or four countries. What happened to the Center, What happened to the South and the East?”
The murmurs had now grown into chatters. There were more hands up. The Speaker pointed at Celestial Levy but the more boisterous Celestial Idi who was sitting behind him jumped up instead.
“Mr Speaker, I am honestly not comfortable with the list too, particularly about Nigeria. Everything goes to Nigeria. Largest population, Nigeria. Largest economy, Nigeria. Richest man, Nigeria. Everything, Nigeria. The Master is playing partiality. Why don’t we see Uganda anywhere?”
Voices rose. The Speaker landed his gavel repeatedly to quieten them.
“Gentlemen” he said rising to his feet even as the chattering continued. “I need to make a clarification here. The countries on the list were not picked by The Master or by anyone else. These are the countries that qualified. There was a qualifying round earlier. So please members, we must choose from them.” He pointed at Celestial Felix on the front row to speak. The man turned to look at the other members behind him in the room like you would at kids making noise in the yard while you listened to the news on a transistor radio, as if saying can you little ones not see I have been pointed to speak? His demeanour amused the Speaker. Not many people knew that long before the Nobel committee decided to honour the Speaker and former President De Klerk with the Peace prize, they had both won a Félix Houphouët-Boigny Peace Prize instituted by and funded by Celestial Felix who was known then, as the Sage of Africa.
“There shouldn’t be much argument on this matter Mr Speaker.” He said gliding from side to side. “Cote d’Ivoire is the best team on the continent, no questions about it.”
The room was silent but it was not the kind of silence that implied concurrence but one that suggested they had not heard what he said. The first to react was Celestial Ahmadou who was sitting right next to Felix on the front row.
“Mr Speaker, I believe my friend Felix here is a little out of touch with reality. Who knows Cote d’Ivoire in World football? Do we not all remember the exploits of Roger Miller at the World Cup? Cameroon was the first to ever reach the quarter finals. We should be the natural choice here.”
Somebody in the back rows screamed “Nigeria!”
“No! Nigeria should focus on finding the missing girls”
The sharp retort was by Celestial Muammar. The Speaker frowned at him.
“Please indicate you want to speak by raising your hand”
Celestial Muammar jumped up with his hand in the air like a school boy. The Speaker smiled at him. They were good friends so much so he named one of his grandsons Gadaffi. After his release from prison and becoming the first black President of South Africa, he had rejected pressure from the West to sever ties with Libya. In one televised interview he had asked all those irritated by his friendship with the Libyan leader to go jump in the Atlantic.
“Muammar” The Speaker acknowledged.
“Yes, Mr Speaker, I was saying Nigeria has no business even going to the World Cup especially when their army have failed to find the school girls abducted by the rebels in their country. The disgrace they have brought to us is too much, we should not even be considering them on the list.”
Several hands shot into the air. There were murmurs of disagreement. Some members were on their feet pointing in the direction of Muammar and speaking angrily. One of them was Celestial Nnamdi who also sat on the front row. The speaker pointed at him to speak.
“This goes beyond a pot calling a kettle black Mr Speaker.” Nnamdi’s American accent was still rich after all these years. The room was suddenly quiet. Nnamdi was one of the most respected members and when he spoke, everyone listened. “I take serious exceptions to characters like Muammar standing up here and opening their buccal cavity to speak all sorts of calumny about Nigeria with the intent of ridiculing our great country. Need I remind him that it is arms from his war ravaged Libya that is being used to fuel insurgency on the continent? Need I remind him of how he failed woefully to save himself from dethronement despite boasting of being powerful and entertaining the United Nations with his rambles. I expect to hear him apologising to Nigeria not insulting our sensibilities.”
Muammar jumped back up, but the Speaker eager to avoid another round of arguments asked him to sit down. Surprisingly, he obeyed without arguing. There were three other hands in the air. Two of them were regulars, Celestial’s Frederick and kwame. The Speaker was pleasantry surprised by the third hand. Celestial Sani was a reclusive figure who rarely spoke nor betrayed any emotions. It was hard to tell what was behind those dark goggles he always had on. Words had it that he was still very bitter at the way The Master cut short his reign just when he was preparing to take off his army khaki and become President for life.
“Yes, Celestial Sani?”
The man stood up slowly, his body language smirking of arrogance. The Speaker disliked him very much. The man was responsible for his biggest foreign affairs blunder, an incidence he continued to regret until his death. In 1995 human rights activists had begged him to openly condemn the man’s murderous regime but he had chosen instead to speak to him in private hoping to convince him not to go ahead with the execution of human rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and his eight comrades on trumped-up murder charges. They had a long phone call and the man promised to see what he could do. The very next day on November 10, Saro-Wiwa and his comrades were taken out of their cells and hanged.
“Mr Speaker, in reaction to the accusation by Muammar, I want to state for the records, that the army of which I was once Commander in Chief is neither incompetent nor an embarrassment. Our military is renowned for their exploits since the Second World War. When our neighbours needed help, I sent them to Liberia and Sierra Leone and they excelled. In fact, we all know that this kind of rubbish could not have happened under my regime. I would have smoked those criminals out a long time ago and taught them a lesson of their lives. But that is not the issue here Mr Speaker. The real issue is that we have sufficient reasons to believe that the entire Boko Haram or whatever they call themselves insurgency is a covert CIA operation. Just in the same way they sponsored my death by recruiting those prostitutes and arming them with poisoned apples. The CIA has been doing these things in Africa. They were behind the removal of some other members like Celestial Patrice and my big brother Kwame. The whole thing is orchestrated to weaken my country and cause chaos so as to pave way for Western occupation of our land. Their eye is on our oil. This people are not comfortable with a stable Nigeria. I believe this is an issue The Master must look into urgently.”
“I am sorry Mr Speaker but describing this as a CIA operation, will that not amount to stretching logic?” Celestial Jomo interjected without waiting to be called on by the Speaker. He was also one of the front row members who could speak while sitting. “The issue of terrorism is a global challenge. It is about the clash of ideologies. Some people are bent on spreading their ideology of fear and hate and they are strategic in their approach. See what they did in Mali. Look at Somalia. You are aware of how they embarrassed my son Uhuru and the peace loving people of Kenya in the Westgate Mall siege last year. Mr Speaker, blaming it on the CIA will be living in denial. This is Al Qaeda we are fighting.”
“We are saying the same thing.” Celestial Sani who was still standing responded “Who is Al Qaeda in the first place? Who trained Osama bin Laden? Is it not the same Americans?”
Some voices rose in the room. The Speaker rose to his feet again.
“Celestial Mobutu can you please sit down” The Speaker said. Mobutu made to protest, and then changed his mind, grumbling inaudibly as he adjusted the leopard skin cap and sat down.
“Celestial Emmanuel or is it Kwasi now, you have the floor”
“I prefer to be addressed as Kwasi actually Mr Speaker”
“Alright Kwasi, please go ahead”
“Thank you Mr Speaker. Mine is a clarification. I want to react to an allusion made by Celestial Sani about the CIA involvement in Ghana. I have said it before and I will say it again, I was not working for the CIA when I and my comrades decided to execute Operation Cold Chop to free Ghana from the corruption and misrule of politicians. I think that point has to be made.”
“Point of Order Mr Speaker” Celestial Kwame screamed jumping to his feet even though he too could speak without standing up. “The last speaker is deliberately trying to distort facts and create an alternate history of his own. The whole world knows that he and his gang of usurpers truncated by their act of malfeasance on 24thFebruary 1966, one of Africa’s earliest democratic experiments and strangled in the process, our brightest chance at creating a Pan-African state through the help of the CIA.”
Many members rose to their feet, hands in the air, voices rising in argument. The Speaker knew it was no use trying to stop them. He stood and watched. Celestial Kwasi and Kwame stood facing each other, pointing and screaming into each other’s faces. The sight reminded him of how they used to argue in the ANC on tactics, how he used to insist that there was no alternative to armed and violent resistance. He felt like Sisulu must have felt, moderating some of those meetings, trying to accommodate all divergent views while subtly voicing his own. Back then, they would lock themselves up in the thatched room in Liliesleaf Farm and shout themselves hoarse. But it all stayed within the walls of that room, their disagreements. Outside, they were one united front against apartheid.
“I am ruling Celestial Emmanuel, sorry Kwasi, out of Order” he said when the argument finally died down and members resumed their seats. “The issue you brought up is one that is personal and clearly outside of the topic being discussed. Members must keep all personal differences out of our sittings. May I remind us that The Master depends on us to guide him on decisions that will affect over a billion people back home and when we come here and waste all the time arguing over little things we are doing our people a disservice. It is bad enough some of us here failed them while alive, we should not fail a second time in death.”
An unusual silence descended on the room. The Speaker knew he had struck some nerves. It was a guilt most of the members lived with, the knowledge that back on earth, the people did not have fond memories of them. It was a sharp contrast to what they always believed while in power, that they were loved by the people, that they were truly respected by their foreign friends. The Speaker allowed some minutes to pass before speaking again.
“Now back to the agenda of our sitting. What is our resolution on the request from The Master?”
Celestial John’s hand was the first in the air. They called him The Prof in reference to his long career in academics before his foray into Politics. He was known to have completed his doctoral thesis in taxation and economic development at the age of 27. The Speaker pointed at him.
“Without sounding biased, I will pick my country Ghana for obvious reasons. Ghana has a long history of successes in football. You will recall Mr Speaker that at the last World Cup in your country, we missed the Semi-finals by a hair’s breadth. I was President then and I knew how painful it was for my people. Getting to the Semi-finals this time will heal our wounds.”
The three hands that went up after Celestial John’s passionate appeal were all Algerians. They all did not speak much on the floor. Their preference for the newly formed Middle East Assembly was well known. But the topic was football and all three of them had something to say. “Celestials Ahmed, Houari and Rabah. It is good to see all three of you are very African today.” The Speaker said chuckling.
There was laughter in the room. Celestial Ahmed who sat on the front row did not seem to share the joke. His protest was drowned by the din. The Speaker tried to calm things down.
“Alright Celestial Ahmed, let us hear you out”
“There is a good reason why we should settle on Algeria Mr Speaker. Besides the fact that we also have a rich football history, all the other countries on the list are in the West. So we are a good compromise.”
“Clearly we all have our biases so I suppose we have to put it to vote” The Speaker said after the jeers and cheers that followed Celestial Ahmed’s contribution receded. He was making to rise up and conduct the vote when Celestial Idi’s hand went up.
“Yes Idi?”
“Mr Speaker, I have a question.
“Go ahead”
“Why Semi-finals, why not champions or is The Master saying Africans are not good enough to win the cup?”
The Speaker thought it was an intelligent question, something rare for Celestial Idi whose comments were always either narcissistic or aimed as an insult at another member.
“I thought of that too” the Speaker said. “But The Master said it is so because that’s what the people are praying for. They are all asking just to get to the semi-finals.”
Celestial Idi shook his head.
“You see why this slot should go to Uganda? In Uganda we do not tolerate inferiority complex. They know what I did to all of them white people in Uganda. As Field Marshal I made the Queen bow down to me, that is why I have CBE at the end of my name, Conqueror of the British Empire. Black people should be proud and conquer the world not fighting for fourth position.”
“Celestial Idi should stop this Field Marshal nonsense.”Celestial Laurent was fuming. He had not waited to be picked by the Speaker. “When real soldiers talk he should not even show his face there talk more of claiming to be a Field Marshal. We all know how he ran away like a coward in the face of defeat in the hands of Celestial Julius, a civilian leader.”
“Like you would know anything about being a Soldier” Celestial Mobutu countered rising to his feet too. “Were it not for the support you got from your Tutsi brothers Yoweri and Paul, I would have exterminated you and your rebels in days.”
“Look who is talking. Same person who could not withstand my gallant ADFL forces. Are you not ashamed that you died in exile?” It was Laurent again.
“And you lasted for how long? Four years. Just four years. Such a weakling you are. Which African leader lasts for just four years? Even your son, Joseph has lasted far longer than you. And you say you are a soldier?”
“Enough, gentlemen!” The Speaker was on his feet. “We are derailing once again. All personal issues must be kept out of our sittings. Please sit down Celestials.” He paused as Mobutu and Laurent reluctantly sat down. “Can we now have our vote?”
Another hand was up. It was Celestial Murtala.
“Mr Speaker, are you not going to allow us make our own case? Or is Nigeria no longer on the list?”
The speaker was shocked. “Sorry about that. Our brothers from Nigeria are yet to make their case, we must allow them do so before we vote. Will you be speaking on behalf of your country Celestial Murtala?”
The man who the International Airport in Lagos was named after was pleased by the opportunity the way he beamed a smile.“You see Mr Speaker” he began, “there is no need for long stories on this matter. As we say in my country, the god of soccer is a Nigerian. We do not even need to waste time voting. I am sure that if you check well, you will find that some of the people from these other small-small hungry countries on the list are actually rooting for Nigeria not their own countries. ”
Celestial Murtala was stirring the hornets’ nest and he knew it. No sooner had he finished speaking and several members were up on their feet pointing at him and screaming in disapproval. The Speaker felt pressed. He raised the gavel and dropped it. There was no point. The argument was not going to end any time soon. Like children defending their mothers cooking. So he decided to sneak out to the restroom hoping that perhaps when he returned, it would have eased out. They did not notice him step down from the dais and leave the room. As he neared the door of the rest room The Master’s messenger, Gabriel who apparently had been lurking around the corner, approached.
“Greetings Madiba” the messenger said smiling “I see it has been a busy afternoon.”
The Speaker shook his head in a way that indicated frustration but did not speak. He was shocked to see Gabriel and was worried because his appearance meant there was an important message from The Master.
“The noise from here is heard all the way at the Central Palace.” Gabriel said gliding across the space between where the speaker stood and the door of the rest room.“The Master has not been able to take his siesta because of it so he has asked me to tell you to end the sitting immediately”
“But we are yet to reach a decision as requested by Him”
“He knows. And He is not happy to have lost the bet either”
“How do you mean? What bet?”
“Well, this was just a test, to see if you people could be united for once on an issue. We had this argument at the Central Palace. Some of us said Africans could never unite on anything. The Master argued that you could agree on football. So we made a bet.”
“But...but we’ve not failed to agree yet. The sitting is still in progress. We were just about to vote”
“A vote is hardly the kind of resolution we are talking about here. Votes don’t inspire unity. It numbs it instead and for a people already divided like you are, a vote simply puts a knife through the weak string that still holds you together.”
There was a loud bang from inside the Assembly Hall, like a table crashing to the floor, then the scream of someone in pain.
“You better hurry back there now before someone gets hurt.” Gabriel said adjusting his halo.
The Speaker made to dash off in the direction of the Hall.
“One more thing Madiba.” Gabriel said, “I thought you should know that The Master does not fix the outcome of football matches.
The Speaker’s eyes widened in disbelief. “But..but, our prayers before the matches, what happens to it?
Gabriel hissed.
“Well, they all end up in the waste bin and are incinerated the next morning”
The Speakers mouth hung open in shock.
“Yes. No one attends to them. We are unable to save many dying of war and sicknesses and you think we will waste our time on who wins a football game? We watch them though. Whenever there is a game, we all gather around the large screen in the Central palace with our packs of pop corn to watch like mortals do.”
“So why do some teams win and others don’t”
Messenger Gabriel smiled.
“There are certain things you should really not bother yourself about. Go now and stop the madness going on in there before someone dies a second time.”
Ken Gitau.http://www.blogger.com/profile/07707773491849297274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6709299446814867771.post-33211945325810901472014-12-04T06:46:00.000-08:002014-12-04T06:46:31.108-08:00Women Poets International Announces Woman Scream International Poetry Festival 201536 countries confirmed participation on Woman Scream 2015
Women Poets International Movement based at the Dominican Republic, announces the first list of participating countries confirmed to join Woman Scream International Poetry and Arts Festival (March 2015). Male and female poets and artists get together to raise their voices against women violence on different cultural manifestations. The Woman Scream festival is launched in November, to celebrate the anniversary of both projects, and to commemorate the Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women (Nov. 25th). WS will have a special connotation that year. It’ll be dedicated to Mirabal Sisters (The Butterflies) using the theme: “Women of Light” to honor them.
Hundreds of institutions, literary groups, poets and artists, take part of the Woman Scream worldwide chain of events simultaneously, starting March 1st to 31st (with over hundred events coordinated). Among the participating countries confirmed so far there are: Dominican Republic (SEDE), Porto Rico, Argentina, Spain, Mexico, USA, Canada, Colombia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Honduras, Panama, Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Guatemala, Curacao, Portugal, Brazil, Italy, France, Greece, Morocco, UK, Australia, Georgia, Kosovo, Russia, South Africa, Tanzania, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, India. Haiti, Luxembourg. This list is expected to grow gradually until February 2015, when general venues calendar will be published.
Many activities are included to celebrate Woman Scream and Women Poets International 5th and 6th anniversaries, in addition to the launching of Grito de Mujer (Woman Scream) International Anthology of Female Poets, Spanish edition, where 243 poetesses of 20 countries take part, with poems allusive to what a scream is all about from a female point of view. This volume, has been well received among MPI’s followers, and can be obtained on the websites: gritodemujer.com, gritodemujer.org, or visiting WS blog: womanscream.blogspot.com for a contribution amount.
Women Poets International Movement, have been active since 2009, and ever since, it has counted on the support of many, to achieve its goal and spreading the mission of this necessary cause.<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bFivPbf84dw/VIByo0r5eUI/AAAAAAAAArg/YVh0b6GFXKI/s1600/unnamed.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bFivPbf84dw/VIByo0r5eUI/AAAAAAAAArg/YVh0b6GFXKI/s320/unnamed.jpg" /></a>Ken Gitau.http://www.blogger.com/profile/07707773491849297274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6709299446814867771.post-32312791375451998512014-11-22T02:50:00.004-08:002014-11-22T02:50:59.795-08:00Why Husbands Who Love Their BMWs Should Avoid High Hairstyles By Muthoni Garland
<b>(Manisha – the Hindu god who symbolises intelligence and desire; also symbolises state of being – where you mind is, there your heart will be also)<i></i></b>.
We are driving home from a party when my teenage daughter Zawadi points, “Look, Mummy, Daddy’s new car….oh, oh,…” and then starts to fidget with my skirt, trying to distract me. It is 9 PM. I slow to a crawl.
Sure enough, there sits my Lucas, in his beloved-above-all-else black BMW. He’s smooching a High Hairstyle. A style where wet hair is saturated with ultra-gel before a bushy horsehair chignon is plonked on top. When it dries, the hair is so hard it can dice unwary fingers….or lips. Nasty hair. Obviously nasty woman. Up to nasty business.
Lucas took me to a place like this.
Once.
It is the kind of lowlife joint open 24-7-365 where you’re greeted by the happiest party of houseflies in the world. You then walk past the bar to a counter to select your chunk of raw meat. Behind this lies an enclosure euphemistically called KITCHENS.
God forbid you should ever study the hardened miniature stalactites hanging under the wire mesh over barbeque fire pits inside. Or see the dank water used to wash utensils that is collected in plastic buckets from the slum bathtub of a Nairobi River. Or hope to enjoy the aroma of roasting meat over wafts of toilet stench. Or listen to resident drunkards shouting over an asthmatic jukebox spewing Lingala tunes that clash with the Willie Nelson classics favoured by those in neighbouring joints.
Wealthy patrons, like my adulterer-husband Lucas, wait in their cars overlooking the River. Attendants bring out the cooked meat spread on a wooden board, along with a plated wet mess of kachumbari salad, and white anthills of maize-meal ugali. It’s held out for lengthy inspection, as though you could recognize the meat, and you want to ask, ‘Hey you shrivelled up carcass, are you really the same juicy specimen I selected raw?’
Said attendants balance the board on the window ledge and then with knife flying a hair’s breath from your earwax, flashily slice this lump. Voila! The grand picnic is ready for Bwana and his Mistress.
The pain is expected, but the coldness of my anger takes me by surprise. I drop Zawadi home, reassuring her that all is fine, fine, FINE, then double back and find the BMW. But Lucas and his High Hairstyle have gone inside – possibly to check on their germy meat, possibly to use the stinking toilet, possibly to rent a filthy room.
Don’t get me wrong. I am an all-Kenyan, educated and hardworking woman who met political-degree student Lucas Githinji at New York’s Syracuse University. He was the activist head of the African Student’s Council who was going to bring democracy ‘back home’ to the ‘motherland’.
At our white wedding in Nairobi’s All Saints Cathedral, I promised to be as obedient as he promised to be faithful.
Sixteen years later, money and power from within the establishment and all its attendant flattery had changed Lucas into a womanising, hard-drinking, pot-bellied, Alfa-male icon of our modern African society.
Not that I’m perfect, but I’ve played the role expected of me. I’ve maintained a clean home, raised two children, kept in shape. I’ve lowered my expectations and raised my threshold for pain. When he beats me in places that don’t show, I sulk in a way that only he knows. When he says, like his father and his father’s father before him, “Women are called atumia because they are supposed to tumia (shut up)!” I choke down my anger with extra strength paracetamol. For him, I’ve kept my legs open and my mouth shut, in other words, I’ve been a GOOD Kikuyu wife.
But this stinking business being played in front of me is the virus-laden straw that’s breaking my back. I open the door, my open-toe kitten heels sink into the mud that passes for lawn. It has not rained in months, but I force my mind not to dwell on the source of the squelch that makes it way between my toes, the toes I polished pink just this morning, like a million years ago.
The Nairobi River doesn’t even pretend to run. It is a black mirror broken into uncomfortable fragments by its own effluent. The past, present and future stares me in the face. My mother. Myself. My daughter. Lucas’ car is just as shiny, winking at me. My keys are in my hand, the heavy-metal-cow-mascot- -bottle-opener Lucas bought me at the showground pointing straight up.
“Karibu madam.” A waiter is heading towards me, wielding his tray and hearty voice as though he were my long-lost uncle. “Mume tutembelea leo.” It is not a question. This man imagines there is A LUCAS waiting in my car, and that I am another of those nasty-hair girls come to visit our home away from home. I wave in the general direction of my car, and the waiter adjusts his direction away from me, to follow what he imagines to be the true scent of what matters. Money.
I stalk Lucas’ black car, my keys in my hand. I touch metal to shiny black metallic. It’s not enough. What Anybody could do is meaningless, impersonal.
The window on High-Hair’s side is greasy with gell and germs, and is a little bit open yet again confirming her to be a dangerously lazy and dirty so and so. I slip my key-ring-cow-mascot into the gap and use it as a lever to push down. Grunting, I rest my weight on it as though my life depended on it. It slowly gives. Reaching in I pull the lock and open the door. I gently pull the door after me. The seat feels like a throne, brushed creamy leather, so soft and plush and generous.
What comes to mind sitting in my husband‘s beloved black BMW is the memory of a hard pimple on my chin. A gentle rise of skin that felt, when probed, like a hard knob. When it began to ache in a low-key manner, I couldn’t keep my hands off it. Tingles of anticipated pain kept me from forcing the issue. But one evening I psyched myself to deal with it, to exorcise this irritation once and for all. A long steamy bath to open the pores, my face almost kissing the mirror, I placed two tissues on either side of this blight and pressed the little hard knob, hard, harder. I did’nt stop and it didn’t give and didn’t give. Tears flowed, nose running over. The pain, oh the pain. Unbelievable. Unbearable. But I bore it, just as I did child birth, three times. My whole face throbbed before I gave in. Next day I went to hospital where they operated to remove what the doctor concluded was a mole before adding in an accusatory tone (and actually wagged his finger) that it might have been a cancerous growth, that it is not safe to go around dredging one’s own skin. I am sure he meant well in his fatherly doctorly way, but I left wishing I’d used my kitchen knife to butcher the thing in private. I tenderly touch the area now. I want to describe it as deceptively smooth but really there is nothing there to show for the pain it caused. Just like my outside shows none of the corrosion going on inside.
“Ala, na hawa wamepotea wapi?” The waiter calls in a confused but still friendly voice, like ‘we’ the missing couple are pranksters playing a trick on him. He is leaning against my Toyota, smoking a cigarette. I filter him out of my mind.
I smell grease in this car that drives us to church on Sunday mornings, to visit the in-laws every last Saturday of the month, to school events at ends of term, to Mombasa Beach for a holiday every August. I zero-in on the fuzzy glass where High Hair rested against the window when she was doing what with my husband? I smell Lucas in the polish, and in the smooth leather of the steering wheel, and in the white handkerchief now no longer home-pressed crisp but scrunched into the rest between the two seats after it wiped what? It whispers a dirty idea.
I find out that no matter how generously proportioned a car, it is difficult to squat on a seat, especially with my shoes on. I persevere, my kitten heels poke into the leather for traction. My head brushes the ceiling which too is creamy, padded and soft, thank god.
So much silence in such a noisy place. Country music winning over lingala in the always-open-for-business buildings ahead. Closer, I hear the waiter again, moving around. Obviously looking for ‘us’. I spy him from the corner of my eye looking in between cars as though we might be lying there overcome. Or maybe it’s dawning on him that we might be a security threat. In a city nicknamed Nairobbery, anything is possible. The waiter is not a young man. He has probably seen too much in this life. He is peeking into cars now, discreetly and with a ready smile just in case their lawful owners are in situ and not exactly in the mood or position to order more meat.
Balancing in a gymnastic move that I’ll never again be able to replicate, I squat and gather my panties to the front noting while I do so that they really are too big. From barely a car-length away, the waiter stops, turns in my direction. He catches my eye and shakes his head. But it is too late. Too much has built up inside me and it time to let go.
Steam rises.
It’s not enough. It’s not even the right thing to do. But it’s a start.Ken Gitau.http://www.blogger.com/profile/07707773491849297274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6709299446814867771.post-4074566811911210572014-11-22T02:37:00.000-08:002014-11-22T02:37:34.240-08:00 That Part Of Me by Lynda Chiwetelu<b></b>
The day it happened dawned normally. Something should have warned me, I should have gotten an omen of sorts, maybe an owl hooting, or a dead lizard- or dropping the hot pot of Okro soup I was taking off the stove on to the table- or, hitting my left foot against a stone solidly buried in the ground. Anything.
I remember clearly the first time I met her. I was eight years old and waiting for a quick breakfast of spaghetti and tomato sauce which Mama was preparing, before I could go to school. Papa looked at me over the top of the sun newspaper which he was devouring. ‘Sandra ’He said ‘Get me my glasses. I can’t read some of this…this thing they print these days. My eyesight is getting worse’. I quickly went to his room to do that. The drawer where Papa kept most of his prized possessions was the location and I opened the first partition as soon as I got there. I saw the case where he kept the glasses. The familiar fading coffee-brown colored case which beckoned at my hand. I almost had it when my eyes caught something else. A wad of crisp naira notes. Some had fled the little string that tied them together and were lying apart. Others strained to get away. She came then, suddenly, shocking me with her arrival. One fifty-naira note found its way into my palm, got squeezed and eventually ended up in my school bag.
That day at school, Mrs. Dupe, my teacher eyed me warily when I went on a spending spree with my three best friends. “My Daddy gave me some money because I missed breakfast” I told her when she inquired. It was so easy I almost cried with joy at the discovery. She got me Yoghurt, Cakes, Sweets, Dolls, Fancy rulers. I could have everything a kid wanted and I didn’t have to ask my parents and be refused them. I used to wonder then why Papa never suspected me, or why Mama never guessed that all the missing change she accused herself of misplacing, was actually in my school bag. I eventually stopped wondering as well listening to my conscience. I stopped listening also to Uncle Femi my Sunday School Teacher.
She was my best friend all through junior and Senior Secondary School and I promised to exile her if I gained admission into the University. I didn’t. Emma my roommate discovered. She noticed the missing earrings, the reduced milk in the tin, the sudden change of clothes, and the occasional hot heels which appeared on my shelf, out of nowhere. By then I had realized that I was cursed with her. I couldn’t leave her or make her leave even if I wanted to. One day, a Sunday, after church, Emma called me aside. She was a slim fair girl of nineteen who had the most amazing eyes. They were probing and piercing as well as beautiful. She fixed them on me and said quietly and ambiguously.
“Sandra I know. I know what you do”
I stared at her, wondered which of the two things she meant and eventually decided it couldn’t be one.
Denial rose in my throat but died there. Half of me wanted help. The other half, well, the other half was her. I didn’t reply and she continued. “I don’t know why you do it.I can’t understand it. I mean, your parents , they are not poor… right?” . I shook my head. I wanted to explain to her. I wanted to tell her about the thrill and unbearable urge she brought out in me to pilfer, take, steal. I wanted to make Emma help me get rid of her. But still I said nothing. Emma held my hand. She said nothing for a while.
“I am not going to tell anyone but you have to promise me that you’ll stop stealing. Can you do that?” Her voice was earnest .
Emma was nice and right then I wished I was not the girl her sweetheart Dayo was cheating on her with. Tears spilled and I promised her I’d stop. For five whole days after I was clean. The sixth day, she came back, with vengeance in mind. It was Saturday and I had gone jogging. The school stadium was my destination and I was almost there when I realized I had to catch my breath. Slowing down to a final halt I leaned on a nearby fence and tried to imagine a break-up scene, with me and Dayo as the main actors. A thin girl passed me. I’d seen her approaching and actually wondered why she bothered exercising. She was actually as fat as a single broomstick. She wore a white t-shirt, white shorts and white trainers and was sweating awfully. She had a headset on and didn’t notice her phone fall out of her pocket. She kept jogging. Quick as a flash, I walked towards the fallen phone and saw it. It was a very cheap phone - the kind you would be ashamed of holding. I bent down. I had already picked it up and was standing up when I heard a shrill HEY!.
I turned.
“what do you think you are doing?” Thin girl had materialized and I was caught.
“Helping you of course.” I snapped. “Here” I thrust the phone into her hands quickly.
She grabbed it and spat out “I’m sure you were. Helping me.”
I started out towards the opposite direction, my heart in my hands. Being caught had never represented an iota of threat for me but I thought that was mainly because it had almost never happened. The worst moments I’d had were those like thin girl’s episode.
******
The wedding planner arrived and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. She was about two hours late and had really gotten everyone up-to-their-necks-deep in the worry ocean. Emma was to be married in three hours’ time and I was there as her maid of honor. I don’t believe she did it to spite me because like I said before, she was a nice girl- but I don’t think it was totally innocent since she had found out about me and Dayo from him. I tried to make myself useful and tried hard not to hear the voices of the gold and diamond bracelets, necklaces and rings left lying carelessly- calling my name and begging me to have them. I went into the make-up Chamber and admired Emma. She looked really beautiful and deserved every bit of the happiness I was sure she felt. “Have you seen Dayo yet?” I asked and immediately regretted it.
“Of course not.” she replied and giggled while the make-up artist by her left tried to fix her lashes. “You know, the normal crazy rule of the groom not seeing the bride before the wedding.”
“I am happy for you” I lied. The three make-up artistes turned to look at me. I saw in their eyes that they knew about me, Emma and Dayo. I left the room with a diamond coated hair pin and tears in my eyes. Dayo signaled me with his eyes and we met in a corridor. There was an open room close by so we entered and he shut the door.
“I’m sorry Sandy. I know this must be hard for you.” I looked at his face and felt the pin’s edge dig into my slightly flabby stomach.
“It’s okay. I’m over us. And you love her right?” It was not actually a question.
“I…I mean I do ….” I knew what he was going to say next. He was going to tell me how he felt guilty about us. How he was trying to make it up to Emma by marrying her. How, anyways, she was pregnant and he had to do it. I placed a perfectly manicured finger over his lips. We hugged and his hand brushed against something hard. The pin. I went rigid for a full minute but it was pointless. He either didn’t notice or didn’t care. We parted and I saw a glimmer of tears.
******
She was with me even in the primary school where I taught social studies- the history teacher’s pink scarf, the headmistress’ pen, the English Teacher’s wrist watch and a few others. Little Sonia was caught with her classmate’s sandwich which was meant for the latter’s lunch. The community of class activists brought the matter to me. Their small eyes demanded justice. Nevertheless, I set Sonia free with a warning of something not as lenient if she repeated the action. That evening I went for Confession at the Catholic Church beside my house. The priest had a kind voice and I wished I could make him see her. Instead I confessed a sin and got reading the whole chapter 119 of the book of psalms as my penance. I had stolen my gold-pink-cover bible from a young woman I shared a bus with and did not fulfill my penance.
I remember going home a week before last Christmas. Mama’s Diabetics was acting up and Papa’s was away on a campaign. He had a new love-politics. Three days after I arrived she and i caught a stray hen and I prepared dinner with it. Mama paused in between each spoonful and tried to catch up with her only child’s life. I chatted with her and tried to imagine how the farmer would react when he found out that one of his hens did not come back home. I saw him go to their shelter, nod imperceptibly and turn to retire. Then, turn back when it finally registered that the white hen with three black feathers was not present.
“The meat is so hard” Mama complained and finally gave up trying to eat it. I wanted her to ask me something. Anything, to which I could give the answer, ‘I stole it’. The day ended without no odd event but somehow I cannot forget it.
******
I met Jide at an auction and we exchanged phone numbers. I didn’t love him or I would not have done it to him. I only prayed she would not be revealed in any way that would hurt him.
We had a quiet wedding in Grace Chapel and had two kids three years later. I named the boy Honest and the girl Honorable.
Two days before the day it happened, I had a distress call from home. Papa had a heart attack and was recovering. I spoke on the phone with Mama for three hours. She was hysteric and told me how she had met Papa. “I saved him from a mob who were about to lynch him” she sobbed “I don’t want to lose him now”
“A mob? Lynch?!”
She told a weird story that for some reason I wished I knew a long time ago. She had prevented an angry group of market women from seriously hurting Papa when he was caught stealing apples.
“I wondered why a well-dressed man like him would be doing that and lay on top of him to prevent the blows…” Mama recounted the story of Papa’s struggle with kleptomania and how he overcame it.
“We fell in love and got married” She continued like I didn’t know. “I don’t want to lose him now. I’m too young to be a widow.” I patiently sat through her lamentations and assured her Papa would be fine. She let me get off the phone when I promised to come home that weekend to see them.
The day was a normal day. I took Honest and Honorable to school in my car. Teaching my pupils that day was as frustrating as it always was. I dealt with all the usual. Ahmed trying out his newly found karate skills on Chris who got hurt- Bisi and Naomi abusing each other’s mothers- Eight year old Hassan, sending love notes to Blessing - all these while the lecture was going on. It was a very tired me that got home that evening. My kids were back and in Bed. I heated the Okro soup I had prepared the day before and took some to eat. I didn’t bother trying to make Eba because I simply lacked the physical energy. I saw the onions when I went outside to bring in Jide’s clothes, which I had washed the day before. I knew Bola, my neighbour had put them in the ash tray, under the sun, so that they could lose their moisture and therefore last longer. I saw their robust round shapes, glowing purple skins and salivated. The tray was placed on top of the dwarf fence that separated my house from Bola’s House. I had a lot of onions at home but I had none as succulent. I felt the familiar pull and the accompanying adrenaline. I didn’t hear Bola approach. I didn’t notice her bring out her phone. What I noticed was a flash. I looked up in time to see the camera eye staring at me, from the mobile phone which Bola held.
“Today I have caught you. Red handed” she hissed in pidgin English. “For a long time now, I’ve known that you are behind it.”
Behind what? I wanted to ask in defense. I was mute.
“Behind all the things that disappear when I keep it outside.” She did a mock victory dance and while I still stood foolishly, holding the suddenly-heavy onion bulb in my hand. Bola whistled and called the attention of the other neighbours. I could easily have dropped the offending weight a long time ago and denied her allegations. Instead I waited, still and not bothering.
She came with her husband later that night to our house. Jide begged me to deny it and I didn’t. I guessed that this was my medicine. I needed the shame to make her go away forever. He apologized to Bola and her Husband. That night I was awfully quiet. Honest and Honorable were quieter and I did not look them in the eyes. I left for my parents’ house the next day.
That next day is today and I am sitting on the front seat of a mass transit bus en route my parents’ home. I look out the window and wonder what Mama is going to say when I tell her the truth. Even if I suspect she already knows, I intend to. I bring out something from my bag. It is Mama’s necklace which I took a long time ago. Ivory gold, it is at once old and beautiful. She thought she had lost it at a party. I put on the necklace with a little difficulty. I think it will give me a starting point. I am trying not to think of the Blackberry phone charger in my handbag which I took from the old man in the waiting hall. I do not own a blackberry phone.Ken Gitau.http://www.blogger.com/profile/07707773491849297274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6709299446814867771.post-46909083201030266742014-11-03T23:43:00.000-08:002014-11-03T23:43:58.704-08:00"Chicken" Efemia ChelaIt was a departure of sorts, last time I saw them. Or maybe not at all. I had left sigh by sigh,
breath by breath over the years. By the time my leaving party came, I was somewhere else
entirely. From this place, I watched fairy lights being looped low over long tables and rose
bushes being pruned. The matching china came out with the crystal glasses. The guards in our
gated community were paid off to pre-empt noise complaints, as were the local police. Our
racist neighbours were invited in time for them to book a night away. A credit card and a
note on the fridge told me to go and buy a new dress (“At least knee-length, Kaba!!”).
The entire dusty front yard was swept. Forthright, our maid, swept it once from the
middle to the left and once from the middle to the right ensuring even distribution. She
minced around the edges of the yard until she reached the right spot. Then she lovingly gave
the earth a centre parting, like she was doing the hair of the daughter she seldom saw. Deftly,
she made concentric circles with the rake, making certain not to be backed into a corner as
she was in life. Paving would have been more in line with the style of the double storey house,
the stiff mahogany headboard in my parents’ bedroom and the greedy water feature in the
atrium. “From the dust we came and to it we return,” my father said cryptically whenever
anyone asked why. Our relatives whispered in covens that BaBasil should have gotten ‘crazy
paving’. They were adept at spending money that wasn’t theirs and would never be, due to
equal measures of indolence and bad luck.
The same relatives called me down to some new-found duty. I slouched my way to
them and despaired again that these women would never know me as an equal. Instead, I was
a comedic interlude breaking up days of haggling in markets, turning smelly offal into
scrumptious delicacies, hand-washing thin and dim-coloured children’s clothes, and serving
dinner to their husbands on knees that could grate cheese. I pitied them too much to be truly
angry.
Celebrations transformed them into long-lost gods and goddesses. We enticed them
with Baker’s Assorted biscuits, school shoes and endless pots of tea. They descended from
the village and came to town. Sacrifices were made; I kissed most of my haircare products
and magazines goodbye. But it was worth it even though they were near strangers tied to us
by nothing more than genetics, a sense of duty and vague sentimentality. Who else could
pound fufu for hours without complaint until it reached the correct unctuous and delightfully
gloopy texture that Sister Constance demanded? Uncle Samu, my mother’s brother had driven
away his third wife with a steady rain of vomit and beatings. As the family’s best drunk he
could play palm-wine sommelier. His bathtub brew was mockingly clear. Getting drunk on it
felt like being mugged. And by midnight he and Mma Virginia, who according to family
legend were kissing cousins in the literal and sordid sense, could always be counted on to
break out ‘The Electric Slide’ to the entertainment of everyone watching.
My aunties’ voices rang out from a corner of the garden that had escaped my
mother’s plot to turn it into a suburban Tuscan nightmare. I weaved between the tacky
replicas of Greek statues I had studied at university. The statues bulged like marble tumors
from the lawn. A brown sea snail slid round The Boxer’s temple. A rogue feather blew past
Venus in the wind. Sister Constance smacked her lips against her remaining teeth in disgust,
“You took so long. They spoil you-o!” I didn’t reply and just contorted my features into what
I thought was penance and respect. “Let them have this,” I thought. “They’ll let me go soon.”
After all, my mother, if she heard I had been too insolent, was far worse than all of them
combined.
They told me to kill them – three plain white chickens. Expressionless and
unsuspecting, they pecked the air while I shuddered above them, a wavering shadow. I
searched myself for strength and violence while rolling up the sleeves of my blue Paul Smith
shirt. “I guess I’ll have to kiss this goodbye too,” I thought glumly. I was about to look like an
extra who found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time in a Quentin Tarantino film.
I curled my sweaty fingers around a knife that someone had pressed into my right hand. I
remember thinking how blunt it seemed; inappropriate for the task ahead. But then I grabbed
a chicken and felt its frailty.
“Wring and cut, Kaba. Wring and cut!” someone shouted.
I was too queasy an executioner. My shaking exacerbated the death flapping of the
fowls and their blood spurts. I kept going. One. Two. Three. Gone in a couple of minutes. I
barely heard the meat hitting the silver-bottomed tub. I was roused from my trance by the
glee-creased face of Aunt Lovemore. As I tried to make my way to a shower, one shirt sleeve
dripping, my mind emptied and all that remained was something someone once said to me or
maybe... I couldn’t tell where it was from. I still can’t tell. It was:
“so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.”
The feast was that night. I looked at myself in the back of a serving spoon that had
some stray grains of white rice smeared on it. No one would need it. Who could be bothered
with Basmati when there was kenke to be unwrapped from wilted banana leaves like a
present? When nshima so soft and personable was at the serving table in a large white
quivering pile just waiting for some kapenta and an eager palate to come by? No, the Basmati
would be given to the beggars who came by in the morning and expected nothing less from
one of the town’s richest families. Our generosity fostered expensive tastes.
My parents’ cross-cultural marriage made for an exciting culinary event. From my
father’s side came slow-cooked beef shin in a giant dented tin pot. Simply done, relying only
on the innate flavour of the marbled red cubes of flesh and thinly sliced onion getting to know
each other for hours. It was smoked by open charcoal fire and lightly seasoned with nothing
but the flecks of salty sweat from nervy Auntie Nchimunya constantly leaning over the
steaming pot. Mushrooms were cooked as simply as Sister Chanda’s existence. Fungi was
hoped for in the night and foraged for at dawn. My favourites were curly-edged, red on top
with a yellow underskirt and fried in butter. My lip curled as someone passed me a bowl of
uisashi, wild greens and peanuts mashed into a bitty green mess. Little cousins cheekily
defied their rank and begged for the prized parsons’ noses from the grilled chickens. My
chickens. Their shiny mouths indicated they’d already had more than enough chicken for the
night and their age. Tauntingly, I popped one of the tails into my mouth and refused to pass
them the crammed tray.
My mother, desperate not to be upstaged by her husband, reminded us all of her issue.
The Fante chief’s daughter, swathed in kente brought kontombire. It was a swamp-like
spinach stew flooded with palm oil, thickened with egusi, specked with smoked mackerel and
quartered hard-boiled eggs. It was carried to the table by three people, in a boat-shaped wood
tureen from our mezzanine kitchen and the ancient forests of Ghana. Even her mother-in-law
was impressed. She unwrinkled her forehead and loosened her fists a little, revealing her
fingers stained so yellow by the sauce. From behind my thick pane of one-way glass, I saw
my uncle had a bit of red garden egg stuck in his beard, but munched along cheerily, stopping
briefly only to push round glasses up the bridge of his Ampapata nose. He was ignoring his
side of waakye. I was tempted to take it and scoff it myself but then I looked down,
remembering the chunk of succulent grasscutter that I’d pinched from Ma Virginia’s bowl of
light soup, still slightly hairy with a bit of gristle dangling from it. She was busy scanning the
party for Uncle Samu’s characteristic beaten-in black fedora. Grasscutter, fried okra and
plantain. Now that would be tasty.
The chair to my left was empty but I preferred it to the barrage of information about
my 30-year-old cousin’s upcoming wedding, courtesy of our great-grandmother on my right.
“Bridget is off the shelf! Ow-oh!
“Praise God! The glory is all yours, Jesus!
“She’s so fat and in all the wrong places. Oh! And she insists on this mumbling. Gah!
And the boys just weren’t coming, you know. So many weddings she had to see and cry at but
no one was crying for her.
“Ei! You know you guys, you’re just like their parents. You go abroad to these cold
places where money is supposed to grow on trees. Even though there is no sun. You marry
these white girls and boys who would die during our dry season, they are so thin. All bones.
You get kept over there and we just hear news. Small-small news. And that you’re making it
big out there, with our name. But never come back. Oh God!
“But luckily this one never left. Just did what he was told to. A job, at least. Nothing
much. But in the government, filing papers and not even important ones. So he will never get
on the party’s bad side like my brother did in the 60s. Eh-eh! No we can’t have all that trouble
again. Even though, God-willing we would recover.
“Now I can say all my girls are settled. Uh-huh! I can die now. Someone else is
responsible for them now. They will do as I did. They will live as I lived. I have made them
so. I have taught them well. They will never lose themselves. That is enough. Yes. That is
enough. What other claim does a wife have?”
A chitenge-covered desk beside the second buffet table was for the DJ. There was a
stack of records and the glow of a MacBook illuminated my older brother’s face. He played
eclectically, switched from computer to record player. Computer to Supermalt. Supermalt to
record player. Mostly high life, with Earth, Wind and Fire, Glen Miller and Elton John. The
musical liturgy of the family. Everything he knew would please. Near the bottom of the pile
of records I saw a tiny snail that had escaped being stewed, creeping slowly upside down on
the underside of a WITCH LP.
The fairy lights doused everyone in a soft glow. I think I was happy dancing with my
little niece in the dust to the music; my heels forgotten by the hedge. Our yard was crowded
and noisy until the sun came up. When I woke up in the afternoon, the noise echoed and
resonated within me. It had embossed my inner ear. I’d captured it all. My brother had
mentioned once that the earth was a conductor of acoustical resonance. If it’s true, maybe the
same goes for people. The night played over and over again. I was there shrouded by night. I
looked around the garden with moistened eyes, a bulb of white wine condensing in my hand. I
saw growing piles of soiled dishes whisked away by staff. Cutlery gleaming like silver bones
under the moonlight. The people, the scale, the grandeur. It wasn’t really anything to do with
me at all.
II
I never wanted to admit it to anyone, but times were tough. I’d just left university with a
distinction no one asked about. I barely managed to convince someone to hire me. Employers
thought eight years of tertiary studies had left a gaping hole where experience should have
been. In the year that the markets crashed, I was assured that the crisis would have sorted
itself out by the time I entered the job market. It was nothing like that. I probably should have
studied something more practical, but stubbornly I believed in my research. That there was
really a place in the world for what I believed in.
I rented a room in the bum end of town and there I plotted my future. I played
clairvoyant, gazing over my neighbours’ corrugated iron roofs into the cavernous eyes of the
mountain. Those were abrasive mornings. I tried to ignore the strangers in the abandoned lot
opposite my window. Girls returned there the morning after the fact, looking for their dignity
in the dirt or lost plastic chandelier earrings. Boys sprayed their scent on the crumbling wall,
eyes on the lookout for scrap metal. The train rattled by, creaking as if each stop would be its
last. Sometimes it was. I was late to work often. Gaudy prostitutes swooped indoors like
vampires at first glimpse of the rising sun and the garbage men, part-time fathers of their
children.
My relationship with my parents festered. I could expect disapproving text messages
and automatic EFTs into my account. They sent me a pittance for rent and over the years had
made sure to cultivate the kind of unspoken relationship that meant I wouldn’t dare to ask for
more money. Every ping in my inbox signaled another accusation. They told me that I was
still young and there was still time to start a law degree. I baulked; their alms lessened.
I tried not to let their unpleasantness taint my days, curdle the sea I swam in or
sharpen the wind. That coastal wind, a blustering soundtrack to my days in that seaside city. It
pranked me in public, lifting my skirt. I, and undoubtedly others, got used to a flash of my
thigh and untrimmed hedge creeping just past the edge of my briefs. I wasn’t having enough
sex to be greatly concerned with my appearance down there. Nothing in my top drawer could
be rightly termed lingerie. In a town where everyone, through lies or privilege, was cooler and
richer than you, I felt like I didn’t even have to try. It was liberating. I went where my heart
led me. Took tables for one. That’s not to say I was starved for sex though. Every so often
things would happen.
Like at this party one weekend. The party went down at a formerly whites-only pub
that had been reclaimed, much like the word ‘slut’ had been some years before. “Oh my god!
Eb! You little slut! I love you!” shrieked my friend, Alice, all arms and legs.
And at this moment, her arms were wrapped around the neck of her polyamorous
boything, Eb. His real name was Ebenezer, I think. I was embarrassed by black parents who
still handed out Dickensian names to their children as if it would advance them up the
hegemony. Though kudos to those kids too dark to blush called Aloysius and Enid for
rebranding themselves as Loyo and Nida. The colonial pub, all flakey gilt frames and lined
beige wallpaper tempered by dark woods, was full of them. Of us, I mean. Another
generation tasked with saving Africa, yet ignoring the brief. Overwhelmed, we sought to
please ourselves as best we could, whether that meant siphoning profits off family businesses,
accepting scholarships overseas and never looking back or being assimilated into the
incompetent state. Laughing, talking, smoking and dancing we could have been young people
on any continent.
A girl and a boy sat down beside me and, after a perfunctory hello, asked me to join
their threesome. Rather a forward approach, I thought, but then the boy backed out after I
feigned some interest. He ran off.
“I think he’s spooked. Sorry. I–” she said, trying to salvage the situation.
I raised my eyebrows in response and she leant towards me in a way that could only
mean one thing. She led the intrepid exploration of my mouth with a gentle suction that left
me gasping at once for air and more of her. I gripped her side. We ended up in my single bed.
I wasn’t dogmatic enough in my desire to be a lesbian but I liked the symmetry of being with
a woman. Breast to breast. Gender didn’t matter really anyway. I talked to Alice over coffee
about it. I remember saying, “Boys. Girls. Whatever. We’re always just two people
searching... fumbling towards something.”
Before she awoke, I surveyed her half-covered body. I was in awe as I always was
when someone wanted to have sex with me. And then I saw it. Holding down her bottom lip
with a finger, I tried not to wake her while getting a better look. It was an inner lip tattoo. God,
it must have hurt – an egg. A single egg. I didn’t have time to ponder what it meant. She
woke and instantly seemed embarrassed. Not by her fevered cries that split the night or the
way she had gushed a little between her legs when her body was racked with pleasure. She
was embarrassed by the window edges taped shut to keep out the cold. The suitcase instead of
a dresser. My crusty two-plate stove that I made nshima and beans on every day that it didn’t
short circuit the whole floor. She dressed in silence, turned away. When she did turn back, she
looked at me, her eyes softened by pity. A bite of the lip said she hadn’t realised what
happened last night was a charity event. She scuffed her Converse on the rough floor as if
trapped and bored.
“It-it was lovely,” she said haltingly, trying not to meet my eyes again.
It was quiet for so long after that I nearly missed her squeak. “You might need this
more than I do,” she said, leaving R100, like a bird dropping, crumpled on the blue crate I
called a nightstand. I didn’t leave my room for two days after. The sheets trembled. But after
my grief, I smoothed out what she thought I was worth and went and bought myself some
fancy gin.
After that I worked harder at work than ever. I was one of 100 unpaid interns at the
bottom of a global firm. Our only hope of getting hired was archiving gossip and evidence of
affairs or theft amongst our superiors and using them as leverage once we became brave
enough. I regret not being braver. My days went down the drain as I alphabetised contact lists
and took coffee orders. I filed things. Then retrieved them for executives a couple of days
later. Then was told to redo the filing system. One night I was given orders by one of the art
directors. She was having a crisis, she said. Meaning, she was on a deadline and her cokeaddled
brain had no vision for the client’s product. It was two days to the big pitch and she
needed to “cleanse to create” so I had to rub all her erasers until I reached a clean surface on
every inch of all 30 of them. Grumpily, I walked to her desk. First, I checked the pockets of
the fawn-coloured jacket draped over her chair. I rustled for snacks, change or something to
pep me up. Rustle. Rustle. But nothing. Except a business card. Rectangular and rounded at
the edges, it read: Karama Adjaye Benin, Chief Recruiter, FutureChild Inc. The ovum bank
you can trust.
III
I envied people who talked in certainties and absolutes. In plans and futures. I felt like I had
nothing. Whether doubt, anger or hunger gnawed at my stomach became irrelevant. I set aside
time at home to cry. I used the internet at work to find more jobs, but I was already stretched
thin on that front. Sleep was for the in-between moments, wherever they fell. I lied my way
into focus groups and market surveys for products I couldn’t afford. My heels wore down.
My gait changed. I saw myself in the blacked-out windows of a skyscraper en route to
somewhere. At first I didn’t realise who the hurried girl with the hunched back was. I looked
again. She looked hunted.
I had to stay home trying to keep warm or risk having to party sober. I could coast
through end-of-the-month weekend when everyone was generous at the bar or people threw
parties at houses with cellars and drinks cabinets. Sometimes at clubs like The Pound, I let old
men call me a doll and dribble nonsense in my ear over synth beats and the squeak of pleather.
I listened, smiled and was intermittently witty, but generally I only spoke to say, “Double
Jack, please.” They were men who lived on promises. I starved on hope. This was fourthwave
feminism.
I considered prostitution quite seriously after that one night stand with Ananda. The
concept didn’t seem so far-fetched any more. In a way, the business card was my chance.
Their offices were in an innocuous looking building not far from the CBD. It was difficult to
know what to wear, but I wanted to look like someone who deserved to be reproduced. I
looked nervously out the window at the wet mist blurring anyone who had the temerity to
leave the house. I picked my most ironed dress and a smart jacket and took a hardback book
to read. This choice too was the source of some anguish as it needed to be big enough to hide
my face in case I saw someone I knew, but also had to double as a tool to intrigue and
impress the recruiter. My father had always said Ulysses would come in handy someday. I
was angry that he was right.
The chrome chair felt sterile and sharp against my body. I looked around at the
waiting room, gooey with pink branding about ethnically diverse angels, mama birds and
dreams. All the framed stock photos were rosy assumptions of family life. I tried to
concentrate on filling out the form handed to me. It was the only truth I had dealt with in a
long time. I found it refreshing. I couldn’t fail here. I was qualified to do this, to be a donor. I
would get a bonus for every year of post-graduate study I had achieved. Checking all the
details, I was glad my natural mediocrity had its uses – healthy, black, 65kg, brown-eyed
woman. A non-smoking, 24 year old, with regular periods and taking no contraceptives. A
little girl with pigtails and a pinafore smiled up at me from my lap. These photos would
complete my personal zine, to be handed over to the agency for consideration. The girl was
blissfully unaware of what was happening, just smiling shyly like she always would. I turned
her over.
Why were the blank lines so easy when life was so hard? I looked so different on
paper. Broken down into sections, I barely recognised myself. I felt that I had only ever heard
of this woman, had never met her. I fake-read my book, which gave me time to really mull
over what I was doing. I was sure it didn’t matter. The eggs were just lying around inside of
me going to waste on the twelfth of every month. From what I remembered from school, I
had thousands of them in reserve. I was a veritable mine of genetic material. This is was
nothing to cry over.
I signed my contract while lying on my back, during one of several ultrasounds.
Injection by injection I began to think that it was meant to be. Maybe it was the hormones.
The red-headed woman doing the extraction sacrificed congeniality for professionalism. I
gathered that she wore all white, even outside work. The only thing that differentiated her
from a robot was her revelation that she had also been a donor, albeit in her thirties.
“I was just young enough. I had a lot of bills. I wanted to give the gift of parenthood
to someone less fortunate,” she said, as if from a script.
To convey emotion, she punctuated her speech with weird bobs of the head. To make
awkward conversation while doing my scans, she asked about my degree. I sensed
misunderstanding. Sometime after third year, I had learnt to let the confusion pass without
comment or justification. They’d see.
“Your ovaries are doing well.”
A few months later I was forced to look up at her like I had several times before. Her
whole face was like clingfilm, wrapped fast across sinew and bone. I squinted up, then
dropped my head down, away from the scrutiny of the powerful lights. My neck slackened as
I breathed in the gas. I lost consciousness counting backwards.
“You’re a hero now,” said Karama as I stumbled out, still a little woozy and
anaesthetised. Trying to be kind, she crushed me into her body. I didn’t feel like anyone’s
saviour, even though there were two red stigmata in my knickers. My phone beeped
somewhere at the bottom of my bag letting me know that I had been paid. I ignored it.
After the extraction, I felt less lost. I knew exactly where I was and where I was
going. I went home and climbed up the rickety fire escape to the roof, holding on fearfully to
the rail afflicted with rust, making it wart-like to the touch. The cold mist cloaked me in damp
as I stepped onto the crunchy pigeon shit roof. I stood motionless looking down at the
swaddled city. I knew what was hidden below the mist. Shacks slanted with uncertainty. Sixlane
highways and car ads clinging to billboards beside them. Wide boulevards bordered by
alien trees and thin housewives in cafés. Narrow byways lined with needles. Underfunded
primary schools with middle-aged men parked outside trying not to eat the sweets they used
as bait. Cold modern apartment blocks; all light, expense and lack of privacy. Secret leisure
houses cowering behind high walls. Leaning road signs waiting to be stolen by students.
All of these places. I would never know where my child would be. No, I would. I
would always be beating paths for it to follow. It would wind its way around my brain. I’d
stage shadow puppet shows on the walls of my skull, playing out its careers, hobbies and
loves. One director, one spectator. I didn’t want the child to be sheared between two lives,
two minds, two imaginations. My own and its own. I pleaded to no one that they would spare
it, not rip it apart. I hoped my ghost would not smother it. That my wishes would not hamper
it. I prayed it wouldn’t be pained. Or nagged by the phantom limb – the gnawing mystery of
my existence. I wanted its parents to take all the credit. I hoped they would never tell it.
That my donation would just be fiction.<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2_pbBHNej30/VFiDrFq0mjI/AAAAAAAAAqg/e7h3rue0TY0/s1600/w.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2_pbBHNej30/VFiDrFq0mjI/AAAAAAAAAqg/e7h3rue0TY0/s320/w.jpg" /></a>Ken Gitau.http://www.blogger.com/profile/07707773491849297274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6709299446814867771.post-71873823028351105972014-11-03T23:38:00.000-08:002014-11-03T23:38:23.342-08:00Tendai Huchu (Zimbabwe) "The Intervention"The first thing I did when we got to Leicester was ask Precious to use the bathroom. I did my business super quick, because I wanted them to think I’d only gone in for a long piss, and her loo had one of those inexplicable doors with frosted glass. I flushed, washed my hands, gave the room a blast of the good ol’ Glade, checked the bowl for skid marks and got out of there.
Z and I had come down from Newcastle where we’d been slugging and whoring for a couple of days until the natives ran us out with pitchforks. He was a little off with me, because all the way down the M1 I’d stopped him every half mile or so for a pee—not my fault, I have a condition. The problem, as he put it, wasn’t so much my non-stop pit stop requests, rather the fact that I refused to use the verges like a ‘real man’. I admit, I was stoned and paranoid, but I’d heard this story from a mate about a bloke who had a mate who was answering nature on the verges when the ngonjos pulled up from nowhere, and get this, coz he was shaking it when they showed up, they did him for jerkin the gherkin, and had the poor sod put on the register.
“This is my gororo, Simba. Simba, meet Precious,” Z said, using the exact same line he’d hit me with when introducing Sharon in Newcastle. Not that this knowledge was new to me, or that I didn’t know of other girlfriends, but in that moment a wave of righteous indignation washed over me. But this never lasts long:
“Tafara nekukuzivai,” I said the mystic words and clapped my hands, old school.
“Pleased to meet you too,” Precious replied in English.
We repeated the ritual for Tamu and his girlfriend Sarah, Sylvia (Precious’s mate), and some random Zimbo—a blazo in shorts whose name I can’t quite remember. There was a lot of
2
clapping and repeating of the mystical words, until Precious’s two daughters came in. I don’t remember their names, but one was older and the other was younger than the older one, yes, I’m sure that’s correct. The kids didn’t speak Shona, so we were introduced in English, and check this out; I was “Uncle Simba”. The little one said something stupid like, “Oh, Simba from the Lion King.” I wanted to twist her ear nice and proper like my teachers did back in the day, but ended up explaining that Simba meant strength and my full name, Simbarashe, meant God’s Strength, because names had to have meanings where we’re from. Then again the rashe could be God or the king, so a more apt translation that keeps the ambiguity is “the Lord’s strength.” The kid just looked at me blankly like I was talking effing Zulu.
“Would you like something to drink?’ Precious asked.
“Tea,” Z said, and I gave him my wtf face.
“What about you, Simba?” she turned to me.
“I’ll have a beer,” I said.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like some tea first.”
“Beer is my tea.” My little joke fell flat. The blazo looked at me with contempt. I reckon he must have been one of those Pentecostal types.
Precious got me a Bud. I couldn’t believe I’d gone through that mini aggro for a Bud. Give me a wife-beater or a Sam Adams if you wanna get into it like that. My dad was hitting Black Labels at eight in the morning when I was growing up, and he never missed a day at work in twenty five years. But I like to think that I drink for religious reasons, Biblical ones that is. And I’m not just talking about Jesus’s first miracle, no man, Proverbs 31’s the daddy, and I‘ve got it all memorized, well, the important bits anyway:
3
Let beer be for those who are perishing,
wine for those who are in anguish!
Let them drink and forget their poverty
and remember their misery no more.
It’s pretty plain to anyone with a rudimentary theological background that Liz, Phil, Charlie, Wills and my boy Harry, oh, and Kate and the baby too, are, by divine decree, advised to stay away from Noah’s brew, and save it for us poor Third World immigrants.
Z asked for the channel to be flicked to the news. Precious stuck us on the BBC, but Z requested Al Jazeera instead. “Maresults are coming and it’s the only channel I trust,” he said. “The winds of change are coming to our nation, just you wait and see.” We were hit with the Egyptian situation. I waited for it, Z was pro-Morsi and I was pro-coup, or was it the other way round? We’d spent so much time arguing about it until we became confused, but what I do know is that our positions on the issue were diametrically opposed and irreconcilable. He looked at me, gauging to see if I was going to say something. I held my peace and drank my crappy Bud.
“I used to think Egypt was such a nice country before all this madness happened,” the blazo said.
“Nice? They ain’t done nothing since the Pyramids,” I replied.
“Do you always have to be so antagonistic?” Z said to me. “That’s such a racist thing to say. I mean, how would you feel if someone said that our people hadn’t done anything since Great Zimbabwe?”
4
“I wouldn’t feel nothing, because it’s the truth. We were the greatest empire in the world, but look at us now, we’re a nation of bums innit,” I replied, knowing this would goad him on.
“You’re a prick. Ah, sorry, mune vana.” Z threw the kids an apologetic glance. “Very sorry about the language.”
I fought to contain a snigger, tried to look injured even, and Z went on, “Wait until the election results, everything’s going to change, just you wait and see.”
The Egyptian thing just kept dragging on as they covered all the angles, the Islamic Brotherhood opinion, the Opposition opinion, the American opinion, the British opinion, the Arab League opinion, the UN opinion. Everyone had something to say about it. I zoned out, my eyes fixed on some indefinite point on the DVD collection next to the TV. There were photos on the wall of Precious and her kids, a social-work degree certificate from some third tier university, and an empty rectangular shadow which I think must have been occupied by her ex-husband’s picture. I wondered where he was and why he’d left. Maybe Z would leave her for the same reason.
Syria came on next and I felt a tinge of disappointment. In the last decade we’d shared the stage with Iraq and Afghanistan; now it seemed Zimbabwe couldn’t make the headlines if it tried. Perhaps the world had gotten tired of us with our crazy politicians and starving billionaires, topped off with an ultra-crap cricket team, the same worn out antics year in, year out; we’d gone the way of Big Brother 10.
I can’t quite remember what else we spoke about, zoned out as I was, but I can guarantee it would have been among several topics Zimbos always regurgitate when congregating—how much better things were back home than in the UK (insert canned laughter), white people
5
(racist bastards), Indians/ in some versions labelled Pakistanis (racist bastards), Nigerians/West Africans (racist bastards), when was the last time you went home? (answers vary), get rich quick schemes (that go nowhere), work (mostly care work and other such menial occupations), food (yes, the food was so much better back home… that is, when we had it). All I had to do was wear a slight smile on my face and nod along. Z looked like he was monitoring my behaviour and would chuck me out at the slightest provocation.
“Let’s not forget why we’re here, the young ones would like to present their story,” Precious announced, pointing at Tamu and Sarah.
“We are ready to listen,” the blazo said.
Israeli jets had encroached Syrian airspace.
“You’re right, that’s why we came,” said Cynthia.
This was outside the script. I was drinking too fast, as you do in boring company, my Bud was two thirds done. The blazo leaned forward and wore a grave face, the kind old biddies wore padare back in the day when we went kumakaya.
“Sarah, perhaps you’d like to begin and then we can hear from Tamu,” Z said, like he was in on the whole thing. I sat up, or sank back in my chair.
“We’ll help you in any way we can,” Precious said.
“Auntie, we’ve come to you ‘grown ups’ because our relationship is in trouble,” Sarah said with great dignity. The blazo nodded to signal they’d done the right thing. “You see, this ‘boy’ and I have been going out for eight years. We met in high school in Mazowe, and we have been together ever since. I came here first and worked hard, with my own hands, until I
6
raised enough money to buy him a ticket so that we could be together. I love him, but now I have doubts as to whether he sees a future for us.
“He promised to marry me three years ago and I’m still waiting. Every time I ask about it, he gets angry and defensive. He starts shouting things about money and work. But three years! Three whole years? He can afford to buy himself iPhones and videogames, but he says he can’t afford a wedding. I am tired. I can’t wait forever, eight years we’ve been together…”
She went on, and on, and on, and on, and on, reciting a litany of accusations against Tamu who sat stone faced with his arms folded across his chest. A couple of times he sighed, blowing out long breaths of exasperation.
“…because I can’t really see why if he is interested, he can’t at least begin to make an effort—”
“Will you please shut up,” Tamu finally said.
“See Auntie, see the way this ‘boy’ talks to me,” Sarah pointed at him, jabbing her finger in the air.
“You’ve been talking for so long, iPads, computer games, I can’t even remember what you started off saying. How can I respond when you keep talking? I need to say my side—”
“Iwe, don’t interrupt me, it’s still my turn to speak.”
“You can’t expect me to keep quiet when you’re talking nonsense. For one hour, everyone has had to sit and listen to your rubbish.”
“I haven’t been speaking for an hour.”
7
“Okay, okay, please, let’s try to be amicable,” Z said, holding up his hands. “You both love each other. I know that because you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t, so we have to find a way of talking nicely to each other and see how we can help you solve this problem.”
“I think we should hear Tamu’s side of the story, so we can better understand what is happening,” said Cynthia.
“That’s right,” said the blazo.
Tamu opened his mouth to speak, but that’s when we came on the news. Precious increased the volume on the TV. Tamu started saying something, or maybe he didn’t speak, rather he turned his attention to Al Jazeera like the rest of us had done. The reporter was black, with a Shona accent, holding a clipboard, and she stood in front of a large green tent with the words “POLLING STETION” written outside it. She spewed some chat about how the election had largely been peaceful and the results were coming soon. A crowd formed behind her, their necks craned, as they looked into the camera. We all held our breaths. The ticker on the bottom scrawled stuff about Egypt. The news reports which we’d followed in the previous weeks as they popped up sporadically on SKY, BBC, CNN, ITV, and Channel 4, all spoke about how Zimbabweans were going to vote for change in this election. This of course meant that the Opposition would win, a fact we were asked to take for granted. That was the only acceptable outcome for which the media had groomed us. I took a sip and checked out the expectant faces around me. A nervous twitch made the left side of Z’s mouth dance Gangnam Style.
The reporter’s lips were moving. I thought she was a very comely woman, like an early Renee Cox portrait, and then quickly corrected my sexist impulse. My beer was at critical. Was Precious going to offer a refill? I languished in my uncertainty, the future became a boot stamping on my face.
8
“Change is coming to Zimbabwe,” Z said.
“It’s been a long time coming,” said the blazo.
“As soon as our victory is confirmed, I’m packing my bags, leaving this goddamn country and going home,” Z went on.
Which side was I on again?
“Ndizvozvo, change is coming, I can feel it.” The blazo was swept along by Z’s optimism.
The reporter was saying something about the ZEC, and the SADC, and the AU, and the EU, and the UK, and the US, and the RSA, but she may not have mentioned some of these acronyms. The results were out. The Party had won. The Party had won. The Party had won. The Party had. The Party? I saw a joyful smile mixed in with relief on Z’s face, because the Party’s win was a victory for him too. He had an asylum claim pending with the Home Office and if the Opposition had won, he’d have been screwed. He quickly mastered himself and frowned, now wearing a new look, a cross between sorrow and anger.
“Those cheating bastards,” he shouted at the TV screen.
“I can’t believe it,” said the blazo. “It’s all lies. Why did they even contest the election when the playing field had not been mowed?”
“Levelled,” I said.
“What?” the blazo asked.
“The playing field had not being levelled,” I replied.
“By mowing,” he said.
9
I closed my eyes and felt it pushing in from the void as it so often did. It was a pressure from an unknown dimension, a place before thought where only feeling and emotion matter. It came to me often during moments of crisis. Sometimes it hit me while I slept, forcing me from my bed to my desk. It was the act of being taken over by something so deep within oneself that it could have been from outside oneself, a seismic force of such magnitude that I was thrust from my seat. My hands were thrown outwards as though I was on the cross, and then my voice cried out:
The children of Africa cry
Waa-waa-waa
When they should be laughing
Ki-ki-ki
Can you hear them, can you hear them.
Will you help them, will you help them.
The land of the fat hippopotamus
The home of the mighty Zambezi
The mystical ancestors
The wide African skies
The children of Africa cry
Waa-waa-waa
….
Out of me flowed a poetic response, a thermonuclear blast that left everyone stunned. Cynthia’s mouth was wide open. Z blinked a couple of times. As it lifted, I felt naked and tired, so tired. I fell back onto my seat and tried to control my breathing. I reached into my pocket, took out a notebook and began to write the verse as I’d received it. My t-shirt felt clammy on my skin. Everyone was staring. Precious told the kids to go to bed.
10
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Z apologised, “Simba is a poet.”
“A poet?” someone said.
“I’m a member of the Zimbabwe Poets for Human Rights,” I said.
“What does that mean?” Precious asked. “Like, forgive my ignorance, but how can one be a poet for Human Rights. Does this mean that as a poet for Human Rights you’re not interested in love, landscapes, the stars, ordinary life?”
I was so exhausted from my poetic attack that I couldn’t formulate a full response for her. The problem with our school system is that it never imparted the appreciation of higher art for all but a handful. The best I could do to educate her was to say that Poetry for Human Rights was the highest form of art. I’m not sure she understood, but she nodded and quickly brought me another beer. I drank in silence, pondering the awesome meaning of my new verse.
I caught Sarah looking at me, and in that moment understood that she was a kindred spirit. There’s a sixth sense by which poetic souls become aware of one another. By poetic souls, I mean not only poets or readers of poetry, but those for whom poetry induces profound emotion and a heightened understanding of the world. Sarah had this soul, and the wide eyed look she gave me from across the room gave me strength and a renewed conviction in my mission here on earth.
“We’ve been cheated again, but we will never accept this result. The people will mobilise across the country,” Z said.
“Rise up, ye, mighty race!” I cried.
11
“The people will take to the streets. We refuse to live under this dictatorship any longer. If the Arabs can do it, so can we,” he said.
“Behold, the African Spring flowers,” I said, waving my Bud, spilling libation for the ancestors on Precious’s carpet.
“When we stand united like this, brothers, there’s no force in this world that can hold us,” the blazo said. “We will not accept this result.”
It was easy enough to say all these things ten thousand miles away from the epicentre. Nothing we said or did meant a fart, and that was the truth of it. I checked Twitter and Facebook on my phone to see what everyone else was saying about it all.
“How can we in the diaspora know what people back home are thinking, or who they voted for?” Tamu said in a quiet voice, as though asking himself.
Not one of us had an answer for him.
The net was abuzz and everyone had an opinion on the result. A lot of people were celebrating. Some of these were Zimbabwean, and a great many of those were just Africans who didn’t live in Zimbabwe. When I was a kid at the UZ (it was a different country then), I had an erection for Castro and Saddam, though, I’d never have wanted to live in their countries.
“Would anyone else like something to drink?” Precious asked.
“I’ll have a beer,” Z said, in a world-weary voice.
“Me too,” said the blazo. “I quit last year, but what’s the point?”
Cynthia asked for wine but got Lambrini instead. We nursed our drinks, staring at the TV, eager for more information. I got to thinking that Precious needed the wallpaper changed or
12
maybe the walls needed a lick of paint. The carpet needed washing. A cell phone rang, it might have been mine. No one answered it.
“I just need to know if he is going to do as he promised and marry me, or else I’ll move on. I can’t wait forever, I’m twenty five. This is not child’s play. Some of my friends, people who were junior to us in school, are already married and starting families of their own,” Sarah started up again. “Auntie, everyone here can see I am committed to this ‘boy’, if money is a problem he should just say so.”
“Ndezvekumanikidzana here?” Tamu replied, gruffly like.
“You see, you see the way he talks to me like I’m a rag. I’m tired, that’s it, it’s over, Auntie.”
Sarah got up, picked up her handbag which was on the dodgy carpet and made for the door. I almost forgot myself and made to rise, but Precious was up before me and blocked Sarah’s path using her considerable weight in a manner my skinny frame could only hope to approximate. She pleaded with her for a couple of minutes, saying certain things, the kind of things that calm people down when they’re seeing red. I don’t quite recall the exact words, but Precious said stuff about how one needs to be patient with men because deep down they are all spoilt little boys.
Tamu sort of sneered and stewed in his seat, making no attempt to keep Sarah from leaving. He looked like he was tired of the whole affair and had better things he’d rather have been doing with his time.
“I went through his phone, Auntie,” said Sarah, and Tamu sat up, attentive all of a sudden. “You can’t believe the things I saw in there.”
“You went through my phone?” Tamu shouted.
13
“Yes, I did.”
“It’s my personal phone. Why would you do that? You see, this is why I don’t want to be with you. How can I be with someone who doesn’t trust me? My phone is private. That’s an infringement of my sovereignty. Arrgh.”
“Let’s calm down for a minute,” Z said. “I can see everyone is getting angry, so how about we all calm down and try to figure this thing out.”
“Uncle, how can I be calm after what this ‘boy’ has done?” said Sarah.
“You went through my bloody phone.”
“Let’s all just calm down like Uncle Z said,” said Cynthia. She looked maternal and concerned.
Sarah glared at Tamu who stared back defiantly.
In that moment, our complete and utter inadequacy to help this young couple became apparent to me. This thing, this intervention, that we were trying to do, was a sort of attempt to bring Shona, old school, ways of doing things to the UK, like we were Tetes and Sekurus, but we were found wanting. Z was a manwhore of the lowest kind, and the young couple would see this when one day, in the not so distant future, Precious would be crying with a mincemeat heart over how he dumped her suddenly, with no explanation. The blazo in the shorts and Cynthia were both sufficiently middle aged so they should have been married but they weren’t. I didn’t know what they were, divorced, widowed, single, whatever, but what I did know, looking at them, was that if neither of them could hold down a stable relationship, then they sure as hell shouldn’t have been playing marriage counsellors. And Precious, poor Precious was compromised, if only because of the poor judgement she demonstrated by going out with my gororo, Z.
14
For my own part, I never cast a single stone in this entire charade. I was consumed with overwhelming fury, seeing what Tamu was doing to this little princess. How could he sit there, chatting nonsense about his privacy, as she trailed the list of names from his phone:
“Tracy, Laura, Chloe, Sekai, Cynthia, Jade, Lucy, Susan, Miranda, Irene, Chido…” Sarah spilled out this litany, like she’d memorised the whole thing.
“You shouldn’t have gone through my bloody phone. You were looking for something, yeah, well, now you found it. I hope you’re happy,” Tamu said.
“Am I not a beautiful woman, am I not beautiful?” She turned to me, but before I could answer Tamu blurted out:
“That’s right, you forgot Sally and Michelle.”
“Come on, Tamu, you’re not helping here,” Z said.
I wanted to get up and sock the ‘boy’ on the speaker proper. Sarah was crying. The two other ladies embraced her, Precious in front and Cynthia behind her, so she was sandwiched, like they were protecting her from another blow. I could feel a tremor in my hands. I clenched and unclenched my fists, felt a dullness, the mist descending. I got up with my fists clenched and the next thing I felt was Z grab my arm.
“Let’s go for a smoke,” he said, as he led me out of the flat.
He hovered by me while I pinched out the seeds and rolled one. I searched in my pockets for a lighter, but couldn’t find one. Z offered me his. I lit up, took a drag, and began to cry. Man, I wept like a pussy.<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lxBUhZIoMhA/VFiCY0uNbEI/AAAAAAAAAqU/OPgd_PlSTUg/s1600/q.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lxBUhZIoMhA/VFiCY0uNbEI/AAAAAAAAAqU/OPgd_PlSTUg/s320/q.jpg" /></a>Ken Gitau.http://www.blogger.com/profile/07707773491849297274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6709299446814867771.post-87924602097848595142014-10-21T09:52:00.001-07:002014-10-21T09:52:58.361-07:00 Chinelo Okparanto ‘America’ <a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GdftuPJ9RwA/VEaNryeMxmI/AAAAAAAAAqE/ya_md5C2J9Q/s1600/Okparantu1-300x198.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GdftuPJ9RwA/VEaNryeMxmI/AAAAAAAAAqE/ya_md5C2J9Q/s320/Okparantu1-300x198.jpg" /></a>
We drive through bushes. We pass the villages that rim our side
of the Bonny River. There are hardly any trees in the area, and
the shrubs are little more than stumps, thin and dusty, not verdant as
they used to be. This, Mama has told me: that the vegetation around
the Bonny River once thrived. That the trees grew tall, and from them
sprang green leaves. And their flowers gave rise to fruit. Of course,
this memory is hers, from a former reality, one too old to be my own.
The roads are sandy and brown, with open gutters, and with
wrappers and cans and bottles strewn about. Collapsing cement
shacks line the roadside in messy rows, like cartons that have long
begun to decompose.
A short distance from us, something comes out of the river, a
small boy or girl, maybe six or seven years old. Hands flail in the
air and another child joins – typical children’s play. Except that it’s
too early in the morning for that. Except that their skin, and even
the cloth around their waists, gleams an almost solid black. That oily
blackness of crude.
The bus moves slowly, and for a while, as we make our way out of
Port Harcourt, I worry it will break down. The last time I made this
trip (about year ago now), there was a problem with the engine. The
bus only made it to the terminal in Warri, not quite halfway between
Port Harcourt and Lagos. When we arrived at the terminal, the
driver asked us to exit. He locked the door to the bus and went inside
one of the offices in the terminal. He locked the office door too,
leaving us passengers outside to fend for ourselves. We had passed
no inns or motels on the way. Just splatters of small shops, their zinc
roofs shining in the sun. Lots of green and yellowing grass. Clusters
of trees.
chinelo okparanta
At the terminal, I found a nice patch of ground on which I slept,
using my luggage as a pillow under my head. Some passengers did
the same. Others, I assume, wandered about the terminal through
the night. The next morning another bus arrived. It took us from
Warri to Lagos. I made it just in time for my interview. Lucky that
I had left a day in advance. Not that leaving in advance made much
difference anyway. As with the previous interview, my application
was declined.
I sit on the bus again, slightly more hopeful about the engine and
much more hopeful about the interview. I have not left a day early, but
so long as the bus does not break down, I expect that this interview
will be a success. This time I have a plan and, even if I hesitate to be as
assured as Gloria is, there is a good chance that she is right, that very
soon I will be on my way to her.
It was on a dry and hot day in November that Gloria and I met.
The headmistress had arranged it all: I would be Gloria’s escort. I
would show her around the campus for the week.
That day, the headmistress stood by her desk, me at her side,
waiting for this Gloria Oke. I was already one of the senior teachers at
the time; I had been at the school for nearly ten years by then.
I’d expected that she’d come in like the big madam she was, ‘big’
as in well-to-do and well known, maybe with a fancy buba and iro
in lace, with a headscarf and maybe even the ipele shawl. Even with
the heat, the headmistress, and all the big madams who visited our
campus, came dressed that way.
But Gloria entered, tall and lanky, a bit too thin to be identified as
a ‘big madam’. She wore a long beige gown, no fancy headscarf, no
ipele hanging from her shoulder. Her hair was braided in thin strands
and held together in a bun at the nape of her neck. Pale skin stuck
out in contrast to dark brown eyes and hair. Her lips were natural, not
lipstick red. On her feet, she wore a simple pair of black flats.
Even then, there were things I liked about her: the way her eyes
seemed unsure, not being able to hold my gaze. The way she stuttered
america
her name, as if unconvinced of her own existence in the world. And
yet her voice was strong and firm, something of a paradox.
That first day, we spent our lunch break together, and for the rest
of the week we did the same, me sharing my fried plantain with her,
and she, her rice and stew with me.
She started to visit me at my flat after her week at the school was
up. She’d stop by every other week or so, on the weekends when
we could spend more than a few hours together. I’d make us dinner,
jollof rice, beans and yams, maybe some gari and soup. We’d spend
the evening chatting or just watching the news. Sometimes we’d walk
around the neighbourhood and when we returned, she’d pack her
things and leave.
I grew a big enough garden in my backyard. Tufts of pineapple
leaves stuck out in spikes from the earth. They grew in neat rows.
Plantain trees stood just behind the pineapple shoots. Behind the
plantain trees, lining the wall leading up to the gate of the flat, an
orange tree grew, and a guava tree, and a mango tree.
Once, while we stood plucking a ripe mango, Gloria asked me
what it was like to teach science at the school. Did we conduct
experiments or just study from a book? Were all of the students
able to afford the books? It was a private school, she knew, but she
suspected (quite accurately) that that didn’t mean all the students
were able to afford the texts.
I straightened up to face the wall that led up to the metal gate.
Lizards were racing up and down. I told her that teaching was not
my job of choice. That I’d much rather be doing something more
hands-on, working directly with the earth, like in my garden. Maybe
something to do with the environment, with aquatic ecology: running
water-quality reports, performing stream classification, restoration,
wetland determinations, delineations, design and monitoring. But
there were none of those jobs during the time I did my job search,
even though there should have been plenty of them, especially with
the way things were going for the Niger Delta.
chinelo okparanta
But even if the jobs had been available, I said, perhaps they
would have been too dangerous for me, with all that bunkering going
on, criminal gangs tapping the oil straight from the pipelines and
transporting it abroad to be sold illegally. The rebel militias stealing
the oil and refining it and selling it to help pay for their weapons. All
those explosions from old oil rigs that had been left abandoned by
Shell. Perhaps it would have been too dangerous a thing.
She was standing with her hands on her hips, showing surprise
only with her eyes. I suppose it was understandable that she would
have assumed I loved my job to have stayed those many years.
We became something – an item, Papa says – in February,
months after Gloria’s visit to the school. That evening, I was
hunched over, sweeping my apartment with a broom, the native kind,
made from the raw, dry stems of palm leaves, tied together at the thick
end with a bamboo string. I imagine it’s the kind of broom that Gloria
no longer sees. It’s the kind of broom we use here in Nigeria – the
kind that Americans have probably never seen.
Gloria must have come in through the back door of the flat (she
often did), through the kitchen and into the parlour. I was about to
collect the dirt into the dustpan when she entered.
She brought with her a cake, a small one with white icing and
spirals of silver and gold. On top of it was a white-striped candle,
moulded in the shape of the number thirty-four. She set it on the
coffee table in the parlour and carefully lit the wick.
I set the broom and dustpan down and straightened up. Gloria
reached out to tuck back the strands of hair that had come loose from
behind my ears. I’d barely blown out the flame when she dipped her
finger into the cake’s icing and took a taste of it. Then she dipped her
finger into the icing again and held the clump out to me.
‘Take,’ she said, almost in a whisper, smiling her shyest sort
of smile.
Just then, the phone began to ring: a soft, buzzing sound. We
heard the ring but neither of us turned to answer, because even as it
america
was ringing, I was kissing the icing off Gloria’s finger. By the time the
ringing was done, I was kissing it off her lips.
Mama still reminds me every once in a while that there are
penalties in Nigeria for that sort of thing. And of course, she’s
right. I’ve read of them in the newspapers and have heard of them
on the news. Still, sometimes I want to ask her to explain to me what
she means by ‘that sort of thing’, as if it is something so terrible that it
does not deserve a name, as if it is so unclean that it cannot be termed
‘love’. But then I remember that evening and I cringe, because, of
course, I know she can explain; she’s seen it with her own eyes.
That evening, the phone rings, and if I had answered, it would
have been Mama on the line. But instead, I remain with Gloria,
allowing her to trace her fingers across my brows, allowing her to
trace my lips with her own. My heart thumps in my chest and I feel
the thumping of her heart. She runs her fingers down my belly, lifting
my blouse slightly, hardly a lift at all. And then her hand is travelling
lower, and I feel myself tightening and I feel the pounding all over
me. Suddenly, Mama is calling my name, calling it loudly, so that I
have to look up to see if I’m not just hearing things. We have made
our way to the sofa and, from there, I see Mama shaking her head,
telling me how the wind has blown and the bottom of the fowl has
been exposed.
Mama stands where she is for just a moment longer, all the while
she is looking at me with a sombre look in her eyes. ‘So, this is why
you won’t take a husband?’ she asks. It is an interesting thought, but
not one I’d ever really considered. Left to myself, I would have said
that I’d just not found the right man. But it’s not that I’d ever been
particularly interested in dating them anyway.
‘A woman and a woman cannot bear children,’ Mama says to me.
‘That’s not the way it works.’ As she stomps out of the room, she
says again, ‘The wind has blown and the bottom of the fowl has
been exposed.’
chinelo okparanta
I lean my head on the glass window of the bus and I try to imagine
how the interview will go. But every so often the bus hits a bump
and it jolts me out of my thoughts.
There is a woman sitting to my right. Her scent is strong, somewhat
like the scent of fish. She wears a headscarf, which she uses to wipe the
beads of sweat that form on her face. Mama used to sweat like that.
Sometimes she’d call me to bring her a cup of ice. She’d chew on the
blocks of ice, one after the other, and then request another cup. It was
the real curse of womanhood, she said. Young women thought the flow
was the curse, little did they know the rest. The heart palpitations, the
dizzy spells, the sweating that came with the cessation of the flow. That
was the real curse, she said. Cramps were nothing in comparison.
The woman next to me wipes her sweat again. I catch a strong
whiff of her putrid scent. She leans her head on the seat in front of
her, and I ask her if everything is fine.
‘The baby,’ she says, lifting her head back up. She rubs her belly
and mutters something under her breath.
‘Congratulations,’ I say. And after a few seconds I add, ‘I’m sorry
you’re not feeling well.’
She tells me it comes with the territory. That it’s been two years
since she and her husband married, and he was starting to think there
was some defect in her. ‘So, actually,’ she tells me, ‘this is all cause for
celebration.’
She turns to the seat on her right, where there are two black-andwhite-
striped polythene bags. She pats one of the bags and there is
that strong putrid scent again. ‘Stock fish’, she says, ‘and dried egusi
and ogbono for soup.’ She tells me that she’s heading to Lagos, because
that is where her in-laws live. There will be a ceremony for her there.
And she is on her way to help with the preparations. Her husband is
taking care of business in Port Harcourt, but he will be heading down
soon, too, to join in celebrating the conception of their first child.
‘Boy or girl?’ I ask, feeling genuinely excited for her.
‘We don’t know yet,’ she says. ‘But either one will be a real blessing
for my marriage,’ she says. ‘My husband has never been happier.’
america
I turn my head to look out the window, but then I feel her gaze on
me. When I look back at her, she asks if I have a husband or children
of my own.
I think of Mama and I think of Gloria. ‘No husband, no children,’
I say.
The day I confessed to him about Gloria, Papa said: ‘When a
goat and yam are kept together, either the goat takes a bite of
the yam, bit by bit, or salivates for it. That is why when two adults are
always seen together, it is no surprise when the seed is planted.’
I laughed and reminded him that there could be no seed planted
with Gloria and me.
‘No,’ he said, reclining on his chair, holding the newspaper,
which he was never reading, just always intending to read. ‘There can
be no seed.’
It had been Mama’s idea that I tell him. He would talk some
sense into me, she said. All this Gloria business was nonsense, she
said. Woman was made for man. Besides, what good was it living a
life in which you had to go around afraid of being caught? Mobile
policemen were always looking for that sort of thing – men with
men or women with women. And the penalties were harsh. Jail time,
fines, stoning or flogging, depending on where in Nigeria you were
caught. And you could be sure that it would make the news. Public
humiliation. What kind of life was I expecting to have, always having
to turn around to check if anyone was watching? ‘Your Papa must
know of it,’ she said. ‘He will talk some sense into you. You must tell
him. If you don’t, I will.’
But Papa took it better than Mama had hoped. Like her, he
warned me of the dangers. But ‘love is love’, he said.
Mama began to cry then. ‘Look at this skin,’ she said, stretching
out her arms to me. She grabbed my hand and placed it on her
arm. ‘Feel it,’ she said. ‘Do you know what it means?’ she asked, not
waiting for my response. ‘I’m growing old,’ she said. ‘Won’t you stop
being stubborn and take a husband, give up that silly thing with
chinelo okparanta
that Gloria friend of yours, bear me a grandchild before I’m dead
and gone?’
People have a way of allowing themselves to get lost in America,’
Mama said when I told her that Gloria would be going. Did I
remember Chinedu Okonkwo’s daughter who went abroad to study
medicine and never came back? I nodded. I did remember. And
Obiageli Ojukwu’s sister who married that button-nosed American
and left with him so many years ago? Did I remember that she
promised to come back home to raise her children? Now the children
were grown, and still no sight of them. ‘But it’s a good thing in this
case,’ Mama said smugly. She was sitting on a stool in the veranda,
fanning herself with a plantain leaf. Gloria and I had been together for
two years by then, the two years since Mama walked in on us. In that
time, Gloria had written many more articles on education policies,
audacious criticisms of our government, suggesting more effective
methods of standardizing the system, suggesting that those in control
of government affairs needed to better educate themselves. More
and more of her articles were being published in local and national
newspapers, the Tribune, Punch, the National Mirror and such.
Universities all over the country began to invite her to give lectures
on public policies and education strategy. Soon, she was getting
invited to conferences and lectures abroad. And before long, she was
offered that post in America, in that place where water formed a cold,
feather-like substance called snow, which fell leisurely from the sky in
winter. Pretty, like white lace.
‘I thought her goal was to make Nigeria better, to improve
Nigeria’s education system,’ Papa said.
‘Of course,’ Mama replied. ‘But, like I said, America has a way of
stealing our good ones from us. When America calls, they go. And
more times than not, they stay.’
Papa shook his head. I rolled my eyes.
‘Perhaps she’s only leaving to escape scandal,’ Mama said.
‘What scandal?’ I asked.
america
‘You know. That thing between you two.’
‘That thing is private, Mama,’ I replied. ‘It’s between us two, as
you say. And we work hard to keep it that way.’
‘What do her parents say?’ Mama asked.
‘Nothing.’ It was true. She’d have been a fool to let them know.
They were quite unlike Mama and Papa. They went to church four
days out of the week. They lived the words of the Bible as literally
as they could. Not like Mama and Papa who were that rare sort
of Nigerian Christian with a faint, shadowy type of respect for the
Bible, the kind of faith that required no works. The kind of faith that
amounted to no faith at all. They could barely quote a Bible verse.
‘With a man and a woman, there would not be any need for so
much privacy,’ Mama said that day. ‘Anyway, it all works out for the
best.’ She paused to wipe with her palms the sweat that was forming
on her forehead. ‘I’m not getting any younger,’ she continued. ‘And I
even have the names picked out!’
‘What names?’ I asked.
‘For a boy, Arinze. For a girl, Nkechi. Pretty names.’
‘Mama!’ I said, shaking my head at her.
‘Perhaps now you’ll be more inclined to take a husband,’ she said.
‘Why waste such lovely names?’
The first year she was gone, we spoke on the phone at least once
every week. But the line was filled with static and there were
empty spots in the reception, blank spaces into which our voices
faded. I felt the distance then.
But Gloria continued to call and we took turns reconstructing the
dropped bits of conversation, stubbornly reinserting them back into
the line, stubbornly resisting the emptiness.
The end of that first year, she came back for a visit. She was still
the same Gloria, but her skin had turned paler and she had put on
just a bit of weight.
‘You’re turning white,’ I teased.
‘It’s the magic of America,’ she teased me back. And then she
chinelo okparanta
laughed. ‘It’s no magic at all,’ she said. ‘Just lack of sunlight. Lots of
sitting at the desk, writing, and planning.’
It made sense. Perhaps she was right. But it was the general
consensus in Port Harcourt (and I imagine in probably most of
Nigeria as well) that things were better in America. I was convinced
of it. I saw it in the way her voice was even softer than before. I saw
it in the relaxed looks on the faces of the people in the pictures she
brought. Pictures of beautiful landscapes, clean places, not littered
at all with cans and wrappers like our roads. Snow, white and soft,
like clouds having somehow descended on land. Pictures of huge
department stores in which everything seemed to sparkle. Pictures in
which cars and buildings shone, where even the skin of fruit glistened.
By the time her visit was over, we had decided that I would try
to join her in America, that I would see about getting a visa. If not
to be able to work there, then at least to study and earn an American
degree. Because, though she intended eventually to come back to
Nigeria, there was no telling how long she would end up staying in
America. The best thing for now was that I try to join her there.
I think of Gloria as my head jerks back and forth against the window
of the bus. I try to imagine her standing in a landscape like the one
in the pictures she’s sent. A lone woman surrounded by tall cedars
and oaks. Even if it’s only June, the ground in my imagination is
covered with white snow, looking like a bed of bleached cotton balls.
This is my favourite way to picture her in America.
I think back to my first interview. The way the man dismissed
me even before I could answer why I wanted so badly to attain a
visa for the USA. The second interview was not much different. That
time, I was able to respond. And then the man told me how foolish
I was for expecting that a job would be waiting for me in America. I
held an African degree; was I unaware of this? Did I not know that I
would not compare at all with all the other job applicants who would
probably not be from an African country, whose degrees would
certainly be valued more than any degree from Nigeria ever would?
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I cried the whole bus ride home after that second interview. When
I returned, I told Mama and Papa what I had done. It was the first
time they were hearing about my plan to join Gloria in America. By
that second interview, she had been gone over two years.
Papa was encouraging. He said not to give up. If it was an
American degree I needed, then go ahead and apply to American
schools so that I could have that American degree. It would be good
for me to be in America, he said, a place where he imagined I could
be free with the sort of love that I had for Gloria.
‘It’s not enough that I won’t have a grandchild in all of this,’ Mama
said, after hearing what Papa had to say. ‘Now I must deal with losing
my only child, too.’ There were tears in her eyes. And then she asked
me to promise that I would not allow myself to get lost in America.
I shook my head and promised her that she’d not be losing me at all.
All the while, the woman I loved was there, worlds away. If I didn’t
make it that third time, I thought, there was a good chance she’d
grow weary of waiting for me. If I were to be once more declined,
she might move on and start loving somebody else. And who would I
blame more for it? Her or me? All this I thought as I booked the third
appointment. By then, I had already gained admission into one of the
small colleges near where Gloria lived in America. All that remained
was for me to be approved for the visa.
About a month before the third interview, Gloria called me
to tell me the news. An oil rig had exploded. Thousands of
barrels of crude were leaking out into the Gulf every day. Perhaps
even hundreds of thousands, there was no telling for sure. She was
watching it on the television. Arresting camera shots of something like
black clouds forming in waters that would usually be clear and blue.
It was evening when she called, and mosquitoes were whistling
about the parlour of my flat. They were landing on the curtains and
on the tables and on the walls, making tiny shadows wherever they
perched. And I thought how there were probably no mosquitoes
where she was. Did mosquitoes even exist in America?
chinelo okparanta
‘A terrible spill in the Gulf,’ she told me. ‘Can you imagine?’
I told her that I could not. It was the truth. America was nothing
like Nigeria, after all. Here, roads were strewn with trash and it was
rare that anyone cared to clean them up. Here, spills were expected.
Because we were just Africans. What did Shell care? Here, the spills
were happening on a weekly basis in the Niger Delta area. But a spill
like that in America? I could honestly not imagine.
‘It’s unfortunate,’ I said to Gloria.
‘Something good must be made out of such an unfortunate event,’
she said.
The bus picks up speed and I watch through the windows as we
pass by the small villages in Warri. Then we are driving by signs
for Sapele and for the Ologbo Game Reserve. The bus is quiet and
the woman next to me is fast asleep, and I wonder how she can stand
to sleep on such a bumpy ride. Hours later, we pass the signs for the
Lekki Lagoon. We reach Lagos at about 2 p.m., an early arrival for
which I’m very thankful, because it gives me plenty of time to make
my way to the embassy on Victoria Island.
At 3 p.m., I arrive at Walter Carrington Crescent, the road on
which the embassy is located. Inside the building, I wait in a small
room with buzzing fluorescent lights. There is an oscillating floor fan
in the corner, and a window is open, but the air is still muggy and
stale. I think of Gloria and I imagine what she is doing. It is morning
where she is in America, and perhaps she’s already at her office at the
university, jotting down notes at her desk, preparing lectures for her
students, or perhaps even rehearsing for a public reading somewhere.
I imagine her in a gown, something simple and unpretentious,
with her hair plaited in braids, the way it used to be. It’s gathered into
a bun at the nape of her neck, but there are loose strands dangling
down her back. Just the way she was the first time I saw her.
I continue to wait. The fan oscillates and I follow its rotations with
my eyes. I think of the spill and I remember Gloria’s description:
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something like black clouds forming in waters that would usually be clear
and blue. The waters of the Niger Delta were once clear and blue.
Now the children wade in the water and come out with Shell oil
glowing on their skin.
I’m imagining stagnant waters painted black and brown with
crude when finally someone calls my name. The voice is harsh and
makes me think of gravel, of rock-strewn roads, the kinds filled with
potholes the size of washbasins, the kind of potholes we see all over in
Nigeria, the kind I imagine America does not have.
I answer the call with a smile plastered on my face. But all the
while my heart is palpitating – rapid, irregular beats that only I can
hear. They are loud and distracting, like raindrops on zinc.
The man who calls my name is old and grey-haired and wears
suspenders over a yellow-white short-sleeved shirt. He doesn’t smile
at me, just turns quickly around and leads me down a narrow corridor.
He stops at the door of a small room and makes a gesture with his hand,
motioning me to enter. He does not follow me into the room, which is
more an enclosed cubicle than a room; instead there is a clicking sound
behind me. I turn around to see that the door has been shut.
In the room, another man sits on a swivel chair, the kind with thick
padding and expensive grey-and-white cloth covering. He stands
up as I walk towards him. His skin is tan, but a pale sort of tan. He
says hello, and his words come out a little more smoothly than I am
accustomed to, levelled and under-accentuated, as if his tongue has
somehow flattened the words, as if it has somehow diluted them in
his mouth. An American.
He wears a black suit with pinstripes, a dress shirt with the two top
buttons undone, no tie; and he looks quite seriously at me. He reaches
across the table, which is more like a counter, to shake my hand. He
wears three rings, each on its own finger, excepting the index and the
thumb. The stones in the rings sparkle as they reflect the light.
He offers me the metal stool across from him. When I am seated,
he asks for my papers: identification documents; invitation letter;
bank records.
chinelo okparanta
‘Miss Nnenna Etoniru,’ he begins, pronouncing my name in his
diluted sort of way. ‘Tell me your occupation,’ he says.
‘Teacher,’ I say.
‘Place of employment,’ he says, not quite a question.
‘Federal Government Girls’ College in Abuloma. I work there as
a science teacher.’
‘A decent job.’
I nod. ‘Yes, it’s a good enough job,’ I say.
He lifts up my letter of invitation. The paper is thin and from
the back I can see the swirls of Gloria’s signature. ‘Who is this Miss
Gloria Oke?’ he asks. ‘Who is she to you?’
‘A friend,’ I say. And that answer is true.
‘A friend?’
‘A former co-worker, too.’ I tell him that we met years ago at the
Federal Government Girls’ College in Abuloma. That we became
friends when she was invited to help create a new curriculum. He can
check the school records if he wishes, I say, confidently, of course,
because that answer, too, is true.
Next question: proof of funding. I direct him to the bank
statements, not surprisingly, from Gloria. He mumbles something
under his breath. Then he looks up at me and mutters something
about how lucky I am to have a friend like her. Not many people he
knows are willing to fund their friends’ education abroad, he says.
Then the big question. Why not just study here in Nigeria?
There are plenty of Nigerian universities that offer a Master’s in
Environmental Engineering, he says. Why go all the way abroad to
study what Nigerian universities offer here at home?
The question doesn’t shock me, because I’ve anticipated and
rehearsed it many more times than I can count in the month since
that phone conversation with Gloria.
I begin by telling him of the oil spill in America. He seems to be
unaware of it. I tell him that it has drawn some attention for Nigeria,
for their plight with the issues of the Niger Delta. I tell him that going
to America will allow me to learn first-hand the measures that the US
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government is taking in their attempt to deal with the aftermath of
their spill. Because it’s about time we Nigerians found ways to handle
our own.
He doesn’t question me as to how I expect to connect with the
US government. He doesn’t ask how exactly I expect to learn firsthand
about their methods of dealing with that type of environmental
disaster. Perhaps, having made a life for himself here in Nigeria, he,
too, has begun to adopt the Nigerian mentality. Perhaps he, too,
has begun to see the US the way most of us Nigerians do, as an
abstraction, a sort of utopia, a place where you go for answers, a place
that always has those answers waiting for you.
I tell him that decades ago, before the pipes began to burst (or
maybe even before Shell came into the area – and of course, these
days, it’s hard to remember a time without Shell), Gio Creek, for
example, was filled with tall, green mangroves. Birds flew and sang in
the skies above the creek, and there were plenty of fish and crab and
shrimp in the waters below. Now the mangroves are dead, and there
is no birdsong at all. And, of course, there are no fish, no shrimp, and
no crab to be caught. Instead, oil shoots up in the air, like a fountain of
black water, and fishermen lament that rather than coming out of the
water with fish, they are instead harvesting Shell oil on their bodies.
I tell him that the area has undergone what amounts to the
American spill, only every year for fifty years. Oil pouring out every
week, killing our land, our ecosystem. A resource that should make
us rich, instead causing our people to suffer. ‘It’s the politics,’ I say.
‘But I’m no politician.’ Instead, I tell him, I’d like to see if we can’t at
least construct efficient and effective mechanisms for cleaning up the
damage that has been done. I tell him that Nigeria will benefit from
sending out students to study and learn from the recent spill in the
US, to learn methods of dealing with such a recurrent issue in our
own Niger Delta.
He nods enthusiastically at me. He says what a shame it is that the
Nigerian government can’t get rid of all the corruption. He says how
the government officials themselves are corrupt. ‘Giving foreigners
chinelo okparanta
power over their own oil, pocketing for themselves the money that
these foreigners pay for the oil.’
I look at him, in his fancy suit and rings. I wonder if he is not
himself pocketing some of that oil money. But something good must
be made out of such an unfortunate event. And of course I don’t
question the man in the suit about where the money for his rings and
suit is coming from.
He fusses with the collar of his dress shirt and says, ‘Sometimes
when Nigerians go to America, they get their education and begin to
think they are too cultured and sophisticated to come back home.’ He
pauses. Then, ‘How do we know that you will?’
I think of Mama. ‘I don’t intend to get lost in America,’ I say, more
confidently than I feel. Because even as I say it, there is a part of me
that is afraid that I will want to get lost in America. There is a part of
me hoping that I will find that new life much less complicated, much
more trouble-free than the one here. Still, I say it confidently, because
saying it so might help me to keep Mama’s fear from becoming a
reality. Because I know that it might break Mama’s heart if I were
to break my promise to her. But mostly, I say it confidently because
Gloria is on my mind, and if I am to be granted permission to go and
be with her, then I must give the man the answer I know he wants: an
emphatic vow that I will come back home.
He smiles and congratulates me as he hands me the greencoloured
card. He takes my passport and tells me to come back in
two days.
The sun is setting as I make my way down Walter Carrington
Crescent. I look up. There are orange and purple streaks in the
sky, but instead of thinking of those streaks, I find myself thinking of
white snow, shiny metals reflecting the light of the sun. And I think
of Gloria playing in the snow – like I imagine Americans do – lying
in it, forming snow angels on the ground. I think of Papa suggesting
that perhaps America would be the best place for me and my kind of
love. I think of my work at the Federal Government Girls’ College. In
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America, after I have finished my studies, I’ll finally be able to find the
kind of job I want. I think how I can’t wait to get on the plane.
I cross over to the next street. It is narrow, but there are big houses
on each side of it, the kinds with metal gates, and fancy gatemen with
uniforms and berets, and small sheds like mini-houses near the gates,
sheds in which the gatemen stay.
I imagine the insides of the houses: leather couches and stainlesssteel
appliances imported from America; flat-screen televisions
hanging in even the bathrooms, American-style.
But the road just in front of these houses, just outside the nice
gates, is filled with potholes, large ones. And in the spaces between
the houses, that corridor that forms where one gate ends and the
next begins, there are piles of car tyres, planks of deteriorating wood,
layered one on top of another. Shattered glass, empty barrels of
oil, candy wrappers, food wrappers, old batteries, crumpled paper,
empty soda cans.
I stop at the entrance of one of these corridors. Two chickens
squirm about, zigzagging through the filth, jutting their necks back
and forth, sniffing and pecking at the garbage, diffident pecks, as if
afraid of poison.
I tell myself to continue walking, to ignore all of this foulness,
just like the owners of the big houses have managed to do. Maybe
it’s even their garbage that saturates these alleyways, as if the
houses themselves are all that matter, and the roads leading to them
inconsequential.
But for me, it is a reluctant kind of disregard that stems from a
feeling of shame: shame that all that trash should even exist there,
shame that empty barrels should be there, between the fancy houses,
littering the roads after the oil they once contained has been made to
do its own share of littering.
Several streets down, I find a hotel, not one of the fancy ones,
more just an inn. The room to which I am assigned smells musty and
stale, and I can feel the dust on my skin.
I scratch my arms with the edges of the green-coloured card. I
chinelo okparanta
think of the possibilities, of the many ways in which I might profit
from the card. I am still scratching and making plans for America
when I drift into sleep.
The story should end there, but it doesn’t. A person wishes for
something so long that when it finally happens, she should be
nothing but grateful. What sympathy can we have for someone who,
after wanting something so badly for three long years, realizes, almost
as soon as she’s gotten it, that perhaps she’s been wrong in wanting
it all that time?
My second night at the inn, the night before I am to return to the
embassy for my paperwork and passport, I think of Mama, her desire
for a grandchild, and I think: Isn’t it only natural that she’d want a
grandchild? I think of the small children emerging from the waters
of the Delta covered in black crude. Their playground destroyed by
the oil war. And I think: Who’s to say that this won’t some day be the
case even in America? It all starts small by small. And then it gets out
of hand. And here I am running away from one disaster, only to find
myself in a place that might soon also begin to fall apart.
There is a folk tale that Mama used to tell me when I was still
in primary school. She’d tell it in the evenings when there was not
much else to do, those evenings when NEPA had taken light away,
and there was no telling when they’d return it. I’d sit on a bamboo
mat, and she’d light a candle, allow its wax to drip on to the bottom
of an empty can of evaporated milk, a naked can, without its paper
coating. She’d stick the candle on the wax and allow it to harden in
place. And then she’d begin the story.
In the dim candlelight, I’d observe the changes that took place
on her face with each turn of her thought. Soft smiles turned to
wrinkles in the forehead, then to distant, disturbed eyes, which then
refocused, becoming clear again like a smoggy glass window whose
condensation had been dispelled suddenly by a waft of air.
The folk tale was about an imprudent little boy, Nnamdi, whose
wealthy father had been killed by a wicked old man who envied his
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wealth. Having killed Nnamdi’s father, the wicked old man steals all
of the family’s possessions, so that Nnamdi and his mother are left
with not even a small piece of land on which they can live. And so it
is that they make their new home in the bush. There, they find a twomonth-
old goat kid, a stray, with a rope around its neck. Nnamdi’s
mother ties the goat to a tall iroko tree. Still, they continue to eat the
green and purple leaves of the plants in the bushes for food, because
Nnamdi’s mother decides that they are to save the goat. It will grow,
she says, and when it does she will sell it for so much money that they
will be able to move out of the bush, or at least build a nice house for
themselves there.
But one day, foolish Nnamdi leads the goat by its rope into the
marketplace, and he sells it to a merchant who gives him a bagful of
what the boy assumes is money. But when he returns to the bush, to
his mother, Nnamdi opens the bag to find several handfuls of udara
seeds, some still soggy, coated thinly with the flesh of the fruit.
His mother, angry at him not only for selling the goat, but also
for doing so in exchange for mere seeds, furiously tosses them into
the bush. The next morning, Nnamdi finds that a tall udara tree has
grown, taller even than the iroko, so tall that its tips reach into the soft
white clouds in the sky.
Nnamdi climbs the tree against his mother’s wishes. In the
uppermost branches, he finds a large, stately house-in-the-sky. He
parts the branches, those thin stalks at the tip of the tree, and pushes
through the rustling leaves. He arrives at an open window and enters
the house that way. First he calls out to see if anyone is home. Once.
Twice. There is no response.
There is a large table not far from the window. Nnamdi walks
to the table. It is covered with a white cloth fringed with silk tassels.
Nnamdi runs his fingers across the tassels. In the air, there is the scent
of something savoury, a little curried, perhaps even a little sweet.
Nnamdi follows the scent into the kitchen and there, on the stove, the
lid of a large pot rattles as steam escapes from beneath. Nnamdi lifts
the lid and breathes in the savoury scent. And then he sees it, through
chinelo okparanta
the doorway of the kitchen, in the parlour: a lustrous cage sitting atop
a white cushion. The cushion is nearly as tall as he is. Inside the cage is
a golden hen, perched on the top half of the hutch. All over the parlour
floor, he sees coins, glistening like the cage. Glistening like the hen.
Nnamdi goes into the parlour. He climbs the cushion and takes
out the hen. By one wall of the parlour, lined on the floor, are half
a dozen small bags. Nnamdi peeks into them and sees that they are
filled with more gold coins. He ties some of the bags around his waist,
others he tucks to the hem of his shorts. He removes his shirt and
makes a sack out of it. He slings the sack across his chest and carefully
places the golden hen inside.
The wicked old man returns in time to see Nnamdi climbing
down the udara tree. He pursues the boy, catching him by his shorts
just as Nnamdi leaps from one branch to the next. The wicked old
man gets hold of the bags of gold coins, but Nnamdi manages to
wriggle away, escaping his grasp.
Nnamdi races off, gains ground, and finally lands safely in the
bush. In fact, he gains so much ground that he is able to begin
chopping down the udara tree before his pursuer has made it past
the halfway point. Feeling the sudden swaying of the tree, the wicked
old man scrambles back up to his home in the clouds before the tree
falls. But he scrambles back without his golden hen, and with only
the bags of coins.
The story always stopped there, and then I’d pester Mama to
tell me more. ‘What about the rest?’ I’d ask. Did the hen continue
to produce the gold coins? If so, for how much longer? And what
did Nnamdi and his mother do with the coins? Did they build for
themselves a huge mansion right there in the bush? Or, did Nnamdi
give all the coins away like he did with the goat? Did he perhaps even
give the hen itself away? Did they live happily ever after?
‘There’s no rest,’ Mama would say. Or sometimes, ‘The rest is up
to you.’
That night, my final night in the inn, I sit on my bed and I recall
every twist of that folk tale. I think of crude. And I think of gold. And I
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think of crude as gold. I imagine Nigeria – the land and its people – as
the hens, the producers of the gold. And I think that even when all the
gold is gone, there will always be the hens to produce more gold. But
what happens when all the hens are gone, when they have either run
away or have been destroyed? Then what?
The next day, I collect my paperwork from the embassy, and
hours later, I head back to Port Harcourt to pack my bags. The bus
bounces along the potholed roads, causing my head and heart to jolt
this way and that. But I force my eyes shut as if shutting them tight
will prevent me from changing my mind, as if shutting them tight will
keep regret from making its way to me.Ken Gitau.http://www.blogger.com/profile/07707773491849297274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6709299446814867771.post-33993010738100813552014-10-20T09:00:00.000-07:002014-10-20T09:00:46.666-07:00The Forgotten Heroes and HeroinesThe Gitu wa Kahengeriled Mau Mau War Veterans Association has published a book that tells the history of the freedom struggle of the 1950s.
It explores the suffering of those who fought the British and the continued agony of the veterans under the successive independent governments, as told by those who have lived it.
Titled <b>The Forgotten Heroes and Heroines</b>, the book is a collection of first-hand accounts based on interviews with survivors of the struggle from across the country.
Some of the interviewees talk of physically executing the war from the forest, where they suffered more from the cold and hunger than the British guns.
Others were detained for many years and tortured to no end, while the women narrate how they and their children were deprived of food, medicine and human dignity in what wa Kahengeri insists were emergency “torture” villages.
The book tries to show that although it may have been the Gikuyu, Embu and Meru who were referred to as Mau Mau, others in the country also fought besides them or contributed in one way or another towards the limited success of the Mau Mau.
“What is unique is that the book enlarges the theatre of the war of liberation to show that it involved more communities than the Gema communities who are normally associated with the Mau Mau struggle. In so doing it does not take credit from Gema; it acknowledges they were the vanguard of the struggle.
But the Mau Mau veterans whose voices are listed here are at pains to show that liberating Kenya from the yoke of colonialism was a combined effort from all corners of the country,” notes Muiru Ngugi an associate director at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Nairobi.
Those interviewed for the book are old men and women most of them struggling through life with bullets lodged in their limbs or painful memories wedged in their minds.
“We will impress upon Kenyans that they are one and that they should act as pillars for each other irrespective of their tribes, colour or religion,” wa Kahengeri put it in the book’s preface.
The book brings out personal accounts including rape.“At Gakui where we were taken initially, we would sleep in the open. In the evening would be removed for the interrogation session one at a time where the bottles were inserted into our private parts.
The home guards would also rape us at will (and) sometimes a woman would be raped by a gang of five and then sent to dig trenches and benches, humiliated and on an empty stomach,” recalls 85-year-old Wairimu wa Kanene.
Another witness of the British atrocities was 98-year-old Nyakomu wa Kahari who recalls how a woman called Wanjiku wa Gathogo was hanged by the British for possessing a Mau Mau register.
“(She) was hanged by the British and their corroborators on a Mugumo tree near the Chania River. Thereafter the home guards taunted the women in the village telling them to go down the river to watch how beautiful Wanjiku was dancing gicukia (a traditional dance) atop the mugumo tree.”
Apart from their exploits during the war and the torture and suffering in detention camps and prisons, the ageing veterans tell of the shocking ‘homecoming’ they received, which generally included dispossession of their ancestral land that had been bequeathed to the loyalists by the British, unemployment and lack of education for their children. And in their old age they have nowhere to turn for assistance.
Written in the traditional journalistic style, the book is a great read as Ngugi notes, it “will by no means constitute the final terminal narrative of the Mau Mau struggle, it will be an important addition to the corpus available to historians, Africanists and general readers interested in how the Mau Mau war was waged.”
If the association were to get funding, it would be interesting to expand a second edition of the book to include more survivors and add more background material on the struggle. The launch of the first edition is expected before the end of the year.
- See more at: http://www.the-star.co.ke/news/article-194576/new-book-enlarges-theatre-kenyas-freedom-struggle#sthash.<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LrWjvrMQgB0/VEUxgoWH7tI/AAAAAAAAAp0/ttg3es8G1b0/s1600/5.png" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LrWjvrMQgB0/VEUxgoWH7tI/AAAAAAAAAp0/ttg3es8G1b0/s320/5.png" /></a>Ken Gitau.http://www.blogger.com/profile/07707773491849297274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6709299446814867771.post-85843368309226489992014-10-10T09:26:00.002-07:002014-10-10T09:26:38.660-07:00Okwiri Oduor ON WHAT WRITING TRULLY IS.- I don’t think of my writing as wild, it’s just not obeying anyone. I write to escape and there’s not much escape staying in certain lanes. I don’t like lanes. Even when it comes to language, in my work in progress, I’m playing with language. I’m writing in English, but not in English; I’m writing in many Englishes. And that’s the kind of writing I want to do. I don’t want to write in the Queen’s language like I was doing in school. This is what writing is. That kind of writing really doesn’t interest me. - Ken Gitau.http://www.blogger.com/profile/07707773491849297274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6709299446814867771.post-85819846512636222822014-10-10T09:16:00.000-07:002014-10-10T09:16:39.769-07:00Run, Baby, Run! | By Yejide Kilanko | You’ve always been the one in charge. Oh, yes. You came into the world on a high note, swinging a golden conductor’s baton all the way down the birth canal. And life as it should re-organized itself by bending to your formidable will. Sweet.
Sure, some folks were trampled on during your march to the top. Big deal. They were just collateral damage in a numbers game. Frankly, it’s easy to sleep at night when all you see are numbers. Thinking about faces can be such a downer. And as everyone knows, you’re all about the up and up.
Last year, your team contributed to the company’s five percent lay-off rate. You told yourself it’s a cold hard world before skipping off to spend the bonus check you got for maintaining the all-important bottom line. Things and people get eaten every day. Nature’s way of maintaining the status-quo. It only sucked if you were way down on the food chain.
And then one morning, IT showed up at the office. Starched, neatly pressed, all straight white teeth. Kissing up, kissing down. Those massive lips. Despicable. As IT walked by your tiny pod to the corner office that had been promised to you, the brisk pace of shiny wingtip shoes shouted, ‘I’m so better than you.’
For the first time in years, you remembered what’s its face. He had slunk out of the office with two cardboard boxes a year after you’d waltzed in with a brand new Ivy League degree and those fancy PowerPoint presentations. Ha, Johnny Old-Timer. He’d given the company thirty-five and a half years of great service and he didn’t even get an ‘I was forced to retire early’ farewell cake. Cold.
That day, in the spirit of being the compassionate team player, you had walked Johnny out to his panel van. Just before he drove off, he gave a weary grin and tapped you on the arm. “Son, never forget that we’re all dispensable,” he’d said. “Don’t let this place consume you. Good luck.” Luck had nothing to do with it you thought as you strutted back to the office. You had the “It” factor.
For a brief moment, your trembling fingers curled around your metal three-hole paper puncher as you wondered how far you could throw it down the hallway. The image of IT standing by the office door crumpling to the floor brought a deep satisfaction. Booyah!
The part of you still mildly shocked by the viciousness bubbling under your well-moisturized skin made you reach for your bottle of cucumber and mint infused water. You told yourself the thoughts were brought on by dehydrated brain cells. The doctor already said you were a triple-bypass procedure waiting to happen. Too many late nights. Too greasy food. Too little exercise. No point in hastening it along.
You swung your chair around in the direction of IT’s office and imagined sharp teeth snipping at your heels. Someone’s hungry. A cloud of panic descended. In your head, you’re scrambling up a chain ladder. One step up and your foot hung in the air. What happened to the missing rung? No time for questions. Run, baby, run! Old-Timer knew what he was talking about.
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hyHQlqSQC8k/VDgGBQtfCLI/AAAAAAAAApc/CIptcttDY_Y/s1600/2867195273_785e682a98_z-e1412549665731.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hyHQlqSQC8k/VDgGBQtfCLI/AAAAAAAAApc/CIptcttDY_Y/s320/2867195273_785e682a98_z-e1412549665731.jpg" /></a>Ken Gitau.http://www.blogger.com/profile/07707773491849297274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6709299446814867771.post-62701630212260714792014-09-14T05:35:00.000-07:002014-09-14T05:35:23.371-07:00The Gorilla’s Apprentice by KWANI'S Billy Kahora.That last Sunday of 2007, just a few days before Jimmy Gikonyo’s eighteenth birthday –
when he would become ineligible to use his Nairobi Orphanage family pass – he went to see
his old friend, Sebastian the gorilla. Jimmy sat silently on the bench next to the primate’s pit
waiting for Sebastian to recognize him. After a few minutes, Sebastian turned his gaze on
Jimmy and walked towards the fence. The gorilla’s eyes were rheumy, his movements slow
and careful. Their interaction was now defined by that strange sense of inevitable nostalgia
that death brings, even when the present has not yet slipped into the past.
Jimmy removed the tattered pass from his pocket and read the fine print on the back: This
lifetime family pass is only for couples and children under eighteen years of age.
There was a sign on the side of Sebastian’s cage: ‘Oldest Gorilla in the World. Captured and
Saved from the Near Extinction of His Species After the Genocide in Rwanda. Sebastian, 56.
Genus: Gorilla.’
The Sunday Standard beside him said: Nairobi, Kisumu, Kakamega and Coast Province in
Post-Election Violence After Presidential Results Announced.
That Sunday morning was strangely cold for late December. When Jimmy looked around,
every one of the animals seemed to agree, each exhibiting a unique brand of irritation. 11
a.m. was the best time to visit the orphanage. The church-going crowd that came in droves in
the afternoon was still worshipping, so the place was empty.
He had come here first as a toddler. They acquired their family pass in the days when his
father was a trustee of the Friends of Nairobi National Park but his father soon found the trips
boring, and for some years, Jimmy had come here alone with his mother.
When Jimmy was twelve his father left them, and Jimmy began to come on his own, except
for the year he had been in and out of hospital. That year, he borrowed a book called Gorilla
Adventure by Willard Price from a school friend. He had read it from cover to cover, in the
night, using a torch under the blanket and eventually falling asleep. He woke up to find the
book tangled and ruined in urine-stained sheets. He had received a beating from the owner
that had only increased his love for the mountain gorilla. For the rest of his primary school
years he would take the lonely side in arguments about whether a gorilla could rumble a tiger,
or whether a polar bear could kill a mountain gorilla.
Feeding time was Jimmy’s favourite moment of the day at the park – sacks of cauliflower
plopping into the hippo pool, the dainty-toed river horses huffing. Until Sebastian had fallen
sick, Jimmy had helped the handlers in the feeding tasks: crashing meaty hunks against the
carnivores’ cages and forking in bales of grass and leaves for the others. These times became
the fulcrum of his weeks, defining his priorities and spirit more than his mother’s war with
the doors of the small Kileleshwa flat they now lived in; her daily conflicts with the cheap
dishes which she had to wash herself as they could no longer afford a maid; their strange and
sometimes psychotic neighbours; her boyfriends.
Week after week, year after year, he listened to the screeching conversations of vervets
devouring tangerines, peel and all; the responding calls of parrot, ibis, egret: the magenta,
indigo and turquoise noises fluttering in their throats like angry telephones going off at the
same time.
It took him away from real life. Real life was Evelyn’s College for Air Stewards and
Stewardesses which he had attended for a year. Real life was the thin couch he slept on at
home. Real life was his mother screaming that he needed to face Real Life. Waking up on
Sunday morning and staring at the thin torn curtains of the sitting room, the stained ceiling
that sagged and fell a few inches every week and smelt of rat urine, Jimmy often felt he
needed to leave the house before his mother asked him to join her and her latest boyfriend for
breakfast. Real life was the honey in her voice, the gospel singing in the kitchen as she played
Happy Family for her new man.
Jimmy was more sensitive to light than most. When he was sixteen, a blood clot had blacked
out his sight for months and he had spent most of that year in hospital. ‘Picture an ink stain
under his scalp,’ the doctors had told his mother. ‘That’s what’s happening in your son’s
head.’ The stain had eventually been sucked out, and the doctors triumphantly gave him large
black X-ray sheets for his seventeenth birthday.
After fifteen months of seeing the world in partial eclipse, light came alive again for Jimmy
in the Animal Orphanage – glinting off slithering green mambas and iridescent pythons,
burning in the she-leopard’s eyes high up in her tree.
Every July he had watched the two kudu shrug off the cold with dismissive, bristling
acceptance, standing like sentinels blowing smoky breaths in a far corner of the enclosure.
When the sun travelled back north from the Tropic of Capricorn over November, the two
hyenas’ hind legs unlocked and straightened, and they acquired a sort of grace. In August the
thick-jawed zebras and black-bearded wildebeest, heeding the old migratory call, would tear
from one side of their pen to the other and, finally exhausted, grind their bodies into the
ground, raising dust.
Over the last year, as Sebastian became more subdued, Jimmy spent more of his Sunday
keeping him company. He could sit for hours like Sebastian, rendering the world irrelevant.
In the Animal Orphanage, everything outside became the watched. And Jimmy knew all
about being watched. What his mum called love.
That last Sunday of the year there were still visitors at the orphanage. They carried their
apprehension like a badge a day after the election results were announced. All who passed the
gorilla pit noticed the slightly built, light-skinned young man with brown hair, a zigzag bolt
of lightning on the left side of his scalp, above one ear. He would have been thought good
looking, but there was something wrong with the face – a tightness, a lack of mobility.
Soon the crowds would arrive, some from church, others rural primary school children in
cheap, ugly browns and purples, wearing leather shoes with no socks, smelling of river-washed bodies, road dust, the corn-cob life, meals on a three-stoned hearth. Jimmy knew all
about these children – had lived among them, and become one of them after his father had
left and his mother had taken them to her parents’ in Kerugoya for six months.
On holidays like today, foreign tourists would crawl out of minibuses and crowd the fence as
they flipped through the pages of Lonely Planet Kenya, carrying water bottles, cameras,
distended stomachs and buttocks, with their wiggling underarms like astronauts on the moon.
They watched with strained smiles as their children actualized Mufasa and other television
illusions, as they chatted about cutting their trip short, with all that was going on. The
children made everyone jump, clanging the metal bars of the cage, trying to get Sebastian’s
attention, sticking out their tongues at the immovable hairy figure and having their photos
taken. When the warders were not looking, they would throw paper cups and other odds and
ends at Sebastian, who threw them back.
When the sun crossed its highest point in the sky, faraway screams rent the air. The gazelles
and impalas stopped grazing and looked up in their wary way, tensed to accelerate from zero
to a hundred as they had always done. The old lions seemed to grin, yawning at a sound they
understood only too well, and licked their chops. Smoke billowed in the air from a distance,
and loud popping sounds could be heard. In half an hour, as if in response, the crowd had
thinned, and Jimmy was left practically alone beside Sebastian’s cage. In the beautiful, quiet
afternoon they started their dance, small mimicking movements they shared. Scratches and
hand flutters, heads bowed forward and swaying from side to side.
Jimmy listened to the faraway sounds once more and said, ‘That must be Kibera. Maybe time
I also left, old man.’
Over the last six months Sebastian had started to avoid making eye contact with Jimmy. At
first Jimmy had taken offence, then he realized that Sebastian’s eyesight was failing. He had
cataracts, and his eyes and cheeks were stained with cakes and trails of mucus. Sometimes
Sebastian would join their weekly ritual of movements for only a few sluggish moments, then
turn away and slowly walk to the shade.
Now they could hear screams coming from Kibera and Jimmy looked up to see a large
mushroom cloud as a petrol station was set ablaze in Kenya’s largest slum. Sebastian raised
his head ever so slightly to catch the breeze, and he began to pace, nostrils flaring and mucus
streaming. He lifted his palm and beat it on the ground along with the faraway popping of
gunshots. Jimmy had read all the books there were on gorillas, and he knew about their sense
of community, their empathy – their embracing of death.
Jimmy had been born not far from State House where the President lived. The house he
remembered smelled like the Animal Orphanage. It smelled of the giant pet tortoise that had
disappeared when he was eight. After he had cried for a week his mother brought him Coxy,
and the house came to smell of rotting cabbage and rabbit urine. Later, when he was older,
Mum allowed him to keep pigeons, and they added to the damp animal smell of the house. It
smelled of the bottom of the garden where he eventually strangled Coxy and the second
rabbit, Baby, and drowned their children, overwhelmed by three squirming litters of rabbits;
the piles of shit to clear. His mother found him crying at the foot of the garden and said in
consolation, ‘What are rabbits anyway? Your father is a rabbit. Always up in some hole.’
He didn’t keep pets after his father left. They moved into a small flat with skewed stairs and
smirking girls in tight jeans who chewed minty gum all day and received visitors all night.
Mum said it would still be all right because they were still in Kileleshwa and not far from
State House.
‘James’, she would call out, from the chemical haze of her dressing table, ‘pass me the toe
holder, pass me the nail polish remover. Come on James, don’t be spastic. Wait till you
become a steward, you’ll fly all over the world. With your mum’s looks you’ll be the best,’
she would laugh in the early afternoon, a glass of Johnny Walker Black next to her. ‘Then
you can stop spending time with that old gorilla. You know, when your father left I thought
that we would just die, but look at us now.’ She would smear on her lipstick and flounce out
of the apartment to meet a new man friend. (I’ve no time for boys. I need a man. James, will
you be my man? Protect me.)
Sebastian rose, slowly coming to rest on knuckled palms. Jimmy watched the gorilla stand on
his hind feet and move in the other direction, slowly, towards the other side of the cage. He
was listening to something. Jimmy strained, and for a while he heard nothing - and then he
felt against his skin rather than his ears, slow whirring sounds, followed by sharp, rapid
clicks. A dark tall man walked into view. He walked with his head tilted. And with his dark
glasses and sure firm steps, he could have been mistaken for a blind man. He went right to the
edge of the gorilla pit, squatted, and, looking down, spoke to Sebastian in a series of tongue
clicks, deep throat warbles and low humming. Sebastian bounded to the bottom of the wall
standing fully upright, running in short bursts to the left and the right, beating his chest as if
he was welcoming an old friend.
Then Jimmy distinctly heard the man say something in what he recognized as French. He
could not understand any of the words, except, mon frère, mon vieux. The gorilla-talking man
walked away briskly, and Sebastian slumped to the ground in his customary place. Jimmy
saw the man walk to the orphanage notice board next to the warthog pen and pin something
on it. He felt that he recognized him from somewhere; the way that one feels one knows
public figures, beloved cartoon characters or celebrities.
Jimmy scrambled up, shouldered up his bag and waved goodbye to Sebastian. Now that his
pass had expired, the Sunday visits would be infrequent. But what he had just seen told him
that those future visits, however rare, might be the most important in all these years he had
been coming – an opportunity to talk to Sebastian.
The man who now called himself Professor Charles Semambo knew that the Jamhuri Gorilla
series of lectures would attract animal science experts from the ministries, and university
students – but the rest was decided by the availability of rancid South African wine, wilting
sandwiches and toothpick-impaled meatballs. He had learned that the renewal of future
contracts was decided in this Nairobi shark pool, and that lectures were where one met and
impressed the major players in the game.
The unmistakeable smell of sweat came down from the higher levels of the auditorium where
members of the public sat. The bucket-like seats comically forced people’s knees up into the
air – and Semambo went through the hour allocated for the lecture briskly, enjoying such
minor distractions as a glimpse of red or white panties between fat feminine knees. It was his
standard lecture: Gorillas 101. Habitat. Behaviour. Group Life. Endangerment.
After the lecture, he allowed the five mandatory questions from the audience. As usual, these
were either of a post-doctoral nature from the front row of specialists, or idiotic juvenile
comments. One man stood up and pleaded for compensation, because a gorilla from a nearby
forest where he lived in Kakamega had eaten his child. He said he had voted for the
Opposition because the previous government had failed to do anything about it. The people
around him laughed.
Angalia huu mjinga. Hakuna gorilla Kenya. Ilikuwa baboon. There are no gorillas in Kenya,
fool. That was a baboon. The man started weeping and had to be led out.
Then the last question: ‘It-is-said-that-far-in-the-mountains-of-Rwanda men-have-learnt-to-talk-to-gorillas. Do-you-think-there-is-any-truth to-such-claims?’
Semambo felt the ground shift slightly beneath him, but as hard as he tried, he could not
make out the face that had asked the question. The projector light was right in his face,
hiccupping because it had reached the end and caused the words on the screen to blink.
Seeking New Habitat in the Face of Human Encroachment: The Mountain Gorilla in
Rwanda.
‘Is that a trick question?’ he responded smoothly. The audience laughed.
‘If I say yes, I might sound unscientific, and you know what donors do with such unscientific
conjecture, as the esteemed gentlemen sitting before me will attest.’ In the front row, the
museum politicos chuckled from deep inside their stomachs.
‘You might have heard of Koko, the famous gorilla who was taught sign language,’
Semambo went on. ‘It is claimed that he is capable of inter-species communication. I think a
lot of it is pretty inconclusive. So the answer would be no.’
The piercing voice floated again. Insistent. The face still invisible.
‘I am asking whether you’ve heard of men who can talk to gorillas, not gorillas who can talk
to men. ’
The audience was bored now; a couple walked out noisily. Then he saw his questioner. He
was just a kid, slight and lithe, about sixteen. Now he remembered – he had seen him a
couple of times at the Animal Orphanage. (Was it possible?) Then, unbelievably, the young
man took a photo of him. The angry click of the camera felt as if it was right next to his ear,
and the flash lit up the whole as auditorium, including a sign that read, CAMERAS NOT
ALLOWED.
‘Excuse me. Excuse me, ladies and gentleman. I want to allow the young gentleman the
courtesy of an answer. There might be something in what he says. I also want to remind you,
young man, that cameras are not allowed in the auditorium.’ There was an uneasy laughter.
The herds needed their wine and pastries. Semambo hestitated.
‘But since you all have to leave I will take the young man’s question after the lecture.’ Light
applause.
Baker, the museum co-ordinator in charge of the lecture series, suddenly emerged from the
shadows at the back. A naturalized citizen, he had lived in Kenya since the 1960s, and
worked as a functionary of one sort of the other through three regimes. He was useful
because he provided a sort of international legitimacy to the thugs who ran the government.
When things swung his way, he could be a power broker of sorts, a middleman between a
defaulting government and donors. He slid to the front of the podium.
‘Let us give Professor Charles Semambo, our visiting expert on the African Gorilla, attached
to the Museum for six months, a big hand. And please join us for wine in the lobby.’
After glad-handing the museum officials, Baker came up to Semambo, his face red with
embarrassment.
‘Sorry about the camera.’
‘Get it,’ he said tightly. He struggled for a smile then said very deliberately, ‘Get me that
fucking camera.’
‘Charles, it’s not that big a deal.’
Semambo wiped the sheen of sweat from his face. It was a bad move to bully Baker: he
removed his dark glasses, reaching for a softer, more conciliatory note. ‘Winslow, you have
no idea how big a deal it is. I want that camera. Introduce me to the boy. I will do it myself.’
Even if it was fourteen years ago, Semambo clearly remembered the day he had erased his
past and come to Kenya. He had met his contact in a seedy restaurant near Nairobi’s City
Hall. It seemed a confusing place at first. People sat gathered around tables, wielding folders
and clipboards and pens, all having various meetings it seemed. Was it some sort of game?
Bingo?
He met the man at the bar.
‘This restaurant markets itself to wedding and funeral committees.’
‘Ah,’ said Semambo, laughing, ‘Where the balance sheets of living and dying are produced.
They are counting the cost of life. Very appropriate. Well, here is the cost of mine, exactly
counted, in the denominations you asked for.’
The man looked at him and laughed back. ‘I don’t know why. I have to sleep at night you
know? Our old man is friendly to your side. Me, I just think you are all butchers…’
A title deed, four different Ugandan passports with appropriate visas and work permits, an
identification document and his new name. But hiding was not easy. There were always
people looking. A couple of million dollars could only buy you so much.
When he turned away from Baker, Semambo was surprised to see the kid standing not five
metres away from them. He had been mistaken – the kid was probably closer to eighteen. He
had good teeth Semambo saw – a rarity in Kenya.
‘Have we met before?’
‘No,’ the boy said. ‘But I’ve seen you at the Animal Orphanage. When you come and talk to
Sebastian.’ The boy’s voice was a quiet whisper. ‘Sebastian. The gorilla. He’s dying, you
know. I need to talk to him before he goes. Can you teach me?’ The boy added breathlessly,
‘He has maybe two months. He’s old. Could even be sixty.’
‘Yes. I know who you are talking about. And you are?’
‘Jimmy. Jimmy Gikonyo.’
‘Call me Charles. Can we talk in my office? Or even better, let’s go somewhere quieter.’
‘Sorry, but my mother expects me home early.’
‘I understand. Where do you live? Maybe we can talk on the way as I drop you off. I don’t
generally allow people to take photos of me.’
‘I’m sorry. It’s just that I thought I recognized you from somewhere. Not that we’ve met.’
It was two days after the election results had been announced, and it seemed as if half the
drivers in Kenya were in a deep stupour and had forgotten how to drive. Semambo counted
three accidents during the fifteen-minute drive from the National Museum to Kileleshwa
through Waiyaki Way, then Riverside Drive. They turned off at the Kileleshwa Shell petrol
station and the boy gave him directions to a large, busy high-rise off Laikipia road.
Two girls loitered outside the grey building. Then a green Mercedes Benz drove up and both
jumped in, waving and blowing kisses at Jimmy. The Benz almost collided with a Range
Rover that was coming in. The Benz driver, an old African man, threw his hands in the air.
The two young men in the other car, one white and the other Kenyan Asian, ignored him,
screeched into the parking lot and bounded out of the car. They also waved to Jimmy as they
passed. Semambo noticed Jimmy’s hands clench into tight fists.
There was a slight breeze, gathering leaves in the now quiet front of the building. It could not,
however, drown out the frantic hooting on the main road right outside the block of flats.
Semambo suspected that this went on all day and night. Even from inside, one could see a
large queue of walking silhouettes, probably going to Kawangware, through the hedge – a
parallel exodus of the walking and mobile classes. Back in 1994 when Semambo had first
come to Kenya, Kileleshwa was still keeping up appearances - now it seemed victim to all
sorts of ugly aspirations and clutchings: tall ice-cream cake apartment buildings that
crumbled like Dubai chrome furniture after a few years.
‘Will this be fine with you? I’ll wait here for the photos, then we can discuss gorilla talking
lessons,’ Semambo said.
‘You have to come in and meet my mother. She won’t allow me to spend time with you if she
doesn’t know who you are.’
Semambo never used lifts. He bounded up the stairs and was not even out of breath when
they got to the flat. Claire, Jimmy’s mother, was beautiful. A beauty of contrast – of failure
even. Lines crossed her forehead, the crumpling skin astonishingly frail. Her mouth and jaw,
perfectly symmetrical, trembled with drunkenness and skewed lipstick: she seemed on the
verge of tears.
‘Please come in.’
Semambo could smell the whisky on her breath. The flat had an extremely low ceiling and he
had to stoop once he was inside. She prattled on. He sat down and looked around. There was
a bottle nestled on the cushions where she must have been sitting. There were two glasses –
one empty.
‘I hope you like whisky.’
The flat was crowded with triumphs of the past. There were photos of three strangers, a
young man, woman and boy in different settings. The young man in the photo seemed a
studious sort, uncomfortable and self-conscious, with his hand held possessively in every
photo by a Claire fifteen hard years younger than the woman in front of him now.
Jimmy carried both his parents’ features. The world in the photo seemed to have little to do
with the small flat Semambo found himself in. He could not stretch his legs and his knees
were locked at right angles. Everything had been chosen to fit the flat’s small specifications:
the Cheng TV, the Fong music stereo, Sungsam microwave and the cracked glass table.
Every appliance in the room was on; even the small washing machine in the corner.
The TV was muted. It showed a crowd of young men dancing with pangas, a shop in flames
behind them. A washing machine gurgled as Dolly Parton sang in the background. There
were two doors to the right, probably the bedrooms, Semambo thought. He could, however,
see blankets underneath the other wicker two-seater where Claire was now slumped, peering
at him beneath suggestively lidded eyes. ‘Thank God for whisky,’ she purred. ‘One of the last
pleasures left to an old woman like me. What you do for fun?’ Her voice sounded breathy and
Semambo was uncomfortable. He was no prude, but these were uncertain times, and with her
perfume and cigarette smell, her drunkenness and incoherence, she promised nothing less
than the loss of control.
She poured herself another shot. Jimmy appeared from behind one of the two doors.
Semambo was developing a grudging regard for the boy – most teenagers would have taken
on a long suffering sullenness with a mother like that. Jimmy treated her like a slightly loopy
older sister. ‘Mum. The professor and I need to talk.’
Her face went blank for a while, and the mouth trembled. ‘I’m going to bed. You men are no
fun at all.’
She went through the door that the boy had come from and slammed it. The TV now showed
a soldier in fatigues creeping against a wall and then shooting down two young men.
‘I need some air,’ Semambo said. Jimmy beckoned and opened the other door. A small room
gave on to a narrow balcony that overlooked the parking lot. Semambo crossed over into the
open and looked down at his hulking Land Cruiser.
Some distance away, towards Kangemi, fires burned into the night, black smoke billowing
towards the City Centre. The screams in the air were faint, the gunshots muted, as if coming
from another country. Semambo looked out, listening, and shook his head.
‘While some fuss about whether to eat chicken or beef tonight, many won’t see tomorrow
morning. We are in the abyss and the abyss is in us.’
He turned and removed his dark glasses. The face was thick and flabby, layered with dark
pudge, and there were two large scars running down his neck. Jimmy felt that he needed to
back away from the balcony.
‘Do you think that it will get much worse?’ he asked.
‘Only when you see the fires in your parking lot.’
‘I never thought that the end of our world could happen so slowly. This all started when
Sebastian fell sick. Can you teach me to talk to him?’
‘That might not be possible. His time might be nearer than we think. Just like ours. Maybe I
can tell him how you feel. Let us go see him.’
Now the screams and wails began on the Langata side of the city. By the time they were near
the Nairobi Animal Orphanage, their faces were lit up in the cabin of the Land Cruiser by the
fire on Kibera plain. They sped down Mbagathi Way, turned up Langata Road and past
Carnivore restaurant as if driving around in hell. Figures danced in the road, yelling and
waving pangas, grotesque in the firelight.
‘Hide in the back and whatever you do, don’t come out. You will only excite them.’
Once they were clear, Jimmy jumped into the back seat.
‘What do you talk about with Sebastian?’
‘Can you imagine what Sebastian has seen of man since he was born?’ They had reached the
gate of the orphanage. ‘Get back into the boot and hide.’
A guard came up to the Land Cruiser smiling brightly and peered into the car. ‘Habari,
Professor. What brings you here at this time of the night.’
‘My old friend is dying, and I need to see him.’
‘Yes, he hasn’t eaten today.’
Jimmy sat back up as they drove in.
In the orphanage, the animals’ nocturnal sounds drowned out the sounds of fighting from the
neighbouring slum. Then, for a while, everything was quiet. ‘I don’t think Sebastian has long.
Living by Kibera has aged him impossibly. Nothing alive can take the past he has come from
and then have to repeat it in old age.’
When they finally got to the gorilla pit, Sebastian lay on his side, heaving. Semambo rushed
to where the wall was at its lowest and jumped into the enclosure, landing as silently as a cat.
Jimmy passed him his bag through the front metal bars. Semambo went back to the gorilla,
crooning all the while. Sebastian tried getting up. A huge light climbed up in the sky,
followed by a large explosion. Sebastian twitched and lay back with a giant sigh. Semambo
removed a long syringe from his bag and filled it with fluid.
‘Goodbye, old friend.’
Jimmy ran to the back wall and scrambled to where Semambo had jumped down. When he
hit the ground inside the cage he felt something give in his left ankle. He hobbled to the
middle – Sebastian had stopped moving. Semambo removed a small razor from his bag and
shaved the left side of Sebastian’s thick chest.
Semambo plunged the long needle into the small, naked spot and pressed the syringe home,
and in that single motion the gorilla sat up immediately. He started clawing at his chest where
the injection had gone in, roaring madly and beating his chest until the rest of the animals
joined in, drowning out the din of man, and fire and death.
Sebastian whirled his arms like windmills. Semambo stood without moving, then Sebastian
wrapped his arms around him, roaring enough to drown out the rest of the world. Jimmy had
scrambled away to the edge of the cage and Semambo’s face turned apoplectic, red,
crisscrossed with blood vessels. His glasses fell off, and his light eyes turned darker as the
two figures became one. Ken Gitau.http://www.blogger.com/profile/07707773491849297274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6709299446814867771.post-63301771427395776702014-09-13T04:04:00.002-07:002014-09-13T04:07:19.368-07:00SECRETS BY JOLYN PHILLIPS
I knew that if Ma found out about Boeta and me, she would probably lock me up. My mother had never liked the Groenewalds. She always said that they were evil people and that we shouldn’t mix with that sort.
‘Meng jou met die semels en die varke vreet jou op’ — that’s what Ma says about people she thinks are sinful.
Boeta used to hand me letters under the desk in Afrikaans class. I never guessed that I would fall in love with ‘Boeta the Mail Boy’. But nou ja, I do not question our stolen times together. It was so secret neither my sisters nor God knew. He told me that he wanted to build houses like his father who had built the klipkerkie in Dempers Street. I liked talking to him and listening to his ideas about life. Sometimes we just went to go and sit at the vlei and talk. No one visited it anymore and it was close to church so I would always have an excuse if Ma asked.
For a long time we only held hands. Then, after a few weeks, Boeta let me rest my head on his shoulders or sometimes he lay on my lap and we would talk about all kinds of things. About exams and about life here in Strandtjiesvlei. When Hellie wrote to me about the bright lights in Cape Town, I showed him the letter. In it my sister had included a R5 note and a picture of her and a handsome man. She was wearing a pink dress and sandals and he was wearing high-waist pants and a tucked shirt and sun-glasses. He was a mechanic and he had a car which he drove her around in. Boeta smiled and said he would make an even better life for us. My heart began to beat really fast when our fingers gently crossed into each other’s.
When we kissed for the first time, he looked at me smiling.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘Do you know our eyes are the same’?
I did not know what to say. He rubbed his nose against mine.
When I got home, I went straight to my bedroom. I couldn’t believe what had just happened. It was our secret. There was a knock on my door. It was Ma.
‘I got Mrs Williams at the shop, Father Williams’ wife.’
My eyes went big in my head; immediately I thought, ‘Oh my God she found out!’ Why else would the Pastor’s wife be speaking to her? I could hear my heart beat in my chest.
‘Father Williams wants to see you tomorrow.’
‘Oh, thank you Ma.’
‘Just don’t be late, it sounds important.’
I felt relief. My secret about Boeta was still safe. I knew why Father Williams was looking for me. He was helping me apply for the teaching college in Wellington. Father Williams was hoping I would get a bursary, but we both knew it was going to be difficult. This was another secret I was keeping from Ma. I knew she would not have approved. She would have thought I was reaching above my station. Boeta. The bursary. When had I started to keep so much from my mother?
I woke up the next morning. I was almost late for my duties at the church. If Ma had not woke me up so violently I would have overslept.
‘What is it with you?’
I was rushing to get dressed and to gather my things together.
‘That shirt is not ironed.’ She scowled. ‘No child of mine walks about in town with a creased shirt. What will the people say? We are gossiped about enough. Het jy muisneste in jou kop?’
‘No Ma’, I replied fixing my cardigan. When I got to the church and Father Williams’ study I knocked very gently. I was shivering from nerves like a wet dog.
‘Come inside Lieda, have a seat.’
‘Good morning.’
Father William’s eyes look concerned. We had been waiting for a response for some time now. I took the brown envelope. It had my address on it.
‘Well go on,’ he said, ‘it is not going to open itself.’
I opened the letter, hands shivering.
‘Dear Miss Aploon’ I began to read.
The letter made me feel so important. I had never been called a Miss before.
‘I got in and the bursary too.’
‘Congratulations Lieda. I know you have your concerns but you must tell your mother. I’m sure she will be delighted.’
‘Maybe if you tell her, Father Williams, she will understand. ’
‘It is not my place, Lieda. I am very sorry. You will have to tell her yourself.’
‘How? She will never listen to me. Look what happened to my sisters.’
Ma had stopped talking to my sisters when they moved to Cape Town.
‘Why don’t you write her a letter?’
‘Letter? I will think about it. Thank you, Father.’
‘Good luck Lieda.’
As I walked home I tried to think about all that was happening to me. Boeta. Our love. And now Wellington next year if I did well enough in my exams. I knew I would pass them. I had been studying very hard, and I got As for most of my subjects during the year. But I was scared about telling Ma this news. I knew she wanted me to work for Miss Wilkenson. To settle down here and look after her. She always complained about her hands and feet. I didn’t want to be like Ma. I didn’t want to die in Strandjiesfontuin.
On the day our exam results were due, all of the Standard 10s got up early to wait for Oom Japie to deliver Die Burger. I knew my name would not be so hard to look for because it’s fifth on the class list. We thought we could buy it from Oom Japie directly, but he said it belonged to the shop. So we had to wait until Mr. Ford came to open up the shop.
The newspaper was R1. We clubbed together and bought a newspaper and Hans Olivier read out the names: ‘Cindy Abrahams, Johan Abrahams… Lieda Aploon.’ Boeta was so happy he ran towards me. But realizing what he was about to do, he stopped and walked towards me and shook my hands. We didn’t want the rest of the class to know that we were seeing each other.
‘Congratulations, Lieda.’ Boeta said, trying to hide his smile.
‘See you at youth practice tonight, Boeta.’
My friends Bettie, Sheila and Dawn gathered around to congratulate me. They already found work, working as flower packers like their mothers. They seemed to be excited working as blomme meisies.
Later that day, I could not keep my eyes off Boeta at Youth Practice. I watched him laughing with his friends, hands in his white pants’ side pockets and blue tucked-in shirt. Father Williams brought along a camera and we all stood huddled up together trying to get into the picture. The boys were sitting on their knees with big afros, the girls with pastel coloured cardigans and of course Lennie the youth league’s clown, lying on his side, with his tongue sticking out.
Everyone was busy playing dominoes and cards when Boeta asked if he could have a word outside. I could see Adam sticking his elbow into Paul’s ribs, but I tried to give them no attention. We went out the back and stood in the corner between the toilets and the big guava tree. It was quiet and the night air was warm and there was not a single cloud in the sky.
I was shivering so badly not because I was cold, but because I was so nervous. He gave me his leather jacket. ‘Daarso, just like Michael Jackson’s.’
‘Boeta?’
‘Yes?’
‘Do you think we will always recognise each other, like we do now? Even after I go to Wellington?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s just that this, what we have – I don’t even know what to call it –’
‘Love,’ he interrupted.
‘Yes, love.’ I agreed, half smiling. Suddenly my smile disappeared, ‘Boeta, I don’t want keep this secret anymore. It feels wrong to lie to Ma.’
‘I agree, so what do we do?’
‘I don’t know Boeta, really I don’t.’
‘Well if she chases you away you can stay with us.’
‘No, that would break Ma’s heart. You know how she feels about your family.’
‘So keep the secret rather?’
‘Yes, let’s.’
Two more weeks passed. Boeta and I saw each other whenever we could. Soon it would be time for me to leave for Wellington. I had already packed my suitcase along with my diary, my photo album, Ouma’s brooch and the photo of the youth league. I had pushed it under my bed, out of Ma’s sight. I hadn’t yet found the courage to tell her about the bursary, but I wrote her a letter explaining why I was going. I was checking the suitcase was still out of sight when Ma called me from the back.
‘Would you do the groceries today? The list is on the kitchen table.’
‘Yes, Ma.’
She went on tending to her asters, stink Afrikaners and daisies.
Ma was totally unaware of me and my new life waiting for me and Boeta, I thought as I walked to the shop. We, her three children always knew not to ask questions, just trust and obey, I thought. Ma can keep her secrets I don’t want to know why she doesn’t like the Groenewalds. I looked down at the shopping list. Fish oil, butter, eggs, sugar and some moerkoffie — usual stuff — and of course some Sunlight Soap which was always on the list. Ma washes every day of her life. When I got home, Ma was sitting in the living room with a letter lying on the table.
‘Who is this boy writing to you?’
‘Where did Ma get that?’
‘Count your words, girlie. Don’t play around. If you want to screw around, you do that under your own roof, not under my roof. Do you want to end up like your sisters? They put me to shame.’
‘It’s not like that Ma, I say. We are not… he is a kind person, he makes me happy.’
‘I want to meet this Boeta. Invite him over for dinner.’
‘Yes Ma, you will like him, he lives in…’
‘I am sure he can explain himself to me and also explain why he did not have the decency to ask me for permission.’
I ran out of the house towards Dempers Street number two. When I got to the house, Boeta’s father was standing over the hekkie, smoking tobacco out of his pipe.
‘Good afternoon, Uncle Ouboeta, is Boeta home?’
‘Sak Sarel,Gedorie, don’t choke on your spit. Boeta is not here, girlie. He went to Hermanus for that building job. He is planning on learning from the boss himself.’
‘When will he be back, Oom?’
‘Six or seven I think, yes six or seven.’
‘Uhm, my Ma invited him to dinner.’
‘Ne? Julle klogoed van vandag.’ He chuckled.
Ma made cabbage bredie, with lamb pieces, rice and beetroot made with a bit of vinegar and sugar. We sat at the kitchen table looking at the candle burning. My mother believed that you never eat without the guest so we just sat here, waiting for Boeta. I didn’t mind — I had a lot on my mind and it seemed Ma did too, sitting across the table. We heard the hekkie go open and Ma got up to answer the door.
‘Oh,’ I heard Ma say in the kitchen, ‘who are you looking for?’
‘My dad said you invited me.’
It was Boeta’s voice. I got up and went to stand a few steps behind my mother in the kitchen. Boeta was still standing in the doorway. Ma looked from him to me and froze.
‘May I come in?’ He asked, politely.
‘No, never are you allowed to come here, get out of here. Don’t ever come near my daughter, you bastard!’
‘I don’t understand, Mrs Aploon?’
‘Did your father put you up to this? He probably did. The bastard!’
‘Ma what is going on?’ I had never seen my mother behave this way before.
‘You stay out of this, Lieda. Go to your room!’
‘You and your father are sick people! How could you do this to me and my daughter? Have you no shame. Your father broke my heart, all those years ago and now he wants to do the same, using his children.’
‘Excuse me ma’am I have no idea what you are talking about. I love your daughter I was going to ask you if I could marry Lieda.’
‘WHAT?!’ She screams, ‘Sit jy op die paal, mytjie?’ She slammed the door in Boeta face.
‘Huh? No, Ma. No! How can you even ask me that? He would never…’
But Ma was so angry I was scared to approach her. She slumped down at the kitchen table. When she looked up I saw that she was white as a laken. ‘He would, he would, and that’s what his father did. He said we were going to get married.’ Her voice was trembling and so was she.
‘What?’ I asked, ‘Who were you going to marry?’
Ma looked at me, straight into my face. The tears were sliding down her cheeks now. ‘Boeta’s father.’ she whispered. ‘We were, until his cousin told me he was married already. I gave myself for him. He left me to suffer by myself — my husband had died a year ago, and he was my comfort. He left me alone to suffer in 1975. I had three children. And he had the audacity to come live here with his family. It shred me to pieces, but I got a job at missies and raised my children by myself. You. I raised you by myself, without his help. Now that bastard and his son come here and try and mess up my life!’
‘I’m sure you have the wrong person in mind,’ I say. Boeta’s father… you… we are… that would make Boeta.’
‘Yes, you are, you are… kyk bietjie, your eyes, they are the same. It’s his… George Groenewald’s eyes.’
I sat with my back against the wall, too shocked to cry. I could see Boeta’s eyes gleaming. Did he know. Did Boeta know. He could not have known.
‘I had to protect you. From them. Now you can see why I told not to mix with them.’
‘THEY DIDN’T KNOW MA. THEY DIDN’T KNOW. UNCLE OUBOETA DIDN’T KNOW MA, YOU DIDN’T TELL HIM.’
She walked past me, to her room, and prayed loudly. I got up. My whole body ached. My heart was broken. I went to my room and took out my suitcase from under the bed and walked over to Father Williams’ house. I didn’t say anything to Ma. I didn’t tell her where I was going. Mrs Williams welcomed me.
‘May I stay here for the night, it’s probably better as we leaving early tomorrow morning for college.’
‘Hi kint, have you been crying, is it your mother?’
‘She doesn’t want you to go?’
I just nodded my head and let Mrs Williams take my suitcase.
‘Ag, she will come by, once she understands. Every mother is scared for her children’s well-being.’Ken Gitau.http://www.blogger.com/profile/07707773491849297274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6709299446814867771.post-57492609486080889952014-09-12T07:59:00.000-07:002014-09-12T07:59:54.217-07:00I am a homosexual, Mum by Binyavanga Wainaina(A lost chapter from One Day I Will Write About This Place)
11 July, 2000.
<b>
This is not the right version of events.</b>
Hey mum. I was putting my head on her shoulder, that last afternoon before she died. She was lying on her hospital bed. Kenyatta. Intensive Care. Critical Care. There. Because this time I will not be away in South Africa, fucking things up in that chaotic way of mine. I will arrive on time, and be there when she dies. My heart arrives on time. I am holding my dying mother’s hand. I am lifting her hand. Her hand will be swollen with diabetes. Her organs are failing. Hey mum. Ooooh. My mind sighs. My heart! I am whispering in her ear. She is awake, listening, soft calm loving, with my head right inside in her breathspace. She is so big – my mother, in this world, near the next world, each breath slow, but steady, as it should be. Inhale. She can carry everything. I will whisper, louder, in my minds-breath. To hers. She will listen, even if she doesn’t hear. Can she?
Mum. I will say. Muum? I will say. It grooves so easy, a breath, a noise out of my mouth, mixed up with her breath, and she exhales. My heart gasps sharp and now my mind screams, sharp, so so hurt so so angry.
“I have never thrown my heart at you mum. You have never asked me to.”
Only my mind says. This. Not my mouth. But surely the jerk of my breath and heart, there next to hers, has been registered? Is she letting me in?
Nobody, nobody, ever in my life has heard this. Never, mum. I did not trust you, mum. And. I. Pulled air hard and balled it down into my navel, and let it out slow and firm, clean and without bumps out of my mouth, loud and clear over a shoulder, into her ear.
“I am a homosexual, mum.”
July, 2000.
<b>
This is the right version of events.<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ka9ffxnwpAE/VBMJeeig3YI/AAAAAAAAAmI/FUnPycj8_Ag/s1600/binya.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ka9ffxnwpAE/VBMJeeig3YI/AAAAAAAAAmI/FUnPycj8_Ag/s320/binya.jpg" /></a></b>
I am living in South Africa, without having seen my mother for five years, even though she is sick, because I am afraid and ashamed, and because I will be thirty years old and possibly without a visa to return here if I leave. I am hurricaning to move my life so I can see her. But she is in Nakuru, collapsing, and they will be rushing her kidneys to Kenyatta Hospital in Nairobi, where there will be a dialysis machine and a tropical storm of experts awaiting her.
Relatives will rush to see her and, organs will collapse, and machines will kick into action. I am rushing, winding up everything to leave South Africa. It will take two more days for me to leave, to fly out, when, in the morning of 11 July 2000, my uncle calls me to ask if I am sitting down.
“ She’s gone, Ken.”
I will call my Auntie Grace in that family gathering nanosecond to find a way to cry urgently inside Baba, but they say he is crying and thundering and lightning in his 505 car around Nairobi because his wife is dead and nobody can find him for hours. Three days ago, he told me it was too late to come to see her. He told me to not risk losing my ability to return to South Africa by coming home for the funeral. I should not be travelling carelessly in that artist way of mine, without papers. Kenneth! He frowns on the phone. I cannot risk illegal deportation, he says, and losing everything. But it is my mother.
I am twenty nine. It is 11 July, 2000. I, Binyavanga Wainaina, quite honestly swear I have known I am a homosexual since I was five. I have never touched a man sexually. I have slept with three women in my life. One woman, successfully. Only once with her. It was amazing. But the next day, I was not able to.
It will take me five years after my mother’s death to find a man who will give me a massage and some brief, paid-for love. In Earl’s Court, London. And I will be freed, and tell my best friend, who will surprise me by understanding, without understanding. I will tell him what I did, but not tell him I am gay. I cannot say the word gay until I am thirty nine, four years after that brief massage encounter. Today, it is 18 January 2013, and I am forty three.
Anyway. It will not be a hurricane of diabetes that kills mum inside Kenyatta Hospital Critical Care, before I have taken four steps to get on a plane to sit by her side.
Somebody.
Nurse?
Will leave a small window open the night before she dies, in the July Kenyatta Hospital cold.
It is my birthday today. 18 January 2013. Two years ago, on 11 July 2011, my father had a massive stroke and was brain dead in minutes. Exactly eleven years to the day my mother died. His heart beat for four days, but there was nothing to tell him.
I am five years old.
He stood there, in overalls, awkward, his chest a railway track of sweaty bumps, and little hard beads of hair. Everything about him is smooth-slow. Bits of brown on a cracked tooth, that endless long smile. A good thing for me the slow way he moves, because I am transparent to people’s patterns, and can trip so easily and fall into snarls and fear with jerky people. A long easy smile, he lifts me in the air and swings. He smells of diesel, and the world of all other people’s movements has disappeared. I am away from everybody for the first time in my life, and it is glorious, and then it is a tunnel of fear. There are no creaks in him, like a tractor he will climb any hill, steadily. If he walks away, now, with me, I will go with him forever. I know if he puts me down my legs will not move again. I am so ashamed, I stop myself from clinging. I jump away from him and avoid him forever. For twentysomething years, I even hug men awkwardly.
There will be this feeling again. Stronger, firmer now. Aged maybe seven. Once with another slow easy golfer at Nakuru Golf Club, and I am shaking because he shook my hand. Then I am crying alone in the toilet because the repeat of this feeling has made me suddenly ripped apart and lonely. The feeling is not sexual. It is certain. It is overwhelming. It wants to make a home. It comes every few months like a bout of malaria and leaves me shaken for days, and confused for months. I do nothing about it.
I am five when I close my self into a vague happiness that asks for nothing much from anybody. Absent-minded. Sweet. I am grateful for all love. I give it more than I receive it, often. I can be selfish. I masturbate a lot, and never allow myself to crack and grow my heart. I touch no men. I read books. I love my dad so much, my heart is learning to stretch.
I am a homosexual.Ken Gitau.http://www.blogger.com/profile/07707773491849297274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6709299446814867771.post-42836919537796588522014-09-05T09:12:00.000-07:002014-09-05T09:12:05.839-07:00My Father’s Head. Okwiri OduorI had meant to summon my father only long enough to see what his head looked like, but now
he was here and I did not know how to send him back.
It all started the Thursday that Father Ignatius came from Immaculate Conception in
Kitgum. The old women wore their Sunday frocks, and the old men plucked garlands of
bougainvillea from the fence and stuck them in their breast pockets. One old man would not
leave the dormitory because he could not find his shikwarusi, and when I coaxed and
badgered, he patted his hair and said, “My God, do you want the priest from Uganda to think
that I look like this every day?”
I arranged chairs beneath the avocado tree in the front yard, and the old people sat
down and practiced their smiles. A few people who did not live at the home came too, like the
woman who hawked candy in the Stagecoach bus to Mathari North, and the man whose oneroomed
house was a kindergarten in the daytime and a brothel in the evening, and the woman
whose illicit brew had blinded five people in January.
Father Ignatius came riding on the back of a bodaboda, and after everyone had
dropped a coin in his hat, he gave the bodaboda man fifty shillings and the bodaboda man
said, “Praise God,” and then rode back the way he had come.
Father Ignatius took off his coat and sat down in the chair that was marked, “Father
Ignatius Okello, New Chaplain,” and the old people gave him the smiles they had been
practicing, smiles that melted like ghee, that oozed through the corners of their lips and
dribbled onto their laps long after the thing that was being smiled about went rancid in the air.
Father Ignatius said, “The Lord be with you,” and the people said, “And also with
you,” and then they prayed and they sang and they had a feast; dipping bread slices in tea, and
when the drops fell on the cuffs of their woollen sweaters, sucking at them with their steamy,
cinnamon tongues.
Father Ignatius’ maiden sermon was about love: love your neighbour as you love
yourself, that kind of self-deprecating thing. The old people had little use for love, and
although they gave Father Ignatius an ingratiating smile, what they really wanted to know
was what type of place Kitgum was, and if it was true that the Bagisu people were savage
cannibals.
What I wanted to know was what type of person Father Ignatius thought he was,
instructing others to distribute their love like this or like that, as though one could measure
love on weights, pack it inside glass jars and place it on shelves for the neighbours to pick as
they pleased. As though one could look at it and say, “Now see: I have ten loves in total. Let
me save three for my country and give all the rest to my neighbours.”
It must have been the way that Father Ignatius filled his mug – until the tea ran over
the clay rim and down the stool leg and soaked into his canvas shoe – that got me thinking
about my own father. One moment I was listening to tales of Acholi valour, and the next, I
was stringing together images of my father, making his limbs move and his lips spew words,
so that in the end, he was a marionette and my memories of him were only scenes in a
theatrical display.
Even as I showed Father Ignatius to his chambers, cleared the table, put the chairs
back inside, took my purse, and dragged myself to Odeon to get a matatu to Uthiru, I thought
about the millet-coloured freckle in my father’s eye, and the fifty cent coins he always forgot
in his coat pockets, and the way each Saturday morning men knocked on our front door and
said things like, “Johnson, you have to come now; the water pipe has burst and we are filling
our glasses with shit,” and, “Johnson, there is no time to put on clothes even; just come the
way you are. The maid gave birth in the night and flushed the baby down the toilet.”
Every day after work, I bought an ear of street-roasted maize and chewed it one kernel at a
time, and when I reached the house, I wiggled out of the muslin dress and wore dungarees
and drank a cup of masala chai. Then I carried my father’s toolbox to the bathroom. I
chiselled out old broken tiles from the wall, and they fell onto my boots, and the dust rose
from them and exploded in the flaring tongues of fire lapping through chinks in the stained
glass.
This time, as I did all those things, I thought of the day I sat at my father’s feet and he
scooped a handful of groundnuts and rubbed them between his palms, chewed them, and then
fed the mush to me. I was of a curious age then; old enough to chew with my own teeth, yet
young enough to desire that hot, masticated love, love that did not need to be doctrinated or
measured in cough syrup caps.
The Thursday Father Ignatius came from Kitgum, I spent the entire night on my
stomach on the sitting room floor, drawing my father. In my mind I could see his face, see the
lines around his mouth, the tiny blobs of light in his irises, the crease at the part where his ear
joined his temple. I could even see the thick line of sweat and oil on his shirt collar, the little
brown veins that broke off from the main stream of dirt and ran down on their own.
I could see all these things, yet no matter what I did, his head refused to appear within
the borders of the paper. I started off with his feet and worked my way up and in the end my
father’s head popped out of the edges of the paper and onto scuffed linoleum and plastic
magnolias and the wet soles of bathroom slippers.
I showed Bwibo some of the drawings. Bwibo was the cook at the old people’s home,
with whom I had formed an easy camaraderie.
“My God!” Bwibo muttered, flipping through them. “Simbi, this is abnormal.”
The word ‘abnormal’ came out crumbly, and it broke over the sharp edge of the table
and became clods of loam on the plastic floor covering. Bwibo rested her head on her palm,
and the bell sleeves of her cream-coloured caftan swelled as though there were pumpkins
stacked inside them.
I told her what I had started to believe, that perhaps my father had had a face but no
head at all. And even if my father had had a head, I would not have seen it: people’s heads
were not a thing that one often saw. One looked at a person, and what one saw was their face:
a regular face-shaped face, that shrouded a regular head-shaped head. If the face was
remarkable, one looked twice. But what was there to draw one’s eyes to the banalities of
another’s head? Most times when one looked at a person, one did not even see their head
there at all.
Bwibo stood over the waist-high jiko, poured cassava flour into a pot of bubbling
water and stirred it with a cooking oar. “Child,” she said, “how do you know that the man in
those drawings is your father? He has no head at all, no face.”
“I recognize his clothes. The red corduroys that he always paired with yellow shirts.”
Bwibo shook her head. “It is only with a light basket that someone can escape the
rain.”
It was that time of day when the old people fondled their wooden beads and snorted
off to sleep in between incantations. I allowed them a brief, bashful siesta, long enough for
them to believe that they had recited the entire rosary. Then I tugged at the ropes and the
lunch bells chimed. The old people sat eight to a table, and with their mouths filled with ugali,
sour lentils and okra soup, said things like, “Do not buy chapati from Kadima’s Kiosk—
Kadima’s wife sits on the dough and charms it with her buttocks,” or, “Did I tell you about
Wambua, the one whose cow chewed a child because the child would not stop wailing?”
In the afternoon, I emptied the bedpans and soaked the old people’s feet in warm
water and baking soda, and when they trooped off to mass I took my purse and went home.
The Christmas before the cane tractor killed my father, he drank his tea from plates and fried
his eggs on the lids of coffee jars, and he retrieved his Yamaha drum-set from a shadowy,
lizardy place in the back of the house and sat on the veranda and smoked and beat the drums
until his knuckles bled.
One day he took his stool and hand-held radio and went to the veranda, and I sat at
his feet, undid his laces and peeled off his gummy socks. He wiggled his toes about. They
smelt slightly fetid, like sour cream.
My father smoked and listened to narrations of famine undulating deeper into the
Horn of Africa, and when the clock chimed eight o’clock, he turned the knob and listened to
the death news. It was not long before his ears caught the name of someone he knew. He
choked on the smoke trapped in his throat.
My father said, “Did you hear that? Sospeter has gone! Sospeter, the son of Milkah,
who taught Agriculture in Mirere Secondary. My God, I am telling you, everyone is going.
Even me, you shall hear me on the death news very soon.”
I brought him his evening cup of tea. He smashed his cigarette against the veranda,
then he slowly brought the cup to his lips. The cup was filled just the way he liked it, filled
until the slightest trembling would have his fingers and thighs scalded.
My father took a sip of his tea and said, “Sospeter was like a brother to me. Why did I
have to learn of his death like this, over the radio?”
Later, my father lay on the fold-away sofa, and I sat on the stool watching him, afraid
that if I looked away, he would go too. It was the first time I imagined his death, the first time
I mourned.
And yet it was not my father I was mourning. I was mourning the image of myself
inside the impossible aura of my father’s death. I was imagining what it all would be like: the
death news would say that my father had drowned in a cess pit, and people would stare at me
as though I were a monitor lizard trapped inside a manhole in the street. I imagined that I
would be wearing my green dress when I got the news – the one with red gardenias
embroidered in its bodice –and people would come and pat my shoulder and give me warm
Coca Cola in plastic cups and say, “I put my sorrow in a basket and brought it here as soon as
I heard. How else would your father’s spirit know that I am innocent of his death?”
Bwibo had an explanation as to why I could not remember the shape of my father’s head.
She said, “Although everyone has a head behind their face, some show theirs easily;
they turn their back on you and their head is all you can see. Your father was a good man and
good men never show you their heads; they show you their faces.”
Perhaps she was right. Even the day my father’s people telephoned to say that a cane
tractor had flattened him on the road to Shibale, no one said a thing about having seen his
head. They described the rest of his body with a measured delicacy: how his legs were strewn
across the road, sticky and shiny with fresh tar, and how one foot remained inside his tyre
sandal, pounding the pedal of his bicycle, and how cane juice filled his mouth and soaked the
collar of his polyester shirt, and how his face had a patient serenity, even as his eyes burst and
rolled in the rain puddles.
And instead of weeping right away when they said all those things to me, I had
wondered if my father really had come from a long line of obawami, and if his people would
bury him seated in his grave, with a string of royal cowries round his neck.
“In any case,” Bwibo went on, “what more is there to think about your father, eh?
That milk spilled a long time ago, and it has curdled on the ground.”
I spent the day in the dormitories, stripping beds, sunning mattresses, scrubbing PVC
mattress pads. One of the old men kept me company. He told me how he came to spend his
sunset years at the home – in August of 1998 he was at the station waiting to board the
evening train back home to Mombasa. When the bomb went off at the American Embassy,
the police trawled the city and arrested every man of Arab extraction. Because he was
seventy-two and already rapidly unravelling into senility, they dumped him at the old
people’s home, and he had been there ever since.
“Did your people not come to claim you?” I asked, bewildered.
The old man snorted. “My people?”
“Everyone has people that belong to them.”
The old man laughed. “Only the food you have already eaten belongs to you.”
Later, the old people sat in drooping clumps in the yard. Bwibo and I watched from
the back steps of the kitchen. In the grass, ants devoured a squirming caterpillar. The dog’s
nose, a translucent pink doodled with green veins, twitched. Birds raced each other over the
frangipani. One tripped over the power line and smashed its head on the moss–covered
electricity pole.
Wasps flew low over the grass. A lizard crawled over the lichen that choked a pile of
timber. The dog licked the inside of its arm. A troupe of royal butterfly dancers flitted over
the row of lilies, their colourful gauze dancing skirts trembling to the rumble of an inaudible
drum beat. The dog lay on its side in the grass, smothering the squirming caterpillar and the
chewing ants. The dog’s nipples were little pellets of goat shit stuck with spit onto its furry
underside.
Bwibo said, “I can help you remember the shape of your father’s head.”
I said, “Now what type of mud is this you have started speaking?”
Bwibo licked her index finger and held it solemnly in the air. “I swear, Bible red! I
can help you and I can help you.”
Let me tell you: one day you will renounce your exile, and you will go back home, and your
mother will take out the finest china, and your father will slaughter a sprightly cockerel for
you, and the neighbours will bring some potluck, and your sister will wear her navy blue PE
wrapper, and your brother will eat with a spoon instead of squelching rice and soup through
the spaces between his fingers.
And you, you will have to tell them stories about places not-here, about people that
soaked their table napkins in Jik Bleach and talked about London as though London was a
place one could reach by hopping onto an Akamba bus and driving by Nakuru and Kisumu
and Kakamega and finding themselves there.
You will tell your people about men that did not slit melons up into slices but split
them into halves and ate each of the halves out with a spoon, about women that held each
other’s hands around street lamps in town and skipped about, showing snippets of grey
Mother’s Union bloomers as they sang:
Kijembe ni kikali, param-param
Kilikata mwalimu, param-param
You think that your people belong to you, that they will always have a place for you
in their minds and their hearts. You think that your people will always look forward to your
return.
Maybe the day you go back home to your people you will have to sit in a wicker chair
on the veranda and smoke alone because, although they may have wanted to have you back,
no one really meant for you to stay.
My father was slung over the wicker chair in the veranda, just like in the old days,
smoking and watching the handheld radio. The death news rose from the radio, and it became
a mist, hovering low, clinging to the cold glass of the sitting room window.
My father’s shirt flapped in the wind, and tendrils of smoke snapped before his face.
He whistled to himself. At first the tune was a faceless, pitiful thing, like an old bottle that
someone found on the path and kicked all the way home. Then the tune caught fragments of
other tunes inside it, and it lost its free-spirited falling and rising.
My father had a head. I could see it now that I had the mind to look for it. His head
was shaped like a butternut squash. Perhaps that was the reason I had forgotten all about it; it
was a horrible, disconcerting thing to look at.
My father had been a plumber. His fingernails were still rimmed with dregs from the
drainage pipes he tinkered about in, and his boots still squished with ugali from nondescript
kitchen sinks. Watching him, I remembered the day he found a gold chain tangled in the
fibres of someone’s excrement, and he wiped the excrement off against his corduroys and
sold the chain at Nagin Pattni, and that evening, hoisted high upon his shoulders, he brought
home the red Greatwall television. He set it in the corner of the sitting room and said, “Just
look how it shines, as though it is not filled with shit inside.”
And every day I plucked a bunch of carnations and snipped their stems diagonally
and stood them in a glass bowl and placed the glass bowl on top of the television so that my
father would not think of shit while he watched the evening news.
I said to Bwibo, “We have to send him back.”
Bwibo said, “The liver you have asked for is the one you eat.”
“But I did not really want him back, I just wanted to see his head.”
Bwibo said, “In the end, he came back to you and that should account for something,
should it not?”
Perhaps my father’s return accounted for nothing but the fact that the house already
smelt like him – of burnt lentils and melting fingernails and the bark of bitter quinine and the
sourness of wet rags dabbing at broken cigarette tips.
I threw things at my father; garlic, incense, salt, pork, and when none of that repelled
him, I asked Father Ignatius to bless the house. He brought a vial of holy water, and he
sprinkled it in every room, sprinkled it over my father. Father Ignatius said that I would need
further protection, but that I would have to write him a cheque first.
One day I was buying roast maize in the street corner when the vendor said to me, “Is
it true what the vegetable-sellers are saying, that you finally found a man to love you but will
not let him through your door?”
That evening, I invited my father inside. We sat side by side on the fold-away sofa,
and watched as a fly crawled up the dusty screen between the grill and the window glass. It
buzzed a little as it climbed. The ceiling fan creaked, and it threw shadows across the corridor
floor. The shadows leapt high and mounted doors and peered through the air vents in the
walls.
The wind upset a cup. For a few seconds, the cup lay lopsided on the windowsill.
Then it rolled on its side and scurried across the floor. I pulled at the latch, fastened the
window shut. The wind grazed the glass with its wet lips. It left a trail of dust and saliva, and
the saliva dribbled down slowly to the edge of the glass. The wind had a slobbery mouth.
Soon its saliva had covered the entire window, covered it until the rosemary brushwood
outside the window became blurry. The jacaranda outside stooped low, scratched the roof. In
the next room, doors and windows banged.
I looked at my father. He was something at once strange and familiar, at once
enthralling and frightening – he was the brittle, chipped handle of a ceramic tea mug, and he
was the cold yellow stare of an owl.
My father touched my hand ever so lightly, so gently, as though afraid that I would
flinch and pull my hand away. I did not dare lift my eyes, but he touched my chin and tipped
it upwards so that I had no choice but to look at him.
I remembered a time when I was a little child, when I stared into my father’s eyes in
much the same way. In them I saw shapes; a drunken, talentless conglomerate of circles and
triangles and squares. I had wondered how those shapes had got inside my father’s eyes. I had
imagined that he sat down at the table, cut out glossy figures from colouring books, slathered
them with glue, and stuck them inside his eyes so that they made rummy, haphazard collages
in his irises.
My father said, “Would you happen to have some tea, Simbi?”
I brought some, and he asked if his old friend Pius Obote still came by the house on
Saturdays, still brought groundnut soup and pumpkin leaves and a heap of letters that he had
picked up from the post office.
I said, “Pius Obote has been dead for four years.”
My father pushed his cup away. He said, “If you do not want me here drinking your
tea, just say so, instead of killing-killing people with your mouth.”
My father was silent for a while, grieving this man Pius Obote whose name had
always made me think of knees banging against each other. Pius Obote used to blink a lot.
Once, he fished inside his pocket for a biro and instead withdrew a chicken bone, still red and
moist.
My father said to me, “I have seen you. You have offered me tea. I will go now.”
“Where will you go?”
“I will find a job in a town far from here. Maybe Eldoret. I used to have people there.”
I said, “Maybe you could stay here for a couple of days, Baba.”
Okwiri Oduor was born in Nairobi, Kenya. Her novella The Dream Chasers was highly
commended in the Commonwealth Book Prize 2012. Her work has appeared, or is
forthcoming, in The New Inquiry, Kwani?, Saraba, FEMRITE, and African Writing Online.
She recently directed the inaugural Writivism Festival in Kampala, Uganda. She teaches
creative writing to young girls at her alma mater in Nairobi, and is currently working on her
first full-length novel.Ken Gitau.http://www.blogger.com/profile/07707773491849297274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6709299446814867771.post-41930617330736335242014-08-26T09:18:00.000-07:002014-08-26T09:18:31.981-07:00Exhibition: Africa by Art Odhis, Aug. 1-31 2014 @ Temporary Exhibition Hall – National Museum CATCH IT BEFORE IT ENDS!
Fifty Years. Half a decade. The age of a country on the road of sovereignty, self-governance and gaining her voice in the global world. Has it been too long? Is she still too young? Either way, it has been an exciting journey to the emerging country that she is today.
Come take a walk through her history, appreciate the turning points.
A transforming experience by means of visual art.
The dominating expressionist style by the artist makes you feel the struggles, triumphs and resilience of the country, the continent and its people.
Arthur Patrick Odhiambo takes a look into the African shapers of the past fifty years.
The exhibition of the legends of years past and present are pieces that allow you to feel the soul of the African people. The artist captures Africa’s cultural diversity and brilliantly marries it to contemporary visuals of the new age African.
Bring your whole self in, bring your children in, bring your family and friends and experience Africa at the National Museums of Kenya, Creativity Gallery Hall.
Happy Anniversary Kenya! Viva Africa!
Be happy, Be bold.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DIAcnJCEcOw/U_yzBsjrBpI/AAAAAAAAAkI/OtYsuwiaS_o/s1600/art-print.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DIAcnJCEcOw/U_yzBsjrBpI/AAAAAAAAAkI/OtYsuwiaS_o/s320/art-print.jpg" /></a></div>Ken Gitau.http://www.blogger.com/profile/07707773491849297274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6709299446814867771.post-67878485665835175722014-08-26T08:54:00.001-07:002014-08-26T08:54:36.698-07:00Ticket Information for THE STORY MOJA FESTIVAL
<b>Day tickets Ksh 1000/.</b> Includes one free master class if bought before 10th Sept.
Season tickets – Ksh 1500/. Includes one free master class if bought before 10th Sept.
Masterclass Ksh 500/. (Payment via Mpesa Buy Goods Number on Registration Pages)
Premium Season ticket Ksh 6000. Includes access toGala Night + all events except evening theatre shows.
Keys to Fest tickets Ksh 7500/. Includes access to all festival events.
Ken Gitau.http://www.blogger.com/profile/07707773491849297274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6709299446814867771.post-36922802512506244422014-08-26T08:51:00.000-07:002014-08-26T08:51:02.449-07:00 2014 Storymoja Festival Events Programme
2014 Storymoja Festival Events Programme
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Come, let us once again together Imagine the World!
The Storymoja Festival is by no means ‘just another festival’. Since its inauguration in 2007 the Festival has grown into an internationally established world class eventthat brings together and celebrates critical thinkers and great minds in storytelling, ideas sharing, writing and contemporary culture. It offers a platform for exposure, for local and international collaborations, and showcases creative talent to feed the minds of both young and old across cultural and social divides.
Once again renowned Kenyan and international narrators, writers, poets and creative artist will be in attendance at the Festival. All will be gathered to together imagine a world, and beyond that, create a space that, through critical expression and interaction, will not only tell our every story, but also challenge us to strive toward improving our world; toward a world that does not allow for such events as the siege that happened on the 21 September 2013 at the Westgate Mall, Nairobi. Tragically, it resulted in the death of, among others, Professor Kofi Awoonor, one of Africa’s great voices and poets. The Professor was at that time a guest of the Storymoja Festival 2013. In honour of his memory and others who lost their lives in that terrorist attack, there will be several special tribute events on the 2014 programme.
So be part of the global community that is the Storymoja Festival! Endorse and support a highly commendable and creative process. You will be investing in our cultural economy, a critical pillar for development that is integral as we move into the knowledge-led 21st century.
To our existing sponsors, partners and supporters, a big THANK YOU for the continued belief in us! Without you the festival would not be what it has become. Asante!
Auma Obama,
Festival Patron 2014
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4X02lFbg_ZQ/U_ysyUk5EhI/AAAAAAAAAj4/H0nkuzb4GmM/s1600/Festival.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4X02lFbg_ZQ/U_ysyUk5EhI/AAAAAAAAAj4/H0nkuzb4GmM/s320/Festival.png" /></a></div>Ken Gitau.http://www.blogger.com/profile/07707773491849297274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6709299446814867771.post-63499109446157406142014-08-26T08:33:00.000-07:002014-08-26T08:36:31.024-07:00Pearls; Wole Soyinka style.My writing grows more and more pre-occupied with the theme of the oppressive boot, the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it, and the struggle for individuality.
I went to government school Ibadan, after that I spent a couple of years in the University College Ibadan.
I think that my prime duty as a playwright is to provide excellent theatre.
One of the most humbling discoveries any African can make is just the fact that he can actually interpret the greed and, you know, the general evil of -what you call the European world in the faces of his own personal and intimate companions.
I found that the <b>Trials of Brother Jero<i></i></b> and <b>The Lion and The Jewel<i></i></b> were in fact quite frankly, like most comedy in the theatre, the most difficult things to write.
I think why <b>Telephone Conversation<i></i></b> - which seems to be the favourite of anthologies, quotations everywhere- which is why it appeals to most people is that it really implies, it has the undercurrent of very strong feeling, but one which overcomes this and tries to see the humorous side of it.
When I write, I write in the absolute confidence that it must have an audience; but production is a different thing. I will adapt, I will alter my play in production for that particular audience I am working for. I have to take this into consideration.
You will find that where there has been any constructive and realistic resistance (<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JeBxSeOfgA4/U_yoh6SyQdI/AAAAAAAAAjg/_kpQnncX8Ik/s1600/WOLE2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JeBxSeOfgA4/U_yoh6SyQdI/AAAAAAAAAjg/_kpQnncX8Ik/s320/WOLE2.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wMXYRpHyauI/U_yohpvs-wI/AAAAAAAAAjc/eCE_tFKzhRs/s1600/WOLE3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wMXYRpHyauI/U_yohpvs-wI/AAAAAAAAAjc/eCE_tFKzhRs/s320/WOLE3.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tuDkHJKJgEc/U_yohR5AyJI/AAAAAAAAAjo/gl9uP6miwcM/s1600/WOLE.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tuDkHJKJgEc/U_yohR5AyJI/AAAAAAAAAjo/gl9uP6miwcM/s320/WOLE.jpg" /></a></div>against dictatorship) it has come from the younger generation.Ken Gitau.http://www.blogger.com/profile/07707773491849297274noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6709299446814867771.post-59672550165911917212014-08-23T09:56:00.000-07:002014-08-23T09:56:12.255-07:00Wednesday, 27 August 2014: In partnership with the Department of Literature, University of Nairobi
<b>
Literary Colloquium: Cosmopolitanism in Kenya At 50</b>
<b>Venue: Department of Literature, University of Nairobi (by invitation only)<i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-c4bBJzTXMGA/U_jHkuspYTI/AAAAAAAAAjM/j0s5OA0qozw/s1600/samosa-2014-banner.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-c4bBJzTXMGA/U_jHkuspYTI/AAAAAAAAAjM/j0s5OA0qozw/s320/samosa-2014-banner.png" /></a></div></i></b>
We are inviting conversations that cut across ethnic, racial, regional, religious, cultural, personal, communal and oceanic differences and similarities. We wish to provoke discussions on how Kenyans, here and in the diaspora; friends of Kenya; visitors; and any other interested persons can connect as humans across these divides, differences and similarities; and how to retain our humanity in the age of cultural erasure, market hegemony or even ethno-national jingoism. We hope that these reflections will contribute to the debate in Kenya on how to make the nation more inclusive and egalitarian beyond our 50th anniversary of independence. We intend to produce a special AwaaZ SAMOSA Souvenir to commemorate the colloquium and the Festival as a whole.
Contact: editors@awaazmagazine.com samosa@awaazmagazine.comKen Gitau.http://www.blogger.com/profile/07707773491849297274noreply@blogger.com0