[For Frank and Mercy]
(Now Departed. So Young to Die).
The cliché that goes: East or West Home is the Best
still rings true to the fancies of heart and soul when one arrives in the
village. Back in my village, I harbor a few hopes – a handful of it in order to
cushion against the myriad disappointments that characterize it. It’s the silly
season as a columnist noted in one of the local dailies and politicians hop
from one scene to the other to blaspheme, slander, dupe, and manipulate the
hungry electorate. They promise heaven. They promise honey and flowing milk
that their predecessors promised in the last electioneering period. They tell
the ‘compact majority’ who are more than eager and willing to listen to their
mendacities but come delivery nothing will be heard of. Political calendars are pinned on the cracked
walls of most households. At our grandmother’s I see a few MP contenders
bedecked in black suits with the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD)
presidential candidate, Raila Amolo Odinga displaying his resplendent grin. CORD
is an amalgamation of three political parties namely ODM, Wiper and Ford-Kenya.
On the flipside is the Jubilee coalition that is giving CORD a run for its
tribal arithmetic and pseudo national interests. That’s Kenya for you.
Ethnicity comes alive than ever in the asinine season. Hunger for power is
manifested from the national level back to the village market.
Young men are still jobless and hopeless. By the
roadside they while time, a saddening indication of the few employment
opportunities. Politicians love them more than anything. In any cheap print out
of the contenders, youth are glowingly promised in colorful words expanded polytechnics,
additional motorcycles and improvement of the sporting prospects among other
glossy things. The village youth is still susceptible to handouts including
women. Wazee (Elders) I understand
love their tea. Every political candidate is in the flirting game with his
people and impressing the ‘wananchi’ is not an easy task. Mother tells me an
aspirant tried to convince them with matchboxes bearing his mug shot but he got
it rough and tough. The matchboxes were hurled back to the sender and eventually
hounded away. That’s the state of affairs. Politics in a third world nation can
be dirty and devoid of meaningful interrogation on ideas and manifestoes.
******
The state of crops is sickening. In central Nyanza,
my ancestral home, a majority of farmers depend wholly on rain. The last season
the weather was awfully disappointing and people will not get any produce to
sustain us the city dwellers. You see, it is the festive season and many an
African, Luo to be particular, must visit the home of his ancestors to see the
extended family. Home in the sense of being where one gets buried. The place of
return when things get awry in the city. A debilitating sickness. Job loss. Payment
of dowry is traditionally a preserve of home. The Village. Dala. And people come from far flung areas
but most prominently Nairobi and Kisumu.
******
Orphans
litter the village in ragged wears. Almost every home has a painful gap left by
their son and his wife who got swept by the HIV/AIDS scourge. Numerous tales
abound of scattered children of former close knit families that lived in
Nairobi, maybe Nandi, sometimes Kisumu and on certain occasion, Mombasa.
Children who gloried in the good life but suddenly thrust into the savagery of
village destitution. The inadequacy of essential needs and degradation of
schooling standards. One looks at the state of affairs and gets deeply
depressed of things one cannot do. The suffering that affects most orphans and
their grandmothers – their sole caretakers – and an intensity of welling
emotions that choke the heart and the indefinable terrors it evokes. One comes
in contact with raw existence in a cracked circumstance that leaves a
distasteful angle in it even as you book your next bus for the city. It follows
you there and pricks you, imprisons your conscience and makes you constantly
question: what can be done? Or, what can I do in my capacity to change their
situation? And in God damned scenarios, it is what you did not do even with the
chances and opportunities. It howls and wants to swallow you whole!
******
What
about self identity? The issue of belonging. One asks self, where do I exactly
belong? Am I living my purpose? And if not, then am I chasing after phantoms?
The city with its bright lights and the superhighway and the parties – is there
any meaning to be derived from it? What about the tranquility of the rural
community? May be I am asking too much. Perhaps the alertness of my conscience
is my greatest folly but where is the contentment of life? Not good education.
Not an excellent pay. Not even friends. It is all a winding tunnel of darkness
that light is not promised at the end. You keep searching for meaning
everywhere. Some of us resort to drinking to find the reason for their
being. But it becomes hard to grasp. This elusive form of happiness that has no
name but has got us panting in artificiality of polished accents, skinny jeans,
weekends parties, ivory tower intellect and all other designs to look cool. We
want to lie to others we have found it. But the void deepens. Others get
salvation, backslide then return to salvation and back again. The futility of
searching for the thing. This nameless thing that evokes gloom and a terrible
loneliness in most of us. You can keenly spot it on the streets if you keenly
stare too long at others. A disturbing distantness mixed with forced plastic
smiles, patting of backs or trembling whispers. People are even frightened of
folks they have known for years.
******
Back to Nairobi.
The first sight that hits you like a rock is the steel-faces of Nairobians. The
faces are diverse and sallow, pathetic, some happy, others just there- vague in
the hubbub that marks the city centre especially when coming from the Machakos
Bus Station. The funny thing is: fellow pedestrians start pushing and shoving
you immediately without warning (as if they warn people) and you still try to
maintain the rural mentality of avoiding this typical game of the city. Walking
on, you meet sadder and tighter faces bogged down by the city pressures and it is
these fellows you should be wary of. My regrets to all who do not own
automobiles and are compelled to do the ‘Great Trek’ constantly across the city
avenues, dingy and spacious streets, crowded alleyways dotted with cons, fake
pastors, magicians, pickpockets and open ware businesspeople. Inside the bus
headed for the estate, earsplitting music welcomes the ears that have known
only calm. By calm I mean only the barking of famished dogs, chirping of night
insects, slurring of harmless drunks who do not rob people of phones, gossip of
women from the market and mooing of cows. The saving grace is that the bus does
not play these riddims that always want to burst the eardrums with their
bawdy-charged lyrics. Reggae carries the day and it is Mighty Culture belting
his consciousness tunes. But the pressure is still overdrive beside me inside
the bus. A woman is flipping and jadedly reading a corporate book with
investment risk subtopics and inwardly I cringe at what awaits me this month.
All the busloads out of the city comprise of competitors and folks chasing
after a dream. The reason for the clammy and pallid expressions written all
over the faces of most Nairobians I pass by on the small climb behind ‘Jack n
Jill’ Supermarket.
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