9 Days in December: Village Reminisces

[For Jacky - A thing of beauty and love]

23 Dec 2012 SUNDAY:

            Semi-boring afternoon. Monotony defines the rather unpredictable weather. KPLC tortures villagers. No electricity. Dead phones. An entire afternoon spent greeting village mates and ducking former friends who want a tipple. Their insistence is fortified by the myth that the society made me. I have a fundamental obligation to give back. A few manage to convince me and I part with a few coins to save face and build name. I read the Standard Newspaper. It’s the best form of deflecting the semi-boredom. An ex-flame is arriving from I-don’t-know-where on a motorcycle and she gets thrilled on seeing me. Several minutes later, she is to jeopardize my ‘home’ image through blatant show of affection. My body gets cold after the embarrassing incident at the market center. On the reverse, a new hottie my eyes have trained on for the last 48 hours is cold towards me. I toddle away self-assuredly as if unscathed. A tinge of bitterness twitches in my heart but I pace on. In the village the boys and I call the roost. As dawn knocks, nimbus clouds form and people wrap their wares ready to flee the imminent downfall. Supporters of former PS of Children Services and Culture, Dr. James Nyikal color the market in orange. Villagers are divided on clan and handout lines on who to vote for among the array of contenders come March 4, 2013.

24 December 2012: MONDAY: On the Christmas Eve

            Woke up at 8.29 a.m. It’s too cold today. Yester night it rained cats and dogs. Pardon the cliché. I reel from the grueling dream where I was supposed to assassinate my master.  My morning recollections sourced from the comfort of the red sofa reveal large bullets. If I recall clearly, the first attempt missed. A vulnerability to fatal consequences. If exposed. Mother asked me to assume responsibility of our shop with its laughing shelves to keep me busy. Containment ploy. I pick up my handset and the novella I have been reading: So Long a Letter by Mariama Ba. Meanwhile, I bump upon tribesmen and women who solicit for Christmas. I make false promises. Lies that bind.  Page 30 reads:
“Her aunt never missed an opportunity to remind her of her royal origin, and taught her that the first quality in a woman is docility.”

Mariama Ba proceeds:
“To tell the truth, a woman does not need too much education. In fact, I wonder how a woman can earn her living by talking from morning to night.”

            New hotels dot the market center. The business ain’t that booming but at least it generates a sizeable surplus. At home, it’s a matter of survival. Nothing grandiose in terms of a balanced diet in most families. From the wire mesh holes of our shop, I detect a bosom pal lost in a jig inside a hotel opposite. It’s called the “Wanainchi Hotel.” Two girls a few years shy of our age operate there. It’s up to the reader’s own imagination to find out why my bosom pal was enjoying his jig.

            AFTERNOON: My handset indicates it is 11:39 A.M. Lunch break. Brown ugali with fried omena. Thereafter, snooze. I don’t know how many how hours I snooze but when I wake up, I reach for my cell phone. Away at arm’s length. I think I heard a shrill cry of a message. I need to confirm if I was wedged between dreams and reality. Kenya Power sent me a message. Only if they knew the persistent power blackouts lasting even for more than 12 hours here in the village. I step out. The splendor of the village calm. Except for the faint hum of a posho mill, chirping of birds and singing of bush insects, it’s all hushed.  One can hear himself put his thoughts to paper. Amid little worries that come with village life. No pressure about the impending rent. Electricity and water bills. Transport costs. Stress at work. Things are conducted one at a time.

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          Today is Chieng’ Chiro [Market Day]. I will have to attend. The market is bound to be full. New clothes. New shoes. New utensils. Business people from areas such as Akala, Akado, Kombewa and Kolenyo. It is the Christmas Eve remember. Tonight Jesus is supposed to be reborn but will we wander the night like the past years? Will fine ladies be there like those yester years? How many remained amongst the cherished ones who had now got married? And a snifter?

P.S: A Tot a day keeps temporary insanity away.

25 December 2012: TUESDAY: Hooray! It’s Christmas Again.

            Last night the massive downpour disappointed again. Today the morning is cold. Mother prepared us thick tea with not so soft chapatis. I complained. My two other brothers did too. But mother did not bulge. By the way, bar owners have been restocking since yesterday. All drugs to freak us skywards. According to yesterday’s plans with boys: Keep low profile. Staggering with kids is not a bright idea for our image now. Borrowed a newspaper from my uncle. Standard. In our village Standard newspaper sells better than Daily Nation, its fiercest rival. The Star is rare. It stems from a rather past misconception that the paper is pro-ODM. The party most favored these sides.

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           It’s Christmas but it does not even look like. Girls of 16 or 17 years pass by with their strapped grown kids from various churches on lean backs.

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            Ok. The Christmas turned out well. Linked with the boys. Bonded. [Here prayers are sought for tender livers that were ethanolled with local brew]. Fine girls. That’s the bliss that comes with attending Christmas in the village. Former flames resurface from the Lord knows where. Kazi (Work). Colleges. From distant relatives. Some forgive me, from failed early marriages. Met with a former bosom one of 2007/2008. Confessions of past errors. Later, whispers under the moonlight. It never rained. Recollections of reneged vows. That’s life. Broken affairs. Miscalculated steps in the younger years. We grow up, shed away most of our stupidities, outgrow the adolescent manias and move on. Life is never static. Hopes get crashed along the way. We lose former best friends. Make new ones. Change ambitions and goals. It’s called readjustment. Good friends pass on. We mourn. Always hoping for our time with concealed dread. A year never goes without losing a loved one in the village. Life is fraught with plentiful distress.        

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            Many a young soul – underage for that matter brings barley to tongue never to recover again from the habit.

26 December 2012: WEDNESDAY: Boxing Day

            Arose after 8 O’clock news briefs. Had a horrible dream but don’t know why. Everyone is still talking about the mammoth number of kids that were at market center yesterday.

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Visited my soul mate - the loveliest black figure of every man’s desire at Maseno. Received an affectionate welcome though felt a little nervous. Her brother was full of infectious humour. Traveled back home arriving at 9.04 p.m. Issues at home. Got totally irked. Later went to sleep in a foul mood.

27 December 2012: THURSDAY

Woke up with the thoughts of the oncoming get-together with boys dominating my mind. Read Guilt by Rayda Jacobs off the anthology: When the Sun Goes Down and Other Stories. Courtesy of my younger brother, I will try and gobble all the stories before the sun of my holiday goes down around January 10^th, 2013. Later, slashed the boma to keep busy.

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            Afternoon spent chilling with friends and talking loud about less necessary things while sipping hooch. Arrived home late again. Mother did not sulk as I expected.

28 December 2012: FRIDAY

            For the first time since I came home, I woke up late at 9.48 a.m. The rain suffered the blame since it begun from yester night around 9.04 p.m. till around 9.30 a.m. Took breakfast before reading a page of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. On page 20, Fitzgerald describes a situation:
“For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened— then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret, like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.”

            Afternoon. Read Smitta [Tony Mochama] on his Pulse column of December 21^st, 2012 after a long time. He’s among my favorite columnists. The End of the World prophesied in the Mayan calendar characterized the column.

            But I still wonder why our girls lighten their skins. As Malcolm X would pose, agitated with blunt honesty: “Why Do You Hate the Color of Your Skin?” Girls around have an almost psychopathic fascination with bleaching their rich black beautiful skins. The trend is widespread amongst the returnees. And none has a clear reason for it. May be it is the fear of the return, who knows.

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Had a brief tittle-tattle with the local councilor in the evening. He also happens to be my former primary teacher. He wants to be re-elected and we politick on his prospects in regards to his current competitors. We part with hope that he first clinches the ODM ticket during the forthcoming January nominations. I later inform him I will be of little help because I registered as a voter in Nairobi for the elections on March 4^th, 2013.

29 December 2012: LAST SATURDAY OF THE YEAR

            Attended the solemn interment of a village mate in the backdrop of intense painful emotions. Another time to grieve with others as a show of solidarity in the moments of bereavement. Later took one for the evening with buddy Mesh then retreated homewards. Read The Great Gatsby for an hour before sinking into uncertain slumber pondering about Tom Buchanan, Sister Catherine, Mrs. Wilson and Mr. McKee among other characters.

30 December 2012: SUNDAY

            The weather was grey and dull – the type that makes the village an extreme bore especially when there no farms to attend to. My step-father summoned me in the morning for some duty. He is to establish a ligala (New Home). According to Luo customs, after certain duration, a man is supposed to move out of his father’s homestead and set up his own home. Later we went to collect grass in another village to be used for thatching. Before then, I had bought a weighty Sunday Nation that I left for my brothers. I only asked myself something in a monologue like manner: How will my step-father create his new home without a son to lead the venture being a staunch traditionalist? This is because in accordance with Luo customs, when a man is going to create a ligala, he carries an axe and a cock with the first born son in tow.

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            I don’t know what time we exactly finished moving the grass but I returned home and read the Sunday paper. Went to the market center thereafter to mix with the crowd. Later made a Facebook update after a long hiatus. The last of my 2012.

31 December 2012: MONDAY: THIS LAST DAY OF 2012

[Last Commentary]

            Last day of Our Lord. 2012. How days speed fast. People move to the next classes. Folks change jobs while others luckily chance into new ones. Unfortunately, others lose good jobs. Families prepare for the New Year with husbands who are jobless and hopeless. The flower of 2013 unwraps with bounty of despair and empty desperation. Families make babies in closets of both poverty and affluence. And people die on 31^st December. The sheer emptiness of existence in the first place. Children get orphaned. Men become widowers. Women are inherited against their wishes. The HIV/AIDS pandemic travels faster than light. Then the village gets messy again with new infections for the brand new year. Crops fail come January and folks whine but nothing happens. The harvest becomes nothing to be written home about. Young men flee the villages to seek jobs in the cities and when they get them, refuse to return back home. Girls mature fast and get impregnated by people who are supposed to be their role models. Early marriages ensue. Later, broken homes. Failed marriages and a new cycle of anxiety to reclaim the lost opportunities of school. The vital piece of advice that could have prevented the wrong moves. How life can be twisted. New women get married and come to the village for the first time. She first loathes the life but after the stark realization that she married a pauper, she recoils and decides to adapt to the savagery of existence instead of living. Who ever loved the village anyway? Everyone wants to move out after sometime. And the fear of the return hangs upon the soul nagging the being there in the city in his/her hollow life. This Last Day of Our Lord. 2012. God speak to us this ‘Year of the Snake.’ 2013.

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            It was a monotonous weather that makes you hate life. Exciting things turn stale. Spent the day in the family shop while staring at people and thinking. The thinking that enables you to evaluate and question and reflect and seethe with a mixture of rage and desperation. There are things one can change and others not. Read The Great Gatsby in the afternoon. Thoroughly enjoyed the pages. On page 48:

“As soon as I arrived I made an attempt to find my host, but the two or three people of whom I asked his whereabouts stared at me in such an amazed way, and denied so vehemently any knowledge of his movements, that I slunk off in the direction of the cocktail table — the only

place in the garden where a single man could linger without looking purposeless and alone.”

            On the sheer lack of purpose and direction in life, a character inquires from others on page 52. In other words, at Jay Gatsby’s, people did not get invited for parties but were brought:

“Who brought you?” he demanded. “Or did you just come? I was brought. Most people were brought.”

The character continues theatrically in a blatant display of the purposelessness of life:

“I’ve been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to

sit in a library.”

Jay Gatsby [Page 54]:
“He smiled understandingly — much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced — or seemed to face — the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated

on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.”

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            Connected with the gang in the twilight as the market bristled with intense activity being a market day. Retreated for the last time in one of market’s drinking holes and washed our livers. The nine of us except two ‘soft’ fellows. KPLC continued with its power blackouts with the heavy downpour extrapolating the situation. Vicious arguments later erupted that almost flared to blows. For the last night of 2012, stormed out of the intoxicated crew, strode home and hurriedly ate a lackluster supper then later went to sleep. 10 minutes away from 2013. Above, dark clouds.