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June 4, 2016

Aquilae

The constellation Aquilae was very important to my great-great-great grandfather Rumbas, an astrologer and a diviner. There are four major stars in the constellation-Altair, Alshain, Tarazed and Agl. Back then in my grandfather’s time, when the entire rim of the Kerio valley was covered by forest, providing a rich canopy for leopards and the mysterious Nandi bear to carry on their silent lives, the stars had other names. Altair was the warrior Lantje, the First Man, who brought all of our clan from the planet Venus on a large skin hide, with all our cows, sheep, goats and seeds of millet, and settled us along the Kerio valley. Alshain was his lovely wife Syakwei, whose breath was the cool breeze that kept the land from parching, whose breasts were the rain that nurtured the fields, and whose swelling womb ensured that cows gave milk, to feed the people. The other two stars, Tarzed and Agl, were their children, Chessesir and Chemeri. Chessesir taught our clan how to derive iron from earth and Chemeri taught our clan how to make furrows from the rivers that trickled down the escarpment. Whenever Syakwei would drift alone to the west, leaving Lantje alone in the east with his son Chessesir, it meant that she had gone to borrow food from the tribes of the west, and that was a sign that great hunger was to come to the land. In the olden days this would call for great fasting and praying. When Syakwei would be in the east, holding Chemeri under her arm, it would mean that either the Nandi or the Karamojong were planning an invasion and spies would be sent to Sergoit hill to be on the look out. Only when the full family was in the east, the children bouncing and laughing across the sky, without being shielded by their parents, was it safe enough for men to drink and tell stories of old, for teenagers to be circumcised and put in isolation, and for weddings to be planned. It is said, that these four stars loved Rumbas so much, endowing him with great beauty. There was such a radiance in his smile that it sent shivers down the spines of old women who were supposed to be done with such feelings. A story is told of how one day Rumbas went to seek work among the Pokot so that he could be paid with cows to add to his dwindling stock. He began tending the cows for a rich Pokot man with a young wife. The sight of Rumbas’s smile put the young wife in a craze, that in the darkness of her hut, she held a sharp knife and plunged it into her husband’s heart as he was sleeping. She then ran off to Rumbas telling him that she was now free and ready to follow him to the ends of the earth. That woman was my great-great-great grandmother Kaarie.

June 15, 2016

Pink Cosmos

Image Source Of all the flowers my mother planted, I loved the pink cosmos the best. They would fully bloom in April, when fog would pour over the landscape like thick cream, turning their flowers to tiny islands of pink in the swirling mist. Then, my mother would take a hoe and weed them all out. She mostly did this when she was angry. She loved movement when she was angry; movement and conversation. I on the other hand welcome only stillness when I am morose. And I was often morose. And nothing would lift my spirits more than to wear my white, torn jacket (inherited from my grandfather) and go and lie beside the spread of pink cosmos. I would be swallowed by their mystery and imagine pink kingdoms where pink trees grew, offering shade to pink princes and pink princesses. Sometimes I would turn them human, into full-grown women wearing pink sweaters. They would sit beside me, heavy and round, with crow feet scattered round their eyes and tell me tales of their lives: of husbands they had loved and buried; of sicknesses they were slowly dying from; of tears they had shed for their children. When mother would start digging, I would hear their screams echo in the fog. I wonder at times, why my mother loves movement. She once told me that she is unlike any other human being, that her first thought, if she was to encounter a lion, would be to fight rather than flee. This makes sense since she grew in a female-only household, with her father being dead and her brother mostly away. She learnt how to skin a cow and to fence, to snare wild rabbits and to drive a tractor. She learnt how to react in an instant, and pick up a fighting stick, when a neighbor, looking down on their female-run household, tried to steal a section of their land. I thought about this recently, when I was lying still, agonizing over a sentence in a story I wrote. I decided to move about to see if I would get some relief. There was none. My steps were slow and hesitant, lacking that definite grace my mother would walk with.

June 27, 2016

The Jalada Conversations No 6: Akwaeke Emezi

I recently did an interview with Akwaeke Emezi, who is an Igbo/Tamil writer and filmmaker based in liminal spaces. These interview was part of the Jalada Conversations, where we interview writers of African identification. Jalada is a Pan-African Writers’ Collective, which we founded in 2013, in order to execute literary projects quickly and effectively. Akwaeke’s debut novel FRESHWATER is forthcoming from Grove Atlantic (Fall 2017/Winter 2018) and her work is available online at http://www.akwaeke.com. Let me quote a bit of what she had to say: “I am interested in navigating humanity, mostly because I personally experience humanity as a rather foreign thing, so I am fascinated by it, and I am particularly interested in aspects of humanity that people have trouble accepting as human. I am interested in things that people think are inhuman or, you know how people say, that person is a monster. I find that interesting because the person is not a monster. The person is a person. We seem at times, to have this reluctance to confront the amount of horror that human beings have been perpetrating for the whole of their existence.” Read or listen to the rest of the interview in the link provided below. Source: The Jalada Conversations No 6: Akwaeke Emezi

August 8, 2016

Dorm 10

Source Dorm 10 is no more. It has been razed to the ground. To be honest, I feel no emotion. Life has moved on for me. I have new attachments to be sentimental for. But when I was 13 and in form one, Dorm 10 was everything. I would go to Dorm 10 after evening preps so that Moi could make me cold power. Moi was one of the few people who always had drinking chocolate and sugar in his locker. Inside, I would stare at its wooden hallway; at the neat cubicles that only allowed two beds, and would hope against hope that I would one day live there. Dreams are valid and come true. In my third year, Chelanga became the Captain. I secretly visited his room at night, under the pretext of giving him some biology revision papers. We had a long conversation about his intention then, of being a priest, but then I discreetly asked him to knock someone out of Dorm 10 so that I could stay there in my fourth year. The joy I felt when I placed my metal suitcase, on my locker, INSIDE DORM 10!!!!! was unparalleled. In my year long stay in Dorm 10, I developed a close affection with a rat whom I would later call Rodney. I never saw his face but he was always skittering up the roof and I would only see bits of his fast-moving tail. One night, when lights were out, I got into bed, not knowing I had covered Rodney under my sheets. I woke up in the morning to find that Rodney had burrowed through my sheets and my mattress to get out. I also realized that he was my friend because he did not bite me. When we finished our syllabus and we were just in our dormitories revising, I would read aloud to Rodney from my favorite literature book at the time-Looking for A Rain God. I would act out the dialogue in Bindeh’s Gift and I bet he was enthralled because he would be quiet in those moments. When it was time for me to leave, I looked up the roof and bade Rodney goodbye. Poor Rodney. It is sad to know that all your descendants were burnt in this fire, and now your bloodline is finished. I say goodbye to you and to Dorm 10. It is over. It is finished. It is ended. Arriverderci. Sayonara. Saisere.

August 12, 2016

Tassia Road

Any Matatu driver will drop you at Tassia road if you say you want to stop at Tassia. From the beginning, the road assaults your senses. No hero’s welcome for you. Your first attempts to walk in and you have to stand aside, as long-horned Maasai cows assume the right of way. These cattle carry a certain grace from the past, walking with the same languidness they would have if they were being herded across a savanna by a shuka-clad, ochre-painted warrior. There are the lorries too; and men pushing mikokoteni laden with bananas and potatoes. These men sweat profusely, making the strong veins on their hands and necks glisten. It is not a road for those who want their peace, but it is a road for the curious. The road for those who want to see life. And it is all there. All the different faces of life; the middle-aged woman in a leso, selling tomatoes and onions in a stall, who tells those who come to buy from her that they need to turn their hearts and minds to Christ; the young girl who for sure has taken time to plait her hair and to do her face just right, and who walks daintily through the mud, determined to soil her clean jeans as little as possible; the drunken man lying on his urine, singing a song of his own special madness; the crowd watching video clips of child soldiers in West Africa from tiny Chinese television sets being sold by the roadside. It is a determined road this one. It leads on forever, unstoppable. It rides over broken sewage tanks and murky, polluted rivers. It squeezes between the narrow spaces left by multi-storeyed flat apartments which stick so close; the assortment of clothes hanging from their balconies, turning them into medieval witches. There are people walking everywhere; coming out and going in; all kinds of faces; old and young; disturbed and peaceful; and also that one Imam walking with the stiffness of old age, gently rubbing his prayer beads in his hands. It is the industry that is amazing; tiny kiosks bursting with all that anyone could need, packets of milk fighting for space with banana fibre-wrapped tobacco, all squeezing against the wire-meshed counters like prisoners desperate to breathe air outside a prison. The shop-keepers themselves are a mystery, invisible in the darkness of their kiosks. They give an almost imperceptible nod when you ask for what you want, followed by a quick flurry of hands in the darkness and a moment later your good appears. There is a brief showing of their bodies as money is exchanged but it is quickly over. Mystery seals them back into her shell, ready to unfurl them again when the next customer leans against the counter. Someone is clean here; someone cares, for there are neat piles of rubbish collected along the road which are burning on a low fire. Papers and plastic bags disintegrate in the heat, leaving behind a Viceroy bottle and a Sportsman cigarette packet. Children are running everywhere. They sing along the rough, heavily synthesized gospel beats of an artist selling his music. His song is coming out in heavy tones from Kenwood speakers standing outside video shops. Here you might also see the mad woman; that is if you are lucky. She is an enigma, a frightful human being who walks barefoot. She has a far-off gaze, as if staring at something cataclysmic only she can see. She never makes eye contact nor does she speak other than making deep, guttural groans when she sees food. You are advised to sit far from the window if you are eating in one of the open air food stalls. She is quick to grab food and run away. And, she never lets go of food she has in her hands. A customer ones lost 150 shillings-worth of chicken drumsticks. 150 shillings. Do you hear that? But these change. They are never constant. On a lazy afternoon, the most reassured thing on Tassia road is the sun. It is just the right kind of warmth to the skin. A warm, luxurious bath. But if you stick too long, the tall medieval witch buildings will trap you in an icy shadow. PS: Article originally published here.

August 22, 2016

The Truth about our Adam

If I lay down and became the earth, and my breasts two Indian temples, carved from red sandstone, more beautiful than the Taj Mahal. If Adam would walk between them, when they were still new and unformed, and truth lay in the sieve of my belly-button like a limpid pool. If it all started then, and the sun burnt just the heat of my nipple, and my mind could bend time, like the fingers on my wrist, and hold it till it ached. If a brook struggled in my heart, and my hands dug a well to let the water out, and make the land green for Adam. If gospels and new definitions felt themselves all over my skin, like the promises delivered, by a cold morning shower. If my tongue uttered a prayer, for the life that once protested and walked upright, but now lay calcified and fossilized, trapped in the ball of my form, like babies never to be born. If Adam saw me, more than a speck of dust, that shrivels before Jupiter’s path, and I trapped in his eyes, the eternity of the galaxies, right there in the middle of his cornea, where light played like liquid jade. But the snake laughed at all this, and climbed a tree, without the wisdom of an arm or a leg, and beneath a pile of leaves, found an apple fit to be bitten.