i finally began working somewhere, after four months of sitting home doing movies, long walks, swimming and much daydreaming. at the moment am too fascinated with everything around to really know what i feel. but to hell with that. am working and moving on with my life, but most of all am taking care of my puny ass so that it never diminishes in size.
some guys are really friendly while some have those impenetrable eyes, deadpan faces and mouth twitches that you can never quite judge to be a smile or a smirk, so i guess i will just stick to my habitat, look for cues and learn, instead of going all overboard by being overfriendly and overgreeting everyone (please readers, forgive my poor grammar for english is my third language)
at the moment, am feeling like a salmon swimming in the deep end of the ocean with the sharks or more appropriately like a sheep in a jungle. i guess everyone goes through that phase, you seem so unsure of who to trust, when to talk to someone, especially when he is a friend because he seems so busy and you do not want to interrupt him or a tiny part of you insists he will bark and you will shrivel. so i guess am kinda at the refugee phase but i bet it will be over soon and i will be my usual self, chatty and full of ready smiles
all i know is that i only have to do my best and not be the best, am not in competition with anyone, i have my life, my goals and my dreams, so i cannot compare myself to anyone. even though i feel a bit dense and obtuse i do not have to try so hard because everything will fall in place with time
Friday, October 26, 2007
Saturday, October 13, 2007
A FRUIT OF UNRIPE WISDOM (OR THE REASON WHY I NEVER LIKED KAREN BLIXEN)
With all their pride and handsome noses, many ‘old school’ wazungus come to Africa with so much romance and fire burning in their hearts that one can only wish to pour bucketfuls of ice-water on their heads.
It all starts with the promises of an exotic hotel in a glitzy magazine that ‘provides the ideal getaway to the luxury traveller who is looking for a unique enchanting experience of serene beaches and traditional wildlife that Africa has to offer’
Or an ubiquitous nudge from a distant aunt who travelled before to Africa and fell for ‘the spell of the land and became instantly reborn’ after passing through ‘idyllic villages’ where ‘the men and women were eager to burst to song at her sight’ and she was able to learn a lesson about happiness from the way they ‘managed to laugh and sing despite their moderate means’.
It all ends in pleasant journeys through Africa where, like new shiny coins falling into a murky mine, they admire the primeval days of their iron ore; the seduction of the unsophisticated and the simplicity of the smiles of the mud-splattered, mucous-blocked children who will flock around and break into a rictus of joy when given a 250 ml can of yoghurt to fight over.
Words such as ‘corruption’, ‘Aids’ and ‘poverty’ will be avoided (apart from the militant kind that move about in herds called conferences reciting the same old tale till it is tedious listening to them) and replaced with spiels of how they were ‘awestruck by the majestic leaps of Maasai warriors’ and how their tears fell at the sight of the ‘tragic beauty of the wildebeest migration in the Maasai Mara’
Ultimately we will be reminded of the amazing world we live in and why we should never lose our customs, our dances and our music for it is a ‘rich heritage’ and that we should always ensure that this part of the world remains ‘wild and untouched’ for it offers so much ‘tranquillity and serenity that the rest of the planet could learn from’.
They will hold their passports safely nevertheless and despite the ‘enchantment and magic of the land’ grumble at any delays in their return flights for somehow they still need to rush back to their ‘boring, developed world’ where people are ‘cold and unfriendly’ and not like us ‘pleasant people’.
We will be left behind always, perpetual guardians of the African serenity and tranquillity. The beach boy to be in love with the Malindi sand and the erotic promise a beckon from another Italian tourist brings. The Maasai woman selling her trinkets to trot back to her house-fly infested manyatta and seek for no more pleasure than the promise of a new bore-hole to be dug in her village. The sweaty-faced tea-picker to trudge every morning through rain, shine and poor pay and be in love with the immense expanse of green tea and marvel at how lucky he is to be outdoors when everyone else is cocooned in concrete prisons in London, Sidney and New York.
Beneath this calm veneer painted over ‘untamed Africa’ is a loud discontent. I remember as a child the way it painfully agitated me and I would walk to the edge of the Kerio valley and stare at the horizon and pray for the vision to overpass that limit and stare at another busy world I had heard of but never seen. I desired more practical experience than I possessed. An acquaintance with a variety of character than was here within my reach. My heart would heave with exultant movement as I allowed my mind to dwell on that bright vision; to feel it swell, quicken and expand with life; but most of all to relive, if only for a moment, a greater existence of my being, before the relentless sun took me back to reality with its heat.
It sad and narrow-minded for these more privileged fellow-creatures to think we ought to be satisfied and confine ourselves to our tranquillity. The African mind seeks for action and greater exercise of its faculty just like any other mind. Millions, however, of my dark-skinned brothers are condemned to a still doom; an absolute stagnation and restraint of the soul as if they were mangrove trees stuck in a dismal swamp.
There is another reality of Africa however, a more vivid kind and filled with so much goodness. It shows in the face of a graduate who steadfastly applies for jobs and believes he will eventually get one for deep down he knows he is intelligent and hard-working enough to add value to the corporate world. It shows in the hard, chiselled faces of hawkers in Gikomba who haggle and cackle their voices hoarse selling second-hand clothes to make enough money to buy land and build a brick house where there children will be able to sleep soundly. It shows in the speech of a woman dying of Aids who sits her children beside her bed and makes them promise that she be the last one in the family to die from the disease. It shows in the matatus that flood our towns in a riot colour, bringing men and women of all kind and tribe, to hustle and move about in our pot-holed roads and dusty shops in pursuit of their private hopes, dreams and happiness.
That is the kind of Africa I love, not the one Karen Blixen and her followers try to create.
It all starts with the promises of an exotic hotel in a glitzy magazine that ‘provides the ideal getaway to the luxury traveller who is looking for a unique enchanting experience of serene beaches and traditional wildlife that Africa has to offer’
Or an ubiquitous nudge from a distant aunt who travelled before to Africa and fell for ‘the spell of the land and became instantly reborn’ after passing through ‘idyllic villages’ where ‘the men and women were eager to burst to song at her sight’ and she was able to learn a lesson about happiness from the way they ‘managed to laugh and sing despite their moderate means’.
It all ends in pleasant journeys through Africa where, like new shiny coins falling into a murky mine, they admire the primeval days of their iron ore; the seduction of the unsophisticated and the simplicity of the smiles of the mud-splattered, mucous-blocked children who will flock around and break into a rictus of joy when given a 250 ml can of yoghurt to fight over.
Words such as ‘corruption’, ‘Aids’ and ‘poverty’ will be avoided (apart from the militant kind that move about in herds called conferences reciting the same old tale till it is tedious listening to them) and replaced with spiels of how they were ‘awestruck by the majestic leaps of Maasai warriors’ and how their tears fell at the sight of the ‘tragic beauty of the wildebeest migration in the Maasai Mara’
Ultimately we will be reminded of the amazing world we live in and why we should never lose our customs, our dances and our music for it is a ‘rich heritage’ and that we should always ensure that this part of the world remains ‘wild and untouched’ for it offers so much ‘tranquillity and serenity that the rest of the planet could learn from’.
They will hold their passports safely nevertheless and despite the ‘enchantment and magic of the land’ grumble at any delays in their return flights for somehow they still need to rush back to their ‘boring, developed world’ where people are ‘cold and unfriendly’ and not like us ‘pleasant people’.
We will be left behind always, perpetual guardians of the African serenity and tranquillity. The beach boy to be in love with the Malindi sand and the erotic promise a beckon from another Italian tourist brings. The Maasai woman selling her trinkets to trot back to her house-fly infested manyatta and seek for no more pleasure than the promise of a new bore-hole to be dug in her village. The sweaty-faced tea-picker to trudge every morning through rain, shine and poor pay and be in love with the immense expanse of green tea and marvel at how lucky he is to be outdoors when everyone else is cocooned in concrete prisons in London, Sidney and New York.
Beneath this calm veneer painted over ‘untamed Africa’ is a loud discontent. I remember as a child the way it painfully agitated me and I would walk to the edge of the Kerio valley and stare at the horizon and pray for the vision to overpass that limit and stare at another busy world I had heard of but never seen. I desired more practical experience than I possessed. An acquaintance with a variety of character than was here within my reach. My heart would heave with exultant movement as I allowed my mind to dwell on that bright vision; to feel it swell, quicken and expand with life; but most of all to relive, if only for a moment, a greater existence of my being, before the relentless sun took me back to reality with its heat.
It sad and narrow-minded for these more privileged fellow-creatures to think we ought to be satisfied and confine ourselves to our tranquillity. The African mind seeks for action and greater exercise of its faculty just like any other mind. Millions, however, of my dark-skinned brothers are condemned to a still doom; an absolute stagnation and restraint of the soul as if they were mangrove trees stuck in a dismal swamp.
There is another reality of Africa however, a more vivid kind and filled with so much goodness. It shows in the face of a graduate who steadfastly applies for jobs and believes he will eventually get one for deep down he knows he is intelligent and hard-working enough to add value to the corporate world. It shows in the hard, chiselled faces of hawkers in Gikomba who haggle and cackle their voices hoarse selling second-hand clothes to make enough money to buy land and build a brick house where there children will be able to sleep soundly. It shows in the speech of a woman dying of Aids who sits her children beside her bed and makes them promise that she be the last one in the family to die from the disease. It shows in the matatus that flood our towns in a riot colour, bringing men and women of all kind and tribe, to hustle and move about in our pot-holed roads and dusty shops in pursuit of their private hopes, dreams and happiness.
That is the kind of Africa I love, not the one Karen Blixen and her followers try to create.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
a dik-dik's leap of faith (or when wild Africa tries to live)
there is a form of courage that comes from following the road less taken where popular thoughts do not matter much. whether that is true or not is for you to decide. but the story i want to tell you is true. i know. i was there.
it was special growing up in Iten. i was more of a butterfly than a real human. i felt more like a soul drifting through space and time without a body, and it was always so surprising when other people touched me. for then i realized that i was human. i had blood and flesh. i could feel and i could touch
doctors will obviously call that some sort of psychosomatic disorder but i call it the pleasures of childhood. i am better now of course. My feet firmly set on ground and my head out of the clouds by sobering subjects like Accounting for Equities, Macro-economics i learnt in university.and of course my elder bro was always there to thump me on the head when i drifted too much. God bless his thumping paws!
but my drifting mind actually led me to places so special and so mine. back then when your feet are small the world seemed so endless and large, and through books i had also visited kingdoms so magical that from then i only wished for the magical and the surreal
it was on a lazy sunday afternoon that i sneaked out of our farm. my mother was asleep or something otherwise she would have found something to criticize me for and ensure i do not get out. i found her too be to hard sometimes. but later on she told me her story and i understood.
there was a stretch of murram, two metres wide that led right from our gate and ended in a tangle of wood and overgrown weed a kilometre or less on. long before than i care to remember, caterpillars had come and dug out the earth around there for murram to build all those pathetic roads that kenya us, and after they fled with the earth and never came back, bush and weed reclaimed its own, but still if one was short enough, you could dive and the tangle of weed and slide down the hollow in the earth on a wooden board with other boys your age who simply wished for fun.
i still remember the sound and feel of us rushing down the incline. there were strange sounds and smells, voices of bored housewives filtering in through the weed, complaining of how we were putting ourselves in danger. the incline would end sharply at an artificial lake that had collected water over the years. it was no more than a hollow of sharply dug earth, probably dug by the caterpillars of yester years. but to us it was our lake. here we swum, here we taught ourselves to drift stones across the lake, attempting each time to make it cross to the other side but to no avail. There we made shouts of joy as we spotted river otters lifting their heads of water and around we also spied on lovestruck teenagers tasting forbidden fruits in queit bushes where they thought there were alone.
if one crossed the lake one went into a thin stretch of forest that back then completely covered the amazing Kerio valley from view. i still remember the colobus monkeys swaying across and the taste of the purple lamaek fruits that grew so high on trees that only the bravest of boys could climb and get them. i never did that because admittedly i was too much of a sissy.
then we discovered a faded path. there were no footsteps upon it so we thought it was made by deer. realizing it was too wide, my imaginative brain embellished my friends with a tale of the road being a path to an elephant graveyard. may be they believed me or may be they just did not wish to go home too soon to their grumbling mothers for we all nodded our heads and walked calmly downwards.
that is an understatement. we were not calm. we feared for leopards and all sorts of creatures, real and imagined, that we were only too eager to rush back if a twig cracked too loud. but it was beautiful, especially when we realized that the path led to a small natural waterfall, ensconced in a tiny escarpment just near the valley. Sasurwa trees (A kind of a banana-like plant) rambled all about with juicy pride and fanned the waterfall with their wide motherly leaves. i can still see the light filtering through the giant podo trees that completely blocked out the sun and playing like liquid jade on the sasurwa leaves. we drank of the waterfall and found the water sweet. then sat on the soft moss and glared at the colobus monkeys and squirrels playing about on the trees and completely oblivious or otherwise not caring so much about our presence.
it was kipchirchir who farted fast, we were used to it because his mother cooked too much beans and nothing else and the boy was always glad to come and play at one of our homes so that he could end up eating a more 'flatulentless' lunch. usually we scolded him or made such fun of him that he would shower on us tiny stones that we would have to run because they stinged like poisonous flies. but beside the gentle waterfall, we only laughed and each one of us tried to outdo him. my attempt was pitiful and for the first time in my life i envied kipchirchir for having a mother who cooked too much bean.
may be it was the farts that aroused the dik-dik or not but we only saw it spring out and shoot through the bush like an arrow and everyone was in hot pursuit. i was a bit of a sissy then who cared so much about animal rights and all but was too scared to defend them against energy-filled youth who only saw the death of them.
i stood still for a while, just staring as everyone scaled up the escarpment. then i searched for the place where it hid and heard a little bawl. there was that sweet tingle in my ear that only a small cry of nature could bring. i looked and saw him, the tenderest of fawn, hobbling about. His foot had been broken or something for it waved in the wind like a flap of skin and the poor child could only grow around in circles hoping its mother would not fall prey to the hunters and come back to him.
i took him and hid him under my shirt. i had to act fast. if the others came back they were sure to demand that i give the creature to them and they would surreptitiously tear him to pieces and make less of my animal right campaign attempts. i walked up the hill. the poor creature bawling as i tripped against a huge root exposed by erosion or if i became too worried and held him too tightly. the path up seemed so different, and when i rose out of the escarpment i found myself in much thicker wood so dark and unfamiliar. i would have trembled and remembered the terrible stories of the nandi bear but the little dik-dik tucked in my shirt made me rational and i groppled through.
i guess i was too much excited for i do not remember see the lake or the murram incline. i only found myself home, wondering what i would tell my parents to whom the word conservation never came to mind. i took him out and placed him near the sheep pen. he had a muzzle that were more sharp and curious that one could mistake him for an odd rat. but i was worried because he was already flecking at the mouth.
i wondered how i would feed him. i wondered how i would tell mum. i was worried that the sheep would kill him. i was sure i he was dying ... he stood up and bawled again. i rushed home and took out a baby bottle feeder, poured some warm water in i, added a little milk and after a little consideration, some glucose. i hurtled back faster hoping against hope that no stray dog had come around and gobbled him up. he was safe, ensconsing himself against a corner like it was natural for a dik-dik to do. he never opened his mouth but when i sprayed the solution on his lips or whatever those flaps of skin around the mouth in dik-diks are called, he would lick it up.
mother had seen me rushing and came to investigate, and when she saw the dik-dik she just smiled and shook her head this way and that and did not quarrel with me. one of the sheep had given birth that day, and she told me that if i wiped the dik-dik with the discarded umbilical cord, the ewe would take it as another lamb and suckle it. i said that the dik-dik looked different. she said that sheep had no eyes.
he was accepted and grew with the sheep, his foot healed as he suckled and became strong, but still he kept his pride and refused to be as idle, woolly and lazy like the dorpers. i guess he had eyes. time flew past and he became a buck, refused to be penned, became nocturnal and ate rows of bean or maize just springing fresh from the ground. mother said that i chase him away or she kills it. i wondered how i would do that. i lied that i could not find him. i knew he loved sleeping in the tall rhode grass in on of the many paddocks we had. i wished him to live there, close to me and silent, even if nothing would grow in our farm.
father and mother were sterner. they called a local gang, i shrivelled and became smaller as i saw them walking to the rhode grass paddock with pangas and sticks and completely surrounded it. the rhode grass rustled like silk, unpeturbed as the men moved close. i closed my eyes and saw tiny flashed of light playing about in the darkness. i looked again and hoped that the dik-dik was not around, that he had not come to sleep there but had gone back to its shrinking habitat.
"Ang' nyi wee! Otekteken!" one of the men cried in Keiyo and i knew it was over. they moved this way and moved back, swayed a bit and shook their sticks angrily, then moved this way and that again and moved back, and they were ready to kill the dik-dik.
i only saw the dik-dik leap, i saw him leap so high over the gang of men and their outstreched pangas, over the hunting cries that spelled of bodies itching for blood and over the rustling grass. He leapt over the fence and over the bean and the maize, knowing his way that he did not stumble on anything. i looked at the hunters who struggled to reach him, clumsily forcing their way through the rhode grass, leaving wide swathes of flattened grass and carefully squeezing their way through the barbed wire fences where am sure one or two pricked buttocks farted, and i looked back at the dik-dik who was almost near the edge of the horizon where the valley stood and i could only smile
i never that dik-dik again
it was special growing up in Iten. i was more of a butterfly than a real human. i felt more like a soul drifting through space and time without a body, and it was always so surprising when other people touched me. for then i realized that i was human. i had blood and flesh. i could feel and i could touch
doctors will obviously call that some sort of psychosomatic disorder but i call it the pleasures of childhood. i am better now of course. My feet firmly set on ground and my head out of the clouds by sobering subjects like Accounting for Equities, Macro-economics i learnt in university.and of course my elder bro was always there to thump me on the head when i drifted too much. God bless his thumping paws!
but my drifting mind actually led me to places so special and so mine. back then when your feet are small the world seemed so endless and large, and through books i had also visited kingdoms so magical that from then i only wished for the magical and the surreal
it was on a lazy sunday afternoon that i sneaked out of our farm. my mother was asleep or something otherwise she would have found something to criticize me for and ensure i do not get out. i found her too be to hard sometimes. but later on she told me her story and i understood.
there was a stretch of murram, two metres wide that led right from our gate and ended in a tangle of wood and overgrown weed a kilometre or less on. long before than i care to remember, caterpillars had come and dug out the earth around there for murram to build all those pathetic roads that kenya us, and after they fled with the earth and never came back, bush and weed reclaimed its own, but still if one was short enough, you could dive and the tangle of weed and slide down the hollow in the earth on a wooden board with other boys your age who simply wished for fun.
i still remember the sound and feel of us rushing down the incline. there were strange sounds and smells, voices of bored housewives filtering in through the weed, complaining of how we were putting ourselves in danger. the incline would end sharply at an artificial lake that had collected water over the years. it was no more than a hollow of sharply dug earth, probably dug by the caterpillars of yester years. but to us it was our lake. here we swum, here we taught ourselves to drift stones across the lake, attempting each time to make it cross to the other side but to no avail. There we made shouts of joy as we spotted river otters lifting their heads of water and around we also spied on lovestruck teenagers tasting forbidden fruits in queit bushes where they thought there were alone.
if one crossed the lake one went into a thin stretch of forest that back then completely covered the amazing Kerio valley from view. i still remember the colobus monkeys swaying across and the taste of the purple lamaek fruits that grew so high on trees that only the bravest of boys could climb and get them. i never did that because admittedly i was too much of a sissy.
then we discovered a faded path. there were no footsteps upon it so we thought it was made by deer. realizing it was too wide, my imaginative brain embellished my friends with a tale of the road being a path to an elephant graveyard. may be they believed me or may be they just did not wish to go home too soon to their grumbling mothers for we all nodded our heads and walked calmly downwards.
that is an understatement. we were not calm. we feared for leopards and all sorts of creatures, real and imagined, that we were only too eager to rush back if a twig cracked too loud. but it was beautiful, especially when we realized that the path led to a small natural waterfall, ensconced in a tiny escarpment just near the valley. Sasurwa trees (A kind of a banana-like plant) rambled all about with juicy pride and fanned the waterfall with their wide motherly leaves. i can still see the light filtering through the giant podo trees that completely blocked out the sun and playing like liquid jade on the sasurwa leaves. we drank of the waterfall and found the water sweet. then sat on the soft moss and glared at the colobus monkeys and squirrels playing about on the trees and completely oblivious or otherwise not caring so much about our presence.
it was kipchirchir who farted fast, we were used to it because his mother cooked too much beans and nothing else and the boy was always glad to come and play at one of our homes so that he could end up eating a more 'flatulentless' lunch. usually we scolded him or made such fun of him that he would shower on us tiny stones that we would have to run because they stinged like poisonous flies. but beside the gentle waterfall, we only laughed and each one of us tried to outdo him. my attempt was pitiful and for the first time in my life i envied kipchirchir for having a mother who cooked too much bean.
may be it was the farts that aroused the dik-dik or not but we only saw it spring out and shoot through the bush like an arrow and everyone was in hot pursuit. i was a bit of a sissy then who cared so much about animal rights and all but was too scared to defend them against energy-filled youth who only saw the death of them.
i stood still for a while, just staring as everyone scaled up the escarpment. then i searched for the place where it hid and heard a little bawl. there was that sweet tingle in my ear that only a small cry of nature could bring. i looked and saw him, the tenderest of fawn, hobbling about. His foot had been broken or something for it waved in the wind like a flap of skin and the poor child could only grow around in circles hoping its mother would not fall prey to the hunters and come back to him.
i took him and hid him under my shirt. i had to act fast. if the others came back they were sure to demand that i give the creature to them and they would surreptitiously tear him to pieces and make less of my animal right campaign attempts. i walked up the hill. the poor creature bawling as i tripped against a huge root exposed by erosion or if i became too worried and held him too tightly. the path up seemed so different, and when i rose out of the escarpment i found myself in much thicker wood so dark and unfamiliar. i would have trembled and remembered the terrible stories of the nandi bear but the little dik-dik tucked in my shirt made me rational and i groppled through.
i guess i was too much excited for i do not remember see the lake or the murram incline. i only found myself home, wondering what i would tell my parents to whom the word conservation never came to mind. i took him out and placed him near the sheep pen. he had a muzzle that were more sharp and curious that one could mistake him for an odd rat. but i was worried because he was already flecking at the mouth.
i wondered how i would feed him. i wondered how i would tell mum. i was worried that the sheep would kill him. i was sure i he was dying ... he stood up and bawled again. i rushed home and took out a baby bottle feeder, poured some warm water in i, added a little milk and after a little consideration, some glucose. i hurtled back faster hoping against hope that no stray dog had come around and gobbled him up. he was safe, ensconsing himself against a corner like it was natural for a dik-dik to do. he never opened his mouth but when i sprayed the solution on his lips or whatever those flaps of skin around the mouth in dik-diks are called, he would lick it up.
mother had seen me rushing and came to investigate, and when she saw the dik-dik she just smiled and shook her head this way and that and did not quarrel with me. one of the sheep had given birth that day, and she told me that if i wiped the dik-dik with the discarded umbilical cord, the ewe would take it as another lamb and suckle it. i said that the dik-dik looked different. she said that sheep had no eyes.
he was accepted and grew with the sheep, his foot healed as he suckled and became strong, but still he kept his pride and refused to be as idle, woolly and lazy like the dorpers. i guess he had eyes. time flew past and he became a buck, refused to be penned, became nocturnal and ate rows of bean or maize just springing fresh from the ground. mother said that i chase him away or she kills it. i wondered how i would do that. i lied that i could not find him. i knew he loved sleeping in the tall rhode grass in on of the many paddocks we had. i wished him to live there, close to me and silent, even if nothing would grow in our farm.
father and mother were sterner. they called a local gang, i shrivelled and became smaller as i saw them walking to the rhode grass paddock with pangas and sticks and completely surrounded it. the rhode grass rustled like silk, unpeturbed as the men moved close. i closed my eyes and saw tiny flashed of light playing about in the darkness. i looked again and hoped that the dik-dik was not around, that he had not come to sleep there but had gone back to its shrinking habitat.
"Ang' nyi wee! Otekteken!" one of the men cried in Keiyo and i knew it was over. they moved this way and moved back, swayed a bit and shook their sticks angrily, then moved this way and that again and moved back, and they were ready to kill the dik-dik.
i only saw the dik-dik leap, i saw him leap so high over the gang of men and their outstreched pangas, over the hunting cries that spelled of bodies itching for blood and over the rustling grass. He leapt over the fence and over the bean and the maize, knowing his way that he did not stumble on anything. i looked at the hunters who struggled to reach him, clumsily forcing their way through the rhode grass, leaving wide swathes of flattened grass and carefully squeezing their way through the barbed wire fences where am sure one or two pricked buttocks farted, and i looked back at the dik-dik who was almost near the edge of the horizon where the valley stood and i could only smile
i never that dik-dik again
Friday, August 10, 2007
the equal ripper
my cousin died yesterday at 32 ... my mother said that there was a look of serenity about him ... he had been a fighter all his life ... he had tried to resist the cancer that searched for his brain ... he had resisted his parents' choices for him and ran away from home ... he had fought with the soil to make a living and finished his education like any other ... but when death was nigh, he did not resist ... but lay in calm like a conqueror ... there was never a true hero such as he as he lay there in wait for the next life ... a true testament to what the book of corinthians says in the bible,
"O death, where is thy sting? O grave where is thy victory?"
32 ... am only 22 .. and i have not thought of death for a long time ... i used to think about it when i was young ... i fancied myself being garbed in black and shedding lots of tears coz i thought it was cute ... i did not fear death so much as the coffin ... i hated seeing a coffin and a cross ... i wondered why people were not just thrown away so that we did not have see all those crosses on the ground ... have you ever walked into one of those african homes with so many graves that you wonder where you could sit down?
nways, my mother supported the innocence of my young mind ... she told me that in the old days corpses were dragged to be eaten by hyenas in the wild ... no one was supposed to see the body apart from the immediate family and the pall bearers ... the latter would walk out of the village at night, stark naked, to lay the body in the forest ... if a body was not eaten they would slaughter a goat over it to encourage the ravenous hyenas to gobble it up ... just like Tartarus of the greeks, hyenas were guardians of the gates of Hades
my great-grandmother i hear had caught a severe case of cold that had left her for the dead ... the family thinking her expired took her out to the forest to be devoured ... but the next morn she was banging at the door asking for porridge to the astonishment of the village and another notch to our family tree on death conguerors
the bible assures us of an after-life ... of a city in paradise with gold houses and streams of living water ... but all we see is the stink of a dead man, the coffin and the tears, and the family is left behind ... and in our hearts we such for immortality ... somehow ... through success, power, art ... we seek to be seen ... to be heard .... to feel alive at every moment so as to console ourselves that we will be alive in the next second
and in all this desperation, our churches proudly display symbols of death everywhere ... that of a dying man in a cross ... i wonder why the cross provides so much assurance ... so much hope ... it should have been a macabre sight but instead we long to gaze at it ... may be it is because the death of another man sobers us up and makes us appreciate how alive we are ... may be i will understand one day ... all i know now is that my cousin is dead AT 32
"O death, where is thy sting? O grave where is thy victory?"
32 ... am only 22 .. and i have not thought of death for a long time ... i used to think about it when i was young ... i fancied myself being garbed in black and shedding lots of tears coz i thought it was cute ... i did not fear death so much as the coffin ... i hated seeing a coffin and a cross ... i wondered why people were not just thrown away so that we did not have see all those crosses on the ground ... have you ever walked into one of those african homes with so many graves that you wonder where you could sit down?
nways, my mother supported the innocence of my young mind ... she told me that in the old days corpses were dragged to be eaten by hyenas in the wild ... no one was supposed to see the body apart from the immediate family and the pall bearers ... the latter would walk out of the village at night, stark naked, to lay the body in the forest ... if a body was not eaten they would slaughter a goat over it to encourage the ravenous hyenas to gobble it up ... just like Tartarus of the greeks, hyenas were guardians of the gates of Hades
my great-grandmother i hear had caught a severe case of cold that had left her for the dead ... the family thinking her expired took her out to the forest to be devoured ... but the next morn she was banging at the door asking for porridge to the astonishment of the village and another notch to our family tree on death conguerors
the bible assures us of an after-life ... of a city in paradise with gold houses and streams of living water ... but all we see is the stink of a dead man, the coffin and the tears, and the family is left behind ... and in our hearts we such for immortality ... somehow ... through success, power, art ... we seek to be seen ... to be heard .... to feel alive at every moment so as to console ourselves that we will be alive in the next second
and in all this desperation, our churches proudly display symbols of death everywhere ... that of a dying man in a cross ... i wonder why the cross provides so much assurance ... so much hope ... it should have been a macabre sight but instead we long to gaze at it ... may be it is because the death of another man sobers us up and makes us appreciate how alive we are ... may be i will understand one day ... all i know now is that my cousin is dead AT 32
Thursday, May 24, 2007
when the heart rests
i feel sad ... but i feel happy too ... i feel so warm and closeted ... like all the scares i had of the big world were all my creation ... that all the evil in the world could be found in me ... and that all i had to be afraid of ... was me or not
i always had this thoughts ... that everyone i came across was just a figment of my imagination ... that someone was just carrying out a farce to please or to annoy me ... may be africa and all its problems did not exist ... may be america was not that powerful that it could invade our living room with its images of a better life that we could only pant for
there was no africa or europe or america or asia or australia in Iten where i grew up ... the rest of the world was far away ... or may be it was just too close only that i did not care ... but with the trees my mother had planted ... the orchard ... the fog ... the field hand who went on with his duties as glum as Uncle Tom would have been ... it was just me and my thoughts ... dream i did dream .
i made images of kingdoms and giant thick forests where the strangest of animals lived ... i saw brave, heroic lasses wielding magic swords running away through the thick forests ... running away from evil lords/wicked witches/ugly trolls who sought to capture them ... and from then on ... the tales of my people and the tales of the outside world merged in me
they say the voice that sings from outside africa is louder than the voice that sings from africa ... every day as i trudged to school we were taught concepts that were too far divorced from the lives we led around ... but that was ok ... science is never different ... it might have found others earlier and the ones who are a tad behind had better learn from those who can call themselves the masters ... still if only a teacher would have made me see the valley that lay to the west of our home ... if someone would have told me to take a keener look at the wood, stone and leaf around
western education made me a dreamer ... i dreamt of a world far beyond ... and the people around me became little ... i too became little ... and so did Kabon .... the old grandma who trudged barefoot to thatch her house
the world used to come to iten once in a while ... the International Safari Rally ... helicopters buzzed around and blew up blouses ... opening up sneak previews for the voyeurs ... and then the colors ... it is so strange to see a mix of color ... it brings life into a sharper reality ... people of all colors moving around ... and the cars and the helicopters
i have read far and wide ... the tutors at school have always thought of me as clever ... i just find myself odd ... in one way or another ... knowing and being interested in things no one else cares about ... who wants to hear about Tenochtilan or Genghis Khan ... who needs the past when you have a whole future fresh and unexplored ... who cares about Bugganes and Guanacos, or whether mammoths could be cloned or that the cross between a lion and a tiger is a liger and that the latter grows so much larger than the parents
may be i should forget the big, wide world for a while ... and focus on me ... improve on me ...create a rock, solid self-image with a pure fountain inside ... may be others would love to drink from that ... others that make my world
i always had this thoughts ... that everyone i came across was just a figment of my imagination ... that someone was just carrying out a farce to please or to annoy me ... may be africa and all its problems did not exist ... may be america was not that powerful that it could invade our living room with its images of a better life that we could only pant for
there was no africa or europe or america or asia or australia in Iten where i grew up ... the rest of the world was far away ... or may be it was just too close only that i did not care ... but with the trees my mother had planted ... the orchard ... the fog ... the field hand who went on with his duties as glum as Uncle Tom would have been ... it was just me and my thoughts ... dream i did dream .
i made images of kingdoms and giant thick forests where the strangest of animals lived ... i saw brave, heroic lasses wielding magic swords running away through the thick forests ... running away from evil lords/wicked witches/ugly trolls who sought to capture them ... and from then on ... the tales of my people and the tales of the outside world merged in me
they say the voice that sings from outside africa is louder than the voice that sings from africa ... every day as i trudged to school we were taught concepts that were too far divorced from the lives we led around ... but that was ok ... science is never different ... it might have found others earlier and the ones who are a tad behind had better learn from those who can call themselves the masters ... still if only a teacher would have made me see the valley that lay to the west of our home ... if someone would have told me to take a keener look at the wood, stone and leaf around
western education made me a dreamer ... i dreamt of a world far beyond ... and the people around me became little ... i too became little ... and so did Kabon .... the old grandma who trudged barefoot to thatch her house
the world used to come to iten once in a while ... the International Safari Rally ... helicopters buzzed around and blew up blouses ... opening up sneak previews for the voyeurs ... and then the colors ... it is so strange to see a mix of color ... it brings life into a sharper reality ... people of all colors moving around ... and the cars and the helicopters
i have read far and wide ... the tutors at school have always thought of me as clever ... i just find myself odd ... in one way or another ... knowing and being interested in things no one else cares about ... who wants to hear about Tenochtilan or Genghis Khan ... who needs the past when you have a whole future fresh and unexplored ... who cares about Bugganes and Guanacos, or whether mammoths could be cloned or that the cross between a lion and a tiger is a liger and that the latter grows so much larger than the parents
may be i should forget the big, wide world for a while ... and focus on me ... improve on me ...create a rock, solid self-image with a pure fountain inside ... may be others would love to drink from that ... others that make my world
Monday, April 16, 2007
with a crock of gold, they wait for us, at rainbow's end
a long time ago, when the earth was still new, many feet shuffled up a valley ... may be it was the words of a powerful shaman that made them go... may be it was a volcano that erupted that chased them away... may be it was their changing spirit ... or the curiosity in their heart ... the important thing is that they moved ... and through them the whole world was filled and explored
the valley was the famous Rift Valley ... and they were our ancestors, so they say, the homo erectus ... i found the tracks of one of them ... so i believed ... firmly embedded in a piece of volcanic rock ... happened when we were digging a well, was a small child then, playing around as the strong workmen dug ... when one of the workers handed me a small rock ... and told me look
it was their clear as day ... the small foot of a small child immortalized in rock ... did he make it to his people's intended destination,what was his name,was he beloved by his mother, was his father a famous hunter, did he see the mammoth and the mastodon ... was he going to be a cave painter ... i was excited ... it is always exciting to connect with the past ... events like wine, tastes much better with time ... time makes even the most small-time act, a great feat for mankind
probably, 10,000 years from now,a scientist might discover your discarded shopping list and spend the rest of his life researching on who you are ... because we are all important ... one away or another ... and everything we do so precious
as a child i listened a lot to my mother, she is a natural tusitala (teller of tales )... i learnt about my grand parents and my grand parent's grandparents ... i just felt important to know about them for once they lived ...breathed ... ate ... loved ... just like me ... their footsteps might never have been immortalized in volcanic rock, but they were forever printed in my heart, mortal though it may be ..
it is sad that one time our laughter is born by the wind ... and the next day the wind bears no recollection of our voice ... and it is the turn of our children and grandchildren to laugh ...i wonder if my ancestors ever dreamt of me ... i wonder if they knew that one day one of their children would try to write about them but have no tale ... but just a heart for them
i met my maternal grandmother only briefly ... my mother was the last born and my grandma gave birth to her at a very late age when the former already had grandchildren ... i was the second last born in a family of 7 so by the time i was just a toddler grandma was already advanced in age ... but i remember visiting her, when she was sick and ailing ... she was already blind and as i reached the doorstep she called out with joy ... who is that with the voice of my father? ... i was to shy to answer and my mother said it was me
it was creepy being there, in her dark hut, seeing her in her gaunt, 'old-age-scented' wrap blankets ... yes old age has a smell for your information ... she struggled to sit ... i could not see very well ... the hut was dimly-lit and her children came in and out, hovering over her like vultures ... but she had so much joy, she did ... she laughed all the time and just wanted to be with me ... interrupting her conversation with mama so as to call me to her side ... i could not speak Keiyo then and she kept referring to me as her 'little Swahili boy'
i remember her holding my hand and muttering something in keiyo ... my mother would translate her words into swahili ... she wanted me to spit on her white head, there was a clash of culture for a mini sec, but i obliged ... and she began her blessings ... she wished that i live till my head was whiter than the clouds, that i be happy and have all my heart desired, that i become a good warrior to my people just as was expected of men at her time ... then she spoke of her oncoming death, that i should not cry when she was gone ... that she was old and needed to meet her husband on the other side ... so that they could sit together by the warm fires in the sky and tale tales of old
it was the most powerful moment in my life ... she died soon after that ... my mother did not take me to the funeral ... grandma, i realized later, had forbade that i attend ... she knew i was too young and would be afraid of seeing her casket ... but mama took me there much later and pointed at the ground where she had been lain ... i shook though i was not afraid ... and reached for mama's hand
the dead have no use for the living, grandma would have said ... i had to reach to my life ... to let my laughter ride in the wind ... and to reach to the blessings my ancestors had left for me and make rich my stay on earth, for fellow mankind and I ... we are not here to stay my people say, but only to prepare the road for those who will follow us
the valley was the famous Rift Valley ... and they were our ancestors, so they say, the homo erectus ... i found the tracks of one of them ... so i believed ... firmly embedded in a piece of volcanic rock ... happened when we were digging a well, was a small child then, playing around as the strong workmen dug ... when one of the workers handed me a small rock ... and told me look
it was their clear as day ... the small foot of a small child immortalized in rock ... did he make it to his people's intended destination,what was his name,was he beloved by his mother, was his father a famous hunter, did he see the mammoth and the mastodon ... was he going to be a cave painter ... i was excited ... it is always exciting to connect with the past ... events like wine, tastes much better with time ... time makes even the most small-time act, a great feat for mankind
probably, 10,000 years from now,a scientist might discover your discarded shopping list and spend the rest of his life researching on who you are ... because we are all important ... one away or another ... and everything we do so precious
as a child i listened a lot to my mother, she is a natural tusitala (teller of tales )... i learnt about my grand parents and my grand parent's grandparents ... i just felt important to know about them for once they lived ...breathed ... ate ... loved ... just like me ... their footsteps might never have been immortalized in volcanic rock, but they were forever printed in my heart, mortal though it may be ..
it is sad that one time our laughter is born by the wind ... and the next day the wind bears no recollection of our voice ... and it is the turn of our children and grandchildren to laugh ...i wonder if my ancestors ever dreamt of me ... i wonder if they knew that one day one of their children would try to write about them but have no tale ... but just a heart for them
i met my maternal grandmother only briefly ... my mother was the last born and my grandma gave birth to her at a very late age when the former already had grandchildren ... i was the second last born in a family of 7 so by the time i was just a toddler grandma was already advanced in age ... but i remember visiting her, when she was sick and ailing ... she was already blind and as i reached the doorstep she called out with joy ... who is that with the voice of my father? ... i was to shy to answer and my mother said it was me
it was creepy being there, in her dark hut, seeing her in her gaunt, 'old-age-scented' wrap blankets ... yes old age has a smell for your information ... she struggled to sit ... i could not see very well ... the hut was dimly-lit and her children came in and out, hovering over her like vultures ... but she had so much joy, she did ... she laughed all the time and just wanted to be with me ... interrupting her conversation with mama so as to call me to her side ... i could not speak Keiyo then and she kept referring to me as her 'little Swahili boy'
i remember her holding my hand and muttering something in keiyo ... my mother would translate her words into swahili ... she wanted me to spit on her white head, there was a clash of culture for a mini sec, but i obliged ... and she began her blessings ... she wished that i live till my head was whiter than the clouds, that i be happy and have all my heart desired, that i become a good warrior to my people just as was expected of men at her time ... then she spoke of her oncoming death, that i should not cry when she was gone ... that she was old and needed to meet her husband on the other side ... so that they could sit together by the warm fires in the sky and tale tales of old
it was the most powerful moment in my life ... she died soon after that ... my mother did not take me to the funeral ... grandma, i realized later, had forbade that i attend ... she knew i was too young and would be afraid of seeing her casket ... but mama took me there much later and pointed at the ground where she had been lain ... i shook though i was not afraid ... and reached for mama's hand
the dead have no use for the living, grandma would have said ... i had to reach to my life ... to let my laughter ride in the wind ... and to reach to the blessings my ancestors had left for me and make rich my stay on earth, for fellow mankind and I ... we are not here to stay my people say, but only to prepare the road for those who will follow us
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
one day when it is all over
i have never loved the word SUCCESS ... it came in the form of a girl i never met ... it was in high school and my sister brought home a copy of the KCSE results ... it fell their on my lap and i read into a list of straight As that girls from her school scored ... big deal my sister says ... there is another one she adds ... so bright that teachers at school marvel at her genius ... i spent an hour or a half listening intensely at this girl at whose form figures of straight As seemed to dance around
we lived in a farm ... every sunday mother forced us to go to the catholic church ... not so bad considering that my head was always elsewhere and i hardly ever listened to the priest's sermons ... never will for he died some years back ... i never really loved my life ... somehow i wish there could be more ... my folks did so much travelling before i was born ... all over kenya and also had the privilege of spending quite a bit of time abroad ... i was just the boy who was born in iten ... i shut my eyes on it ... it was too small for me ... i had to move ... somewhere
but it was always good when it was raining ... the roof would trap the rain into little streams that would wash down and tear at the grass and the earth ... it was exciting to watch the rain ... it was even more exciting when the rain would stop and all you would hear was the sound of the frogs and the toads that came out ... and the termites ... to me they were like fairies ... silverish angels that flocked the sky in a ridiculous rain dance ... we used to catch them, tie them stiffly in a paper bag so that their wings would fall and they would form tight couples ...
then would come the roasting ... my mother had a black pan hidden somewhere and after dinner was made we would pour all the termites on and roast them over a low heat ...a wierd oily scent would feel the room and by the end of it all many of my sisters would be too scared to eat it
but luel was brave ... luel, my elder sister who used to be a prefect in school ..... luel who said she had eaten termites raw several times before ... luel, who taught me how to castrate a bull ... luel, who tore my favourite t-shirt while i was wearing it and laughed at the look on my face ... luel, who i once threw a pliers at ... luel who was now sitting with me telling me about a girl who scored straight As in school
i do not know why i was so much fascinated with the STRAIGHT A GIRLS STORY ... and why it was always so boring to everyone else ... i must have talked about it too much that people must have thought i was a loon with a fetish for grades ... still, i think to me grades was the only way of showing my 'it' to the world ... i felt dreary alone many times with friends whom i felt were only nice to me coz i was a sorry kid ... i felt weak, small, unassertive ... this strange kid who never played football, who always read, who always knew the meaning of every word someone failed to understand in a newspaper, novel or magazine
still i wanted life ... more fulfillment ... and i needed a future ... and grades to me was the only way of breathing out ... i followed her like a dream ... i knew her habit, i imagined her like a person i knew for long ... i despised her somehow ... but i loved her ... she was success
whenever i felt down from then on i would only think of her ... her name was Flora ... and somehow her dream became my dream ... i dreamt of making straight As ... i read hard i did, ... followed all the rules and listened strictly to the teachers ... i made it somehow ... for now am in campus ... flora went far ... she made it to Harvard ... the school our headmaster drummed constantly in our heads ... i made her my e-pal ... we talked for long ... followed her school life and examination tables as if they were my own ... and at a point i thought my life would simply mesh into hers ... but when she closed off my heart felt relief ... it was time to search for what i truly wanted
SUCCESS must be a greek word ... it was the greeks who complicated the world with such issues ... before people simply lived, no one strove to be better than the other ... there was very little competition if any ... only love and wars on love, and shepherds taking care of their flock ... simple, rustic lives that seek to be coveted
am finishing school ... finally, i have to look at myself in the mirror and take myself for what i truly am and to make choices to lead my life towards the path i have chosen ... it is scary ... i feel so young, so unprepared ... i have never loved surprises ... but am strong as any other that came ... i will pull it through ... i will find my essence and shine through it ... am not just a cog in the wheel ... a pebble flowing with the mass of humanity to a destructive end ... am alive, i feel, am sexy, i have dreams, i have a heart, i have something to offer to the world and i have the right to pursue happiness and SUCCESS
we lived in a farm ... every sunday mother forced us to go to the catholic church ... not so bad considering that my head was always elsewhere and i hardly ever listened to the priest's sermons ... never will for he died some years back ... i never really loved my life ... somehow i wish there could be more ... my folks did so much travelling before i was born ... all over kenya and also had the privilege of spending quite a bit of time abroad ... i was just the boy who was born in iten ... i shut my eyes on it ... it was too small for me ... i had to move ... somewhere
but it was always good when it was raining ... the roof would trap the rain into little streams that would wash down and tear at the grass and the earth ... it was exciting to watch the rain ... it was even more exciting when the rain would stop and all you would hear was the sound of the frogs and the toads that came out ... and the termites ... to me they were like fairies ... silverish angels that flocked the sky in a ridiculous rain dance ... we used to catch them, tie them stiffly in a paper bag so that their wings would fall and they would form tight couples ...
then would come the roasting ... my mother had a black pan hidden somewhere and after dinner was made we would pour all the termites on and roast them over a low heat ...a wierd oily scent would feel the room and by the end of it all many of my sisters would be too scared to eat it
but luel was brave ... luel, my elder sister who used to be a prefect in school ..... luel who said she had eaten termites raw several times before ... luel, who taught me how to castrate a bull ... luel, who tore my favourite t-shirt while i was wearing it and laughed at the look on my face ... luel, who i once threw a pliers at ... luel who was now sitting with me telling me about a girl who scored straight As in school
i do not know why i was so much fascinated with the STRAIGHT A GIRLS STORY ... and why it was always so boring to everyone else ... i must have talked about it too much that people must have thought i was a loon with a fetish for grades ... still, i think to me grades was the only way of showing my 'it' to the world ... i felt dreary alone many times with friends whom i felt were only nice to me coz i was a sorry kid ... i felt weak, small, unassertive ... this strange kid who never played football, who always read, who always knew the meaning of every word someone failed to understand in a newspaper, novel or magazine
still i wanted life ... more fulfillment ... and i needed a future ... and grades to me was the only way of breathing out ... i followed her like a dream ... i knew her habit, i imagined her like a person i knew for long ... i despised her somehow ... but i loved her ... she was success
whenever i felt down from then on i would only think of her ... her name was Flora ... and somehow her dream became my dream ... i dreamt of making straight As ... i read hard i did, ... followed all the rules and listened strictly to the teachers ... i made it somehow ... for now am in campus ... flora went far ... she made it to Harvard ... the school our headmaster drummed constantly in our heads ... i made her my e-pal ... we talked for long ... followed her school life and examination tables as if they were my own ... and at a point i thought my life would simply mesh into hers ... but when she closed off my heart felt relief ... it was time to search for what i truly wanted
SUCCESS must be a greek word ... it was the greeks who complicated the world with such issues ... before people simply lived, no one strove to be better than the other ... there was very little competition if any ... only love and wars on love, and shepherds taking care of their flock ... simple, rustic lives that seek to be coveted
am finishing school ... finally, i have to look at myself in the mirror and take myself for what i truly am and to make choices to lead my life towards the path i have chosen ... it is scary ... i feel so young, so unprepared ... i have never loved surprises ... but am strong as any other that came ... i will pull it through ... i will find my essence and shine through it ... am not just a cog in the wheel ... a pebble flowing with the mass of humanity to a destructive end ... am alive, i feel, am sexy, i have dreams, i have a heart, i have something to offer to the world and i have the right to pursue happiness and SUCCESS
Thursday, March 22, 2007
dread the road the devil spat on
i have always felt like a puppy ... reaching out for people for love and appreciation ... but i guess it is time i become a full-fledged wolf ... am getting out of campus soon in quest for my own life and destiny ... i kinda feel like frodo in middle-earth ... all so short and small with all this gaunt orcs hovering around me ... but i have spirit in me so i guess things will not turn out as bad as they did to another
am reminded intensely of home ... we had a garden i said ... no, it was an orchard ... a fruit orchard and i used to sit there whiling away time when i was a kid ... my parents would get scared ... what is wrong with our child ... why doesn't he find friends to play with ... yea, i was mostly a sulky kid who looked so sad for those who do not understand me ... but i was happy ... in one way or another i was ... even though i could stay still under the lemon shade for long no one would know i was having conversations with the tree
the most amazing thing is that trees can talk ... this does not mean i have descended into any form of celtic paganisms but i can sure understand where they came from ... christianity as described by the first missionaries and many of the so -called charismatic churchmen has really done its best to distance us from certain truths about mother earth
and one of those truths is that trees have souls ... they feel, breathe and gossip as the rest of us ... they also have dreams to and appreciate those who come close to them to take shelter under their shade ... the trees that grew up in my parents farm remain fondly in my heart ... i have saved their lives countless of times when my folks threatened to cut them down ... and them in their part welcomed me to their most tender secrets ... on their branches, i dreamt of a time when the world was a great jungle and the whole human race was squeezed into little pockets that the trees left us with ... for a long time i did hope that the trees would come and reclaim their own
but here i am and the only world before me is the corporate jungle ... full of fancy gentlemen and fancy ladies in fancy attires, driving fancy cars, speaking fancy English and being all fancy formal ... may be that works ... but for me the only real freedom i ever hard was when i was in my garden
who knows may be the present world system will collapse like the ancient maya kingdom and we could all safely go back to our own farms and talk to the trees ... that would be theraupetic ... but still we would not have aspirin on an aching day ... there would be no dvds to watch desperate housewives ... the honest truth about the world will be cut out from us and we will sink back to fantasy and imagination ... or would people be what they are and seek the truth as it is ... i do not know
well, am just a tired student ... tired of all the competition and all the dreams ... all the goals and all the ambitions ... as you slowly get older and await to die ... i want my garden back ... somehow ... i want to reach to it and shut the rest of the world away from me
am reminded intensely of home ... we had a garden i said ... no, it was an orchard ... a fruit orchard and i used to sit there whiling away time when i was a kid ... my parents would get scared ... what is wrong with our child ... why doesn't he find friends to play with ... yea, i was mostly a sulky kid who looked so sad for those who do not understand me ... but i was happy ... in one way or another i was ... even though i could stay still under the lemon shade for long no one would know i was having conversations with the tree
the most amazing thing is that trees can talk ... this does not mean i have descended into any form of celtic paganisms but i can sure understand where they came from ... christianity as described by the first missionaries and many of the so -called charismatic churchmen has really done its best to distance us from certain truths about mother earth
and one of those truths is that trees have souls ... they feel, breathe and gossip as the rest of us ... they also have dreams to and appreciate those who come close to them to take shelter under their shade ... the trees that grew up in my parents farm remain fondly in my heart ... i have saved their lives countless of times when my folks threatened to cut them down ... and them in their part welcomed me to their most tender secrets ... on their branches, i dreamt of a time when the world was a great jungle and the whole human race was squeezed into little pockets that the trees left us with ... for a long time i did hope that the trees would come and reclaim their own
but here i am and the only world before me is the corporate jungle ... full of fancy gentlemen and fancy ladies in fancy attires, driving fancy cars, speaking fancy English and being all fancy formal ... may be that works ... but for me the only real freedom i ever hard was when i was in my garden
who knows may be the present world system will collapse like the ancient maya kingdom and we could all safely go back to our own farms and talk to the trees ... that would be theraupetic ... but still we would not have aspirin on an aching day ... there would be no dvds to watch desperate housewives ... the honest truth about the world will be cut out from us and we will sink back to fantasy and imagination ... or would people be what they are and seek the truth as it is ... i do not know
well, am just a tired student ... tired of all the competition and all the dreams ... all the goals and all the ambitions ... as you slowly get older and await to die ... i want my garden back ... somehow ... i want to reach to it and shut the rest of the world away from me
Friday, January 12, 2007
CHARLES THE SERIOUS
Charles was a serious Kenyan
he was not intentionally bad
neither was he necessarily good
of course he loved his beer at Rhoda's place
but he would never turn away a beggar at his door
he never bothered with friendships
so he made no enemies
ten shoes he had
strenously collected from the markets of Gikomba
to suit the styles of Milan's spring collections
one of them he called a camper
though it had been nibbled by a mouse
another he called a loafer
though it closely resembled a small shovel
his head he scratched
to keep plans awake
his eyes visions they bore
to make him blind to all around
that he crossed Haile Selassie without looking
and a matatu slammed into him
leaving behind a Charles The Serious Kenyan stain on the road
he was not intentionally bad
neither was he necessarily good
of course he loved his beer at Rhoda's place
but he would never turn away a beggar at his door
he never bothered with friendships
so he made no enemies
ten shoes he had
strenously collected from the markets of Gikomba
to suit the styles of Milan's spring collections
one of them he called a camper
though it had been nibbled by a mouse
another he called a loafer
though it closely resembled a small shovel
his head he scratched
to keep plans awake
his eyes visions they bore
to make him blind to all around
that he crossed Haile Selassie without looking
and a matatu slammed into him
leaving behind a Charles The Serious Kenyan stain on the road
Monday, January 08, 2007
Love as Long as You Can
Oh love, as long as day may dawn,
The hour will come,
You will stand beside a grave , and mourn
Whoever gives his heart to you
Oh, show him all the love you own,
And fill his waking hours with joy,
And never make him feel alone.
And watch your tongue as best you can -
A wicked word is quickly spoken.
"Oh, god, I didn't mean it so!"
The other goes away, Heart-broken,
Then you kneel down beside the grave
And say: 'Look at the woman who
Is weeping here to see you go!
Forgive me, please, for hurting you!
Oh, god, I didn't mean it so!'
But he can't see and he can't hear you,
He can't be welcomed back, somehow.
The mouth that kissed you oft before
Can't say that all's forgiven now...
He did forgive you, long ago,
But many hot tears fell, my friend.
About you and your bitter word...
Oh, he's at rest, he's reached the end!
The hour will come,
You will stand beside a grave , and mourn
Whoever gives his heart to you
Oh, show him all the love you own,
And fill his waking hours with joy,
And never make him feel alone.
And watch your tongue as best you can -
A wicked word is quickly spoken.
"Oh, god, I didn't mean it so!"
The other goes away, Heart-broken,
Then you kneel down beside the grave
And say: 'Look at the woman who
Is weeping here to see you go!
Forgive me, please, for hurting you!
Oh, god, I didn't mean it so!'
But he can't see and he can't hear you,
He can't be welcomed back, somehow.
The mouth that kissed you oft before
Can't say that all's forgiven now...
He did forgive you, long ago,
But many hot tears fell, my friend.
About you and your bitter word...
Oh, he's at rest, he's reached the end!
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