DO WE EVER REMEMBER TO BE YOUNG AGAIN?

BEING YOUNG

BY BRIAN MOSETI

It’s a curiosity that grips you and thrusts you back into childhood. A never ending barrage of questions and arguments and “why’ questions that brings back reminiscence of adults fed up. Of beatings earned and unearned. Of growing up.

Do we ever remember to be kids?

Ake The years Of Childhood, a memoir by acclaimed author Wole Soyinka seems to explore the little child in every personality. Usually we are too caught up in the throes of adult life that memories of childhood seem fickle. And when we get our own kids we are too busy to try to understand their world but instead realise or not realise at all, that we have turned into our parents.

Wole writes about growing up with romantic nostalgia. Even the way he describes Ake, and the changes it has gone through throws me back to when I was a kid growing up in a little town with iron sheet roofs that bled rust, and looked picturesque. Everything was a mystery, a new thing, a new experience that awed. Every adult was revered, a different creature full of a world that looked as tall as them. Our prejudices only covered what was our immediate surrounding.

The priest was to be feared, he had demigod status. Wild Christian, Wole’s mother was a force to reckon with. Were our mothers any different? Did we not always wonder how they almost came up with anything we wanted unless we looked too spoilt? Or how they always knew we had erred and were always ready with their knuckles or slaps? Headmaster, Wole’s father lorded over his school like a kingdom. Our fathers ran our homes the same way. Our fathers were the best in the entire world. And how we came up with nicknames for everyone. Now that we are grown, past teenage, we only whisper nicknames of bosses and people we don’t like in coded hushed tongues.

Wole follows the Police marching band past his home, experiences stereotypes of the woman who looks like a witch, wonders how one could finish all the salt that is being sold at the market place and ends up totally lost. Not only does this bring back nostalgia of when we experienced new things first and the joy and fears that they aroused in our hearts but also the reckless abandon we could exercise to enjoy them. It’s scary because life has curtailed us to the point we can’t really enjoy the simple pleasures of life without the weight of the world and responsibilities tying us down.

Who here did not try to run away as a child or even think that running away could solve everything? And then we’d have nowhere to run. Wole had his guava tree which was his sanctuary. I used to hide in the tea plantation behind our home when I knew a thrashing was coming, but then mum, just like Wild Christian could let it go for a day but raise the issue on a different occasion and only God knows the amount of times I was on the wrong.

The lessons Wole learnt in his childhood are entrenched as he progresses from class to class. For instance don’t fight your brother, but if we did not engage in petty squabbles with our own blood while young, then how will we have grown to love them, because remember we fought over everything. We were jealous of one another over the haziest reasons. Wole learns not to cry when he gets initiated. We all grew up in societies that frowned upon men crying as it portrayed weakness. This nonsense circling about in society lately that men should be emotional is unAfrican. He learns through his father that you shouldn’t destroy other people’s property in the part where another teacher cuts his father’s rose and is forced to cower in fear the whole day, or when Wole himself destroys the Rose bushes.

To me perhaps the two most important lessons Wole learnt were reading and when to say “enough is enough”. The first lesson he picked from his father who loved books and arguments and the second his Mother when they protested against paying taxes. I thank my mother for introducing me to books at a tender age. If perhaps more people encouraged their children to read more, then we could a society that is not full of sheep, a society that questions why dirty deeds like corruption are happening and why we tolerate them.

Why then do we forget to be kids? To laugh freely and play in the sun and live in a world of mirth? Must we break our backs with the confusion of adulthood and forget to smile. There are too many depressed and sad people out there who have forgotten to laugh. Too many people raising children the way they want and not letting children be themselves for that’s how they discover things albeit with a little guidance. Just remember to be a child once again, and you never know everything might turn out alright.

ENDS.

@Mossetti
Photo credit: Photo.net-Anthon Jackson; 

A WEDDING IN KIBERA

 DELUKA

BY BRIAN MOSETI

If a great eye could look from the cloudy dark abyss above, it could center on the brilliance of shukas shawls and flowery dresses that outshine the night. Their bearers dance around living music. Tunes that have been passed down generations by word of mouth and beating drums. The thump thump of the drum and mellow voice of the singer ring with what I imagine to be tinges of the Nubian Desert.

I do not understand the language but the beat simply enters my body, does a little jig in my brain then trickles down to my limbs which start tapping the ground on their own accord. M suddenly propels me to dance, in a crowd of female dancers in flowery dresses, shukas and a storm of perfumes. We dance in rings around the source of the music, a middle aged man sitting on a stool cradling his drum and sweating as he belts out happy songs.

“Lets go to the middle,” M pulls my hand. I don’t want to go, then the lady next to me who has clearly seen that I’m new nudges me in a, what-are-you-afraid-of, manner and laughs, “Just go,” she says.

I shy off and as M heads into the throng I go back to my seat to watch.

I try to find the groom and his bride because I want to see how they are dressed. But I can’t see them in this throng and when M comes back we head to behind the tent where the hood boys are sitting, some standing, smoking drinking, chewing khat and catcalling the ladies. There are more ladies than men.

The ladies spare them knowing stares and walk on, it almost looks like a free for all but no one does anything indecent like grabbing a lady or anything. If I was with my other friends and this was going on, it could be debauchery, but it here it looks so organized.

“Unataka, mwanamke? Go talk to any lady there, which one do you like?” M who sees my interested eyes that are swallowing in this maiden experience like a hungry desert does water tries to get me to talk to a girl. Then he walks over and talks to one of two girls dressed in maroon shawls with gold lacing. He walks while dancing and before he can get there the girls are giggling. I don’t know what he tells them but they jokingly run off giggling, he comes back punches me lightly and says, “You got to show them your moves man”.

“So how will you know who is married or not because I don’t want to be found dead,” I ask him fearing that I don’t possibly want to do something in a culture I don’t understand and end up dead, considering we are in the belly of the infamous Kibera Slums.

“If she is married atakwambia uwache kumsumbua,” this answer again shocks me as it seems so simple and disciplined. Here a no means no.  

M passes me the drink. B who disappeared as we walked in comes over accompanied by a lady carrying a baby in her arms. The baby is about a year old. I swig straight from the bottle and hand it to B. All around me people are having fun. The guys behind me all know one another, as they catch up describe shootings that happened, who went to jail, who won Sport Pesa, while catcalling at the girls who are passing by. Inside the massive tent, people are sitting bobbing their heads to the music. In the middle of the compound the rings continue around the music. It’s a merry affair, Deluka is a Nubian wedding after all. The drink has started to make me feel giddy, I feel infinite. How did I get here?

Kibera has been previously painted as squalid and gory. It has been painted as a festering scar on bordering the almost affluent Langata estate. It has become a postcard picture of NGO’s sourcing for funds. Stand from a high point and all you see are tin roofs, some new and shiny, some so rusted they seem to be bleeding, spreading on to the horizon. Kenya Power poles and wires dominate the skyline above the shanties like a canopy of leafless trees in the jaundiced evening light when I alight at the stage to go visit B.

B’s house is like a coin. You step out of one world into another. Its mud walled on the outside but there is cement plaster inside. A one room without a ceiling but there are two couches inside and a five by six bed. On one wall there is a 24 inch TV and a thick blue carpet on the floor. He tells me he is intending to put a ceiling.

We start the evening with memories of how I became a load the last time we got drunk together in town. C comes over later, more drinks. Its starts to get dark and B says he wants to make a book shelve. We think he is kidding until he gets out timber boards and tools. So we sit outside his house drinking as we watch him hammer away. The din disappearing into the shanties, I wonder why no one is inquiring about the noise.

It’s almost nine but little kids in Bui Buis are playing about, B seem to know almost everyone and some of them stop to inquire what he is making. One elderly lady asks if he is making a stool and if he could make one for her. Then M shows up out of nowhere staggering and shouting greetings at everyone. He sits down. Apparently he is eight years younger than B but he looks older, and rough.

I ask him to show me where the loos are. The outhouse is communal and it is cleaner than it’s immediate surrounding. You walk through pathways flowing with muddy water, cross over a bridge under which if you fell, you’d have to swim in disinfectant, and probably drink it to ensure you are clean. But I never expected to find a clean toilet in Kibera. Kibera is famous for it’s flying toilets.

As we are heading back, we can hear overtones of music over the slum din. “Unataka kwenda Deluka?” M asks. “What’s that?” I ask back as I’ve never heard of the word before.

“Twende tu, utaona,” he says.

By the time B has finished making a rickety book shelf, C is drunk and has started singing in vernacular. The solitary Mulika Mwizi floodlight bathes the ghetto in an orange glow. Almost outside very shop that line the road, young men sit dreamily chewing khat in groups of stoic silent with lost dreams in their eyes. The road is still crowded.

On either side of the road, young men sit chewing Khat and sharing stories of despair. Its 10pm but business is thriving, Matatus weave through the throng of pedestrian traffic incessantly hooting. B buys a Legend mzinga. Today, we do not stop drinking, the music calls to us. M is still shouting at everyone, they all know him.

“Hii ni ghetto bro, you have to belong,” he tells me hugging one side of my shoulder to stop falling.

We arrive and immediately B disappears. The first thing that hits me is the smell. It’s a rich mixture of henna, perfumes, sweaty people and above all these, the smell of marijuana. Behind a massive tent, the hood boys are standing and smoking. The joint is passed around in a circle, no one cares, it is a merry affair after all.

We sit for a while among them sharing our drink, then M gets up to dance pulling me with him. The dancers, a whirlwind of perfumes and the music in a circle. The musician is an old man riding a cradling a drum between his things belting tunes I’ve never heard. A little boy is holding a microphone to his mouth.

‘Where are the bride and her groom?” I ask.

“Over there,” M points to a little tent secluded apart from the crowd where a few elderly women swathed in layers of flowery shawls are sitting with distracted bored eyes watching the revelry as if wondering what the youngsters are up to.

The drink is warming me up, I don’t see the two I’m looking for because I want to see how they are dressed. Later I chance on them dancing, the groom is wearing a navy blue a suits and an Islamic cape, the bride is in a white shawl decorated across the body with patterns of lace and flowers. I’m disappointed. I expected something more exotic.

I’ve also missed the actual ceremony and I was curious as to whether they say the “I do” and who performs the ceremony.

But this does not matter as M is pointing out girls he wants me to hit on, which is making me wonder why he thinks I can’t do it on my own. But my mind is a blur with the smells and the drink we are having which is three quarters gone and I’m still a little afraid as I don’t know this place. I’ve heard stories of how young Nubian men will gang up on you and beat clobber you to death if they catch you hitting on their women.

B comes back with a lady cradling a baby in her arms. He has also brought another bottle with him. This is Chang’aa in a plastic bottle which he passes to M who passes him the Legend. B gets lost in the conversation.

The scene has started to feel shifty. Earlier, the moon was feebly peeking from a cloudy sky. Now the clouds have swallowed the moon. Only the lights from the scene disappear a few meters above and fade into nothing. M passes me the plastic bottle. The baby with B’s woman starts crying. I feel giddy.

The music goes on, the revelry goes on, the guys who were behind the tent have come out and some of them are dancing, a lady tries to get me to dance but I shy off, then out of nowhere, gunshots!

The crowd scatters, I don’t even have time as M swigs the drink, passes it to me and says, lets run. I drink and throw away the bottle and follow them, not knowing where or why we are running to. B is laughing, “you have been baptized to the ghetto,” he says between the laughter.

Everyone is running away.

ENDS.

@Mossetti

 Image sourced from avax.news