CHANGES

CHANGES

The weather has changed.

Lately you cannot anticipate the rain. Once it has given its warning, it pours from the skies at its own discretion. Before, it used to start raining from the hills, you could watch it advance as you did the last minute shelter oriented preparations. You could watch it come, usually from the east, seen as a milky mist that could cover the hill, then spread around until you heard it drumming on the iron sheet rooftops of the town center. Then it was time to go inside. Listening to an old man speak the other day, he referred to it as the rain is falling ‘from the nape’.

As kids, School holidays were characterized by countless days spent patronizing the river valley. Under ruse of going to graze the cows, we could stay the whole day  engaging in all the games we imagined possible. The river valley had not been cultivated yet and it was one sprawling grassland punctuated by random thickets and bushes. The banks of the river were full of trees which gave the river a kind of privacy from the rest of the world. Under the shade of these trees, we could sit, light fires and burn the juicy maize cobs or potatoes which we had ‘picked’ from one of the neighboring shambas, thus completing our menu for lunch. Then we could swim until the shadows grew long and thin by which time we couldn’t hear ourselves properly owing to the water in our ears.

The river valley has been cultivated, the trees from the banks have been cleared away and presently you cannot find a single surviving thicket thanks to the charcoal burners and the growing population. The river is no longer as serene as it used to be, the long soft grass, the kind that is makes thatch that was witness to a lot of illicit affairs is no longer there. At one point, the river opens up to form a pool where we used to swim, in our time a tree branch overhung from the bank where we could crawl and dive into the river. All gone. Am told no one even bothers to put that concoction of herbs we used to put in the river when the waters were low to make the big fat mudfish that were a delicacy to us rise drunkenly to the surface.

I am home alone. All the friends I grew up with are away. Since Dommy’s house burnt down, he vowed never to come home, I haven’t seen the dude ever since I was in seconds year. I hear Phanice got married. I can’t find Alex, after finishing from the police academy, he rarely ever comes home.  Edna got married, she now has a kid. No one know where Linet is, Zippy is in Nairobi, she tells me she plans to be married soon and Dorothy flew to the States.

The other kids, the ones we always counted as too young to join our games or those who played children while we played the parents in Kalongolongo have all grown up. They are now strapping brawny young men just breaking their voices and starting to notice the girls. They sit by the rails on the bridge waiting and discussing as we once did.  My own brothers are in this lot. I remember my time here, I remember almost being beaten because of some girl and then almost being beaten again after I had taken Paul to go see Lydia.

My primary school tutor began an Academy  Primary School, way to go man! The school has picked up. One thing about this guy, he never even for one moment ever did treat me as a kid in all the time he was my teacher. He used to tell me everything, his plans, his aspirations for his family and his zeal to learn. He has just completed his diploma and is starting his degree programme in August.  This he tells me over drinks in a bar he began but had to sell due to community pressure. Apparently he was growing too fast for the community’s liking so he had to sell the Bar or else his wife had started saying that he wants to marry another woman and stay at the bar since its some distance off from their homestead.

All the talk I seem to be hearing all over whenever I meet the older portion of the village is how I have become a young man and how I should think about marrying. I fear I am going to be a disappointment to these folks. Marriage is the furthest thing from my mind at the moment. I am still deciding on what I want to do with my life. I am at that stage where having a conversation with people feels bothersome, I’d just rather be left alone to my wiles, but how do you tell your mother that you don’t feel like conversation and that you just want to be alone? And that when she is used to your bubbly nature and sunny disposition

College is done. I need to go out there find a job. The prospect of being all alone in the big wide world is scary. My mother is being of no help either from the way she is speaking. Today the conversation at the table was about this family who all went to college to do education, about six members from the same family. Mum is insinuating that had I done education I could have found a job without any hassle. All am asking for is cash to go rent a house with and start tarmacking, my parents all seem to be broke.

 @mossetti