September

I’m glad July is over. I didn’t buy any books, it wasn’t very easy not to peep at all the titles in the streets…. I bought other important things  like food and a sweater that hangs like a mosquito net.

I don’t like August as much but it passes so quickly and before you know it it’s plum blossom and the world feels right again as  the September sun shifts on shades of pink and white, and the millions of stars on cloudless nights reminds you that there’s a higher being, and a creative one too.

In 2010, I witnessed  a rare experience. I had been passively watching the sky, the twinkling  stars, some still some on long journeys. Some a bright orange, others a cool purple. The plough, the only set of stars I know, on one side. Then one evening I looked and,,, the plough was on a different location. The entire sky  had shifted. You always hear about scientists telling about the sky and stars and other planets, but from down here, it’s hard to get it, how massive and expansive the universe is I guess at that moment I realized how small I am compared to the major things.

 This month I haven’t had music at all, after waving my hard drive bye bye, I lost motivation to listen  to music from CDs, coz it hangs, and I hate that. But I got  some Jazz- Dave Coz- the other day in my  flash disk and it was just wonderful. Then I was unearthing my CDs and realize I have two missing CDs and I can’t trace them- Sade and Vic Chou. And I passed by a music shop that had a big sign saying- We put your tracks into your flash as you wait- It’s one of those dusty faded music shops. You will find Hugh Masekela and Stevie Wonder in there. But it’s also one of those places headed for closure so they have eager sales men in navy blue aprons who want to know what you want to BUY the minute you sniff in. I want a  place where once you walk in you find cool music playing and you can listen to your select CD on headphones, at your own pleasure- why have they  got to wear navy blue Aprons?

I’ve been eager for the Olympics to start. I like to watch the gymnastics. And Ice skating. But the opening ceremony put me off kabisa. I had set my alarm to wake up and watch but I slept not many minutes later.

 I guess every other will always be compared to the Beijing one.

 And now that the games  have started, I realize I ‘ll end up youtubing them maybe next year Jan.

Positioning.

You can tell by the way he holds a cauliflower head that a mole has eaten from beneath. Also how fast he  can gather  a bunch of spinach with just the right turn of his finger. He is passionate about farming.

He’s a boy I went to Business college with. He was very involved in growing things  then, and it’s no surprise he has never picked up his certificates from the school. So when I nudged an invitation to see what he’s been up to, I got my camera and set off to Kĩng’eero(that’s the real name of the place) Coming from Kieni where if you decide  to plant cabbage you plant  2 acres of it.

 I was really impressed  by what he has done with his one acre. He has everything. Cucumbers, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, brinjals, tomatoes, cabbage, green peppers, and  everything else  that goes by the  name of veggie for the  Kenyan market. At the market they call him kijana wa kila kitu-  young man with everything. He grows and drives his produce to the market, by 6a.m he is back from selling, with bulging pockets.

-Sometimes I feel like I’ve stolen from them- he laughs. He can make a very quick meal with the produce too. Everytime I spend time with a serious farmer, I feel sorry for all those families living in squeezed rooms in Soweto, earning ksh.8,000 while their father’s land overgrows with Mexican marigolds and datura thorn apple.

On my  way bank I passed by a bank to  ask about opening an account.   Figure if I saved a hundred bob every month, in a few years I will have a bit of cash to take a holiday somewhere sunny.

As I filled the form I asked for the terms and  conditions form  to read  through  before I  signed. She took sometime to find it.  Later  she asked me how come I asked for that- No one has ever asked for that. I said how I like to be sure about things. Then she asked what I do and I said I write. We had a nice  chat that went on close to two hours. She was really interested in me writing about Chinese cabbage growers and Japanese spare parts.

-How did you decide to become  a writer?

 Probably coz my uncle is such a story teller and I love reading.

-I wish I knew  what makes  me tick

But you are doing great in customer care

-Maybe, but all I can talk about is my customers. You are doing what you love

 You have a salary at the end of the month.

We laughed, at both ourselves I left at about some minutes to 7.

 I  was very interested in hearing about her acting when she was in school. Turns out she goes to FCC to watch plays and feels very alive while there. 

-So how  come you are in banking.

 I donno, I just found myself here.

 I laughed  when she told me what course she did in college, basically  something that sounded right to the general population.

254

Ignorance is a terrible thing, and I got caught out in this. So there is  this song by Rihanna, Ludacris and some rappers. It’s called – this party don’t stop- I’ve been hearing  it on radio since  last year but didn’t pay much  attention. So the other day  at my friend’s house  I asked for some music. I’ve decided to listen to Neo Soul, Lovers’ rock(love Reggae ), and Kenyan music for the next part of the year. After getting the Glen lewises, Norah Jones and Vivian Greens, he puts on a video and you can imagine my shock that that Rihanna song is actually by CAMP MULLA. I was blown away. These beautifu beautifu  (no typo)Kenyan kids making great music, and here I’m thinking I knew all about Kenyan music! I stand corrected, I felt like one of those people who after hearing a couple of Cold Play, Nickle back and Daughtry songs won’t stop telling you how great rock is and how you must listen to clocks by cold play and photograph by Nickle back and you’re thinking, no, I want Owl City, Ben Jelen and Bo Bice.

So, there are,  some good  mainstream music going round. My favourites: Just a Band, Harry Kimani, Kidum, Ken wa Maria, Sauti Sol, John Njagi, That Jazz guy, who plays the guitar and has an unlikely name for an artist, I think he’s Kevin or Mark, I’ll find out. But Kamande wa Kioi disappointed me with his almost inciting song, he should have stuck to his kapusi and belching in church lyrics. Makes me shudder imagining just how bloody the next election might carry on “shiver”

Then there is Liquideep. There are not Kenyan but I want to adopt them, they are South African. I love the beat to their music, they also don’t pimp their video’s much, kinda like –Just a Band- I like that, you get to concentrate on the music. Asa is someone else I’m coming to love, I hear she’s Nigerian, like Sade is but I don’t suppose she records in Nigeria?

 I once sat on a table, and someone bragged about Justin Beiber being his country man, I thought about mentioning Ezekiel Kemboi and Ndereba  and the huge tea estates in Kericho, the white sandy beaches and the delicious avocados, plums and sweet potatoes, then I thought, a no point, let me just have my pork rice in silence, no it was a cheese burger, yes at McDonalds. A place I only went in when I had to, and not alone, after being openly racially discriminated.

I was two weeks sick last month, bad cold with stuffed nose, headache and a cough that would wake up the dead but the great thing is I knew I’d be alright.  It’s just a Winter cold. Not like that time I had dengue fever and didn’t know  what was wrong with me, you could have  boiled arrow roots on my forehead. I thought this was the end, and started wondering, should I be cremated, or sent back in a box and  what would happen to all my picture collection? 

poem

You lived a dream

Floating grappling

For air, always.

Until the day you saw  running blood, 

from you finger

I’m liquid after all. 

                                                                                      Greg, Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Every living thing

--------As the cloud shadows, racing on the wind, flew over me, trailing ribbons and brightness over the endless browns and greens, I felt a rising exhilaration at just being up there on the roof of Yorkshire. It was an empty landscape where no creature stirred and it was silent except for the cry of distant bird, yet, I felt a further surge of excitement in the solitude, a tingling sense of the nearness of all creation.-------

James Herriot was in touch with his world. Last month I read- Vet in a Spin and Every living thing. He was a vet, but he didn’t simply go about with his medical bag oblivious of the world around him. So as I read about helping lambs give birth, or fixing lame dogs, and clearing off rot in horses, I wish I lived earlier, I would have made an effort to reach him.

Chad Kruger is alive and I haven’t emailed him yet, and the’re three letters to Maeve Binchy which I need to send out. Time.

-----‘Have you felt inside her?’

‘Nay, I haven’t had time.’ He turned harassed eyes towards me

We are behind with the milkin’ this morning. We can’t be late for t’milk man.’

I knew what he meant. The drivers who collected the churns for the big dairy companies were a fierce body of men. Probably kind husbands and fathers at normal times but subject to violent outbursts of rage if they were kept waiting even for an instant. I couldn’t blame them, because they had a lot of territory to cover and many farms to visit, but I had seen them when provoked and their anger was frightening to behold----

I can relate to this. My uncle has to get up at bizarre hours just so not to upset the milk man, he sells a litre for 25 Shillings to the society. Half a litre of the same when packed is Ksh 50. So we tell him to take a risk and move to Brookside but, what will happen when Brookside decides to take less he wonders.

------------She was of the farming generation which had come through the tough times before the war and her gaunt, slightly bowed frame and lined face bore testimony to the hard years. It was the kind of face I had seen on so many of the old Yorkshire folk-grim, but kindly.----------

Reading that paragraph lists faces in my mind that would fit that description. Years of hard, tiring work have lined their faces and roughed their palms.

…….Afterwards we walked through the scented silence of the woods,

The pine needles soft under our feet, and he talked, not only about the deer, but about the other wild creatures of the forest and about the plants and flowers which flourished in those secret places. He seemed to know it all and I began to understand the depths of the interest which colored his entire life. He held the key to a magic world.

As we reached the field the sun came out and, looking back, I could see long drifts of bluebells among the dark holes of the trees, and in the glades, where the first ray struck through the branches, the primroses and anemones shone like scattered jewels…….

Yep, that’s James Herriot for you.

books, memories and giants

I broke open my old book box today and was  surprised at how many books I have collected  over  the  years. From MobyDick to- what if I’m a literary gangsta?- Poetry collection by Tony Muchoma to Carcass for hounds by Meja Mwangi. Diaries and journals dating back to 1997 my own bound sublime Innocence poetry collection from 2007, and  a stripped pullover. The diaries are a bit worthless to me now. Between  ’97 and ’03 I made my entries in a made up language which I can’t be bothered to decode now. ’03 to ’05 was in French, I can’t be bothered to decode either  now.

Maybe I should write  a will. But talking about a will now may convict me if I turned up dead next week, they would  say I  had been suicidal. But I have realized I actually  have  some wealth. Quite a bit too. On average a novel in a second hand shop costs up to $2.50.

There is also the unpublished manuscripts  which could sell after my demise. Two cats, more than  five good clothes, a USB drive, 2 nice plates and a really nice purse my friend gave me. I’m worth about that much.

 There is a time that my dictionary was my most valuable possession. It went up in flames in 2010. If you ask me now, I’m not sure what is that extraordinary something. I think I could get up and go and not worry that I didn’t bring  my camera. Is that a  good or bad thing? It depends. There was a time moving required so much planning and bags. I was attached to old clothes and drift wood collected from sea shores, I guess now I’m more attached to people. I drag along people across the boundaries I traverse.

It’s easier to bring people along. The smiles  and laughs and experiences  shared are lighter to carry  than rocks from Mt.Longonot or sweaters that mean something.

I never look forward to Mondays

I'll take one shot for my pain
One drag for my sorrow
Get messed up today
I'll be okay tomorrow

Singing about liquor is not really a way  to progress, but it helps me  boot  on Monday Mornings.

Cause my job's got me going nowhere
So I ain't got a thing to lose
Take me to a place where I don't care
This is me and my liquor store blues("Liquor Store Blues"
(Bruno Mars feat. Damian Marley))

 Monday has always  been my worst as far back as is possible to remember.

 

Our music teacher wanted us to make musical instruments. We had options. You could make a flute from bamboo, shakers from bottle caps, burned in fire then straightened out. Or you could make  a wandindi- it is a kind of a guitar with a drum base made out of stretched  skin. A shaker  would  have been easy but bottle caps were hard to come by.

 The main brew then was Shibuku, which came in yellow  plastic bottles, the kind that is used for battery water now. I had rabbits, but mine were pets, about 25 of them, they had names too so slaughtering one  to get the skin  was out of the question. The only time  I had some slaughtered was  when  ants invade the hatches  and ate them alive. So I needed bamboo.

No one grew bamboo in my area. The closest bamboo plantation was kirangi. Kirangi was  part of the Aberdare  forest where some squatters planted cabbage interlaced  with ganja forest conservation they called it.

I had  a classmate lived in that direction nearby so one Sunday afternoon we decided to go search for  the accursed raw material that  could make music. To say it was a 50km walk would not be a big exaggeration, and by the time I got back home, grandmother wanted to skin me. Worse, the cows  had broken into the farms and fed on a good number of corn heads, the rest had been carried away by baboons. Two of the young bulls were bloated, and while the village vet was  basking in his glory after carrying out a major surgery-piercing their abdomens to let out the air, I run in horror to the back of the house to find my uniform wet from the afternoon rain. A calf had chewed on the sleeve of my good sweater too.

 In those days, children didn’t get depression and high blood pressure and such, it was simplified in one term- rung’athio- I got a  telling off from cucu for having- rung’athio- the following  Monday morning. I had barely finished my tea when the whistle went off- my neighbor always  whistled twice to say-ukaga- meaning unless you fly you will find us ahead.

If Damian Marley and Bruno Mars had had their liquor store blues single then, I’d have sold all my earthly treasure, rabbits  and library and bought a ticket. Coz you can imagine how it felt when I realized I didn’t pack my lunch, nor the hastily made flute.

strange thing, is that as I post this, about midnight, the egesa- the pub in the neighbourhood is playing that same song-... I bet I'll sleep  soundly then.