Coffee berries and the cappuccino query

Yesterday around 10.00a.m, when the drizzling subsided, we went to the coffee plants to remove suckers. I didn’t know what a sucker was before. Now I understand the weight of the insult- you sucker. Ever painted a  high wall with a roller or fixed a few light bulb holders? De- sucking is the same  pain in the neck. I can’t say I enjoyed  the job. The coffee plants are long and with the morning drizzle, the minute you pulled the plant towards you got a wet splash across your face. See, 100gm tin of ordinary coffee goes for ksh.200. A kilo of raw coffee beans is selling for ksh.106 at the moment, the highest pay they say. At times they get ksh.20 per kilo.

Yet the  farmer prunes, weeds, de-sucks, harvest for that  kind of cash. Somethings have me puzzled. A farmer grows coffee he cannot afford in its final form, yet lives in a lopsided, temporary shelter. I’m trying to put away the thought- how much does a 500gm tin of Java or Nescafe  coffee cost? A small cup sold for ksh. 120 four years  back.

So as we  de-sucked the coffee plants and got wet from the dew, I kept thinking about sweet potatoes and terere(pig weed) you are better off planting every inch of your land with those.

After that neck biting task, we beat some macadamia to snack on as we warmed lunch.

Macadamia has two outer hard  covers. You can tell it is ready  when the outer  green cover  breaks   to reveal the  harder  brown  shell. If you roast them for a while, when you break the hard cover, they come off the shell easily, the heat enhances the taste too.

I read in an Awake!  Magazine that Macadamia nuts regulate blood pressure. Funny, I live in a place where every third person has issues with B.P or diabetes, or both, they all have macadamia trees, which is a children’s  snack. The rest is carted off to the international market.

One day, I might understand farmers’ logic. The patience, the hard work, the undying hope. I never  met  a farmer  who didn’t believe in God.

Some days shine, some days glitter, some days are as bright as yellow curtains, inside my heart

Radio played my favourite song. That is significant because, I was feeling quite low, so sipping Rosemary tea and thinking about getting into bed, but not yet, I wanted to write a poem feeling that the moon rising earlier that evening should be honored with a poem, but the kind of poetry I've been composing lately involves my camera.
So shiftening channels on my uncle's transistor radio, they played Corrine Bailey Rae-Records On, I didn't think that station knew her, they play Luther and other dead people like the dude with a bass which John from Ally McBeal used to impersonate, what's his name- my first, my last, my everything, that guy.
Anyhow. I had gone from wishing I had a brother, or a father, to wishing I was man, to concluding that God must be a superwoman long story that. I had to go somewhere in the evening so I couldn't go alone, my aunt was not around otherwise she would have gone with me. I needed company, preferably male with the rise in rapes and muggings .


On further thought, I realised even if I had either, a brother or a father, they'd probably not want to go with me. If I were a man, I wouldn't get the chance to wear flowing cotton skirts and ballet shoes so that thought didn't last.

So I decided that either way, thank God God is not a physical ,an and since no one has ever seen God, I'm free to imagine him as a superwoman: Kind, patient, helpful,with a smile, hardworking and tough, yeah.

Smelling cats

Tata, Me, picking plums

My aunt thinks I am mad. I saw the look she gave  me when I asked her to smell the  cats. I had shared some insight, which ofcourse I’ve researched on, that cats have a certain scent especially those with a bit of fur. Two of our cats- Kilucy and Kamau have the scent, I like it, it is like a warm frumpy duvet(Not

that I’m thinking of  making a blanket out of their fur, although, I wonder  would grow back if I shaved them?)

The othe r two, Sox and Ming ming have silky hair which doesn’t smell at all. So she picked them up one by one, that’s when she gave me the look and I regretted saying somethings out loud.

“A, a, I can’t smell.” She said.

We had been slashing away at a field of overgrown sturdy pigweed  the sun hitting us had, it wasn’t enjoyable so I offered to bring Tea and Githeri.

Things are bad when tata thinks I’m  mad since she is the one human who has had my back over the years even in my mad schemes. If I called her and said- hey tata, I want to go to Pluto- She would send me pocket money for the trip. So I told her never mind it’s probably my nose.

But tata is mad too, probably why we get along. Her madness takes another form- Unimaginable positivity, that’s the best phrase I can come up with to describe her take on life.

I remember one time someone came and packed up her chicken, all her laying chicken . The next day she  went out and bought others. A week later, she was getting about six eggs a day .

I guess, if someone planted a mountain infront of tata, she would not  blast a way through it, but she would  find a way round it, maybe by negotiating with the mountain to please make way. She is the woman mentioned in proverbs 30.

Kamau and Ming Ming

harvesting macadamia nuts

this morning, as I was blowing hard at the fire and making no progress, I stopped to pull out a  thorn from my finger. Dry macadamia leaves  are full of sharp thorns, and I have plenty in my palms since I started using them. I paused to think that in a short while, I've become so comfortable it's hard to tell the difference between me and the locals, which is an advantage to me, fitting in, blending in and getting on with it. So I listed myself as one of the weirdest people I've met, and pounded on a single macadamia nut . My new set up makes me think of  a doll house, playing house(cha mama) fire that doesn't really cook, evenings that end without the usual climax of a steps and orders household, it's all about doing what seems best at that time.

Last night, when I put on the cheap rice to cook, I knew we were set for an amazing super, which  turned out just so, half cooked half burned, and sticky, but there is always a solution to such meals, plenty of black pepper, hot pepper, and avocado, then wolf it down in minutes.

Well, I had to check  how ripe my recent passion fruit wine was getting on, just to clear the former taste. I must say this new wine could see me become a mututho dealer ( http://www.kentv.net/kentv-news/1-latest-news/3179-misery-in-kenya-as-mututho-law-bites), but dreams of self employment are still a length away.

This morning I attended a funeral, my friend lost his father to a disease, he is younger than me,my friend, and now looking at him, I can't help feeling the weight on his shoulders, and seeing the vuta nikuvute(push and pull) from the extended family, I have this thought in my mind: We live only for a short while, if we make it until 70, the rest of the years are filled with misery. So why can't we all move an inch, just an inch so that we can all fit in within the time limit we have to breath. The speaker at the funeral, an aged brother left no doubt that all those in Jehovah's memory will be resurrected.In God's new earth, everyone will have the  freedom to live as they were meant to be, in perfect health.

I'd like to share a soundtrack from Juno, the movie,  the only movie I have watched  ever so many times, only seconded by Pareneeta, but this computer won't allow adobe flash, so I'll just keep humming this song:

You may tire of me as our December sun is setting because I'm not who I used to be
No longer easy on the eyes but these wrinkles masterfully disguise
The youthful boy below who turned your way and saw
Something he was not looking for: both a beginning and an end
But now he lives inside someone he does not recognize
When he catches his reflection on accident ..

It's by the band Death Cab for Cutie, can't get it off my head. Brothers on a hotel bed, and this here is wild rose, Endarasha's finest.

a poem

Thank You

I spoke with an old pal yesterday. He said I inspired him to write after he saw my collection of handwritten books, that was in ’06 I think, so he has been writing and he wanted to know, what to do with the volumes? I told him I have mine locked up in a box, for which I misplaced the key.

I had texted him to ask-was he alright? We are very alike so I haven’t been too worried that we haven’t communicated in a while. I tend to take a break from communication sometimes, and from friends and family, then while I’m getting on with life thinking all is alright, someone shows up at my door wanting to know- Is something wrong?

So my Pal, he’s the one who suggested I get on blogger since I had trouble posting on my webpage.

When he called, I thought it was one of my editors asking why I haven’t sent a story I had opened my mouth to say I had but can’t get round it, so I was pensive, until he laughed.

I guess it’s because of the ease at which me and this old friend can talk. After a year, 3, we just continue from where we left, no pressure, no questions, or judgment on the other’s choice of life.

-So you decided to become a fish trader in Lake Victoria? Fine, what have you written lately?

Whenever I feel unsure or unsettled about my writing, on instinct I end up tracing Ken and if we meet up for a chat, I end up getting any pilled up energy and writing. He taught me that writing, being an art should be taken seriously, we were looking at the art displayed at the Hilton Art shop one evening . “ We are all artists, when humans don’t discover their artistic side, they turn to the basic art of creating.”

Onetime, as I was writing my 2^nd novel, I caught malaria and was struggling to write between sick spells. Ken came over, we chat over kahawa no.1( Rough coffee that needs extensive boiling to taste like coffee). I felt better after, and finished my novel.

So this week when I called Ken, we chat and I finally managed to write two stories from my last trip, which is a relief.

.....just get on a bus

after high school I was still a rioting teenager suffering the effects of a troubled mind. I cut ,my long hair but it grew back in offense like kei apple that has been burned to the ground.. I had trouble maintaining curly hair which I wanted to have but I only went about looking like a Somali shepherd boy or like a male Ethiopian athlete like Tlotlego likes to put it.

There was this period I didn't have shampoo, or conditioner  and was washing my hair with course bar soap and using coconut oil( you don't smell it after a while)haha.
I mentioned to someone I knew in college that I needed to wash my hair but wasn't really eager. Would you believe it he said- come over I'll wash it for you-so sweet. It wasn't a trap either, his sisters laughed, I think his brother thought it was tacky.

I was thinking about this when meditating abut Nyeri men. Not a single gentle man exists among them. My aunt explained this fact to me."They love money, are contemptuous and useless, they think property is what makes a man."
Earlier, I only thought they had an ego, but now, as I make my calculations, I could  count the gentle men I've met in this region in our hand. One of them was this  young man who came  up to me after high school and asked- are you alright? With real interest,like he would take what was bothering me and give it a good thump. I had just  realised we weren't as rich as I had always assumed, and I was moving away from my family.
Perhaps it's the Hero factor.

Another thought, very people around here(Nyeri) marry. They have girlfriends, with three children, 3 years down the line; if they make it that far and that could be the third wife- ah.

So anyway. This morning I was walking fast to reach town quick, I got a lift from a friendly shop owner on a motorbike! ( I told him I was recently married nearby),  I was so excited, it was my first and  I  had a 10 o'clock interview but I had been listening to stories by my friend's father, he's the old man I was talking about, he told me his dog- Popi, sleeps the kind of sleep a drunkard sleeps and I laughed like a mad person, he said laughing is good, but he stopped laughing a lot when he realised laughing too much is also stupidity, he also told his  wife that he will die soon, and they'll meet on the other side of the valley. I found that very funny, he has been sick and is faintly worried about not being able to do the things he used to do as a young person, like just, getting on a bus and heading to Arusha.

 I think I'm just gonna stay in Meru