Buffalo beef

17th September 2008

Today was a public Holiday . I decided to do a bit of shopping , important things like bread and potatoes . I now have guts to go all the way to ioi shopping mall alone , that’s about 30 km’s from where I stay . I take two buses .
The minute I got out of the bus- Vam! Mcdonalds . Since I came to Malaysia , everytime the M sign board appears, I Just have to get me something . My favorite is the cheezburger {www.icanhascheezburger.com} . I like the big Mac too . I tasted few burgers in Kenya but nothing like Mcd’s , which is fairly prized. So after the burger I walked around the mall , quite big . I went to this big shop –Hot Market- It has everything . You know those tiny flowered notebooks that cost too much at bookshops or those you’ll never find when you want to give a gift to your friend who writes poetry or your little sister who suddenly needs to keep a journal?
When I was little I really wanted those notebooks. My gran bought me one , it was not fancy but I treasured it until some girls stole it and scribbled tomfoolery all over the pages. I still have it, in my old trunk of treasure .Well, that’s just the book section since for me my first stop anywhere is where the books and pens are, I love pens . My mother gave me one as a parting gift , felt nice to see she has finally accepted-yeah, she’s never gonna be a doctor so what the heck –
The hot market, if you let a girl loose in it , she’d go crazy . The beauty section is another that amazed me . I thought they’d just have the silver I see everywhere but there was bead necklaces and headbands and cute hair clips and earings…my ears aren’t pierced ,maybe I’ll just pierce my fore head Botswana style , and get me a face ring.
This is my 3rd week and I can’t still find washing soap . But excuse me , I’m used to brands like Persil , Omo with powerform, Toss the gentle detergent. When I walk past tings like Trojan, ondrex , zerox …I’m not so sure if that’s something flammable or a video game title . Ha, then I went looking for meat . I have bought beef twice . The first time I threw it all out , I learn how to cook it and tried a second time . Today , looking at the row of beef ,I had a big smile seeing –buffalo beef- No doubt that’s what I bought first time. I couldn’t pass my teeth through it . I had some fun at the fruit section seeing a single avocado going for more than 2 USD. That’s about the cheapest fruit I could buy in Kenya .
I also saw some maize meal at a stand called African Stuffs . The seller looked at me, said a greeting in Botswana when I looked at him funny he asked where I’m from , where I stay how long I’ve been in Malaysia and do I live with my boy-friend I walked away . He was calling to me- come back miss come back . I went to a stand on the opposite stand selling watches ,I bought one , I guess, just because the girl was polite enough not to assume I’m Jamaican or Botswanan but ask me where I’m from .
The other day a man walking towards me was smiling a lot, he said hi then dumela? And I felt like running after him- sir, I’m Kenyan Lah!Or like one day at the bus station a group of Botswana guys kept talking to me in Tshona and I wasn’t amused at all . I told them I was Kenyan – but you understand what we say right-?

After looking for things for about an hour I was tired and the cheezburger was long gone . I saw a waffles stand . Another thing about this place , if you eat something real good , it’s really good and you won’t stop thinking about it . Like the waffles . I ate some at school , with strawberry and chocolate . Today I had some with ice cream and the only way to describe the feeling is{you know those bollywood movies where a group of dancers come out of no where and start to dance? yeah} . I haven’t eaten ice cream in years {it’s too cold} but here it feels like a glass of water at room temperature .I then had lemon tea and I was thinking of how soon I will be readily accepting those exercise equipment fliers and how every conversation will be punctuated with phrases about weight loss , and soon I’ll be looking at the milk packet to check whether it’s low fat , and if my frying oil is cholesterol free or not .
I saw a sweet potato stand and thought- great! -Home snack-Graciously ordered two of them .Quite thin and shriveled but I thought what the heck let me have a taste . I paid 5.50RM and the seller gave me a taste of Chestnuts he was roasting . When I was in the bus looking at my receipts , I saw the sweet potato one and..wait a minute OMG! What a rip off . If you multiply that by 20 you’ll know how many Kenyan Shillings,and divide it by 3.4 to see how many USD . That happens a lot. I look at something and think aa, just a 10, fine. In my mind I’m thinking ashu tu[ten bob], when I realize what I just did I feel so silly.

poems from the East

WHEN I ALLOWED MYSELF TO FEEL

That was when I was able to feel

The love I felt inside

The emotions embedded upon my heart’s walls

The reasoning of my mind.

I recalled

How I once felt

When my hands trembled with adrenaline - or was it love?

When my pulse increased with anticipation, for his voice

How I felt

When his eyes caught mine.

I wished upon an eagle’s wings fly

And with darkness as cover

I’d climb to my love’s space, whisper how I felt

How I always felt.

It took a thousand miles

For the heart to convince the mind

Where it wanted to be , with whom .

I ached for him

As the Eastern sunset lighted my walls at 7

As I waited to spot a star

A plane passed with lights flashing

I wondered-

What stirs emotion?

Distance ? Lack ? A calm mind ?

Poem 7

Her face was always a tight sneer,
Sometimes a painful scrawl
He took her home, and waited for the promised smile
That never came despite, the shape her mouth took
A suggestion that if she smiled.
It would be sunrise. She never smiled

But she laughed, one time when, the child jumped and fell in a heap
Across the fence
A loud,
Crazed noise that echoed to the valley
Where he was bent cutting grass for the child’s rabbit hatch

And when she died,
She took long
Dry, wordlessly, she laid
Finally ,at the public hospital downtown she lay rigid
And when he looked at her face,
The smile,
The overdue smile
‘Let me take her home’, he said
He laid her body on their couch, and called the camera man.

He’d have tried to save then
Wake her
Presence the new beauty resurrect

Beautiful in death she was,
Still
Serene eyes shut
.Still,with a smile
A smile of she that would eventually smile
He framed the picture

Art

My friend sells things at the maasai market,and last week she asked me to help her take pictures for her catalogue.So as I was touring the market after,I met this artist who according to me should not be selling his work at the nomad market,but rather should have his work exhibited at Ramoma,Gallery Watatu and FCC.Not that it wil change who he is but his work impressed me to such an extent I
asked if I could take a picture to post on my site.I was hovering at his stand for about half an hour studying his pieces.
Like the typical artist,he really doesn’t care about publicity he told me-kaa hii sinimeuza ngiri mbili-I’ve sold about 2 thousand pieces of this one,he said pointing to a back and white painting of some herd’s men walking towards a sunset.His name is Eli Mumira,his work is that of a mature artist.

{can't post any pictures.I'm in the slowest cyber in Nairobi}

Kwani?Open Mic

I enjoyed this month’s kwani pen mic.The featured poet;Karinga, has always managed to

bring back any minds that were beginning to wander back to the stage.I am yet to figure out how one can store 15 poems in the head.The one time I tried to recite a poem,in standard 5,I started with the last verse.It went something like-oh rainbow,rainbow,rainbow,you who sits on high…
I remember adding my own words,not really my own,actually,they were lines from the famous poem-An African storm
-the wind blows,the trees sway,
the open window shuts with a bang.

After not getting further than interschool competitions,I never attempted to do a solo verse again.

When I was called out to read my poem,I opened the book and the DJ started to play a song,so I was sitting there wondering-huh? And the audience was smiling and I was repeating in my head-oh no oh no.

Then the Cindy Ogana-runs back on stage and starts to dance,the DJ was playing the Cecilia you’re breaking my heart song and now I had to dance! I tried to look a bit confused hoping they’d let me-just read my poem-wapi!I had to dance despite it being a public secret that I donno how to dance.Believe me,even traditional dancing iliniweza.

It’s not the first time,many times I meet people and when they learn my name they start to sing -Cecilia you’re breaking my heart,you’re shaking my confidence-
I could revert to my other name but that wont help,when I was young,there was a hit song that Mama and his friends would sing to me,went like-
Gathoni Gathoni Gathoni ii,
Gathoni ,Gathoni,Gathoni,

Gathoni blaki beauty!

The opening artist was Munyi,that young boy who plays the guitar on his back but has a rotten mouth.He played Hotel California and Spanish guitar, then Nuru Bahati{Light Lucky} recited a poem.He is a pen artist and can do voices,made me laugh most of the night,and that little girl kweli who didn’t forget her words this time reminding me of when I was 18 and trying to look serious,hehe.
Cindy makes a great MC,and among the things I’m going to miss,Kwani?Open mic is number one on the list.
{Pictures on my album on facebook}

T 9

When I was small,there were three things I feared.An ogre,a T-9 and a Kanyutu.
In my mother tongue,a big person is called a kimundu,following the ngeli ya m-ki.A normal person is a mundu.A big p erson is also called impolitely, irimu.Irimu is an ogre. One day I watched as a child ran back to it’s mother saying-mami mami!Irimu!" In front of them a very tall man stood.
Mama told me that there were three times of marimu,those that carry baskets{irimu cia nyakondo},those that have three eyes, and Cain. I feared the first time most because if they came across you,they put you in their basket and took you to their very old grandmother who would boil you in a large pot as the ogres played a game of fire jump.Cain I was told could only be seen by children. I was not very afraid of him because he was only one and I believed if he was still making his round mwenda,he’d be somewhere as far as America,and before he returned I’d have grown up and wouldn’t see him.
When mama narrates a story he’s very dramatic, if he wasn’t so attached to his potato and cabbage plants, and his three cows,burugei, bahati and nyakairu, he would have made a career from telling stories,then his age mates would think he’s gone soft in the head,and kids would make fun of his sons at school.Though I doubt he’d get paid anything close to what he earns from one gunia of wheat for two or even 3 narrations.
So kanyutu he told me,was an animal that walked on it’s two legs, it was beige in color and could move faster than my dog chui running away from cucu if she found it in the kitchen watching me peel potatoes.
He said Kanyutu’s favourite food was cow’s udders. It would snatch the udder right out from under the unsuspecting cow and before the cow realized it was missing an important bargaining part ,fainted,then got up to moo, kanyutu would be in charity{charity was a village about 25 km from our village,up up the hills},disgorging another udder,and when the alarm was raised there,kanyutu would be in Baringo, another hilly 25 kms. Carrying the two udders like money bags from both hands, you can imagine, like a man running away and looking behind once in a while. The way he put it, kanyutu would know in advance where to go, and his route back so there was no way to keep watch to catch him.
I lived in terror of kanyutu.He said no one ever saw a kanyutu.
Last weekend,my neighbor was listening to Coro fm at his kiosk and when I went to buy a bamba twenty . I heard them mention kanyutu . I asked him what it was and he pointed to his calendar.I laughed.In my mind all this time,I had assumed mama had made up the story .Kumbe, a kanyutu is cheetah, and this time, the name was not even coined by mama.
The other cause of fear was a T9.These,everyone said were some very tiny rubies ridden dogs released from Uganda by Idd Amin.I don’t know how true that is .I never saw one but I saw it’s effects .When T9 caught up with your dog,the dog went mad immediately and started biting everything in sight.
One of cucu’s friend had only two cows, one they fondly called gathambu,and another silky one which gave them more milk. Gathambu gave about a cup and a half. When the T9 Paid their shed a visit, it bit the silky one. Now , the rule was that I such a case, one had to report immediately to the chief. Then the chief would send some askari to shoot down the animal. I remember that day, many men gathered in the field and dug a hole, like a grave then tied the cow with ropes and bang! It fell into the hole. We, the women folk were a bit far off , it felt like a funeral.
When two of my cucu’s cows were bitten, cucu was very sad. One died the following day, the other had to be killed. Now that I think about it, it must have been a very big loss. The neighbours came to comfort us.
Had it been a calf or a bull, the loss would have been minimal.
With dairy cows, there is always a connection. Which comes naturally from all those days you lean your head into their stomachs as you milk them twice even three times in a day and when you stay up with them to help them calve at 3a.m.No wonder the naming. Daisy , Rosy, Gathambu.
I have never understood how a small dog will just bite one animal and go the next, why just wound while it could bite, even eat the animal, maybe a calf and die happy instead of all the mad running around.
Ogres don’t scare me anymore, although when I meet a very huge person, I look again, just to make sure .
These fears are no longer prominent, but when I go to visit cucu and it gets dark and from the forest comes all sorts of sounds, I think-there is a kanyutu nearby,and that’s a fact.

Standard Five

Adolescence

Still in standard five,when we began to study homescience,some girls suddenly realized that indeed,their chests were undergoing a transformation.Some were happy,some started to walk with their eyes cast upon the ground,shoulder’s hunched. I still had some years to go before I faced the problem,but I was curious,me and another late bloomer. We managed to talk one of the girls whose chest was no longer like a boy’s to giving us a peek.
We could have gone behind the latrines or even in a bush on a way home but nine year olds thinks just like nine year olds.When one day we had our evening prep and no teacher was going round, crouching below the desk she gave us the peek, the mystery was dissolved, and we went on with the prep.
The following day during the morning parade,the teacher on duty had an important announcement.
-Can the following ngaos lemain mbihind-
Our three names were called out.We received a beating,and a warning,and we were told to keep away from boys.
That reminds me of the kind of mischief one will get into in school.In high school,our class prefect was very funny.
One night during prep,the class was quiet and everyone was busy reading something, even though for some it was those very popular sweet valley high teenage romance novels{SVH}.The teacher on duty came in and called out the prefect’s name,
-what do you think you are doing during prep?-
The following day,the entire school knew that Form 2 Pluto’s Cop had been caught mending her brassire in class during prep,by a male teacher.It was a big joke,to the prefect,but she was punished for it even though it left most of us who had humour genes in stitches.