Nyĩrĩ

I remember telling Michael, Botswanian Michael as we called him- hey hey not beyond my wrist- when he would shake my hand- poor boy, that must have been so offensive. But I was not fully to blame for such a view point, I had just landed from a society, which still adheres to the code of boys on one side, girls on the other, even in public meetings by the chief, no no now, we mustn’t get too close; yet S.T.Is and Bastards abound, everywhere.

Hear I was, in the midst of Africans, the easy going Naija people who’ll call you brother on their first meeting, the happy beer loving Botswana people who like to hang out most of the time, the friendly Mugambe people, the smart- ly dressed Tanzanians, the Waswahili from the Kenyan Coast, from Oman, the curly haired Sudanese, now northeners, the Indonesians from Florence, the Tamil, and the Stiff Kenyans.

Ivy, from Uganda would tell me- Kenyans are so stiff, you’re like robots, why so serious all the time, fear, perhaps, no no now don’t get too close I don’t want you coming over to borrow salt and chai whenever you feel like. I’m from the highlands, hugs are a new education.

So Michael would shake my hand and give hugs all around. A month later I was a changed woman.

Last week I met my friends, a couple fro long ago and on impulse I wanted to jump in with open arms, but then it clicked, it’s a cheek to cheek greeting for the woman( Man! I hate those!), and a firm handshake for the man, with a slight eye contact for acknowledgement.
I am re-learning what I re-learnt and this time, honestly I feel like bursting out of this town and never coming back , end up somewhere on Ogingo Island or Kamchatka, where people hug and nod to Lady Gaga’s Poker face.

Things I have to remember:
If you have boy friends over- you are a prostitute
If you wear jeans – you are a prostitute
If you wear make up – you are a prostitute
Hug men- you are a prostitute
Wear a short skirt- you’re a prostitute
Wear a long skirt- your religion tells you to wear long skirts

The middle ages I tell you.

Farm Diaries, Jane of all trades

I got up at 5 this morning, it took effort since I slept quite late last night. See, every evening, I have to milk a goat, cook, food and tea and clear my neighbour's kitchen. A lovely old lady who has many tales. Anyway I really enjoy helping her out. She has experience in a lot of things, like slaughtering rabbits. Last Sunday she got up early so she could slaughter one and get it ready to cook in the evening, it needs to be hang up for drying. She said to me- If I ask someone to help me slaughter this tiny thing, they'll expect meat, so what I'are we supposed to eat if we serve the butcher a platefull?

We cooked the rabbit in the evening, three of us, the young child she is bringing up loves meat, she ate most of it, yeah and last night she vomited in her bed for eating too much, but we love the young one, she lost her mother only two weeks ago and is coping with it in her own way, like narrating funny stories about her mother to us. She told me, when my mother comes back, I'll be big, in my own stone house and I'll never get married. Her great grand said to her- she won't come back, you'll go to her, she said she doesn't want to die.

So when I got up, at 5.15, I made instant coffee and threw in a ginger root into my mouth. I'm not a fun of coffee, but ginger coffee is nice.
When the old woman got up some minutes to seven, I went in to rouse the child, who complained about a tummy ache, but we knew it was from overeating, and she has been looking for excuses to miss school.

Many times I pause and think,hmm today was another funny day, like the night when a strong wind blew and fell several avocados on top of my neighbour's roof. She is a teacher, lives with her daughter and a househelp, they begun screaming to the ends of the earth, and I, the good neighbour helped them. When other neighbours came with sticks and rungus, we thaked darkness that hid our embarassment. But that happens when women live alone,among coffee plants; they get hallucinate.

So today I'm going out to buy a thermos, and garlic if my budget allows it, I might get a heavy curtain too. I keep thinking a thief, banana thief,they are plenty where I live might come peeping one evening, I'm not ready to scream like that day.

cooking a fish

I’m a lover of fish, infact for a very long time I couldn’t forgive my uncle for not letting me taste a fish he once brought home, bought off a boy who had caught it in a river. I was six or seven, and I promised myself when I grew up, I would go to the Indian Ocean and catch myself a fish. I grew up and learnt that grand ma had said to uncle not to give the child any fish, incase I died and he’d be blamed. A lot of people won’t eat fish for a number of reasons. Fish smells bad my friend Mel says, the fish bones will kill you according to a lot of people in central province, majority have no clue what to do with a fish so they just opt for other meat.

When I lived on an island, I ate a lot of fish, different fish and when I came back to the mountains, I longed for the days I had bought 5 medium sized tilapia at Tesco for Rm.2.50 on holiday sales.

So when my friend suggesting a fishing trip, I could have jumped up and down.
I live in Tetu, and you can see a lot of Wangari Maathai’s green belt movement’s efforts. Trees are more than the population, unlike most places in Kenya, the beautiful surroundings are a treasure. There are a couple of public dams around my area, not many people make good use of them though and discovering the dams have been happiness itself.

I must say the scenery was more enthralling than the actual fishing itself, especially when the sun begun to set; the green reeds were reflected into the water giving the dam a soft green luster. The long legged white birds with the black, red breasted diving ducks, the kingfishers all completed the ideal setting for a fishing afternoon.

We arrived at 1.00p.m and at 5.30 none of us had caught a single baby fish. But you should have seen the determination. Someone caught a tiny one, which we threw back later, honestly, you can’t carry home a finger’s length fish and tell people you went fishing.

On another fishing trip at a different dam, on one Kamanda’s farm, the wife hailed her workers who came and dragged the net in the dam and caught us five fish-yeah!. We disappointed them though because immediately after we continued throwing our grasshopper baited hooks lines into the water. They left us to our mad experiments, and Maureen, by accident, haha, caught one, for which we celebrated.

Fishing is fun, as much fun as learning to play a guitar. I think you get the same excitement as you do when you learnt to play two notes of Snow Patrols’ Chasing Cars. I need about 15 more lessons before I can at least get a fish out of the water.

To cook a fish, unless it’s fish balls you’re aiming at, don’t boil the fish, like potatoes.

Fragrance Of Rice

I brewed, I harvested, I met, I fished, I sat for hours trying to understand written text. I wrote poetry, yes I am writing poetry once again.

June has been a good month, thinking about it this morning in the train, I felt a sense of satisfaction, and smiled. The girl opposite looked at me perhaps wondering what was there to smile about. She should have asked, I would have told her- honey, you have one option every morning,initiate happiness which will reflect on others' faces.

Radio was playing- lifestyles of the rich and the famous by good charlotte. My mind was humming a one man guitar I heard earlier: You gave birth to a daughter, my mother's name won't simply disappear, and you've told me you're preparing yourself to have another, our house will expand- totally inappropriate to be humming such songs in the morning.

Anyway June didn't help to make my mind more organised, actually I've had to write down the things I need to do more than before, but I end up forgetting where I put the list, so much for organising myself.

Looking back though, June has been a great month. I learnt something important to look at another human in the eye and ask: what did you do that for. Well, not exactly but I've learn to ask.
I always preferred to just wait and see the turn of events, to be polite but June has taught me to fight, and how to harvest potatoes without piercing too many. It's been really enjoyable, harvesting potatoes. I like it when I pull out a wispy stem and discover six big round ones attached.


I get a similar excitement when each evening, I realise, a foundation takes time to build. It costs time and needs thought. I'm learning, slowly to accept help, to give way to others and not look at it as interference. So bottom up, I'm getting stronger. And when my young cousin, all by his own initiative came to visit me, the word -worth- came into my mind. He brought his friend along, and we had a blast, I admire the vivacity of teenagers. He's grown up, that boy, and he was looking cute, I didn't tell him, but I said- the cream you're using is making you nice and lovely, his friend said it was make up. He said he was discovering what's good fro his skin.

A little girl once said to me: why don't you stay here, It's better when you're around. I didn't want to be a burden. I later went back, and as much as I wouldn't admit it, I needed that young girl , and she needed me, and together, we managed some emotionally difficult days. She wasn't a small girl, she was 20,but she knew a few things about life.

I would like to wish July won't be so cold, but that's a dream, I've got to get another blanket.

Maybe I'll catch a fish this July, but if I don't I'll keep practising. I wanted to learn how to ride a bicycle but never got the time. Maybe July will provide the opportunity.
Posted by Ciss at 7:52 AM

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