BAck IN The DAys: WHen WE WEre BOys

The death of Hon. Michuki has in many ways taken my mind back to the village days. 

Many of us who grew up in pre-independence  Kenya *Ahem* will agree that life then was not a bed of roses. Growing up in the village was nothing short of baptismal by fire and this in a way prepared us for the roles we were to undertake in the young independent Kenya. Personally, the clean up ceremony every Sunday remains the most traumatic event in those days. From my #PenToPaper archives, I’ve fished out a piece that captures the ritual which my mother executed with zeal. Intertwined with the torture and roughness was the greatest love as only a mother can give. I’ve no doubt my fellow village alumni will identify. May the Good Lord Rest His Soul in Eternal Peace... 

On that occasion when I was six, mum was busy smearing cow jelly on our faces. Cow’s jelly had solely been manufactured for milking but the village woman had invented a hundred and one other uses beside that.

 In the village, there were rituals which were only performed on children on Sundays. We found these same rituals being executed whenever an important holiday came up. Very early on Sunday, mama would line us up and start the ritual. For reasons I would give the whole world to know, mama preferred to perform them with our shirts off. The biting cold of early morning would freeze us to the verge of crystallization. 

To generate some heat, we would place our closed hands under the armpit and flap like hens desperately trying to fly. If mama ever noticed the torture of those dreaded Sundays, she played totally oblivious. Mama always started with our toes. Armed with an arsenal of thorns from the sisal plant, she would declare war on the small vermin’s that make toes their official residence. She would poke and pull on the skin trying to get to the root of the jigger. Most of them would be pregnant with eggs and the arduous work of removing them would be to say the least; painful. One would coil and recoil as mama dug her way and an occasional prick on the raw nerves was not sufficient enough to make her stop. Time was not on her side for she always had five pairs of feet to work on. Removing one jigger proved a Herculean task and they were never one or two nor three. I am convinced that jiggers are polygamists and good neighbours. The pair of feet was densely populated. By the time mama was through with you, your toes would have openings the size of your nostrils. You’d be so busy nursing your new look toes that the freezing wind would be your least concern. I thank God that the shoe industry had not thought of possible investment in our village. You tell me, how would you have squeezed your feet with your big toe facing the east and the small one facing the west into those razor sharp plastic sandaks.

Being what she was, mum would have forced the feet into the shoes. Her kids had to look cool and not even jigger infested toes would stand in her way.

The second part of the ritual entailed a quick check on our heads to ensure there were no lice. Luckily, our hair lacked that which lice looked for in a good home. We knew of kids whose parents would become overnight millionaires if for certain reasons lice could be harvested for economic purposes. It was followed by a check on the finger nails to make sure they were in no hurry to go places. The last checkup before we got to the grand finale was a thorough inspection of the body for any swellings and bruises. Any swelling or bruise would leave the softest part of your thighs red hot and a well versed explanation of the source of the injury. To avoid this, we always did ensure that our bodies were swell and bruise free and this was the part of the ritual we enjoyed most.  Come to think of it, I now prefer to call it the calm before the storm.

The ritual would never have been complete without a thorough bathing. I’d probably think that in her seasoned brain, mama called it the icing on the cake. I for sure know what my sibling and I thought of it; it was the last nail on our miserable coffins. If you were brought up in the village, bathing was a priviledge enjoyed once in a week. In Sunday school, there were so many things we had been taught about the beauty of creation. We concurred with most of them but at that moment when the first container of water was poured on your head, every village kid knew for sure that bathing was included erroneously on the creation list. Like so many other things we reasoned with our village brains, we could have been wrong on this one also.

Mama would go inside and come out with a basin full of steaming water. We were never fooled by the steam. There was one well known principle held as true by every village mother. The common belief that bathing with warm water made one old. I’d skin the owner of the mouth that first floated this thought. This thought was held as gospel truth even across the ridges and any mother who considered herself worthy of the title preached and practiced it. Now the problem with village rumour was that it spread like wild fire in a dry season. If by any chance the rumour had motherly concerns at hand, God help us kids.

The steaming basin would be placed strategically on a green patch of the compound. Here, the tools of trade would be unleashed. They included a bar of soap   

some wise guy had called kipande and a very very rough spongy, dead-and-dried fruit of a plant I would have cared less to know its name.

 let me talk a little bit about this spongy-like invention…sob…sob…on second thought, it will conjure up memories I’d be proud to forget. Mama would ask us to make a file in a descending order of our ages. This was one of the few moments I enjoyed being the last born.

When mama poured the first container of water on my eldest brother, he let out a pitched shriek that would have sent bats into a panic. You would be forgiven to think that the repetitive performance of the ritual every Sunday would have made one immune. Take it from the horse’s mouth, every experience was unique. The only similar thing was the reaction. By the time the ice cold water made its journey from the head to the devil describe ‘em toes, all the body organs would have called an emergency session and passed a vote of rebellion. Blood would freeze, the bones would rattle and the jaws would enter into a duel. As if the torture in the internal affairs was not bad enough, mama would use her trusted agents of cleaning to wreck havoc on the external mission. She would generously soap the damn sponge and scrubbed us as if she had a score to settle. 

Soap would come visiting into our eyes uninvited and this would open up the tear wells. In the name of water conservation, mama never rinsed the head until she was through with the whole body. Any attempt to try and inform mama that one was in pain would be countered with a snappy ‘you ain’t heard nothin baby’ and then she would move literally to the mother of all painful areas. She would hold the sole of ones feet so tightly and give the toes a thorough scrubbing. If I could indulge your mind on an earlier fact; these are the very toes containing a thousand and change raw nerves, thank to the art of jigger removal. We would scream and scream but mama would hear nothing of it. She was on a mission to make her kids clean and healthy. I’m yet to figure out what her vision was. It was like facing the knife every week. By the time one was being rinsed, the next on line would be fidgeting as he pulled his shorts down. He knew exactly what to expect.

When mama was through with you, one thanked his gods if he could still feel his nerves. What with destroyed nerve endings and internal organs that were half frozen.  At least the process was not due again until after a staggering six days. Mama believed that each day added a layer of dirt on the skin and this layer had to be scrubbed off on Sunday morning. The task of wiping and dressing was entirely left to an individual save for mama’s boy. Our faces would brighten up as we donned the only descent attire in our entire wardrobe. 

 

The peak of the day would be at the church where every village kid of reasonable age would gather after Sunday school for a fashion show like no other. The majority of us wore the same garments over and over again but nobody would have dared disqualify us. We would have ranted and whined. It would have been tantamount to a human rights denial bearing in mind the cleaning ritual we had undergone. The rules were simple; you argued your way to victory. Those who could intimidate and bully did that. Those who could beg begged. Those who could blackmail blackmailed and those who could bribe did exactly that. I remember a certain boy who proved to be the master of the blackmail. He’d make rounds threatening to give your mum a detailed account of your past week’s activities. Now if you are a boy who plays away from home, the last person you would wish to land a report of your weekly whereabouts is your mama. 

A girl whose name I am desperately trying to remember would fleece a whole government if she was kept in charge of its coffers. She would bribe you with all sort of goodies and true to her words, she kept her part of the bargain. Getting a piece of chapati from mama call-her-whoever’s kitchen was a dream we all wished to come true and when such an offer came in return for a simple acclamation to prove that a girl was the fairest of them all, then by God above we agreed unanimously. She could be our miss village for all we cared. Every village boy with a good appetite, and hell knows there were lots of us, would have traded his birth right for a place in that lady’s household for the obvious reason. That girl ended up being our miss village kid for as long as I can remember. Chapatis in her homestead were cooked every time her father visited from Nairobi and we would be sure to wait within their compound for our pay. 

Call it what you may but I am still convinced it was a fashion show like any other. It was one of the lights at the end of the tunnel that made us see beyond the Sunday torture our mothers executed.

Having dressed, mama would smear that one inch thick cow jelly on our faces, hands and legs. I guess mama thought that the layer would protect our bodies from dust. She thought wrong and so did so many other village women. The sun would not be the only thing shinning bright on Sunday. I have not the slightest of doubt that mama did all this out of her immense love for us. We are because she and so many other mamas were.

I'm a sandak baby lol!