By t. Michael Mboya.
I was afraid that these children would live like the
birds of the air.
Bene[ii]
Prelude
January 2008[iii].
Our dreams
of making a home here
in this Eldoret Town
where we have lived
for fifteen years
are beaten
out of matatus
on the Nairobi-Nakuru highway
at Naivasha
The blood that flows
as runoff
is licked dry
by rabid flames
in the market centres and villages
of Uasin Gishu.
And we remember
the song:
Sikuzaliwa juu ya miti
Ninako kwetu
Ninako kwetu
Kwa Baba na Mama[iv].
Now I hear Mother
Her small voice
squeezes through the polyrhythm
of hacking pangas and roaring fires
It weaves the melody
of the remembered song
with the wailing of women
Over and over she solemnly intones
Child, you are not a bird of the air.
I hear the call
in the deep heart’s core.
The Return
And therefore I have come to Uriya[v]
Where the soles of my shoes sink in soft soil
It feels like stepping on someone’s torso
That someone’s clay fingers clutch at my legs
Cling, let go, leaving red paste on trouser legs
I walk gingerly
Past obengle bushes, past siala trees
I come to the Elders, my parents. They rest
In cemented graves in a well tended clearing,
Their gunda.[vi]
They did not have land to bequeath to me.
Like a Ja-Taon[vii] I will have to buy
A plot somewhere, to build a home.
Dropping slow from somewhere in the quiet country
The cry of a watching dove:
Pardon, pardon, pardon.
Uref: The Founding
No cockerel is cradled
in the crook of my left arm[viii]
My wife’s head does not sway
under the weight of tinder
Her right hand does not close
a box of matches
No axe handle balances
on my son’s right shoulder
No gleaming axe-head
laughs away the sun’s darts
behind the boy’s back
None of Father’s brothers walks
behind us, to get down on a knee
to braid some blades of grass.
We stand in a circle
holding hands
The builders and ourselves
holding hands
In a portfolio at Mikey[ix]’s feet
our copies of the necessary
permits from the authorities
the blueprints & c.
With her eyes shut
Maggy[x] leads us
in a prayer to Jehovah.
Before me it rises, slowly,
a vision of the house
that will be the centre-piece
in our homestead.
[i]
Uref. A village in western Kenya, the poet’s home.
[ii]
Bene. The poet’s mother-in-law.
[iii]
January 2008. The time of the infamous Post Election Violence in Kenya.
[iv]
Sikuzaliwa … Etc. Kiswahili: “I was not born on tree tops/ I have a home/ I
have a home/ The place of Father and Mother”. From the song “Ndoa ya Mateso”
(“Marriage of Suffering”) by Marijani Rajab and Dar International. In the 1980s
the song was a favourite of the deejays of the Voice of Kenya, at the time the
only radio station in Kenya.
[v]
Uriya. A village in western Kenya, the poet’s ‘ancestral’ home, where his
parents are buried.
[vi]
Gunda. DhoLuo. Abandoned homestead.
[vii]
Ja-Taon. DhoLuo. Literal, Man of town. Urbanized, detribalized person.
[viii]
The carrying of a cockerel, tinder, axe, etc. are part of the traditional Luo
ritual of founding a home.
[ix]
Mikey. The poet’s son.
[x]
Maggy. The poet’s wife.
Prof. T. Michael Mboya teaches in the Department of Literature, Theatre and Film Studies at Moi University, Eldoret, Kenya.@TomMichaelMboya
Prof. T. Michael Mboya teaches in the Department of Literature, Theatre and Film Studies at Moi University, Eldoret, Kenya.@TomMichaelMboya
