Once upon a childhood

So today was one of those days I haven’t had in a long time. I had time to cuddle up with myself in bed without the anxiety of waking up to run some chores.  I also got a chance to put on my lazy clothes, grab the earphones and take a walk in the sunny estate. I don’t know if schools are closed but the kids riding bikes all over took me to my childhood. There are things that I didn’t get a chance to do; like riding the bike- not that I didn’t want to, but my dad’s bike was the big hire purchase mamba (actually they were two; my dad had an addiction with hire purchase stuff) – so things like mountain bikes, family trips to uhuru park, putting on trousers, new shoes every school opening day, complete mathematical sets, blueband on bread, stories about santa-the clown etc were luxuries I didn’t get to enjoy. When I look back though, I wouldn’t undo my childhood. Not a thing. I would go through it the same way; except, well, I’d totally change the part where I had to carry my grandmother’s old basket to the local posho mill. I hated that basket! And every time I met my object-of-desire of back then, he’d roll down on the floor laughing at my poor ass.

But, my childhood is a story I look back at and smile- I will give you a few clippings of this shagzmodos soap opera.

1.  When I was in nursery school, I was ‘stolen’ by the house help. I think she had beef with my mum. She just packed my dad and mum’s favourite clothes in a box, put it on her head, grabbed the undressed skinny me and sped off. We walked miles and miles to a place I later came to know as Mwala.  Mwala is a million and seventeen kms away from home. When we got to their home place, she cooked chapatti and strong tea (sturungi) to celebrate with her family members. The idiot I was felt really good to sleep in a different bed, have new sisters and brothers, and be far away from mom who used to beat the lights out of me. Long story short; mum and dad looked for me in the whole Machakos District, and as they were almost done searching that kavillage, dad saw one of his pants hanged outside some house (the pants were pink- by the way). Then mum spotted me playing on the same compound covered with clay soil you could barely see my eyes. A normal mum would have run and hugged the finally-found-daughter; mum slapped and pinched the blood out of my thighs. She put me on her back and let mosquitoes bite me all the way back to kangundo. That’s the first time I got malaria. My late mother had that weakness of getting superbly and overly worked up that sometimes id’ be afraid that she’d beat herself up.

2. Same thing happened a few months later, or before. – I don’t remember. I got carried away with the barabara kati game we used to play on our way home. So we played the game and I found myself at my friends homestead. I had completely forgotten which direction home was, and my friend’s mother wasn’t ready to escort me to our place. So she opted to have me around for the night. That night, she cooked Githeri. Because there was a visitor, they were allowed the luxury of putting uncooked mafuta into their mixture of grains. So a bar of the 12-bob Kimbo that had live ants stuck on it was passed for us to ‘luxuriate’ our mixture of grains. Oh, did I mention that they had a crazy uncle who had just murdered his wife and had also attacked his head with a panga? Did I also say that he was sharing the same house with us? I do not know how my parents came to know where I was, but I remember my mum’s strong hand grabbing me and asking the woman who had hosted me “what kind of mother are you?”enyewe what kind of a woman allows another woman’s child to wander around in a mad-manned-compound without letting the parents know? This time round, I wasn’t beaten or pinched. Mum just kept quiet about it.

3. At 10 years old, I was already a mother.  My mum passed away when I was in class three. But before then,  she spend almost half a year in the hospital, with my dad by her side( does this kind of love still exist?) anyway, when they were away, my brother and I had our five year old and seven year old siblings to cater for; maybe you do not understand what being a mother meant- it meant making sure that you have enough water in the house , that the sheep and goats were safely locked in their whatevers, that everyone woke up at 3 am because the walk to school was like 1 hr plus- and Mr. Munyuvi would beat the dimwits out of you if you were five seconds late or earlier that 4.30 am (And we did not have electricity in this school, so we just sat in the classroom until 6.00am). Being a mother also meant that our ever drunk help tilled the shamba on time-. If there is a period in my life that reminds me that there is a God watching over us, it is this. I mean, how now? People knew that we were staying alone, but no one ever broke into our house or did anything as scary as raping these three girls living alone with some 12 year old brother. How now?

4. I have serious scars on my legs. If you see me walking around town in a super short skirt, but I break all the sexiness with stockings, don’t even say a word. I used to be a climber- a tree climber. I remember one time, some month of February when the mangoes are in season; my grandmother pointed at me and told me “na muikalise mitini”. That means’ please do not climb on trees’’. The mjuaji i was, I took the initiative to put a foot on a tree and paraparanya…there I was, on top of a mango tree, shaking the fruits off. End of story is, I came down as one of the fruits, with the branch I was on following closely behind.  I also had the habit of climbing n top of my uncle’s unroofed house.  Up to today, I am still the girl who climbs on top of my dad’s house to fix the aerial, because I cannot stand bad reception on tv. I’d rather switch it off than strain to make out blurry figures.

5. In class five, my Kiswahili teacher hated me with a passion. She (yeah, u guessed right-she) started up a rumour about another male Kiswahili teacher and I. If you have met me, you know how petite I am. So take me back to years later, and proportionally scribble out my body size- yes, I was the size of a peanut, and there was the Kiswahili-she-teacher, standing me up in front of the school to shamelessly sex-scandalise me with gigantic Mr. Makau.

6. We used to shave each other’s heads with a scissors, not for fun, but because as I said earlier, the kinyozi haircut was far too expensive. Well, my mum had passed on, and dad was working miles away. And my grandmother did not understand why we needed the luxury of a kinyozi. So she bought us a five bob scissors. Whenever Mr. Kikumu said that he wanted to see our heads shinning like his vaselined forehead, we would rush home and busy ourselves with the chore of the hair and the scissors. I still have marks on my head, where my brother cut off parts of my skin pamoja with the hair. Other than the chopped skin parts, the shaving was always done unevenly, so what you had in the end would be a scarred head full of mang’uye( i cant really translate that one. It’s just mang’uye)

7.  I used to love Saturday afternoons and Sundays. On Saturdays afternoons, I would shower (take a bath actually), put on my ironed shirt and grab the big green paper bag (forgot to tell you, ironing the shirt was either done with the makaa iron box, or the top was folded in some way and put under the bed the previous day, to make a diamond shape at the back). So on Saturday afternoon, after tuition, I’d grab the paper bag, and run off to the shamba to pick sukumawiki from our 1km-away shamba.  I looked forward to this because there was a high possibility of bumping into object-of-my-desire-of-back-then. If I didn’t see him, i’d wait outside their gate or even peep. On Sundays, I’d always walk into church late with my hair nicely blow-dried. I’d walk out five minutes later for chats and loud laughs outside with other idle church goers. We would then wait for the youth meetings where I’d jiskia with my English (for a shagzmodo girl, I had some pretty good English). After youth meetings. We would give each other what we called ‘pushes’ back and forth. I give you a push to your place- you push me back; times 10. On Monday, Mr. Kilo would always beat me up because I forgot to do all my GHC and Maths assignments.

8. Did I mention that I was the brightest girl in the zone? Even though I was caned almost every day, and I was lazy with copying notes and I actually did not understand anything that was being taught especially in science, I was the brightest they had. I got everything in tests that sometimes I think got the wrongs out of choice (I just lied). But I was bright. When it came to writing compositions about “a thin sweat cascading down the valleys of my back-“ and “ I was confused like a pregnant chameleon sitting on a merchant box waiting for its master’ then hapo haungenibeat. I was the girl! I aced everything, for real. And we had this school tradition where after every exam, you were allowed to cane everyone who you had defeated. So we were all to lie down on a line and from 1-46, you were to cane everyone who was lying next to you. Woe unto you if I asked for a red pen from you in class to underline the title na ukanikataza, the cane mould rain down on you at some special speed. That aside, hadi wa leo, that school still has a trophy, famously known as kikombe, labelled as “Best Girl- Jacqueline Ndinda- K.P.S. Kanzalu Zone”.

9. Almost forgot to mention the school uniform- the tunics and shorts were navy blue. The shirts were pink, the socks were red, the shoes were whatever colour your mum or grandmother chose- even luminous green was acceptable. So picture that, and I pray you do not lose your sight in the process.

10.  Our headmaster once leaked to us ’us the mock exams- he called us to the assembly ground and showed us the signs that he would do for the answers to each number.  For A, he scratched his ears, for B- he picked his nose—-well, I lied again here- but just know that this leakage involved  a lot of physical activity that if you watched him from a distance, you’d think that he was dancing. The supervisor later came to know and did nothing after our headmaster bought him a packet of roster.

11.  There wasn’t supposed to be a number 11, but all through my childhood, we had a thief friend who used to go into the house through the windows even when we were inside the house. His name was Muia. He used to steal the weirdest things like sufurias and brooms, but mostly food. Muia used to live in our macadamia- nut trees. He had a tree house there. He once stole my dad’s goat, cooked it and killed it in our compound (well, whichever comes first) no one heard any noise. We just found the head of the goat and some left over nyama. But the scariest that Muia did was pushing his hand through a broken window to tekerenya my head while I was asleep! Creep!!!!!!

Nkt! Hata nimeacha kufikiria sasa.

But word is, this coming Thursday we come together, poets, bands , comedian s and all, to give a smile to a child who might never have memories like these- a child with Cerebral Palsy. These kids don’t get to play with their peers, or have stupid-out-of-this-world moments. Most of them spend their lifetime on wheelchairs and the only friend they have is their mother.  So poetry, music, stand up comedy for you- and all you need is 400/= ….at Secrets Lounge this Thursday, 4^th of November. We start at 7pm.

Be a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world, and show some love… spread the word!!!