A yawn here
A dream there
Rumbling stomachs all over.
Lunchtime at lunchless park
Our hungry faces litter the park.
You sat by me in my corner,
Cheap skirt-suit to impress panels
Worn out shoes tired of the tarmac
A haggard envelope carrying your credentials
Lying on your tired thighs – the real credentials?
You yawned
I saw a dream die in your eyes
As your rumbling stomach confirmed my fears.
Lunchless? I asked,
It wasn’t your bitter look that amused me
It was your answer –
Am watching my weight!
©2008 Otiato Opali
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
A Child of One World
That ride, what a ride! This is the part where am supposed to cry but I can’t, I wont, not after that ride. It wasn’t just a ride through the streets, it was a ride through my life and I won’t shed any tears. It is said that women cry when in pain, men drink. I will not cry. And why should I? Some would tell me it is because I have been left with nothing. Nothing? Nothing is all I have had all my life. If having nothing would be a cause for crying, then my tear glands would have flown dry long ago. And I would have nothing to shed.
Like my neighbor mama Aluoch says, if things continue in this manner, she will one day throw herself in front of a speeding vehicle and bang; there goes nothing – her life. Come to think of it, that is exactly what happened to me yesterday. Mama Aluoch has a funny twist to the way she would like to end the nothingness that is her life. When the day comes, she will patiently wait by the roadside until she sees a sleek and elegant Mercedes Benz, only then will she hurl herself onto the road. She can’t afford to be wiped off by a creaky and rusty Chevrolet or some other funny car. It has to be an expensive machine. It has to be an honorable death, a Mercedes death. That is the death I died yesterday, an honorable death, a Mercedes death.
Mine was not a Mercedes though, it was a sleek state of the art Toyota Lexus. What a ride! As we set off, I snugly surrendered myself to its feathery leather seat and let the music from the player soak into me. The music seeped in, bit by bit, carrying me to far far way places, places I have never been to, worlds I have never imagined, worlds other than the one world I have always lived in, my small world.
All this while Mr. expensive suit thick neck fleshy lips just drove on sweating profusely, wishing he could get a broom and sweep me out of the car. I didn’t care, I stuck on like a stubborn stain.
As we rode along the streets, I was this important woman looking out through the tinted glass, seeing everyone while not being seen. Outside I could see council workers sweeping the streets, emptying dustbins and slashing grass. All this for a mere five thousands shillings a month. But that was them, not me. I was this elegant woman, riding in a sleek car, donning expensive clothes and reeking of money.
I had the whole of the back seat to myself, Mr. expensive suit stuck to the steering wheel, squeezing it as if he wanted to strangle it but I didn’t care, like the stubborn stain I stuck on. There was a bar at one side of the rear doors. The alcohol sounded expensive. This is because the bottles clinked in this sophisticated manner every time the vehicle hit a bump or something. I passed my hand over the bottles and I noticed Mr. fleshy lips pursing them harder while glaring at me through the rear view mirror.
I withdrew my hand but not with fear, with dignity. In a manner actually suggesting that I don’t drink, praise the Lord! I don’t indulge in earthly pleasures, pleasures of the flesh and wiles of the devil, Hallelujah! I didn’t want his drinks, even my husband would not have wanted the drinks. I suppose a bottle costs almost three thousand shillings and the bar had three of the bottles. My husband would never drink such. Why should he when he would always go to Mama Junior’s place, spend fifty shillings and come home stupefied as if he had drunk all the alcohol there was at Mama Junior’s.
Baba Billy, that man of mine could drink. I had spent the early years of my marriage trying to stop him from drinking but after twenty five years of marriage, one gets used to it. That man could drink. The best I could do to curb his drinking was to take three quarters of his salary, which was about six thousand shillings and pay the rent, buy salt, flour and cooking fat and leave him the remaining two thousand so that he can drink. On good months, the two thousand would last him till the next pay but on others, he would be out by the middle of the month and I had to lend him some of my own money. Don’t ask me why I did it yet am a saved Christian. It was either I gave it to him or he took it. We used to keep our savings in a tin buried under the bed and nothing could stop him from getting the money if he wanted to. The act of asking me was just a way of showing that he at least cared about me and respected me.
Most people blame his death on the alcohol but I blame it on nothing. He was just doing his job like any other person, trying to eke a living. Baba Billy met his death while dispensing his services for the city council where he worked. He was a guard with the city council, we call them council askaris. Their job description includes chasing hawkers from the city center. Hawkers are considered an eyesore in the central business district of our city, they are this stubborn stain that defiles the standards of civilization and further more, they steal from the rich who use the city. On the day Baba Billy died, the council askaris and the hawkers were involved in running battles.
My husband had had a little too much to drink the previous day and during the fight, he was cornered by the hawkers. The hawkers and the askaris, both living in the slums as neighbors, both earning a pittance to make ends meet and both fighting in the name of making a living, fighting at the orders of the rich. Baba Billy never made it out alive.
But even if he had made it, he would never spend three thousand on a bottle of brandy when he can deposit that same amount at Mama Junior’s and have a whole month’s supply of alcohol. And furthermore, I would never let him do that knowing well that with that money, I can do a shopping that can last for two good months. So as I withdrew my hand from the bottles, I ensured that I did it with dignity, not with fear. I did it in a way that Mr. thick neck would know that I didn't want his alcohol and even if my husband were alive, he wouldn’t want it either.
The ride went on slowly, moving inch by inch in the thick traffic jam and with it, my journey into affluence progressed. If this woman riding in this car had three television monitors in the car, how many did she have at home. There was a television monitor on the dashboard for the driver and the co-driver while both the driver and the co-driver’s seats had monitors at their backs to serve the passengers in the back seat. If this were my car, mounted with three monitors, what about my house. I believe my house would have six screens. One in the sitting room, one in our bedroom, the third and fourth in both Billy and Anne’s bedrooms, a small one in the servants’ quarters and the last one in the lounge.
Since boys love football, I love gospel music and girls love soaps while maids love those Nigerian movies, it would be convenient if everyone had their own privacy to watch what they want. Baba Billy could watch his news in the sitting room while the guests could decide what to do with the television in the lounge. That is what I call peace. No fighting over the remote and better still, no having to pay five shillings to get into a crowded hall just to watch television as it is done in Onga city where everyone, including myself, lives.
Those television dens are not good places. That is where I lost my son Billy after my daughter Anne was gone. Billy was the eldest and I thought he would turn out fine. Anne on the other hand had problems early enough in life. She failed her primary exams terribly but I don’t blame her, the school she attended was no good and we couldn’t pay for a better one. I decided to take her for sewing lessons so that she could learn how to make clothes and acquire a craft that would later help her in life but the road does not tell the traveler what lurks ahead.
Okudi, that wicked man that was supposed to teach her how to make clothes added in a few lessons of his own, how to make babies. Anne couldn’t face me about it, she ran to the coast and I understand that nowadays she does the bad work with the tourists. All this and I can do nothing, I don’t know where the coast is. People fly from abroad to come and see the coast when I can’t afford to get enough money to go to the coast to redeem my daughter, not gaze at the sea, save my daughter!
After Okudi happened on my daughter, Billy started coming home late and every time I asked him where he’d been, he would always tell me that he had been watching football at the hall where people share television. I warned him about the bad boys who hang around that place but I knew I was kidding myself. Which bad boys? All those boys are children I saw growing up alongside my Billy. They are children whose parents lived a tin house away from mine or two sewage trenches away. If I believed they are bad, then their parents must surely believe that my Billy was bad too, they were all bad.
What I was really trying to put through Billy’s head was the fact that his father was not around anymore and he was supposed to seriously think of taking his father’s position in the house but the boy had grown so fond of the sister and coming home to a house without her was coming home to an empty house. As he stayed out late, he started smoking bhang with the boys at the television hall. The bhang got into his head and he started talking of wrongs that can never be righted, telling me about the slavery of blacks four hundred years ago, what did that have to do with me? I warned him and told him that bhang would bring him no good, just madness but he wouldn’t listen. They started a movement with his fellow bhang smokers called ‘No election without liberation, no more politricks’ but they were all arrested for various reasons. Some for possession of illegal substances, others for loitering while others went in for being poor. I hope when he finishes his seven year term he will have learnt that bhang smoking is for the mad men, not normal people living normally like we do, living normally like we do...
Anyway, whatever the case, it would sure be nice to be this woman who has six screens in her house and three in her car. Then, Billy would not have had to go watch football at the hall, never have had to smoke bhang and never have had to serve seven years.
Mr. Expensive suit thick neck fleshy lips realized that I had gazed long at the TV monitor behind his seat and decided to switch it off but that would not get me out. On and on I stuck like a stubborn stain sprawled against the white immaculate leather that was his car’s back seat where I sat.
As the car indicated to turn left into the council offices, I saw a smile of victory curve itself out of the thick fleshy lips. At long last, the ride was over and the stench would get out of his elegant machine. At the offices I explained how Mr. Expensive suit had refused to stop at a Zebra Crossing where I was stationed and how he talked rudely at me when I stopped him. I had therefore booked him and asked him to drive me over to the council offices so that I could charge him with the necessary fine. Mr. thick neck winked at my supervisor and I was asked to wait outside. After a while, he was escorted out to his car by my supervisor who on coming back asked me back into the office.
I was sacked. That even after the man identifying himself as Mr. important person and deep pockets, I still subjected him to such humility. That due to my action, he was threatening to withdraw his sponsorship for the council members’ Easter Holiday at the coast unless something was done about me. I had been a good worker for the almost twenty years I worked for the council, the supervisor went ahead to add, and he would not like to lose me but it was beyond him.
As I walked home to my world Onga city which is ten kilometers from the city center, all I could remember was that ride, that opulent ride on a cloud of affluence between the Zebra crossing on which I was stationed and the council offices. That was one ride out of my world and though it knocked my job dead, at least it was a Mercedes death, an honorable death. And though my neighbors think that I should be crying because I have lost my job and am now left with nothing, what they don’t know is that I have had nothing all along. I have never known what it feels to have something except when I was in that car. It is only then that I knew how it feels to be of that other world and for that, I will not cry.
©2008 Otiato Opali
Like my neighbor mama Aluoch says, if things continue in this manner, she will one day throw herself in front of a speeding vehicle and bang; there goes nothing – her life. Come to think of it, that is exactly what happened to me yesterday. Mama Aluoch has a funny twist to the way she would like to end the nothingness that is her life. When the day comes, she will patiently wait by the roadside until she sees a sleek and elegant Mercedes Benz, only then will she hurl herself onto the road. She can’t afford to be wiped off by a creaky and rusty Chevrolet or some other funny car. It has to be an expensive machine. It has to be an honorable death, a Mercedes death. That is the death I died yesterday, an honorable death, a Mercedes death.
Mine was not a Mercedes though, it was a sleek state of the art Toyota Lexus. What a ride! As we set off, I snugly surrendered myself to its feathery leather seat and let the music from the player soak into me. The music seeped in, bit by bit, carrying me to far far way places, places I have never been to, worlds I have never imagined, worlds other than the one world I have always lived in, my small world.
All this while Mr. expensive suit thick neck fleshy lips just drove on sweating profusely, wishing he could get a broom and sweep me out of the car. I didn’t care, I stuck on like a stubborn stain.
As we rode along the streets, I was this important woman looking out through the tinted glass, seeing everyone while not being seen. Outside I could see council workers sweeping the streets, emptying dustbins and slashing grass. All this for a mere five thousands shillings a month. But that was them, not me. I was this elegant woman, riding in a sleek car, donning expensive clothes and reeking of money.
I had the whole of the back seat to myself, Mr. expensive suit stuck to the steering wheel, squeezing it as if he wanted to strangle it but I didn’t care, like the stubborn stain I stuck on. There was a bar at one side of the rear doors. The alcohol sounded expensive. This is because the bottles clinked in this sophisticated manner every time the vehicle hit a bump or something. I passed my hand over the bottles and I noticed Mr. fleshy lips pursing them harder while glaring at me through the rear view mirror.
I withdrew my hand but not with fear, with dignity. In a manner actually suggesting that I don’t drink, praise the Lord! I don’t indulge in earthly pleasures, pleasures of the flesh and wiles of the devil, Hallelujah! I didn’t want his drinks, even my husband would not have wanted the drinks. I suppose a bottle costs almost three thousand shillings and the bar had three of the bottles. My husband would never drink such. Why should he when he would always go to Mama Junior’s place, spend fifty shillings and come home stupefied as if he had drunk all the alcohol there was at Mama Junior’s.
Baba Billy, that man of mine could drink. I had spent the early years of my marriage trying to stop him from drinking but after twenty five years of marriage, one gets used to it. That man could drink. The best I could do to curb his drinking was to take three quarters of his salary, which was about six thousand shillings and pay the rent, buy salt, flour and cooking fat and leave him the remaining two thousand so that he can drink. On good months, the two thousand would last him till the next pay but on others, he would be out by the middle of the month and I had to lend him some of my own money. Don’t ask me why I did it yet am a saved Christian. It was either I gave it to him or he took it. We used to keep our savings in a tin buried under the bed and nothing could stop him from getting the money if he wanted to. The act of asking me was just a way of showing that he at least cared about me and respected me.
Most people blame his death on the alcohol but I blame it on nothing. He was just doing his job like any other person, trying to eke a living. Baba Billy met his death while dispensing his services for the city council where he worked. He was a guard with the city council, we call them council askaris. Their job description includes chasing hawkers from the city center. Hawkers are considered an eyesore in the central business district of our city, they are this stubborn stain that defiles the standards of civilization and further more, they steal from the rich who use the city. On the day Baba Billy died, the council askaris and the hawkers were involved in running battles.
My husband had had a little too much to drink the previous day and during the fight, he was cornered by the hawkers. The hawkers and the askaris, both living in the slums as neighbors, both earning a pittance to make ends meet and both fighting in the name of making a living, fighting at the orders of the rich. Baba Billy never made it out alive.
But even if he had made it, he would never spend three thousand on a bottle of brandy when he can deposit that same amount at Mama Junior’s and have a whole month’s supply of alcohol. And furthermore, I would never let him do that knowing well that with that money, I can do a shopping that can last for two good months. So as I withdrew my hand from the bottles, I ensured that I did it with dignity, not with fear. I did it in a way that Mr. thick neck would know that I didn't want his alcohol and even if my husband were alive, he wouldn’t want it either.
The ride went on slowly, moving inch by inch in the thick traffic jam and with it, my journey into affluence progressed. If this woman riding in this car had three television monitors in the car, how many did she have at home. There was a television monitor on the dashboard for the driver and the co-driver while both the driver and the co-driver’s seats had monitors at their backs to serve the passengers in the back seat. If this were my car, mounted with three monitors, what about my house. I believe my house would have six screens. One in the sitting room, one in our bedroom, the third and fourth in both Billy and Anne’s bedrooms, a small one in the servants’ quarters and the last one in the lounge.
Since boys love football, I love gospel music and girls love soaps while maids love those Nigerian movies, it would be convenient if everyone had their own privacy to watch what they want. Baba Billy could watch his news in the sitting room while the guests could decide what to do with the television in the lounge. That is what I call peace. No fighting over the remote and better still, no having to pay five shillings to get into a crowded hall just to watch television as it is done in Onga city where everyone, including myself, lives.
Those television dens are not good places. That is where I lost my son Billy after my daughter Anne was gone. Billy was the eldest and I thought he would turn out fine. Anne on the other hand had problems early enough in life. She failed her primary exams terribly but I don’t blame her, the school she attended was no good and we couldn’t pay for a better one. I decided to take her for sewing lessons so that she could learn how to make clothes and acquire a craft that would later help her in life but the road does not tell the traveler what lurks ahead.
Okudi, that wicked man that was supposed to teach her how to make clothes added in a few lessons of his own, how to make babies. Anne couldn’t face me about it, she ran to the coast and I understand that nowadays she does the bad work with the tourists. All this and I can do nothing, I don’t know where the coast is. People fly from abroad to come and see the coast when I can’t afford to get enough money to go to the coast to redeem my daughter, not gaze at the sea, save my daughter!
After Okudi happened on my daughter, Billy started coming home late and every time I asked him where he’d been, he would always tell me that he had been watching football at the hall where people share television. I warned him about the bad boys who hang around that place but I knew I was kidding myself. Which bad boys? All those boys are children I saw growing up alongside my Billy. They are children whose parents lived a tin house away from mine or two sewage trenches away. If I believed they are bad, then their parents must surely believe that my Billy was bad too, they were all bad.
What I was really trying to put through Billy’s head was the fact that his father was not around anymore and he was supposed to seriously think of taking his father’s position in the house but the boy had grown so fond of the sister and coming home to a house without her was coming home to an empty house. As he stayed out late, he started smoking bhang with the boys at the television hall. The bhang got into his head and he started talking of wrongs that can never be righted, telling me about the slavery of blacks four hundred years ago, what did that have to do with me? I warned him and told him that bhang would bring him no good, just madness but he wouldn’t listen. They started a movement with his fellow bhang smokers called ‘No election without liberation, no more politricks’ but they were all arrested for various reasons. Some for possession of illegal substances, others for loitering while others went in for being poor. I hope when he finishes his seven year term he will have learnt that bhang smoking is for the mad men, not normal people living normally like we do, living normally like we do...
Anyway, whatever the case, it would sure be nice to be this woman who has six screens in her house and three in her car. Then, Billy would not have had to go watch football at the hall, never have had to smoke bhang and never have had to serve seven years.
Mr. Expensive suit thick neck fleshy lips realized that I had gazed long at the TV monitor behind his seat and decided to switch it off but that would not get me out. On and on I stuck like a stubborn stain sprawled against the white immaculate leather that was his car’s back seat where I sat.
As the car indicated to turn left into the council offices, I saw a smile of victory curve itself out of the thick fleshy lips. At long last, the ride was over and the stench would get out of his elegant machine. At the offices I explained how Mr. Expensive suit had refused to stop at a Zebra Crossing where I was stationed and how he talked rudely at me when I stopped him. I had therefore booked him and asked him to drive me over to the council offices so that I could charge him with the necessary fine. Mr. thick neck winked at my supervisor and I was asked to wait outside. After a while, he was escorted out to his car by my supervisor who on coming back asked me back into the office.
I was sacked. That even after the man identifying himself as Mr. important person and deep pockets, I still subjected him to such humility. That due to my action, he was threatening to withdraw his sponsorship for the council members’ Easter Holiday at the coast unless something was done about me. I had been a good worker for the almost twenty years I worked for the council, the supervisor went ahead to add, and he would not like to lose me but it was beyond him.
As I walked home to my world Onga city which is ten kilometers from the city center, all I could remember was that ride, that opulent ride on a cloud of affluence between the Zebra crossing on which I was stationed and the council offices. That was one ride out of my world and though it knocked my job dead, at least it was a Mercedes death, an honorable death. And though my neighbors think that I should be crying because I have lost my job and am now left with nothing, what they don’t know is that I have had nothing all along. I have never known what it feels to have something except when I was in that car. It is only then that I knew how it feels to be of that other world and for that, I will not cry.
©2008 Otiato Opali
Deserve to Die
The silence that greeted Mbaluto when he had unbolted the door to his house was too eerie for him to bear. He felt like locking the door and walking back into the night but where to? Glancing at his watch he realized that it was one O’clock in the night. The night was so quiet behind him, not even the crickets chirped. He had to get into the house, his house.
He had never envisaged the fact that this house would be so unwelcoming without her. Why was she doing this to him? Couldn’t she at least forgive him? He was sorry, truly sorry. He would do anything to prove this to her. But where was she? She should have stayed, should have given him a chance to express his remorse but she did not. She chose to go. And now that she was gone, he could not even enter his own house.
In the past three days, he had been coming home dead drunk. This way, the telling silence of his house could not reach him in his drunken stupor. He would get home, collapse on the bed and light a cigarette. Sleep would prevail upon him by the time the cigarette’s ember was crossing over to the filter. In the morning, he would take a shower and quickly dash out of the house on his way to his workplace. This had become life for him since she went away. Always running away from his house, her house, their house.
On this day, he had gone to the pub but he could not drink. He had to get used to his house and the only way to do this was to get home while still sober. So he had just sat at the pub, smoking cigarette after cigarette while trying to get the courage to go home.
Mbaluto was now at his doorstep but he couldn’t get into the house. He fiddled with his pocket and got out a cigarette lighter. He lit it and pushed open the door. The lighter’s orange flame made everything in the sitting room glow in a golden manner, so romantic …
Yes, it was in this very sitting room with this very same golden glow that he first knew her depths. It was two years ago and he had just been employed as a journalist with one of the leading papers in the country. Naomi had just joined a medical college then.
On that particular night, Naomi had come to his house for the first time. He had gone through the pains of strategically placing candles in the sitting room. All lights were off. The candles’ orange flame made everything in the sitting room glow in a golden manner, so romantic … He had kissed her on the couch and on the thick carpet on the floor. And it was there on the carpet that he had known her insides. God! She was beautiful, so beautiful and warm. He was a man in love and he wanted her, all of her.
These memories of that night left Mbaluto empty inside. He was like a deflated balloon with no inside. He quickly blew off the lighter to wipe the memories away. It was then that the darkness and silence started weighing down on him once again. In the darkness, he stumbled his way to the switch and turned on the lights. He then saw that he had left the door open. He walked over to it and shut it. He was now alone in the house. This made him lonely. He missed Naomi with all his being. He gave the house one look, everything was pointing at her absence.
Were she around, his shirts would not be lying unwashed on the chairs the way they did. The carpet he had once treasured would not be smeared with mud as it was tonight. The utensils would be washed and neatly arranged in the cupboard. The ashtray on the table would be emptied of all those cigarette stubs. Everything would be in its rightful place only if she were around.
He then saw her face on the wall. His heart started thumping audibly faster. He walked to the wall and with trembling hands, he brought down the framed picture. With the picture in his hands, he sat on one of the sofas. That was Naomi in his arms on their wedding day. He looked at Naomi and himself in the picture as if he was looking at it for the first time. Ice-cold tears rolled down his cheeks. He hugged the picture and let himself cry.
When he had landed himself a job two years ago, Mbaluto’s future seemed bright. There was no stopping him. He had a good salary and a good house. What was missing in the picture was a wife. Didn’t they say that behind every successful man there was a woman? The only problem was that Naomi, his all, had just joined a medical college and he had to wait for her to clear her schooling. Four years! That was too much for an impatient man like Mbaluto. He managed to convince the tender minded Naomi that she didn’t necessarily need to have a job. His salary was enough to take care of them and the children they would raise in the future. He went as far as paying her parents for interfering with their daughter’s education. Since when did parents refuse money especially if it was for their daughters? The deal was sealed.
Their wedding was so wonderful and this picture he was holding held all the day’s memories. The onset of their lives together, Naomi and himself.
What went wrong? Was it fate, was this destiny? How could he hurt the one he had once loved? So many questions. He looked at Naomi yet again in the picture. She was so beautiful. He was realizing this after a very long time. What had gotten into him? What had led him outside, away from her? What made him become so brutal towards her? She must have gone through a lot. It was funny that he was realizing this after she was gone. If only she were around, he would make it up to her. He would do anything to earn favour in her eyes again. But she was gone. Gone to the winds. Blown away from the surface of the earth. The worst part of it, she wouldn’t forgive him, she just wouldn’t.
He had pleaded with her on her deathbed in this very house but all she did was shake her head in refusal. He had promised her that she would get better. He would treat her as the queen that she was. He would never drink again. He would never hurt her, never lay a hand on her, never. He even cried, real tears. He was sorry. She did not buy it. She was indifferent to his overnight conversion. All she did was shake her head from side to side. No, she would never forgive him.
As he sat on the table looking at the picture, a deep-rooted hatred for her developed at the pit of his stomach. Why wouldn’t she forgive him? Did she have to subject the rest of his life to guilt? Hadn’t she once vowed to stand by him through thick and thin? Why didn’t she forgive him? He was truly deeply sorry. This haunted him. It made him guilty. It made him a stranger in his own house. He now hated her. Hated her so much for not forgiving him.
A thought struck him. He was going to get rid of her from his life and house once and for all. He went to the window, opened it and threw the wedding picture into the night. He heard the glass on the picture’s frame shatter to pieces in the quiet night but he didn’t care. He headed straight for her wardrobe in the bedroom. He would evict all her clothes from his house and burn them. He opened the wardrobe and with one sweep of his hand all the clothes were of the hooks. He threw the clothes on the floor and on looking back into the wardrobe, he saw it.
It had been pushed to the far corner of the wardrobe. He looked closer at it. It quietly lay at its place. It seemed so unperturbed and provocative. So inviting. In it lay the script by which her life had been lived. It was her diary. The last episode! The last entry – he thought. He wanted to read their last encounter in her words because it was here that the key to his confusion lay.
He grabbed the diary and walked back to the sitting room trampling on the clothes he had thrown on the floor. Once on the sofa, he started flipping through the diary. He did not care to read earlier entries. All he wanted to do was read the last episode.
Had he read earlier entries he would have seen something like this;
Saturday 12th April 2004
Mbaluto came home drunk as usual. It is not this that bothered me. What bothered me is that in his drunkenness, he forced himself on me. I know I am his wife and it is part
of my marital duty but for heaven’s sake not when he is drunk! Where is the man I married?
Mbaluto did not have time for this and other earlier entries. Those of her sufferings at his hands. Of the beatings, of the cheatings, of the insults. Just because she didn’t have a job of her own. Just because he had to give her everything. Mbaluto did not have time for these entries. All he wanted was to read the last episode. To revisit the scene in his sober self, from her point of view. At last! There it was. He had opened the page that contained the last entry. It was quite lengthy as he had expected it to be. He reached for a cigarette, lit it and drew in a long puff. Let the reading begin.
Saturday 15th June 2004
Mbaluto has killed me. He came home drunk as usual and I served him Ugali and fried meat. He didn’t eat the food. Instead, he demanded to know where I had gotten the money to buy meat. The money he had left behind could not afford a quarter of a kilo of meat.
I didn’t work, he said, and so there was no way I could have my own money unless I was seeing another man. So where did I get the money?
I told him I had found two hundred shillings in his trouser while doing the washing yesterday and before I could even finish talking, he slapped me. Mbaluto slapped me so hard that I fell onto the carpet.
He was angry. Hadn’t he told me to give him all the money I found on his clothes? If I wanted money from him I had to ask. He kicked me on the floor and threw the plate of meat at me. Why was I stubborn, he was asking. Why couldn’t I simply follow instructions?
I told him that I did not find the two hundred shillings alone. That I also found a receipt for two at the Lucky Star Hotel. That the dinner, a room for two for the night and breakfast had cost him two thousand five hundred shillings. So I saw no problem in using just two hundred for a decent meal in the house.
I have never seen Mbaluto so mad. He beat me. So I was spying on him. So I was trying to curtail his freedom as a man. How could a woman try to ‘limit the oxygen’ of a man, was what he said.
He then kicked me on the chest, kicked me so hard on the chest as if he was fighting his fellow man. I felt a sharp pain in my heart. Vomit filled my mouth and when I let it out it was pure blood. Mbaluto has killed me.
This man I once loved. This man I once cherished. This man I once adored has become my undoing. He deserves to die. I will never forgive him for what he has done to me. Men like him deserve to die.
By the time Mbaluto finished reading the last episode, his whole shirt was awash with sweat. He should have taken her to the hospital. But how would he have explained it to the doctors? He thought the vomiting was mild and would stop on its own but it didn’t. She vomited blood until the day she died. He had killed her.
Her words rang in his head like the churchman’s bell. She would never forgive him. He didn’t deserve a life. Men like him should never be forgiven. They deserved to die. He, Mbaluto, deserved to die.
Why hadn’t he seen it before? It was so simple and it lay right below his nose. He deserved to die. He pulled out another cigarette and lit it. At last he felt at peace with himself. All the tension and anxiety had left him. He slowly pulled at the cigarette, probably his last. He looked at his house for the last time. He would miss it so much. It was four O’clock in the night. Now he was around but when the sun will be peeping in the east he will never be around!. He deserved to die. When tomorrow comes, he will be gone to the winds, blown away from the surface of the earth!
©2008 Otiato Opali
He had never envisaged the fact that this house would be so unwelcoming without her. Why was she doing this to him? Couldn’t she at least forgive him? He was sorry, truly sorry. He would do anything to prove this to her. But where was she? She should have stayed, should have given him a chance to express his remorse but she did not. She chose to go. And now that she was gone, he could not even enter his own house.
In the past three days, he had been coming home dead drunk. This way, the telling silence of his house could not reach him in his drunken stupor. He would get home, collapse on the bed and light a cigarette. Sleep would prevail upon him by the time the cigarette’s ember was crossing over to the filter. In the morning, he would take a shower and quickly dash out of the house on his way to his workplace. This had become life for him since she went away. Always running away from his house, her house, their house.
On this day, he had gone to the pub but he could not drink. He had to get used to his house and the only way to do this was to get home while still sober. So he had just sat at the pub, smoking cigarette after cigarette while trying to get the courage to go home.
Mbaluto was now at his doorstep but he couldn’t get into the house. He fiddled with his pocket and got out a cigarette lighter. He lit it and pushed open the door. The lighter’s orange flame made everything in the sitting room glow in a golden manner, so romantic …
Yes, it was in this very sitting room with this very same golden glow that he first knew her depths. It was two years ago and he had just been employed as a journalist with one of the leading papers in the country. Naomi had just joined a medical college then.
On that particular night, Naomi had come to his house for the first time. He had gone through the pains of strategically placing candles in the sitting room. All lights were off. The candles’ orange flame made everything in the sitting room glow in a golden manner, so romantic … He had kissed her on the couch and on the thick carpet on the floor. And it was there on the carpet that he had known her insides. God! She was beautiful, so beautiful and warm. He was a man in love and he wanted her, all of her.
These memories of that night left Mbaluto empty inside. He was like a deflated balloon with no inside. He quickly blew off the lighter to wipe the memories away. It was then that the darkness and silence started weighing down on him once again. In the darkness, he stumbled his way to the switch and turned on the lights. He then saw that he had left the door open. He walked over to it and shut it. He was now alone in the house. This made him lonely. He missed Naomi with all his being. He gave the house one look, everything was pointing at her absence.
Were she around, his shirts would not be lying unwashed on the chairs the way they did. The carpet he had once treasured would not be smeared with mud as it was tonight. The utensils would be washed and neatly arranged in the cupboard. The ashtray on the table would be emptied of all those cigarette stubs. Everything would be in its rightful place only if she were around.
He then saw her face on the wall. His heart started thumping audibly faster. He walked to the wall and with trembling hands, he brought down the framed picture. With the picture in his hands, he sat on one of the sofas. That was Naomi in his arms on their wedding day. He looked at Naomi and himself in the picture as if he was looking at it for the first time. Ice-cold tears rolled down his cheeks. He hugged the picture and let himself cry.
When he had landed himself a job two years ago, Mbaluto’s future seemed bright. There was no stopping him. He had a good salary and a good house. What was missing in the picture was a wife. Didn’t they say that behind every successful man there was a woman? The only problem was that Naomi, his all, had just joined a medical college and he had to wait for her to clear her schooling. Four years! That was too much for an impatient man like Mbaluto. He managed to convince the tender minded Naomi that she didn’t necessarily need to have a job. His salary was enough to take care of them and the children they would raise in the future. He went as far as paying her parents for interfering with their daughter’s education. Since when did parents refuse money especially if it was for their daughters? The deal was sealed.
Their wedding was so wonderful and this picture he was holding held all the day’s memories. The onset of their lives together, Naomi and himself.
What went wrong? Was it fate, was this destiny? How could he hurt the one he had once loved? So many questions. He looked at Naomi yet again in the picture. She was so beautiful. He was realizing this after a very long time. What had gotten into him? What had led him outside, away from her? What made him become so brutal towards her? She must have gone through a lot. It was funny that he was realizing this after she was gone. If only she were around, he would make it up to her. He would do anything to earn favour in her eyes again. But she was gone. Gone to the winds. Blown away from the surface of the earth. The worst part of it, she wouldn’t forgive him, she just wouldn’t.
He had pleaded with her on her deathbed in this very house but all she did was shake her head in refusal. He had promised her that she would get better. He would treat her as the queen that she was. He would never drink again. He would never hurt her, never lay a hand on her, never. He even cried, real tears. He was sorry. She did not buy it. She was indifferent to his overnight conversion. All she did was shake her head from side to side. No, she would never forgive him.
As he sat on the table looking at the picture, a deep-rooted hatred for her developed at the pit of his stomach. Why wouldn’t she forgive him? Did she have to subject the rest of his life to guilt? Hadn’t she once vowed to stand by him through thick and thin? Why didn’t she forgive him? He was truly deeply sorry. This haunted him. It made him guilty. It made him a stranger in his own house. He now hated her. Hated her so much for not forgiving him.
A thought struck him. He was going to get rid of her from his life and house once and for all. He went to the window, opened it and threw the wedding picture into the night. He heard the glass on the picture’s frame shatter to pieces in the quiet night but he didn’t care. He headed straight for her wardrobe in the bedroom. He would evict all her clothes from his house and burn them. He opened the wardrobe and with one sweep of his hand all the clothes were of the hooks. He threw the clothes on the floor and on looking back into the wardrobe, he saw it.
It had been pushed to the far corner of the wardrobe. He looked closer at it. It quietly lay at its place. It seemed so unperturbed and provocative. So inviting. In it lay the script by which her life had been lived. It was her diary. The last episode! The last entry – he thought. He wanted to read their last encounter in her words because it was here that the key to his confusion lay.
He grabbed the diary and walked back to the sitting room trampling on the clothes he had thrown on the floor. Once on the sofa, he started flipping through the diary. He did not care to read earlier entries. All he wanted to do was read the last episode.
Had he read earlier entries he would have seen something like this;
Saturday 12th April 2004
Mbaluto came home drunk as usual. It is not this that bothered me. What bothered me is that in his drunkenness, he forced himself on me. I know I am his wife and it is part
of my marital duty but for heaven’s sake not when he is drunk! Where is the man I married?
Mbaluto did not have time for this and other earlier entries. Those of her sufferings at his hands. Of the beatings, of the cheatings, of the insults. Just because she didn’t have a job of her own. Just because he had to give her everything. Mbaluto did not have time for these entries. All he wanted was to read the last episode. To revisit the scene in his sober self, from her point of view. At last! There it was. He had opened the page that contained the last entry. It was quite lengthy as he had expected it to be. He reached for a cigarette, lit it and drew in a long puff. Let the reading begin.
Saturday 15th June 2004
Mbaluto has killed me. He came home drunk as usual and I served him Ugali and fried meat. He didn’t eat the food. Instead, he demanded to know where I had gotten the money to buy meat. The money he had left behind could not afford a quarter of a kilo of meat.
I didn’t work, he said, and so there was no way I could have my own money unless I was seeing another man. So where did I get the money?
I told him I had found two hundred shillings in his trouser while doing the washing yesterday and before I could even finish talking, he slapped me. Mbaluto slapped me so hard that I fell onto the carpet.
He was angry. Hadn’t he told me to give him all the money I found on his clothes? If I wanted money from him I had to ask. He kicked me on the floor and threw the plate of meat at me. Why was I stubborn, he was asking. Why couldn’t I simply follow instructions?
I told him that I did not find the two hundred shillings alone. That I also found a receipt for two at the Lucky Star Hotel. That the dinner, a room for two for the night and breakfast had cost him two thousand five hundred shillings. So I saw no problem in using just two hundred for a decent meal in the house.
I have never seen Mbaluto so mad. He beat me. So I was spying on him. So I was trying to curtail his freedom as a man. How could a woman try to ‘limit the oxygen’ of a man, was what he said.
He then kicked me on the chest, kicked me so hard on the chest as if he was fighting his fellow man. I felt a sharp pain in my heart. Vomit filled my mouth and when I let it out it was pure blood. Mbaluto has killed me.
This man I once loved. This man I once cherished. This man I once adored has become my undoing. He deserves to die. I will never forgive him for what he has done to me. Men like him deserve to die.
By the time Mbaluto finished reading the last episode, his whole shirt was awash with sweat. He should have taken her to the hospital. But how would he have explained it to the doctors? He thought the vomiting was mild and would stop on its own but it didn’t. She vomited blood until the day she died. He had killed her.
Her words rang in his head like the churchman’s bell. She would never forgive him. He didn’t deserve a life. Men like him should never be forgiven. They deserved to die. He, Mbaluto, deserved to die.
Why hadn’t he seen it before? It was so simple and it lay right below his nose. He deserved to die. He pulled out another cigarette and lit it. At last he felt at peace with himself. All the tension and anxiety had left him. He slowly pulled at the cigarette, probably his last. He looked at his house for the last time. He would miss it so much. It was four O’clock in the night. Now he was around but when the sun will be peeping in the east he will never be around!. He deserved to die. When tomorrow comes, he will be gone to the winds, blown away from the surface of the earth!
©2008 Otiato Opali
Letters to mother
Mama school good. Teacher learn us to write to sing ba ba black ship to read. Mama school good school very good.
This was the first letter he ever wrote me. It was not really a letter but something to show me he could now write since he had started going to school. Not that I could read. I had never gone to school all my life. Then, girls never went to school, they went to their husbands! It is Bahati my son who taught me how to read when he got to secondary school. I now wish he had never taught me how to read. Then, I would not be able to read this letter, his last letter.
Bahati, what have they done to you? I am finished! I am finished! Without you I am nothing! Nothing! Bahati, without you I am David before goliath without my sling. My husband, my son, my life, why did they pick on you? Uuuuuuwi! Why, why oh why, why you?
Oh, I am sorry for that outburst but you will have to bear with me. It is very painful, this letter is. He was everything I had. Do you know how it feels like to be a fisherman without a lake? That’s how I feel without Bahati my son. And that I have to learn about it in a letter! Oh, how I wish I never knew how to read. Bahati, I wish you never taught me how to read. Then, I would never be able to read this letter, your last letter!
I am not saying that all his letters brought bitterness to my heart, am I? No am not! His letters always brought warmth to my heart. Whenever they would be delivered, I would stop doing whatever I was at to go and read them. Whether I was in the shamba ploughing, at the river fetching water, in my hut brewing chang’aa or with other women gossiping, I would have to stop the work.
His letters always renewed my hope in life. I always kept them under my mattress in my hut. I treasured them as I treasured my own life. These were the connection between him and me, between mother and son, between mother and only son. In times of boredom I would retrieve them from under the mattress and go over them again and again. From his earliest that said ‘mama school good … school very good’ to his most recent. His letters made me proud of my son. They made me know that my struggle to bring him up single handedly were not in vain. All that scuffling with the police as I brewed and sold chang’aa to earn him school fees was not in vain after all. My son would stand by me, his letters confirmed this. He would get a good job and support his poor mother.
I will not tell you about his father. I will not tell you about the drunkard who always beat me as if he had paid bride wealth to purchase a punching bag. No, I will not tell you about that beast who got himself a fifteen year old girl and sent me away from his home like a dog. He had found himself a wife and did not need us anymore, me and my scabies infested baby. No, I will not tell you about him.
Instead, I will tell you about my son’s letters. Going through my son’s letters always wiped these bitter memories off my mind. They gave me hope to keep on keeping on. I would be happy to show you all his letters but it is not possible. They are so many. Maybe I should show you some. Yes, I will show you one. He wrote me this one when he got to the big city to start his work. He had just finished his secondary education and Omwami Isimba agreed to employ him as one of his drivers. Omwami Isimba … To realize that it is them who have caused me this misery! I wish I had never trusted them. Oh, how people change.
Wasn’t Omwami once as poor as I am? Did we not brew chang’aa with his wife Esther? Didn’t Esther and I bribe the police together to save our chang’aa, our livelihood? Oh! How people change! Omwami and his wife Esther used to be our neighbours here in this very village. They lived in that fallen hut across my fence. Tattered, hungry and poor, that was our lot – the Omwamis and we. We shared everything, from cooking sufurias to kitchen salt. They were us and we were them. Then the winds of change started sweeping across the whole country. Elections were nearing but this time it was different. All other parties had united against the old party. Songs were sung – The old party is bad, It’s time for change, A new beginning, Down with corruption, It’s time to give back – so many songs, so many slogans.
But still, both the new and old parties dished out money to voters. They came with briefcases filled with fifty shilling notes. The new party too! Each voter got fifty shillings. They sung about a new beginning but still dished out money. They sang of no more corruption but still dished out money. They sung of no more bribery but still dished out money. Fifty shillings for the five years they would be in power. Ten shillings a year. They must have found us very cheap!
No one cared to mind. The politicians were clever enough to offer free chang’aa alongside the fifty shillings. I had never sold so much chang’aa since I got into business. Omwami Isimba of all the people was the candidate for the new party. He had simply told Esther to give out free chang’aa and he got his nomination. In these rural parts of the country where everybody is poor, hopeless and disillusioned, chang’aa is life. A giver of chang’aa is a giver of life. Omwami gave us chang’aa, we will give him our votes! Now that Omwami had become a contender, I was assigned as his chang’aa distributor and I made quite a sale out of it. I sold enough chang’aa to drown a whale!
The new party won the elections and Omwami got his way into parliament. There was talk then of better things to come. Jobs were to be created, prices were to be slashed; corruption was to be fought and so on and so forth. That was when Omwami decided to take Bahati my son and make him one of his new drivers. Within a month he had already bought three vehicles. One for himself, one for Esther and the other for the children. But even if he could now buy twenty cars in a day, even if he could now eat at a five star hotel, even if he was now an MP, what gave them the right to cause me such misery? Bahati my son what gave them the right to do this to you? Uuuuuwi! Where do I go now? Whose guest shall I be?
Oops! There I go again with my outbursts but like I said, you’ll have to bear with me. This is the cry of a down trodden mother for her son. Now where was I? You’ll have to forgive me but I’m a very bad story teller. I was supposed to be showing you a letter he had written me when he got the big city to drive Omwami around. But being a bad story teller, I keep on jumping from this issue to the other. Anyway, a bad story teller or not, my son’s story must be told. I will now show you the letter he wrote me when he got the city that very first time to start his job as Omwami’s driver. Here it is.
Dear mama,
How are things back at home? Things are fine with me here in the city though I am trying so much to adjust.
Life here is difficult and bad. People here worship money. It is money here, money there, money everywhere! Mama, life in the village is good. In this city it is nothing but money. No love, no smiles, no greetings. Just money!
Mama do you think I am lying? I will bring you here one day so that you can see for yourself. All streets are lined with cripples, blind men, deaf men, men with wounds as open as sufurias, men in pain, some genuine others pretending. All these beg for money. This is not the village mama. People wake up in the morning knowing that “ I am going to beg” not to work, “ I am going to steal” not to work, to beg and to steal money.
In this city, there are homeless children everywhere. They are called children of the streets. One wonders, did the street mother and father them? In this city, mama, no one is a friend. Any one could be a thief, a conman, a gangster – even the police! It is all for money. I recently met uncle Juma but he had no time for me. He was rushing to his shop - to make money. One could not tell he was my father’s brother. He rushed off as if he had been told I am one of the robbers in this ugly city.
Anyway, that is the way of the city. How are you fairing on? I hope things are not so bad. I have enclosed two thousand shillings in this letter. Use five hundred shillings to build another granary where you will store the beans that are in the kitchen. You can pay the boys in the village one hundred and fifty so that they can help you harvest the maize I planted. Eight hundred shillings is for you. You can use it as you wish. Give the remaining money to my friend Yusuf. I had talked to him about a bigger house which he should build for me.
I know you are wondering why I need a bigger house. Mama, I have found a girl and I like her. I know you are worried that she is a town girl, one who cannot go to the shamba but she is not. She is also from our village and she came to the city to work as a waiter in a hotel. She is good, beautiful and very caring. I love her. Her name is Edna and I will bring her home so that you can see her. I am sure you will like her.
I have a little problem with Peter, Omwami’s son. He wants my Edna by force. I live in Omwami’s servants’ quarters and when Peter saw her come to visit me he started running after her. Edna does not like him and he tried to use his money to influence her. Oh! How people change! Wasn’t Peter my best friend back at the village before his father became our MP. Did we not grow up as brothers. Didn’t we burn and sell charcoal together to raise money to help you, our parents? What didn’t we do together? Nowadays he does not even want to see me let alone talk. Oh! How people change.
Anyway this should not worry you much. I love Edna and she I. There is no way Peter will have her. You take care of things back there at home knowing that I am fine. Do not worry so much about our troubles. God will see us through. He has brought us so far. I love you and miss you so much. I miss your good food too! Goodbye.
Your loving son,
Bahati.
Such letters always left a smile painted across my face. My life had been a bitter chain of painful episodes and my son had become my messiah, my saviour. Life had become hopeless for me but as my son grew older my hopes started rising again. You can tell this by looking at the letter I have just shown you. He loved his mother, he would take care of her to the end of the road. He was all that she had.
Where do I go now that he has been finished? They have finished him, they have ruined him. Bahati, I am finished. There is this letter I have not shown you. It is the letter I am crying about. When I received this letter yesterday, I got very happy. My son’s letters were a joy of its own kind in my life. Whether or not they brought money, I still cherished them. His letters were a testimony that this woman had not lost all in life. That above all, she had a son..
I was distilling chang’aa when it was delivered. It was brought from the shops where the driver of the matatu from the big city had left it. I quickly left the chang’aa alone and rushed into the house to read it. To find out how my son was fairing on in the city. To find out when he would come home to see his mama. Will he bring that Edna girl he always talked about? I must admit that as mother, I was a little jealous of this girl. Not that I did not like her, I had never met her. I just could not help fearing that she would take my position in my son’s life. But I had to let my son go. I know Bahati well enough and there is no way he would forget me. I guess that is our fate as women. We are close to our children from the time they enter our wombs. We spend sleepless nights by them when they are small to make sure they are okay. We look after them until they become big and strong but in the long run they live us to go and stay with strangers they just met in the outside world, outside our motherly love. And so a man and woman shall leave their mothers and the two shall become one!
So much was on my mind as I opened the letter hurriedly. I now wish I had never opened the letter. I wish I had never read the letter. Bahati my son, I wish you had never taught me how to read. Then, I would not be able to read this letter, your last letter.
Where does one begin? What wrong did I do to deserve this pain, this misery? What does one do? Do you cry until your tears run dry, do you tear of your clothes and roll in the dust, do you shout your voice hoarse, what do you do? Where does someone, nay, a mother like me find justice in this world? Let me read you this last letter and you will tell me where to turn to, tell me where to go, where to find justice.
Listen carefully it says: Dear mama, things have gone bad. I will keep the story short since I do not have much time to write this letter.
I got home last Saturday and found a rude shock waiting for me in my servants’ quarter room. I had left Edna in the room when I left in the morning and on coming back I did not find her, I found her corpse! I found the naked body of my lovely Edna sprawled on the floor. She must have been hit by some heavy thing on the head because her forehead was swollen. Shock gripped me. I could not tell head or tail of what had happened. My mouth ran dry, my voice disappeared, and my blood froze in my veins. Yes, I was not dreaming. That was my girl, my love lying naked on the floor. No doubt she had been raped. Who did this to my girl? I rushed out of my room in panic and headed for Omwami’s house. I do not know what I was going to do there but I just went. My head drummed with pain. I did not even know myself.
Another rude shock was waiting for me at Omwami’s door. Before I could even knock on the door, I overheard Omwami talking on the phone inside the house. He was speaking to someone in the police force. He was telling that someone how his son had messed. His son had accidentally killed a petty thief who was hiding in a servant’s room. The servant was one of the drivers. He was saying that he wanted the driver blackmailed. Yes, make it look like the driver killed the girl … Yes it is a girl … No it will no be hard, the driver is a poor wretch I picked from the village … Do not worry, I will settle that …That is a hard bargain but I will make it seventy five thousand shillings … Okay but make it clean, my son’s name should not appear anywhere. And the press should get none of this, my reputation, you know … Yes, a clean job, remember I am paying you.
Mama, I could not believe my ears. Peter, my childhood friend had raped and killed my Edna and I was being framed as the murderer. I had to run fast, very fast.
I turned away and ran towards the gate. My heart was beating fast and I was sweating all over. On reaching the gate, I found Peter and the watchman blocking my way. I was going nowhere, Peter said. They had called the police and I should be picked anytime to help with investigations. It was the same Peter we had grown up side by side. The same Peter we had schooled together. The same Peter we had gone without food together. Money makes beasts out of men.
I looked at Peter and anger boiled up in me. He had wronged me this much and he was now boasting that I will pay for his sins. No, he will not have it his way this time. I found myself snatching a rungu from the watchman and hitting Peter squarely in the head. The watchman came at me and I gave him one too on the shoulder and he fell. I then turned to Peter and pounded life out of him with the rungu. Yes, I beat him to death. Mama it was not me, it was the anger.
I am now a wanted man. Wanted for two counts of murder. That of my Edna and that of Peter. Mama your son is a killer, a serial killer. Do you think I can let them get me mama? No I can’t. By the time they get to me, I will be with Edna. We will be together in that world where there is no more suffering. We will love forever, together forever.
I am so sorry mama. I did not intend it to end this way. I guess fate had this in store for me. By the time you will be reading this letter, my body will be hanging somewhere on a tree but my soul will be with you, always. Goodbye mama. I am so sorry. Goodbye.
That is it, there it is! That is my son’s last letter. A mother’s last letter from her son. Now tell me, where does mama Bahati find justice? Where does she begin? What does she do? Where does one find justice in this land? Bahati my son, I am finished! Without you I am done. Without you I am nothing, nothing, nothing!
©2008 Otiato Opali
This was the first letter he ever wrote me. It was not really a letter but something to show me he could now write since he had started going to school. Not that I could read. I had never gone to school all my life. Then, girls never went to school, they went to their husbands! It is Bahati my son who taught me how to read when he got to secondary school. I now wish he had never taught me how to read. Then, I would not be able to read this letter, his last letter.
Bahati, what have they done to you? I am finished! I am finished! Without you I am nothing! Nothing! Bahati, without you I am David before goliath without my sling. My husband, my son, my life, why did they pick on you? Uuuuuuwi! Why, why oh why, why you?
Oh, I am sorry for that outburst but you will have to bear with me. It is very painful, this letter is. He was everything I had. Do you know how it feels like to be a fisherman without a lake? That’s how I feel without Bahati my son. And that I have to learn about it in a letter! Oh, how I wish I never knew how to read. Bahati, I wish you never taught me how to read. Then, I would never be able to read this letter, your last letter!
I am not saying that all his letters brought bitterness to my heart, am I? No am not! His letters always brought warmth to my heart. Whenever they would be delivered, I would stop doing whatever I was at to go and read them. Whether I was in the shamba ploughing, at the river fetching water, in my hut brewing chang’aa or with other women gossiping, I would have to stop the work.
His letters always renewed my hope in life. I always kept them under my mattress in my hut. I treasured them as I treasured my own life. These were the connection between him and me, between mother and son, between mother and only son. In times of boredom I would retrieve them from under the mattress and go over them again and again. From his earliest that said ‘mama school good … school very good’ to his most recent. His letters made me proud of my son. They made me know that my struggle to bring him up single handedly were not in vain. All that scuffling with the police as I brewed and sold chang’aa to earn him school fees was not in vain after all. My son would stand by me, his letters confirmed this. He would get a good job and support his poor mother.
I will not tell you about his father. I will not tell you about the drunkard who always beat me as if he had paid bride wealth to purchase a punching bag. No, I will not tell you about that beast who got himself a fifteen year old girl and sent me away from his home like a dog. He had found himself a wife and did not need us anymore, me and my scabies infested baby. No, I will not tell you about him.
Instead, I will tell you about my son’s letters. Going through my son’s letters always wiped these bitter memories off my mind. They gave me hope to keep on keeping on. I would be happy to show you all his letters but it is not possible. They are so many. Maybe I should show you some. Yes, I will show you one. He wrote me this one when he got to the big city to start his work. He had just finished his secondary education and Omwami Isimba agreed to employ him as one of his drivers. Omwami Isimba … To realize that it is them who have caused me this misery! I wish I had never trusted them. Oh, how people change.
Wasn’t Omwami once as poor as I am? Did we not brew chang’aa with his wife Esther? Didn’t Esther and I bribe the police together to save our chang’aa, our livelihood? Oh! How people change! Omwami and his wife Esther used to be our neighbours here in this very village. They lived in that fallen hut across my fence. Tattered, hungry and poor, that was our lot – the Omwamis and we. We shared everything, from cooking sufurias to kitchen salt. They were us and we were them. Then the winds of change started sweeping across the whole country. Elections were nearing but this time it was different. All other parties had united against the old party. Songs were sung – The old party is bad, It’s time for change, A new beginning, Down with corruption, It’s time to give back – so many songs, so many slogans.
But still, both the new and old parties dished out money to voters. They came with briefcases filled with fifty shilling notes. The new party too! Each voter got fifty shillings. They sung about a new beginning but still dished out money. They sang of no more corruption but still dished out money. They sung of no more bribery but still dished out money. Fifty shillings for the five years they would be in power. Ten shillings a year. They must have found us very cheap!
No one cared to mind. The politicians were clever enough to offer free chang’aa alongside the fifty shillings. I had never sold so much chang’aa since I got into business. Omwami Isimba of all the people was the candidate for the new party. He had simply told Esther to give out free chang’aa and he got his nomination. In these rural parts of the country where everybody is poor, hopeless and disillusioned, chang’aa is life. A giver of chang’aa is a giver of life. Omwami gave us chang’aa, we will give him our votes! Now that Omwami had become a contender, I was assigned as his chang’aa distributor and I made quite a sale out of it. I sold enough chang’aa to drown a whale!
The new party won the elections and Omwami got his way into parliament. There was talk then of better things to come. Jobs were to be created, prices were to be slashed; corruption was to be fought and so on and so forth. That was when Omwami decided to take Bahati my son and make him one of his new drivers. Within a month he had already bought three vehicles. One for himself, one for Esther and the other for the children. But even if he could now buy twenty cars in a day, even if he could now eat at a five star hotel, even if he was now an MP, what gave them the right to cause me such misery? Bahati my son what gave them the right to do this to you? Uuuuuwi! Where do I go now? Whose guest shall I be?
Oops! There I go again with my outbursts but like I said, you’ll have to bear with me. This is the cry of a down trodden mother for her son. Now where was I? You’ll have to forgive me but I’m a very bad story teller. I was supposed to be showing you a letter he had written me when he got the big city to drive Omwami around. But being a bad story teller, I keep on jumping from this issue to the other. Anyway, a bad story teller or not, my son’s story must be told. I will now show you the letter he wrote me when he got the city that very first time to start his job as Omwami’s driver. Here it is.
Dear mama,
How are things back at home? Things are fine with me here in the city though I am trying so much to adjust.
Life here is difficult and bad. People here worship money. It is money here, money there, money everywhere! Mama, life in the village is good. In this city it is nothing but money. No love, no smiles, no greetings. Just money!
Mama do you think I am lying? I will bring you here one day so that you can see for yourself. All streets are lined with cripples, blind men, deaf men, men with wounds as open as sufurias, men in pain, some genuine others pretending. All these beg for money. This is not the village mama. People wake up in the morning knowing that “ I am going to beg” not to work, “ I am going to steal” not to work, to beg and to steal money.
In this city, there are homeless children everywhere. They are called children of the streets. One wonders, did the street mother and father them? In this city, mama, no one is a friend. Any one could be a thief, a conman, a gangster – even the police! It is all for money. I recently met uncle Juma but he had no time for me. He was rushing to his shop - to make money. One could not tell he was my father’s brother. He rushed off as if he had been told I am one of the robbers in this ugly city.
Anyway, that is the way of the city. How are you fairing on? I hope things are not so bad. I have enclosed two thousand shillings in this letter. Use five hundred shillings to build another granary where you will store the beans that are in the kitchen. You can pay the boys in the village one hundred and fifty so that they can help you harvest the maize I planted. Eight hundred shillings is for you. You can use it as you wish. Give the remaining money to my friend Yusuf. I had talked to him about a bigger house which he should build for me.
I know you are wondering why I need a bigger house. Mama, I have found a girl and I like her. I know you are worried that she is a town girl, one who cannot go to the shamba but she is not. She is also from our village and she came to the city to work as a waiter in a hotel. She is good, beautiful and very caring. I love her. Her name is Edna and I will bring her home so that you can see her. I am sure you will like her.
I have a little problem with Peter, Omwami’s son. He wants my Edna by force. I live in Omwami’s servants’ quarters and when Peter saw her come to visit me he started running after her. Edna does not like him and he tried to use his money to influence her. Oh! How people change! Wasn’t Peter my best friend back at the village before his father became our MP. Did we not grow up as brothers. Didn’t we burn and sell charcoal together to raise money to help you, our parents? What didn’t we do together? Nowadays he does not even want to see me let alone talk. Oh! How people change.
Anyway this should not worry you much. I love Edna and she I. There is no way Peter will have her. You take care of things back there at home knowing that I am fine. Do not worry so much about our troubles. God will see us through. He has brought us so far. I love you and miss you so much. I miss your good food too! Goodbye.
Your loving son,
Bahati.
Such letters always left a smile painted across my face. My life had been a bitter chain of painful episodes and my son had become my messiah, my saviour. Life had become hopeless for me but as my son grew older my hopes started rising again. You can tell this by looking at the letter I have just shown you. He loved his mother, he would take care of her to the end of the road. He was all that she had.
Where do I go now that he has been finished? They have finished him, they have ruined him. Bahati, I am finished. There is this letter I have not shown you. It is the letter I am crying about. When I received this letter yesterday, I got very happy. My son’s letters were a joy of its own kind in my life. Whether or not they brought money, I still cherished them. His letters were a testimony that this woman had not lost all in life. That above all, she had a son..
I was distilling chang’aa when it was delivered. It was brought from the shops where the driver of the matatu from the big city had left it. I quickly left the chang’aa alone and rushed into the house to read it. To find out how my son was fairing on in the city. To find out when he would come home to see his mama. Will he bring that Edna girl he always talked about? I must admit that as mother, I was a little jealous of this girl. Not that I did not like her, I had never met her. I just could not help fearing that she would take my position in my son’s life. But I had to let my son go. I know Bahati well enough and there is no way he would forget me. I guess that is our fate as women. We are close to our children from the time they enter our wombs. We spend sleepless nights by them when they are small to make sure they are okay. We look after them until they become big and strong but in the long run they live us to go and stay with strangers they just met in the outside world, outside our motherly love. And so a man and woman shall leave their mothers and the two shall become one!
So much was on my mind as I opened the letter hurriedly. I now wish I had never opened the letter. I wish I had never read the letter. Bahati my son, I wish you had never taught me how to read. Then, I would not be able to read this letter, your last letter.
Where does one begin? What wrong did I do to deserve this pain, this misery? What does one do? Do you cry until your tears run dry, do you tear of your clothes and roll in the dust, do you shout your voice hoarse, what do you do? Where does someone, nay, a mother like me find justice in this world? Let me read you this last letter and you will tell me where to turn to, tell me where to go, where to find justice.
Listen carefully it says: Dear mama, things have gone bad. I will keep the story short since I do not have much time to write this letter.
I got home last Saturday and found a rude shock waiting for me in my servants’ quarter room. I had left Edna in the room when I left in the morning and on coming back I did not find her, I found her corpse! I found the naked body of my lovely Edna sprawled on the floor. She must have been hit by some heavy thing on the head because her forehead was swollen. Shock gripped me. I could not tell head or tail of what had happened. My mouth ran dry, my voice disappeared, and my blood froze in my veins. Yes, I was not dreaming. That was my girl, my love lying naked on the floor. No doubt she had been raped. Who did this to my girl? I rushed out of my room in panic and headed for Omwami’s house. I do not know what I was going to do there but I just went. My head drummed with pain. I did not even know myself.
Another rude shock was waiting for me at Omwami’s door. Before I could even knock on the door, I overheard Omwami talking on the phone inside the house. He was speaking to someone in the police force. He was telling that someone how his son had messed. His son had accidentally killed a petty thief who was hiding in a servant’s room. The servant was one of the drivers. He was saying that he wanted the driver blackmailed. Yes, make it look like the driver killed the girl … Yes it is a girl … No it will no be hard, the driver is a poor wretch I picked from the village … Do not worry, I will settle that …That is a hard bargain but I will make it seventy five thousand shillings … Okay but make it clean, my son’s name should not appear anywhere. And the press should get none of this, my reputation, you know … Yes, a clean job, remember I am paying you.
Mama, I could not believe my ears. Peter, my childhood friend had raped and killed my Edna and I was being framed as the murderer. I had to run fast, very fast.
I turned away and ran towards the gate. My heart was beating fast and I was sweating all over. On reaching the gate, I found Peter and the watchman blocking my way. I was going nowhere, Peter said. They had called the police and I should be picked anytime to help with investigations. It was the same Peter we had grown up side by side. The same Peter we had schooled together. The same Peter we had gone without food together. Money makes beasts out of men.
I looked at Peter and anger boiled up in me. He had wronged me this much and he was now boasting that I will pay for his sins. No, he will not have it his way this time. I found myself snatching a rungu from the watchman and hitting Peter squarely in the head. The watchman came at me and I gave him one too on the shoulder and he fell. I then turned to Peter and pounded life out of him with the rungu. Yes, I beat him to death. Mama it was not me, it was the anger.
I am now a wanted man. Wanted for two counts of murder. That of my Edna and that of Peter. Mama your son is a killer, a serial killer. Do you think I can let them get me mama? No I can’t. By the time they get to me, I will be with Edna. We will be together in that world where there is no more suffering. We will love forever, together forever.
I am so sorry mama. I did not intend it to end this way. I guess fate had this in store for me. By the time you will be reading this letter, my body will be hanging somewhere on a tree but my soul will be with you, always. Goodbye mama. I am so sorry. Goodbye.
That is it, there it is! That is my son’s last letter. A mother’s last letter from her son. Now tell me, where does mama Bahati find justice? Where does she begin? What does she do? Where does one find justice in this land? Bahati my son, I am finished! Without you I am done. Without you I am nothing, nothing, nothing!
©2008 Otiato Opali
Conversations
What you have said is very right. The problem is on what is to be considered right and wrong. Just because they have made right wrong and wrong right does not mean right is wrong and wrong right. I saw all the wrong. Humans in paper-bag houses walking naked in streets, eating carcasses cooked in tins. The murderer sent the murdered to the gallows. The thief steals from you and imprisons you for being stolen from. And that’s what they call right. Yesterday you were telling me about your uncle. Where did you say he is? Oh! In this very prison. I thought you said he is still in remand. What are you saying? Please speak louder, since they tramped on my head with those boots I can hardly hear a thing. Oh, you said he was sentenced for life. Now, look at his case, he saw them wronging rights and he was bold enough to tell them and look what it earned him.
“Daktari, what is wrong?”
“Nothing officer, I am just talking to Isutsa, a very keen former student I had. He likes visiting me for a chat.”
“Daktari, all other inmates are asleep and you are busy rambling to yourself in there. I don’t care whether you are here on presidential orders. I will open this cell and beat you to sleep if you don’t shut up and sleep like the rest.”
“But officer, cant a man have a little talk with his former student? Isutsa is the only link that I have to reality.”
“I don’t give a damn about your students, former or present. Next time I hear you talking to yourself I will whip the hell out of you. This is a prison, not your home where you tell bedtime stories to ghosts so go to sleep.”
Isutsa, let’s go to sleep. No, I will tell you about it tomorrow. Yes, how I finished them. Yes, that too, why they brought me here.
“What are you mumbling about, I thought I told you to go to sleep.”
“Yes officer, we are going to sleep.”
“You and who?”
“Me and Isutsa.”
“I don’t want to hear this Isutsa nonsense anymore! Just shut up and sleep.”
* * * *
“Good afternoon officer. I am the government psychiatrist Professor Sigmundu Fraud. I am here to examine Dr. Okaka Okaka who was brought in for treason. After that I should be able to advice the court on his mental status. I am told you guard their cells so I would like you to assist me by informing me on his behaviour. That should make my work a lot easier than wasting time talking to him.”
“Professor, I would really like to help you, but I have not had lunch and so I was busy thinking how I will have that lunch.”
“Oh that is no problem. I hope this will do.”
“You will have to do better than this because I am still thinking how I will have that lunch.”
“Why are you so hard? Okay, have this as well. The economy is bad for all of us you know. Next time I will come better armed.”
“Not so bad but not so good either. Anyway I will help you hoping next time business will be better. You wanted to know what about which prisoner?”
“Yes officer, now we are talking. I wanted you to tell me if Dr. Okaka says or does anything strange.”
“That one is gone, Kaput! You just go and say that he is mad so that they can take him out of here and send him to a mental hospital. He gives me a lot of headache that one. No prisoner can stay with him in the same cell so he enjoys a whole cell to himself. Does he think this is a holiday camp?”
“What strange things does he say or do?”
“That does not matter. He is mad, full stop. What does it matter to you what he says or does?”
“Officer, he was a colleague of mine. We used to lecture at the same university. I want to argue for mental stability in his case so that he is sent to a mental hospital. Treason carries a death tag on it.”
“So it is true. He keeps talking to imaginary students. I thought he was a medical doctor.”
“No, he has a PhD in Philosophy and that is why he is called Doctor. You said he talks to students?”
“Yes Professor. He has a favourite one called Isutsa. Talks to him all night long and I cant get him to stop.”
“What does he say to this … what did you call him?”
“Isutsa.”
“Yes, Isutsa, what does he say to this Isutsa?”
“How do you expect me to know Professor? The man is mad. He just mumbles to himself. The other day he was telling me that I am just like him and them. Imagine, saying that I was like him! And when I asked him who ‘them’ are, he said they are the bees, making honey for humans to steal. He said the humans had colluded with the queen bee to drink our sweat and keep her majesty the queen bee fat. Just imagine. Comparing me to a bee! That day I clobbered him for insulting a police officer.”
“Is that all he says?”
“That man says a lot of things. You cant get it all unless you are Isutsa. Anyway, is it true he did it? You say he was your friend, why cant you just talk to him?”
“He cant stand me. He says I am a coward. What he doesn’t know is that cowards live longer. I tried to stop him from doing it but he would not just listen.”
“So it is true he did it. Imagine doing that to the president himself in front of all those guests on such a big day. Doing it to him in the eyes of all those citizens who had gathered to celebrate the independence day. He must be nuts.”
“I tried to stop him. I remember the day he came up with the idea very well.”
“Tell me about it.”
* * * *
“Prof. I have found the key to myself. That which will open me up and let me out of my trapped self. The missing piece in the puzzle.”
“What are you talking about Dr. Okaka?”
“What I have been talking about all this time. My entrapment in myself. Being locked in yourself such that you are always trapped. Today, God has dropped the key in my hands. Today, I will be free.”
“If it is what you’ve been prattling about, save me the time and don’t tell me about it. Doc, cant you see there is nothing much you can do about the state of affairs? You are lucky to be where you are so stay there. You did not make anyone poor. You don’t steal the money, you earn it. Why should you worry about the poor. That is the government’s problem. You cant ask me to give up my salary to go and agitate for people who never even went to school. Forget it.”
“Not just you. Me, you, all of us! However thin the sticks are, when they form a bundle they cannot be easily broken. Prof, the salary they pay you is not theirs, it is yours. You give to them so that you can wag your tail when they give it back to you. The master is away Prof. Let us come together and plan against him.
Prof, how much did he give you? Five thousand – write that down. He gave me two thousand – write that down too. Our poor fellow here was given one thousand – write that down too. Let us all bury his money under the ground and trade in our own. Why make his money grow while our money lies idle in our homes? Let him call us fools.”
“Whatever song you sing Doc, you are not going to convince me to fight for poor miserable people I don’t even know.”
“You have been transfused with their individualistic blood. In their language, the ‘I’ is written in capital while the ‘we’ starts with a small letter. They capitalise on the ‘I’. There is no difference between us and those you call miserable. We are all bees, we are all being stolen from. Let us come together. Let us desist from visiting the flowers and the nectar. Let us go to the queen bee and her thieving drones. Let us tell her that they have fattened enough on our honey and it is time they left. Come, let us go together.”
“Call me a coward if you want but I am here to stay. I shall never descend the food chain. Forward ever backward never. So what is this key you were talking about earlier?”
“I have just received an appointment from the chief thief.”
“You mean the president?”
“The chief thief himself Prof. I have found the key to my freedom. I was going to quit anyway but he has given me an honourable way to do it.”
“What is your appointment?”
“Song-writer.”
“What the hell is that?”
“Once upon a time there existed a thief, the chief thief. He would go to the people and sing a song so sweet to the ear. The people would be stupefied and in the stupor, the chief thief’s men would ransack their pockets and strip them of the little they had.”
“What is that all about?”
“tomorrow is independence day and the chief thief needs to sing a song to the poor that will be gathered there. He wants me to write the song.”
“I hope you are not thinking what I think you are thinking.”
“That is what I am thinking. He will sing my song, not his. I will have downed my tools honourably.”
* * * *
He who seeks to save his sanity shall loose it but he who loses it for the sake of the truth, verily verily I say unto you, shall save it. I have saved mine, Isutsa. They are all mad out there. What they sought to save they have lost, just because they disregarded the truth.
Isutsa, I have something to tell you. Okay, that too but before I tell you how I came to be here, I have another thing to tell you. Today is our last day together. No, don’t say that, I always enjoy your visits and I will never want you to stop coming. It is only that when you come, you will not find me. No, not that, I am not being moved to another prison. Not that either, they said the mental hospital is full. Yes, that. How did you guess? That is why I liked you as my student, you always read between the lines. You are right, the charge is treason, the punishment termination.
You should have seen the judge passing the sentence. Sweating under his white wig and his ludicrous robs in the hot afternoon, he passed out the sentence which he had definitely not authored. ‘Germination! No appeal. Case closed’ he said banging his hammer. The people’s bewildered look made him realise it. He stopped chewing his gum, put on his spectacles and after squinting at the paper that carried my fate, he cleared his clogged voice and shouted, ‘Order!’ There was silence. ‘Termination! No appeal. Case closed’ he thundered banging his hammer. The cameras clicked and the judge resumed chewing his gum.
Don’t cry Isutsa, no greater love has man than this, that I should die for you. Come on now, stop crying. This is a day for redemption so don’t cry, rejoice instead. That is better. I want you to promise me one thing though, Isutsa, that you will witness my last moment. You will? Thank you, I knew I could count on you. I also want you to promise me that you will tell the world about our conversations and tell them all about the truths, all about the rights wronged. Yes, tell them all so that the son of man does not die in vain.
Okay, I think I can now tell you how I ended up here. It was the greatest moment of victory in my lifetime. The foreign guests were all there. They had come to inspect their businesses and they dropped by to grace our independence celebrations. They had come to see how the honeycombs were doing and give the queen bee a large tip. They sat in the air -conditioned dais behind their dark glasses. In the field, the masses squeezed each other in the scorching sun. They pulled and pushed with their clammy bodies trying to catch a glimpse of the chief thief and his guests. The police drove them back with batons to prevent them from polluting the guests’ air- conditioned air. The broadcasting stations had their cameras placed in all strategic positions so that no bit of my genius would escape the rest of the nation.
Isutsa, the chief thief is a retard. On such occasions, he just sings the song the way it is written. He never reads it prior to the presentation and when reading it, he does not pay attention to the words. He trusts his song-writers to come up with spell binding songs, who would dare defy the chief thief? He trusted me and sang my song.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he sang on, ‘these dignitaries seated in front of you are our gods from foreign countries. They are the Humans. Those who eat the hen’s eggs, drink the cow’s milk and lick our honey. The Humans like our honey because they don’t pay all of you for producing it. They only pay me, the queen bee, the chief thief. Paying one person for the sweat of a million sounds cheaper doesn’t it?
One thing you must know though, they pay me well. How else could I afford this executive suit specially imported from Italy? How could I drive in a convoy of twenty limousines, all air-conditioned and bullet proof? How could my wife afford to fly to London twice a week for her shopping? How, I ask you, how could my children and their children and their children’s children live in palaces? What I make in one month can feed your hungry bellies for a lifetime!’
I was seated among the dignitaries and I could not believe my ears. Some of the dignitaries had started walking of in disgust. The crowd was too dismayed to react. They just stood there mute not fathoming the insults just heaped upon them.
I jumped up and started shouting in joy. I praised the Lord for seeing it through. I could not believe I had actually made it. It was then that the police realised what had actually happened. ‘The new Speech-writer!’ shouted the police commissioner. I was bundled into a ball and kicked all the way to this room.
You cant trust the newspapers Isutsa. What else did you expect them to write? Those stories were fabricated for state security and I am not mad. Remember that he who looses his sanity for the sake of the truth shall save it but he who seeks to save it shall loose it.
“Daktari!”
“Yes officer.”
“Time has come.”
“Let me say my last words to Isutsa.”
“Isutsa my foot! The priest, the hangman and the rest have better things to do than wait while you perform your madness. Let us go!”
* * * *
“Dr. Muga, is he dead?”
“Yes Mr. Police commissioner sir, dead as a dodo.”
“Pastor, say your prayers, we have better things to do.”
“AMEN!”
©2008 Otiato Opali
“Daktari, what is wrong?”
“Nothing officer, I am just talking to Isutsa, a very keen former student I had. He likes visiting me for a chat.”
“Daktari, all other inmates are asleep and you are busy rambling to yourself in there. I don’t care whether you are here on presidential orders. I will open this cell and beat you to sleep if you don’t shut up and sleep like the rest.”
“But officer, cant a man have a little talk with his former student? Isutsa is the only link that I have to reality.”
“I don’t give a damn about your students, former or present. Next time I hear you talking to yourself I will whip the hell out of you. This is a prison, not your home where you tell bedtime stories to ghosts so go to sleep.”
Isutsa, let’s go to sleep. No, I will tell you about it tomorrow. Yes, how I finished them. Yes, that too, why they brought me here.
“What are you mumbling about, I thought I told you to go to sleep.”
“Yes officer, we are going to sleep.”
“You and who?”
“Me and Isutsa.”
“I don’t want to hear this Isutsa nonsense anymore! Just shut up and sleep.”
* * * *
“Good afternoon officer. I am the government psychiatrist Professor Sigmundu Fraud. I am here to examine Dr. Okaka Okaka who was brought in for treason. After that I should be able to advice the court on his mental status. I am told you guard their cells so I would like you to assist me by informing me on his behaviour. That should make my work a lot easier than wasting time talking to him.”
“Professor, I would really like to help you, but I have not had lunch and so I was busy thinking how I will have that lunch.”
“Oh that is no problem. I hope this will do.”
“You will have to do better than this because I am still thinking how I will have that lunch.”
“Why are you so hard? Okay, have this as well. The economy is bad for all of us you know. Next time I will come better armed.”
“Not so bad but not so good either. Anyway I will help you hoping next time business will be better. You wanted to know what about which prisoner?”
“Yes officer, now we are talking. I wanted you to tell me if Dr. Okaka says or does anything strange.”
“That one is gone, Kaput! You just go and say that he is mad so that they can take him out of here and send him to a mental hospital. He gives me a lot of headache that one. No prisoner can stay with him in the same cell so he enjoys a whole cell to himself. Does he think this is a holiday camp?”
“What strange things does he say or do?”
“That does not matter. He is mad, full stop. What does it matter to you what he says or does?”
“Officer, he was a colleague of mine. We used to lecture at the same university. I want to argue for mental stability in his case so that he is sent to a mental hospital. Treason carries a death tag on it.”
“So it is true. He keeps talking to imaginary students. I thought he was a medical doctor.”
“No, he has a PhD in Philosophy and that is why he is called Doctor. You said he talks to students?”
“Yes Professor. He has a favourite one called Isutsa. Talks to him all night long and I cant get him to stop.”
“What does he say to this … what did you call him?”
“Isutsa.”
“Yes, Isutsa, what does he say to this Isutsa?”
“How do you expect me to know Professor? The man is mad. He just mumbles to himself. The other day he was telling me that I am just like him and them. Imagine, saying that I was like him! And when I asked him who ‘them’ are, he said they are the bees, making honey for humans to steal. He said the humans had colluded with the queen bee to drink our sweat and keep her majesty the queen bee fat. Just imagine. Comparing me to a bee! That day I clobbered him for insulting a police officer.”
“Is that all he says?”
“That man says a lot of things. You cant get it all unless you are Isutsa. Anyway, is it true he did it? You say he was your friend, why cant you just talk to him?”
“He cant stand me. He says I am a coward. What he doesn’t know is that cowards live longer. I tried to stop him from doing it but he would not just listen.”
“So it is true he did it. Imagine doing that to the president himself in front of all those guests on such a big day. Doing it to him in the eyes of all those citizens who had gathered to celebrate the independence day. He must be nuts.”
“I tried to stop him. I remember the day he came up with the idea very well.”
“Tell me about it.”
* * * *
“Prof. I have found the key to myself. That which will open me up and let me out of my trapped self. The missing piece in the puzzle.”
“What are you talking about Dr. Okaka?”
“What I have been talking about all this time. My entrapment in myself. Being locked in yourself such that you are always trapped. Today, God has dropped the key in my hands. Today, I will be free.”
“If it is what you’ve been prattling about, save me the time and don’t tell me about it. Doc, cant you see there is nothing much you can do about the state of affairs? You are lucky to be where you are so stay there. You did not make anyone poor. You don’t steal the money, you earn it. Why should you worry about the poor. That is the government’s problem. You cant ask me to give up my salary to go and agitate for people who never even went to school. Forget it.”
“Not just you. Me, you, all of us! However thin the sticks are, when they form a bundle they cannot be easily broken. Prof, the salary they pay you is not theirs, it is yours. You give to them so that you can wag your tail when they give it back to you. The master is away Prof. Let us come together and plan against him.
Prof, how much did he give you? Five thousand – write that down. He gave me two thousand – write that down too. Our poor fellow here was given one thousand – write that down too. Let us all bury his money under the ground and trade in our own. Why make his money grow while our money lies idle in our homes? Let him call us fools.”
“Whatever song you sing Doc, you are not going to convince me to fight for poor miserable people I don’t even know.”
“You have been transfused with their individualistic blood. In their language, the ‘I’ is written in capital while the ‘we’ starts with a small letter. They capitalise on the ‘I’. There is no difference between us and those you call miserable. We are all bees, we are all being stolen from. Let us come together. Let us desist from visiting the flowers and the nectar. Let us go to the queen bee and her thieving drones. Let us tell her that they have fattened enough on our honey and it is time they left. Come, let us go together.”
“Call me a coward if you want but I am here to stay. I shall never descend the food chain. Forward ever backward never. So what is this key you were talking about earlier?”
“I have just received an appointment from the chief thief.”
“You mean the president?”
“The chief thief himself Prof. I have found the key to my freedom. I was going to quit anyway but he has given me an honourable way to do it.”
“What is your appointment?”
“Song-writer.”
“What the hell is that?”
“Once upon a time there existed a thief, the chief thief. He would go to the people and sing a song so sweet to the ear. The people would be stupefied and in the stupor, the chief thief’s men would ransack their pockets and strip them of the little they had.”
“What is that all about?”
“tomorrow is independence day and the chief thief needs to sing a song to the poor that will be gathered there. He wants me to write the song.”
“I hope you are not thinking what I think you are thinking.”
“That is what I am thinking. He will sing my song, not his. I will have downed my tools honourably.”
* * * *
He who seeks to save his sanity shall loose it but he who loses it for the sake of the truth, verily verily I say unto you, shall save it. I have saved mine, Isutsa. They are all mad out there. What they sought to save they have lost, just because they disregarded the truth.
Isutsa, I have something to tell you. Okay, that too but before I tell you how I came to be here, I have another thing to tell you. Today is our last day together. No, don’t say that, I always enjoy your visits and I will never want you to stop coming. It is only that when you come, you will not find me. No, not that, I am not being moved to another prison. Not that either, they said the mental hospital is full. Yes, that. How did you guess? That is why I liked you as my student, you always read between the lines. You are right, the charge is treason, the punishment termination.
You should have seen the judge passing the sentence. Sweating under his white wig and his ludicrous robs in the hot afternoon, he passed out the sentence which he had definitely not authored. ‘Germination! No appeal. Case closed’ he said banging his hammer. The people’s bewildered look made him realise it. He stopped chewing his gum, put on his spectacles and after squinting at the paper that carried my fate, he cleared his clogged voice and shouted, ‘Order!’ There was silence. ‘Termination! No appeal. Case closed’ he thundered banging his hammer. The cameras clicked and the judge resumed chewing his gum.
Don’t cry Isutsa, no greater love has man than this, that I should die for you. Come on now, stop crying. This is a day for redemption so don’t cry, rejoice instead. That is better. I want you to promise me one thing though, Isutsa, that you will witness my last moment. You will? Thank you, I knew I could count on you. I also want you to promise me that you will tell the world about our conversations and tell them all about the truths, all about the rights wronged. Yes, tell them all so that the son of man does not die in vain.
Okay, I think I can now tell you how I ended up here. It was the greatest moment of victory in my lifetime. The foreign guests were all there. They had come to inspect their businesses and they dropped by to grace our independence celebrations. They had come to see how the honeycombs were doing and give the queen bee a large tip. They sat in the air -conditioned dais behind their dark glasses. In the field, the masses squeezed each other in the scorching sun. They pulled and pushed with their clammy bodies trying to catch a glimpse of the chief thief and his guests. The police drove them back with batons to prevent them from polluting the guests’ air- conditioned air. The broadcasting stations had their cameras placed in all strategic positions so that no bit of my genius would escape the rest of the nation.
Isutsa, the chief thief is a retard. On such occasions, he just sings the song the way it is written. He never reads it prior to the presentation and when reading it, he does not pay attention to the words. He trusts his song-writers to come up with spell binding songs, who would dare defy the chief thief? He trusted me and sang my song.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he sang on, ‘these dignitaries seated in front of you are our gods from foreign countries. They are the Humans. Those who eat the hen’s eggs, drink the cow’s milk and lick our honey. The Humans like our honey because they don’t pay all of you for producing it. They only pay me, the queen bee, the chief thief. Paying one person for the sweat of a million sounds cheaper doesn’t it?
One thing you must know though, they pay me well. How else could I afford this executive suit specially imported from Italy? How could I drive in a convoy of twenty limousines, all air-conditioned and bullet proof? How could my wife afford to fly to London twice a week for her shopping? How, I ask you, how could my children and their children and their children’s children live in palaces? What I make in one month can feed your hungry bellies for a lifetime!’
I was seated among the dignitaries and I could not believe my ears. Some of the dignitaries had started walking of in disgust. The crowd was too dismayed to react. They just stood there mute not fathoming the insults just heaped upon them.
I jumped up and started shouting in joy. I praised the Lord for seeing it through. I could not believe I had actually made it. It was then that the police realised what had actually happened. ‘The new Speech-writer!’ shouted the police commissioner. I was bundled into a ball and kicked all the way to this room.
You cant trust the newspapers Isutsa. What else did you expect them to write? Those stories were fabricated for state security and I am not mad. Remember that he who looses his sanity for the sake of the truth shall save it but he who seeks to save it shall loose it.
“Daktari!”
“Yes officer.”
“Time has come.”
“Let me say my last words to Isutsa.”
“Isutsa my foot! The priest, the hangman and the rest have better things to do than wait while you perform your madness. Let us go!”
* * * *
“Dr. Muga, is he dead?”
“Yes Mr. Police commissioner sir, dead as a dodo.”
“Pastor, say your prayers, we have better things to do.”
“AMEN!”
©2008 Otiato Opali
Make me King!
This is not a short story to be published in your literary anthologies and later to be studied by drunk University students. Students who spend years being taught how to criticize what they will never be able to write. Neither is this a political manifesto, drafted by handsomely paid professors of political science, outlining five year plans on how to rob us the little we have. This is not a sermon either. It will not tell you to turn your left cheek when your right has been assaulted. It will not ask you to pay offerings to God when you cannot even afford salt for your soup. This is none of the above!
This is a reminder to you selfish and thankless fools. You ungrateful visitors who after eating to your fill, go ahead and shit in the plate with which I served you food. This your old prostitute’s wish – Make Me King!
You people are a very ungrateful lot. The other day your Minister for home affairs went to visit a sickling freedom fighter in the true spirit of patriotism. After giving the ailing hero ten thousand shillings, his speech followed as thus: You freedom fighters have been neglected, you live in paper bag houses while those who did not fight for freedom drive limousines to five star hotels to have shamefully expensive dinners. Immediately he stepped out of the freedom fighter’s paper bag house, smiling at flashing cameras, he jumped into his limousine and headed for a five star hotel to have a shamefully expensive dinner.
Is that the kind of thanks you want to accord me after I brought sanity back to this confused country of yours? You enjoy the fruits of my genius as you call me the old prostitute. Have you forgotten how I brought sanity back to this country? Oh … I see! It was such a long time ago wasn’t it? It was when my breasts were still pointed and my skin smooth and shiny in the sun. My breasts are now as flabby as empty wineskins and my skin as wrinkled as an elephant’s wizened buttocks. Age has caught up with me hasn’t it? It has also caught up with my heroism too, is that it?
Okay, I will tell you a story before I die. I will remind you of what age has wiped of your memories for I want you to honour my courage, I want you to Make Me King!
There was a time we had a President. This President was hardworking to a fault. He did all the jobs and left the rest of the country jobless. He believed in hard work, you see. He therefore was everything. He was farmer number one. Teacher number one. Footballer number one. Driver number one. He was commander in chief of all armed forces; headmaster of all nursery, primary and secondary schools; chancellor of all public and private universities; chairman of all political parties (where all means one because we only had one party). He appointed ministers but he was the minister of ministers. Minister of education; minister of health; minister of treason and rebellion punishment; minister for welcoming visitors; minister for political parties; minister for V.I.P salary increment; minister for everything!
Even natural jobs like fatherhood were left to him. He was father of the nation; father of all political parties; father of all schools, father of all hospitals; father of all churches; father of all children; father number one!
We were lucky to have a hard working President but people started having their doubts. The whole country was jobless while the President was extra-jobful. Those who wanted to become Presidents were told we already have a President. Those who wanted to become teachers were told we already have a teacher. Those who wanted to become fathers were told we already have a father. Those who wanted to become ministers were told we already have a minister. Those who wanted to become thieves were told we already have a thief. Those who wanted to become murderers were told we already have a murderer. Those who wanted to become Hitlers were told we already have a Hitler!
The people became helpless. They died of hunger and disease. Children died, women died, men died. The dogs, the cats , the cows –they all died. Hopes died, courage died and futures died.
On seeing so many deaths, the people resorted to weeping. They wept in towns, they wept in villages. They wept in jails. They wept at the hangman’s yard. They wept in detention camps. The people wept! The President saw another job opportunity that could be added to his curriculum vitae – weeping. He became weeper number one! He toured the whole country weeping with the people. Soon he was declared the father of weeping. He would weep on people’s behalf and no one was to be seen weeping.
When the drum is hit too hard, it tears! The people could take it no more. He killed them but they sang a new song – change! He tortured them but they still sang change. He bribed them but this song change would not go. Even the police with their batons and metal rubber-bullets could not stifle this song. Mr. President gave in and for the first time the people held an election.
His Excellency the new President was a man of the people. He believed in equality and embarked on drastic measures to make everyone equal. He argued that the country had enough resources to employ everyone. The secret was equality. He made a declaration, no one will have more than one job.
His Excellency was such a good man. He made a sacrifice no president has ever made the world over. He slashed his salary! He claimed that before he became a president, he used to earn three thousand shillings as a teacher and on becoming a president, he decided to earn six thousand shillings only! A one hundred per cent increment on his part. He thus saved the five hundred thousand he would have earned as a member of parliament. The hundreds he would have earned as commander in chief of all armed forces. He saved the one and a half million set aside for the president. He also saved the hundreds of thousands he would have received as chancellor of all universities. In general, he gave up over twenty salaries all amounting to over twenty million shillings.
His cabinet ministers were people who had been jobless graduates, doctors and professors in the past regime and they did not mind earning four thousand five hundred shillings each considering the fact that the president was earning six thousand only. If they would have been in the previous regime, they would have earned a record five million each.
Salaries were slashed everywhere. Members of parliament, permanent secretaries and government clerks all had their salaries slashed. All those who had excess it was taken from them and given to those who had none. We all found jobs. All those who had graduated found jobs in their respective fields. They became doctors, teachers, journalists, engineers as well as lecturers. Those who had not gone to school went to school. Primary education became free. I became a managing director in a parastatal. Those who had been idlers became clerks. Shoe polishers became civil servants. Mechanics became big company engineers. We would never have known that our country had enough resources to employ all of us were it not for his Excellency. We all earned a flat rate of two thousand five hundred shillings. Tax on goods was effectively collected and since we all had a salary, we paid promptly. The previous regime was wasting millions in excessive salaries, allowances, corruption and ineffective tax collection. His Excellency corrected all these. We were all equal, we were all brothers in his Excellency.
Then from nowhere, trouble erupted. Those who had cars could not have them repaired for there were no mechanics, they had become engineers. Those who wanted to board taxis got stranded for there were no drivers, they had become clerks. Those who wanted to have their torn shoes repaired were at a loss for there were no cobblers, they had become civil servants. Those whose wives were giving them headaches were wasted for there were no prostitutes, they had become secretaries.
The country was thrown into chaos. Every one had a decent job with a decent salary but crucial services were missing. Something had gone wrong. His Excellency had tried his best but this predicament caught him pants down. Something had gone wrong, people started murmuring. Economic analysts tried to explain what had gone wrong by conjuring dead economists’ theories. They drew curves on graphs to illustrate their theories. Criss-crossing curves, curves bulging like a pregnant woman’s belly and curves sagging like a young woman’s bottom. Political scientists were not left behind. They mentioned Karl Marx, Engels, Nyerere, Nkrumah. They talked of communistic capitalism and African socialism. Everybody talked. Everybody blamed. Everybody cursed.
And here I want you to read carefully for this is where I come in. All these people, the common man, the economist and the political scientist had taken a wrong path. Like the rest of Africa, they had started manufacturing theories on how their Excellencies have gone wrong. They started punching holes into his Excellency’s project. Africa went wrong a long time ago. This was when she sent the enemy away through the front door and welcomed him back through the backdoor. While people spend time fighting each other and punching holes into each other’s projects to redeem Africa, none of them mentions this enemy that is pulling the strings. Africa seems to have developed a new survival tactic. She has become the fool who after being pricked by a thorn in the leg, decides to move around on crutches instead if simply pulling out the thorn and letting the wound heal. His Excellency’s project was one such crutch. The rest of us clap and celebrate as the crutches are being purchased. Intellectuals, students and workers dance in celebration at the purchase. Religious leaders shout hallelujah in praise. The peasant in his shack is not left behind, he makes love to his tenth wife in celebration and the child born of this act will be named Foreign Aid Kujitawala!
I sat back and watched the economists and political scientists punching holes and none of them mentioned the enemy. None of them talked of the thorn in our flesh. In fact, they put the blame on the crutches. They said crutches are old fashioned. Why don’t we try a wheel chair instead, they suggested. After all we have money. Why pull out a thorn when we can afford the comfort of a million wheel chairs?
Africa knows the truth, I thought, but practice has made her live with falsity. Living a lie has become a reflex to her. At that time, I saw Africa behaving like the professor of Atheistology who was climbing the steps to a podium to lecture on how God does not exist. On his way up, he tripped on the stairs and cried ‘oh my God!’ Everybody was surprised – he was crying ‘oh my God’ when he believed there exists no God. ‘Oh my God?’ they wondered, oh ‘which’ God? The professor believed in his heart that there exists no God but practice had made him call God’s name when in trouble. It was reflex. The economists and their friends knew in their hearts who the real enemy was, but practice had made them point fingers in the opposite direction. It was reflex!
I therefore decided to donate them an automatically propelled wheelchair, the most expensive one in the market. Since they were not ready to pull out a mere thorn, let them have their wheel chairs. I made my move. Being a manager in his Excellency’s setup earned me two thousand five hundred. Everybody earned the same amount but vital services were lacking. There were no shoe shiners, no taxi drivers, no peasant workers and no casual labourers. I resigned my post as managing director and went back to my old profession. Since we were too busy protecting the enemy, we might as well survive with him in our flesh. I went back to prostitution. I became a freelance prostitute and business has never been good. I had customers hovering around my door and once a client stepped out others rushed for my door like hyenas fighting over a corpse. I started earning five thousand a day unlike the two thousand five hundred a month the managing director job earned me.
Everybody followed suit. People quit the civil service to become cobblers. They left their clerk positions to become taxi drivers. Women quit their secretary posts to become market sellers. They all quit thanks to my genius move. They all sang my name in bars as they drank themselves silly. Finally, his Excellency quit. A new Excellency came to power and things returned to ‘normal’. The President could once again earn his cool twenty million a month while the cobbler could once again walk home with five shillings a day. Things had returned to ‘normal’ thanks to me.
That was long ago. It was I who brought sanity back to this country. Then, you sang my name in bars. You even named your children after me. Time has wiped away the songs you sang in my honour. You have forgotten about me, about my genius. You now call me the old prostitute. I serve you food and after having your fill, you shit on my plates! I will not let this happen. My days have passed and my days are running out but I will not let you fools disgrace me. I am making a demand, I am making a wish, my death wish.
When I die, I want to have a portrait of my corpse taken while it lies on a mat. It should be enlarged and the least area it must cover should be three metres squared. The portrait should be hung at all national museums and below it should bear the words ‘Make Me King!’ Beside the picture should be a copy of this article you are just about to finish reading. So that all may see the truth. So that all may Make Me King!
©2008 Otiato Opali
This is a reminder to you selfish and thankless fools. You ungrateful visitors who after eating to your fill, go ahead and shit in the plate with which I served you food. This your old prostitute’s wish – Make Me King!
You people are a very ungrateful lot. The other day your Minister for home affairs went to visit a sickling freedom fighter in the true spirit of patriotism. After giving the ailing hero ten thousand shillings, his speech followed as thus: You freedom fighters have been neglected, you live in paper bag houses while those who did not fight for freedom drive limousines to five star hotels to have shamefully expensive dinners. Immediately he stepped out of the freedom fighter’s paper bag house, smiling at flashing cameras, he jumped into his limousine and headed for a five star hotel to have a shamefully expensive dinner.
Is that the kind of thanks you want to accord me after I brought sanity back to this confused country of yours? You enjoy the fruits of my genius as you call me the old prostitute. Have you forgotten how I brought sanity back to this country? Oh … I see! It was such a long time ago wasn’t it? It was when my breasts were still pointed and my skin smooth and shiny in the sun. My breasts are now as flabby as empty wineskins and my skin as wrinkled as an elephant’s wizened buttocks. Age has caught up with me hasn’t it? It has also caught up with my heroism too, is that it?
Okay, I will tell you a story before I die. I will remind you of what age has wiped of your memories for I want you to honour my courage, I want you to Make Me King!
There was a time we had a President. This President was hardworking to a fault. He did all the jobs and left the rest of the country jobless. He believed in hard work, you see. He therefore was everything. He was farmer number one. Teacher number one. Footballer number one. Driver number one. He was commander in chief of all armed forces; headmaster of all nursery, primary and secondary schools; chancellor of all public and private universities; chairman of all political parties (where all means one because we only had one party). He appointed ministers but he was the minister of ministers. Minister of education; minister of health; minister of treason and rebellion punishment; minister for welcoming visitors; minister for political parties; minister for V.I.P salary increment; minister for everything!
Even natural jobs like fatherhood were left to him. He was father of the nation; father of all political parties; father of all schools, father of all hospitals; father of all churches; father of all children; father number one!
We were lucky to have a hard working President but people started having their doubts. The whole country was jobless while the President was extra-jobful. Those who wanted to become Presidents were told we already have a President. Those who wanted to become teachers were told we already have a teacher. Those who wanted to become fathers were told we already have a father. Those who wanted to become ministers were told we already have a minister. Those who wanted to become thieves were told we already have a thief. Those who wanted to become murderers were told we already have a murderer. Those who wanted to become Hitlers were told we already have a Hitler!
The people became helpless. They died of hunger and disease. Children died, women died, men died. The dogs, the cats , the cows –they all died. Hopes died, courage died and futures died.
On seeing so many deaths, the people resorted to weeping. They wept in towns, they wept in villages. They wept in jails. They wept at the hangman’s yard. They wept in detention camps. The people wept! The President saw another job opportunity that could be added to his curriculum vitae – weeping. He became weeper number one! He toured the whole country weeping with the people. Soon he was declared the father of weeping. He would weep on people’s behalf and no one was to be seen weeping.
When the drum is hit too hard, it tears! The people could take it no more. He killed them but they sang a new song – change! He tortured them but they still sang change. He bribed them but this song change would not go. Even the police with their batons and metal rubber-bullets could not stifle this song. Mr. President gave in and for the first time the people held an election.
His Excellency the new President was a man of the people. He believed in equality and embarked on drastic measures to make everyone equal. He argued that the country had enough resources to employ everyone. The secret was equality. He made a declaration, no one will have more than one job.
His Excellency was such a good man. He made a sacrifice no president has ever made the world over. He slashed his salary! He claimed that before he became a president, he used to earn three thousand shillings as a teacher and on becoming a president, he decided to earn six thousand shillings only! A one hundred per cent increment on his part. He thus saved the five hundred thousand he would have earned as a member of parliament. The hundreds he would have earned as commander in chief of all armed forces. He saved the one and a half million set aside for the president. He also saved the hundreds of thousands he would have received as chancellor of all universities. In general, he gave up over twenty salaries all amounting to over twenty million shillings.
His cabinet ministers were people who had been jobless graduates, doctors and professors in the past regime and they did not mind earning four thousand five hundred shillings each considering the fact that the president was earning six thousand only. If they would have been in the previous regime, they would have earned a record five million each.
Salaries were slashed everywhere. Members of parliament, permanent secretaries and government clerks all had their salaries slashed. All those who had excess it was taken from them and given to those who had none. We all found jobs. All those who had graduated found jobs in their respective fields. They became doctors, teachers, journalists, engineers as well as lecturers. Those who had not gone to school went to school. Primary education became free. I became a managing director in a parastatal. Those who had been idlers became clerks. Shoe polishers became civil servants. Mechanics became big company engineers. We would never have known that our country had enough resources to employ all of us were it not for his Excellency. We all earned a flat rate of two thousand five hundred shillings. Tax on goods was effectively collected and since we all had a salary, we paid promptly. The previous regime was wasting millions in excessive salaries, allowances, corruption and ineffective tax collection. His Excellency corrected all these. We were all equal, we were all brothers in his Excellency.
Then from nowhere, trouble erupted. Those who had cars could not have them repaired for there were no mechanics, they had become engineers. Those who wanted to board taxis got stranded for there were no drivers, they had become clerks. Those who wanted to have their torn shoes repaired were at a loss for there were no cobblers, they had become civil servants. Those whose wives were giving them headaches were wasted for there were no prostitutes, they had become secretaries.
The country was thrown into chaos. Every one had a decent job with a decent salary but crucial services were missing. Something had gone wrong. His Excellency had tried his best but this predicament caught him pants down. Something had gone wrong, people started murmuring. Economic analysts tried to explain what had gone wrong by conjuring dead economists’ theories. They drew curves on graphs to illustrate their theories. Criss-crossing curves, curves bulging like a pregnant woman’s belly and curves sagging like a young woman’s bottom. Political scientists were not left behind. They mentioned Karl Marx, Engels, Nyerere, Nkrumah. They talked of communistic capitalism and African socialism. Everybody talked. Everybody blamed. Everybody cursed.
And here I want you to read carefully for this is where I come in. All these people, the common man, the economist and the political scientist had taken a wrong path. Like the rest of Africa, they had started manufacturing theories on how their Excellencies have gone wrong. They started punching holes into his Excellency’s project. Africa went wrong a long time ago. This was when she sent the enemy away through the front door and welcomed him back through the backdoor. While people spend time fighting each other and punching holes into each other’s projects to redeem Africa, none of them mentions this enemy that is pulling the strings. Africa seems to have developed a new survival tactic. She has become the fool who after being pricked by a thorn in the leg, decides to move around on crutches instead if simply pulling out the thorn and letting the wound heal. His Excellency’s project was one such crutch. The rest of us clap and celebrate as the crutches are being purchased. Intellectuals, students and workers dance in celebration at the purchase. Religious leaders shout hallelujah in praise. The peasant in his shack is not left behind, he makes love to his tenth wife in celebration and the child born of this act will be named Foreign Aid Kujitawala!
I sat back and watched the economists and political scientists punching holes and none of them mentioned the enemy. None of them talked of the thorn in our flesh. In fact, they put the blame on the crutches. They said crutches are old fashioned. Why don’t we try a wheel chair instead, they suggested. After all we have money. Why pull out a thorn when we can afford the comfort of a million wheel chairs?
Africa knows the truth, I thought, but practice has made her live with falsity. Living a lie has become a reflex to her. At that time, I saw Africa behaving like the professor of Atheistology who was climbing the steps to a podium to lecture on how God does not exist. On his way up, he tripped on the stairs and cried ‘oh my God!’ Everybody was surprised – he was crying ‘oh my God’ when he believed there exists no God. ‘Oh my God?’ they wondered, oh ‘which’ God? The professor believed in his heart that there exists no God but practice had made him call God’s name when in trouble. It was reflex. The economists and their friends knew in their hearts who the real enemy was, but practice had made them point fingers in the opposite direction. It was reflex!
I therefore decided to donate them an automatically propelled wheelchair, the most expensive one in the market. Since they were not ready to pull out a mere thorn, let them have their wheel chairs. I made my move. Being a manager in his Excellency’s setup earned me two thousand five hundred. Everybody earned the same amount but vital services were lacking. There were no shoe shiners, no taxi drivers, no peasant workers and no casual labourers. I resigned my post as managing director and went back to my old profession. Since we were too busy protecting the enemy, we might as well survive with him in our flesh. I went back to prostitution. I became a freelance prostitute and business has never been good. I had customers hovering around my door and once a client stepped out others rushed for my door like hyenas fighting over a corpse. I started earning five thousand a day unlike the two thousand five hundred a month the managing director job earned me.
Everybody followed suit. People quit the civil service to become cobblers. They left their clerk positions to become taxi drivers. Women quit their secretary posts to become market sellers. They all quit thanks to my genius move. They all sang my name in bars as they drank themselves silly. Finally, his Excellency quit. A new Excellency came to power and things returned to ‘normal’. The President could once again earn his cool twenty million a month while the cobbler could once again walk home with five shillings a day. Things had returned to ‘normal’ thanks to me.
That was long ago. It was I who brought sanity back to this country. Then, you sang my name in bars. You even named your children after me. Time has wiped away the songs you sang in my honour. You have forgotten about me, about my genius. You now call me the old prostitute. I serve you food and after having your fill, you shit on my plates! I will not let this happen. My days have passed and my days are running out but I will not let you fools disgrace me. I am making a demand, I am making a wish, my death wish.
When I die, I want to have a portrait of my corpse taken while it lies on a mat. It should be enlarged and the least area it must cover should be three metres squared. The portrait should be hung at all national museums and below it should bear the words ‘Make Me King!’ Beside the picture should be a copy of this article you are just about to finish reading. So that all may see the truth. So that all may Make Me King!
©2008 Otiato Opali
Endless as the Waters of River Nzoia
It was early in the morning and the sun had just but peeped over the hills in the east. Everything was quiet in Sigalame village apart from the relentless cry of the little girl that flowed endlessly from the lonely hut. A crowd had already gathered by and more people were trickling in. None of them had dared enter the hut. They just came, peeped into the house momentarily and moved aside covering their wide open mouths with their hands. They had formed little groups around the hut talking in low tones about this tragedy that had befallen them.
In the hut everything neatly lay in place, a testimony that there had been no struggle whatsoever. The bed, a worn out mattress and dirty un-matching sheets, was neatly spread and no one had used it for the night. Beside it was a stool that acted as a table with a Bible on it. On the other end of the room were tins neatly arranged on a rack these served as the utensils. Besides the Utensil was a clay water pot sitting quietly in the silence. On the floor, the little girl cried. Tears rolled down her cheeks like the endless waters of River Nzoia, never ending. Her face had lost expression and one could not tell whether that was anger, bitterness or sadness that had settled on her face. She just stared blankly at the people in the doorway and wailed. Her voice did not seem to get exhausted, it just wailed on in a single monotonous tone that was as endless as the tears that rolled down her cheeks, endless as River Nzoia! Beside her lay the lifeless body of the woman. It lay sprawled across the floor facing the grass thatch roof of the house. The eyes were wide open and as pale as a sheet in the moonlight. Wide open, the eyes stared at the grass thatch roof trying to solve the puzzle of this brutal death by looking for an answer in the tufts of grass that made the thatch. Between her flabby breasts was lodged the kitchen knife, proud and firm. Her blood had soaked into the earth and had clotted where the knife had stabbed.
Outside the hut, people gathered in small groups and whispered in low tones. To the right of the hut lay two graves, one big and the other small. In the big grave lay Emanuel, the villagers called him Manu. In his life, he had been the husband to the woman lying sprawled on the floor. He had also fathered the two children, the girl who was crying tears as endless as the waters of River Nzoia and the little boy who lay in the smaller grave that lay beside the big grave, Manu’s grave.
The mother of the two little children was dead. No, not the woman lying sprawled in the hut with a knife in her chest. That too was dead but the mother of the children had died earlier. Manu had married the woman who lay sprawled with a knife in the heart but after unsuccessful trials, he realized that she was barren. He then demanded that the woman’s relatives provide him with a sibeyo, a compensation not to be married but to bear him the children his wife could not. Nafula, a smaller sister to the woman who lay dead in the hut, therefore gave birth to the two little children, Manu’s children. Was it bad luck or was it fate that got Nafula killed? She was swept away by the flooding waters of River Nzoia during a season of heavy rains. She had gone to fetch water at the river and she never returned, neither was her body ever found.
But death never gets tired of reaping. About a year ago, the grim reaper left villagers asking of the age old question, whence cometh another. In the Sigalame book of village records, the most drunkard slot was occupied by Manu. Never had Sigalame village seen a drunkard like Manu in its entire existence.
He spent entire nights and days drinking chang’aa at Senga’s place. He would cut trees in his compound, sell them as firewood to Senga in return for chang’aa. All this while, the woman with a knife between her flabby breasts, the little girl with River Nzoia tears and the boy lying in the small grave all went hungry. Manu drank on and on as his wife and children slept hungry. On coming home after a spree, he would belch stale alcohol onto the woman’s face as he asked for food. Realizing that no food was forthcoming, he would slap her, kick her and later on enter her. All this time he would be calling her names, barren, useless, ugly, all names. The woman never talked because this, to her, was life.
As he kicked and slapped their mother, the little children would watch from a distance with hopeless eyes. Not only did they go hungry for days, not only did they walk naked in tatters, not only did they miss out on school but their mother also beat them. The anger that Manu nailed into their mother found an outlet in them. Immediately Manu would leave for Senga’s place after a night of beating his wife, the children would be faced with their own session of whacks. Very small mistakes earned them very thorough beatings. They had no one to turn to. Telling Manu about it would only infuriate her more and earn them more beatings when he was gone and if anything, he was never there to listen. At one time the little boy told the father about the beatings, this earned the woman an extra share to her normal beatings from Manu and subsequently earned the children an extra share of their beatings from her when he was gone.
A year ago, Manu was found dead in a ditch early one morning after he had disappeared for a whole week’s drinking. He had felled a whole tree that week and his supplies in exchange to firewood that week seemed endless at Senga’s. Nothing could get him out of Senga’s during that week, nothing except death. The woman buried him beside their hut and the few villagers who attended the funeral knew one thing for sure, never had Sigalame seen a drunkard as tough as Manu and all they were left to ask was; whence cometh another?
Last night when the little girl started crying, none of the villagers were bothered because they were used to the cries of the little girl. All they did was comment from the safety of their homes that ‘Mama Obuha beats that girl too much.’ After Emmanuel’s death, the woman intensified the beatings she gave the children. In her heart, she hated the two little angels with a passion. What bothered her most was the fact that they were not her real children. They only reminded her of her inability to give birth.
It was only two months after Emanuel’s death that Obuha died. The woman had sent him to the shop and on his way he had lost the five shillings that was to purchase a packet of salt. The woman consequently beat the child well. She took a piece of wood and thwacked the child as if she was pounding life out of a snake. The little boy sustained internal bleeding and after a week of ailing without any medical care, he died. As the boy took in his last gasps of air before his death, he gave the woman a long and hard look. The woman shivered at the stare from the boy and looked away. In the eyes, the woman saw vengeance, she saw hatred and revenge. All these in the eyes of a little boy, a little dying boy.
The villagers never knew the cause of Obuha’s death, they just buried him in a small grave beside his father’s. It is no wonder that when they heard the little girl crying last night, they were not moved. They only commented from the safety of their homes that ‘Mama Obuha beats that girl too much.’
While they were commenting from the safety of their huts, Mama Obuha was killing the small girl. The small girl had spilt some salt on the floor and the woman was determined to teach her that things were hard to come by in this hut. She picked the same piece of wood that had killed Obuha and started hitting the child. The deafening screams from the child pierced the quiet night in Sigalame but all the villagers could do was comment from the safety of their homes that Mama Obuha beats that girl too much.
The girl writhed on the floor as the piece of wood that had killed her brother landed heavily and mercilessly on her. The woman struck her ribs her back, her buttocks her head her everywhere! She was determined to teach this child that things in this hut were not bought by stones. How could she spill a whole pinch of salt? As she went on beating the child the woman felt rather than saw something move behind her back. She instinctively turned around and what she saw made her drop the piece of wood in disbelief.
She looked straight into those vengeful eyes, those hateful eyes, eyes burning with revenge, Obuha’s eyes. The boy, or was it his ghost held the Kitchen knife in his hand. On the floor, the little girl did not realize anything except that the beating had taken a break. She covered her head with her hands waiting for the beating to resume but to her amazement, she saw the limp body of the woman falling on her. On the woman’s chest between her flabby breasts, the kitchen knife was lodged, proud and firm. The rest of the house was quite and no one else was in sight.
Her heart beat faster as she raised her screams to higher pitches. Down her cheeks, tears as endless as the waters of River Nzoia freely flowed. In the safety of their houses, the villager only said that Mama Obuha beats that girl too much.
The villagers only went to find out what was happening when they realized that the child’s screams had lasted the whole night and that she was still crying in the morning. Having called on the woman from outside her door and receiving the endless wails for an answer, they decided to bring down the door and they were met with one of death’s best masterpieces yet.
None of them dared enter the house. they only gathered in groups around the hut whispering in low tones as they waited for the police to arrive at the scene. To the right of the hut, two graves peacefully lay, one big and the other small. In the hut, the woman lay dead facing the grass thatch roof of the house. Beside her the little girl cried tears as endless as the waters of River Nzoia.
©2008 Otiato Opali
In the hut everything neatly lay in place, a testimony that there had been no struggle whatsoever. The bed, a worn out mattress and dirty un-matching sheets, was neatly spread and no one had used it for the night. Beside it was a stool that acted as a table with a Bible on it. On the other end of the room were tins neatly arranged on a rack these served as the utensils. Besides the Utensil was a clay water pot sitting quietly in the silence. On the floor, the little girl cried. Tears rolled down her cheeks like the endless waters of River Nzoia, never ending. Her face had lost expression and one could not tell whether that was anger, bitterness or sadness that had settled on her face. She just stared blankly at the people in the doorway and wailed. Her voice did not seem to get exhausted, it just wailed on in a single monotonous tone that was as endless as the tears that rolled down her cheeks, endless as River Nzoia! Beside her lay the lifeless body of the woman. It lay sprawled across the floor facing the grass thatch roof of the house. The eyes were wide open and as pale as a sheet in the moonlight. Wide open, the eyes stared at the grass thatch roof trying to solve the puzzle of this brutal death by looking for an answer in the tufts of grass that made the thatch. Between her flabby breasts was lodged the kitchen knife, proud and firm. Her blood had soaked into the earth and had clotted where the knife had stabbed.
Outside the hut, people gathered in small groups and whispered in low tones. To the right of the hut lay two graves, one big and the other small. In the big grave lay Emanuel, the villagers called him Manu. In his life, he had been the husband to the woman lying sprawled on the floor. He had also fathered the two children, the girl who was crying tears as endless as the waters of River Nzoia and the little boy who lay in the smaller grave that lay beside the big grave, Manu’s grave.
The mother of the two little children was dead. No, not the woman lying sprawled in the hut with a knife in her chest. That too was dead but the mother of the children had died earlier. Manu had married the woman who lay sprawled with a knife in the heart but after unsuccessful trials, he realized that she was barren. He then demanded that the woman’s relatives provide him with a sibeyo, a compensation not to be married but to bear him the children his wife could not. Nafula, a smaller sister to the woman who lay dead in the hut, therefore gave birth to the two little children, Manu’s children. Was it bad luck or was it fate that got Nafula killed? She was swept away by the flooding waters of River Nzoia during a season of heavy rains. She had gone to fetch water at the river and she never returned, neither was her body ever found.
But death never gets tired of reaping. About a year ago, the grim reaper left villagers asking of the age old question, whence cometh another. In the Sigalame book of village records, the most drunkard slot was occupied by Manu. Never had Sigalame village seen a drunkard like Manu in its entire existence.
He spent entire nights and days drinking chang’aa at Senga’s place. He would cut trees in his compound, sell them as firewood to Senga in return for chang’aa. All this while, the woman with a knife between her flabby breasts, the little girl with River Nzoia tears and the boy lying in the small grave all went hungry. Manu drank on and on as his wife and children slept hungry. On coming home after a spree, he would belch stale alcohol onto the woman’s face as he asked for food. Realizing that no food was forthcoming, he would slap her, kick her and later on enter her. All this time he would be calling her names, barren, useless, ugly, all names. The woman never talked because this, to her, was life.
As he kicked and slapped their mother, the little children would watch from a distance with hopeless eyes. Not only did they go hungry for days, not only did they walk naked in tatters, not only did they miss out on school but their mother also beat them. The anger that Manu nailed into their mother found an outlet in them. Immediately Manu would leave for Senga’s place after a night of beating his wife, the children would be faced with their own session of whacks. Very small mistakes earned them very thorough beatings. They had no one to turn to. Telling Manu about it would only infuriate her more and earn them more beatings when he was gone and if anything, he was never there to listen. At one time the little boy told the father about the beatings, this earned the woman an extra share to her normal beatings from Manu and subsequently earned the children an extra share of their beatings from her when he was gone.
A year ago, Manu was found dead in a ditch early one morning after he had disappeared for a whole week’s drinking. He had felled a whole tree that week and his supplies in exchange to firewood that week seemed endless at Senga’s. Nothing could get him out of Senga’s during that week, nothing except death. The woman buried him beside their hut and the few villagers who attended the funeral knew one thing for sure, never had Sigalame seen a drunkard as tough as Manu and all they were left to ask was; whence cometh another?
Last night when the little girl started crying, none of the villagers were bothered because they were used to the cries of the little girl. All they did was comment from the safety of their homes that ‘Mama Obuha beats that girl too much.’ After Emmanuel’s death, the woman intensified the beatings she gave the children. In her heart, she hated the two little angels with a passion. What bothered her most was the fact that they were not her real children. They only reminded her of her inability to give birth.
It was only two months after Emanuel’s death that Obuha died. The woman had sent him to the shop and on his way he had lost the five shillings that was to purchase a packet of salt. The woman consequently beat the child well. She took a piece of wood and thwacked the child as if she was pounding life out of a snake. The little boy sustained internal bleeding and after a week of ailing without any medical care, he died. As the boy took in his last gasps of air before his death, he gave the woman a long and hard look. The woman shivered at the stare from the boy and looked away. In the eyes, the woman saw vengeance, she saw hatred and revenge. All these in the eyes of a little boy, a little dying boy.
The villagers never knew the cause of Obuha’s death, they just buried him in a small grave beside his father’s. It is no wonder that when they heard the little girl crying last night, they were not moved. They only commented from the safety of their homes that ‘Mama Obuha beats that girl too much.’
While they were commenting from the safety of their huts, Mama Obuha was killing the small girl. The small girl had spilt some salt on the floor and the woman was determined to teach her that things were hard to come by in this hut. She picked the same piece of wood that had killed Obuha and started hitting the child. The deafening screams from the child pierced the quiet night in Sigalame but all the villagers could do was comment from the safety of their homes that Mama Obuha beats that girl too much.
The girl writhed on the floor as the piece of wood that had killed her brother landed heavily and mercilessly on her. The woman struck her ribs her back, her buttocks her head her everywhere! She was determined to teach this child that things in this hut were not bought by stones. How could she spill a whole pinch of salt? As she went on beating the child the woman felt rather than saw something move behind her back. She instinctively turned around and what she saw made her drop the piece of wood in disbelief.
She looked straight into those vengeful eyes, those hateful eyes, eyes burning with revenge, Obuha’s eyes. The boy, or was it his ghost held the Kitchen knife in his hand. On the floor, the little girl did not realize anything except that the beating had taken a break. She covered her head with her hands waiting for the beating to resume but to her amazement, she saw the limp body of the woman falling on her. On the woman’s chest between her flabby breasts, the kitchen knife was lodged, proud and firm. The rest of the house was quite and no one else was in sight.
Her heart beat faster as she raised her screams to higher pitches. Down her cheeks, tears as endless as the waters of River Nzoia freely flowed. In the safety of their houses, the villager only said that Mama Obuha beats that girl too much.
The villagers only went to find out what was happening when they realized that the child’s screams had lasted the whole night and that she was still crying in the morning. Having called on the woman from outside her door and receiving the endless wails for an answer, they decided to bring down the door and they were met with one of death’s best masterpieces yet.
None of them dared enter the house. they only gathered in groups around the hut whispering in low tones as they waited for the police to arrive at the scene. To the right of the hut, two graves peacefully lay, one big and the other small. In the hut, the woman lay dead facing the grass thatch roof of the house. Beside her the little girl cried tears as endless as the waters of River Nzoia.
©2008 Otiato Opali
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Emptiness
When I finally merge with opulence
Drinking expensive wines
Buying her expensive gifts
Dispensing thirty pieces of silver
To bait young pointed breasts,
Will I forget about us?
This was supposed to be a poem about us,
With our outstretched hands, begging
With our sunken eyes, despairing
With our rumbling stomachs, hungering.
Instead, it’s an empty poem
A poem about our emptiness
The lie that is the reality we live.
As I work hard, I dream harder
Of driving my wife around
Taking my girlfriends to Hiltons
And taking my children to academies
When that day comes
Will I forget about us?
Of our wives under burdens of stale merchandise
Trekking to markets full of emptiness,
Our children plunging into sewages for a swim
Of how many we are, how few they want to remain
Of the emptiness that separates them from us.
So the poem remains unfinished
Not knowing whom to Ballard about,
The me I want to become
Driving as others starve,
The me I am
Starving as others drive,
The me I should be
Looking down if am up above.
And instead of singing a poem about us
My heart belts out in sadness
Screaming a cacophony of emptiness.
©2008 Otiato Opali
Drinking expensive wines
Buying her expensive gifts
Dispensing thirty pieces of silver
To bait young pointed breasts,
Will I forget about us?
This was supposed to be a poem about us,
With our outstretched hands, begging
With our sunken eyes, despairing
With our rumbling stomachs, hungering.
Instead, it’s an empty poem
A poem about our emptiness
The lie that is the reality we live.
As I work hard, I dream harder
Of driving my wife around
Taking my girlfriends to Hiltons
And taking my children to academies
When that day comes
Will I forget about us?
Of our wives under burdens of stale merchandise
Trekking to markets full of emptiness,
Our children plunging into sewages for a swim
Of how many we are, how few they want to remain
Of the emptiness that separates them from us.
So the poem remains unfinished
Not knowing whom to Ballard about,
The me I want to become
Driving as others starve,
The me I am
Starving as others drive,
The me I should be
Looking down if am up above.
And instead of singing a poem about us
My heart belts out in sadness
Screaming a cacophony of emptiness.
©2008 Otiato Opali
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Mariwana!
The following is a quotation from a Doctor who was investigating the effects of the Herb and decided to use the participant observer method of collecting information, quite something!
Monday, March 10, 2008
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
About Me
- Poetikally Korrect!
- Though I might look like your common guy next door, there's more to me than meets the I. If you get the chance to meet the I, you will find out more about me.
