Over the weekend in shags I woke up at dawn and as I reversed I saw my dad, a toothbrush stuck in his kisser, asked me where I was going so early. I told him I was going to the pier, to take a picture of the sunrise. He chuckled. As I drove out I stared at him in the rear view mirror standing on the steps of the verandah in his shorts, a baffled look on his face. ‘Did he say he’s going to take a picture of the SUNRISE?’ his look suggested. Why would anyone want to go take a picture of the sunrise? Why do I have to be the guy who gets the son who wakes up to take a picture of the sunrise? Why didn’t God give me a son who goes to hunt? Or wants to go to war at dawn? Or sink a dam? A goddamn sunrise? God, why?
Sometimes I suspect my dad questions my sexuality when I do shit like that.
Anyhow, I went down to the disused pier, past the rumbling old town of Kendu Bay, with it’s old elegant mosques and line of homes with splintered blue wooden doors and closed shops that will never open again. Goats were just rising up with their kids leaping playfully on the warm tarmac. The pier was deserted as it usually is at this time. The wrought irons remained rammed into the lake, a place where ships and steamers and many big bowelled sea animals once docked. Today it’s a neglected maritime museum, a place where things came to wither and flounder and then diminish.
It was peaceful at that time of the morning. Across the lake, boats bobbed up and down in the reeds by the shore. A few women silently washed clothes nearby. Eastbound, on the horizon, the orange glow of the sun made a promise. I reclined the seat in the car and opened my Kindle to read “Just Kids,” By Patti Smith. There is a line I read as I waited for the sunrise: In the war of magic and religion, is magic ultimately the victor? Perhaps priest and magician were once one, but the priest, learning humility in the face of God, discarded the spell for prayer. I read and re-read that passage a few times and for a while I couldn’t get past it. Further in the lake, two men steered a boat with its mast up against the rising sun. I stood in the peer in my vest and leso (which I assure you has got no bearing to my sexuality) and took pictures. Later, I went back to the car, read two more chapters and slowly drove back to shags taking the long route home.
When I got there, my brother was up washing my mom’s grave. The ugly domestic dog with no name had been herded back into its kennel kicking and yelping, and my dad was at the verandah, a small radio in his lap, listening to Radio Citizen. “Did you take a picture?” He asked. I went to my gallery and quickly scrolled through the pictures that came before and after my sunrise shots, because I didn’t want him to be looking at beautiful pictures of the sun only to come across a picture of a girl with a thonged bum that someone had sent from one of those Whatsapp Groups where some very, uhm, risque conversations happen.
I wonder how he would react though, given that he’s now in church and he loves the Corinthians. I wonder how that moment would be when I’m there bending over his shoulder, showing him these pictures and suddenly, boom! An ass. You can’t even pretend it’s anything but. You can’t say it’s a picture of a drumstick taken at a very creative angle. And for a moment we stare at that ass and the ass stares back at us and we are both sure that there is never going to be a more awkward moment between father and son. And of course I will have to diffuse that moment, make it light, and probably say, “OK, that is not exactly one of the pictures I took today, but it also happens to be called sunshine.”
Then I will scroll to the next picture of a boat and and another sunrise, but the ass picture will have stolen the moment from us and we would not be able to bring back that innocence. Of course we will act as if that ass moment didn’t happen and move on like we didn’t see it; hear no ass, see no ass, kind of thing. But that night, once we have all gone to bed, he will probably go to his bedroom, ease himself at the edge of his bed and pick his Bible and flip it to 1John:1:8, which says, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” Then he will pray again, for my soul and the soul of the assumed woman who took that picture to spread evil and to derail the good hearts of good men and – unbeknownst to him – the disturbed soul of the Whatsapp group member who shared that picture.
Then he will get into bed, reach out and switch off the overhead light. For a moment he will lie there face up, staring into the darkness, and because he is still all flesh and all man, he will think of that ass and he will sigh and say, “This generation is seeing some good shit.”
Of course that didn’t happen. It didn’t happen because there wasn’t any lewd pictures before and after the sunrise shots. He looked at my sunrise pics, feigning interest and then asked me what I was going to do with them. I told him I was going to use one on my Instagram and Facebook. “Oh, I know Facebook,” he said proudly and I wanted to hand him a plaque. Hey, give Simon over here the biggest plaque you have, he knows Facebook!
I had forgotten my toothbrush so I went back to the backyard and plucked a branch from this tree that you can use a toothbrush if you are, say, stranded in a bush or an island. OK, you can’t use the whole tree as a toothbrush, just a branch. I snapped a small twig, peeled it’s bark, chewed on the end to create bristles and spread some toothpaste on it. I walked around brushing my teeth, feeling very debonaire and innovative. I ran into my sister’s son, an 8-year old boy called Garvin, a tech junkie who had been walking around with a PSP in his hands the entire time. He was completely taken by the sight of a twig in my mouth.
“What is that?!” He asked looking up with wonder.
“A twig.” I said. “Like a branch from a tree.”
“Are you eating it?”
“I’m brushing my teeth with it.”
He laughed.
“You don’t have a toothbrush?” he asked me and I said I hate toothbrushes then walked away. Silly kids! Where were they when we were fighting the white man? Later, a friend sent me a message and asked me to send a picture of the so-called “simbas” that jango’s talk about. So I sent and she said, “Wow, it looks nice, I thought it was like a hut.”
Ha. A hut.
I was in shags over the entire Easter period, and I did some small series of posts on my Instagram. Of course what that meant is that my friends (mostly Kikuyu, but also Meru and a few Kaos) kept asking questions about shags. Interesting questions, yes, but also very ignorant. My Kisii friends don’t ask these questions, mainly because most Kisiis are not on Instagram. They will join in 2018.
I would like to take the pleasure to answer those questions here in greater detail. So here, the most common questions Kikuyus ask about Nyanza.
Have you ever seen a nightrunner before?
Yes. Once at Explorer Tavern. He was ordering his whisky in singles and flooding it with six ice cubes. His lips looked cold and dead.
Also in my shags, behind our boma, lives a nightrunner. Of course we all know he’s a nightrunner, they have that walk. His kids will be nightrunners. His kid’s kids will move to the city and be nightrunners, only they will not run along Oloitoktok road at night, they will run at Karura at dawn. A night runner’s tongue spits fire at night, he runs buck naked and he hurls himself on doors and pours sand on your roof and can smell fear. He can also tell if there is a Kikuyu visiting in a house in Nyanza. In fact, the moment you land in Kisumu they will smell you all the way from Mbita. Don’t come to Nyanza because a nightrunner will seek you out and lick the soles of your feet as you sleep. I know because one licked mine and I’m embarrassed to say that it was sort of erotic. Sort of.
Will you bring me fish?
So that you eat it with chapos? So that you say the fish is staring at you? So that you eat it with a fork? No, I will not bring you fish. Also, not all of us live by the lake. Have you ever heard of Olambwe? Didn’t think so. It’s far. It’s a valley, like Rift Valley. And they don’t have a lake. What about Migori? No Lake. Rarieda? No lake. Chemelil? No Lake. Not all shags have a lake. Besides fish is more expensive in these areas than in Nairobi.
Do you know kina Felix’s shags?
Felix is from Siaya. I’m from South Nyanza. Those are two worlds apart. We are both Luo and sure, you can’t tell who is who when they speak Luo, but we can tell. The guys from Siaya all speak funny. They say stuff like, “mita in?” We say “to in?” Obviously you can tell by just reading that aloud that ours is a more refined lingo, no? Having said that, not all of us come from the same place. There are Njoroges from Molo and Njoroges from Kianderi, donge? How do you think Njoroge from Molo feels when you ask him if he sees Njoroge from Kianderi when he goes to shags? Do you think he will be a teamplayer? Will he see you in intelligent light? Will your question further your friendship? Don’t you think he will ask you to stand in a corner?
Is it true that when a husband dies, the wife is to sleep with the body?
Actually traditionally you were meant to ‘sleep’ NEXT to the body. I suspect it was a direct translation, “nindo gi….”’ to mean spending the night WITH the coffin. That’s why during funerals you see madhes sitting around the coffin the whole night. The white man called it a ‘wake’. You stay up and mourn with the bereaved. We make a ruckus during funerals, yes, and we slaughter animals yes, but we draw the line at sleeping with the dead. Surely.
What about tero buru? You know, wife inheritance, does it still happen?
Only if the said widow promises not to come with her weaves.
How do you catch omena, it’s so small and cute.
This is a good question, I will admit. Forget that rumour they tell you about fishing nets. That is hogwash that was started in Kinoo in 1987. Here is what you do to catch omena; You get a bunch of women and you sit them by the lake at night and you let them sing gospel music. Omenas love the word. They will come in droves and when they do the women catch them. While still singing.
And no, omena is not cute. Larry Madowo’s African print shirts are.
Do you use the same metallic basin for cooking and bathing? (Haha. I love this one!)
No! Come on, that’s ridiculous. We also use it for milking cattle.
How far is the nearest hospital?
The nearest hospital is Kenyatta National Hospital.
Why are there less toilets in Luoland?
This was a question that a friend of mine called Njoki asked on Saturday. The thing with writing satire and what can pass as humour is that people will ask you insulting questions and not expect you to take offence because really, you do satire sometimes, yes? Some offend me, but most amuse me. This offended me for about three minutes and I stared at her whatsapp for a while before going under a tree to do a yoga pose and control my breathing before answering her.
I asked gently, “How do you know there are less toilets in Luoland? Was there a poll by Ipsos Synovate?”
“I know from experience.” She wrote back defiantly.
“When we go for field work in Kisumu I can never get a toilet unless at the hotel.”
“When you say Kisumu, do you mean Kisumu town or Kama’gambo?”
“Hahaha. Kisumu County, but if you need exact locations I can go to the office on Tuesday and get you those names, so that this interrogation can go better with exact information.” (This one is sarcastic).
So I told her that there are plenty of toilets in Luoland if she cared enough to look. There are bushes and rocks and in valleys and on hills. Some go in the river. We work with nature.
I also think our luo leaders should install loos in the remote villages just incase NGO types like Njoki get the sudden urge to use a bathroom while on their field work. And please have some air freshener in there as well.
I thought you lived in huts?
We do. But Jakom sent a strict directive that when sending pictures of our homes to people from Central we should send one the pictures from the approved file images sent in by the luo council of elders. No luo is allowed to send pictures of the huts they live in. It paints a bad picture. (See what I did there?) It’s bad enough that the presidency eludes us; we can’t send pictures of our huts as well. It’s damaging. We need to support Jakom on this and not embarrass him with our hut pictures. So we don’t. But yes, we live in huts. And they have wifi.
Image Source: Global Health