BENI'S HOLIDAY EXPOSE'

My friend Beni is coming to the end of his month-long holiday in Nyagesore, somewhere in Kisii. He will soon travel back to Maralal to attend to the misfortunes of his career. If all things have been going well for everybody, that has not been the case with Beni.

He has had a little of this, and a little of that. At least that is what our several correspondences with him via phone can reveal. For more, join me from the start of next week for a serialization of his adventures and/or misadventures. These will be some of the features:

 1. BENI'S ENCOUNTER WITH THE VILLAGE PROFESSORS
 2. WHY BUSAA SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN LEGALIZED

EXTRACT FROM THE ADVENTURES OF BENI

“POWER IS NOTHING WITHOUT CONTROL”, Beni read the Pirelli Advert sticker on a tire at the back of the Landcruiser. He held tight at the handlebar along the windows. He did not want tell the speed at which they were traveling. He however got the feeling that at most times the vehicle barely touched the ground. He shifted uncomfortably, trying to maintain his perch on the worn out leather seat. As the vehicle bounced on, moments of discomfort to him increased. He was not one of those people whose bones are far from his skin.

Cold wind rushed in through the hole on the window pane. And this wind bit into his eyeballs. To avoid the disquiet, he turned his face and through the back saw the Kirisia Hills receding in the background. On the hills was a thick forest. But it was the only forest one could see on the eastern side of Maralal. He guessed that either nature or man had wreaked havoc on the rest of the landscape, throwing the once beautiful countryside into near environmental catastrophe. 

The indigenous forest was so lonely; so detached. It almost evoked the look of something that was not part of this land. It, in essence, refused to lose the appearance of a small mass of land left hanging in the middle when the wrath of erosion finally eats up everything surrounding it. But what erosion? He wondered. Was it an act of God? Could it be the doing of natural disaster? Or was it a matter of the dangerous prophecy that he had imagined but told nobody. In the making of this prophecy, his rampant imagination had driven him to whisper to himself this: if human beings did not stop destroying nature; nature would finally destroy them alongside itself.

The man sitting next to him must have guessed what was going on in his mind. Beni did not like such people. Either through speculation or art practiced over time, they guessed what he was thinking and then began forcing him into a conversation. A quick glance at the man made him suspect that he was one of those deluded political kinds that attempted to give politics such a simplistic take. Such analyses of politics in ways so facile as if commenting on Vioja Mahakamani did not appeal to his sensibilities.

 

It was difficult to approximate how old he was. Regardless, it was rather obvious that he had surpassed the then Kenyan life expectancy of 42.3. Nevertheless, at his presumed age he still maintained a bright face. In fact one could say that he was almost handsome. His head sat proudly on his neck; he hair closely shaven. Around his waist was a Samburu Shuka. There was yet another piece of the same attire folded neatly and made to run from back to front on his left shoulder. On the right hip, a leather handle of his sword emerged from a scabbard made of plastic cans of different colours. Within the period of his glance in which he gathered all these details, Beni discovered that the man was also very clean.

The clean man opened the window and let out a neatly evicted jet of saliva. This act made Beni wonder just how long he had practiced to attain such proficiency in that art. In retrospect, it was not actually saliva. Beni decided that if he were to name the substance, he would call it “Saliva of Multilateral Extraction”. Before the man let it out; he did a few other things. He first executed the scouring of his throat and allowed whichever element that came of it to move to his mouth. With expert rolling of his tongue, he seemed to have mixed it with the remnants of the green stick toothbrush he was using. Satisfied with the ratio and gelling of the mixture in his mouth, he let out the jet and then assumed the posture of a man who understands his liberties.

Beni’s eyes moved back to the landscape. Not so far away from the road, scores of tree stumps dotted the land. There were old ones and young ones; the young tree stumps were, without doubt, those of trees that had been recently denied life in their middling years. Among these stumps, little acacia shrubs struggled for the same life that had been snuffed out of other trees in this all-pervading sense of wastefulness. He momentarily glanced at the Pirelli advert sticker and tried to make sense of it in view of what he was seeing. Just as his eyes were moving from the sticker, the clean man took the cue.

“That is what a society gets when it sits back and waits for a non-existent voice to speak for it,” the man said with a determined nodding of his head.    

The man paused as if waiting for Beni’s rejoinder and then resumed.

“This is not how it was when I was young. And those days it used to rain frequently too.”

At this point, Beni who had successfully covered his surprise at the man’s fluent English, shook himself from his reverie spoke.

                        “Sometimes it happens,” he said rather vaguely.

“But it shouldn’t happen, you know! It happens yes, but it shouldn’t!” the man said rather passionately.

Beni did not like the sound of his voice. The man was beginning to get too sure with him. He was beginning to push. Beni did not like it because he thought either the man saw he had found a willing audience, which Beni detested; or he imagined that he could compel him into revealing his opinions in the matter, which was impossible. 

Beni knocked at the glass behind the driver’s seat when the sign post YARE CAMEL AND SAFARI CLUB began to emerge from the ground ahead. He would rather walk the rest of the distance than tolerate the discomfort of the clean man’s conversation. After all, he had the mayor’s son to meet.

A SPACE FOR BENI

One could possibly sit alone and imagine that these things did not matter. It was perhaps safe, for the sake of one’s soul, to stay out of certain brawls. But the soul and realism still refused to be easily made the best of friends, with a neat point of intersection and consensus. They never had been friends and they probably never could be, as long as the world maintained the structure it so indifferently insisted on upholding. Where the soul needed serenity and purity; the realistic frame of the universe told it that for it to be able to keep its demands, the body which was the house of the soul needed what it takes to keep it in shape. This situation appears to have forced the soul to inevitably bow to the wants and commands of the body. That was the philosophy that Beni originated when he was taken to task about these certain issues. 

The basic things that one needed were few and appeared simple when named in Social Studies classes: food, clothing and shelter. These however, in the strict sense of their basic meaning, had failed to fulfill the wants of the human spirit. As he came to the end of his monologue, one could sense the discomfort and, perhaps, a sense of betrayal that seemed to be eating into his person. But beyond these apparent discomfort and sense of betrayal, there was something underlying but visible in the conviction of his look. A yearning to create space for himself. A natural craving for space. 

Like kingdoms which sought to expand their empires while protecting what was already theirs, Beni’s soul seemed to have reached a point where it could no longer avoid being plagued by the imminent morbid desire for space. And creating this space could not be achieved by following the prescriptions of the scriptures. Neither could it be attained by the fickleness of the spirit and the somewhat false purity of the soul. The only possibility of acquiring this space lay in three things. One’s commitment, versatility and vigour in the economic rat-race. The making of hands dirty in the struggle to own things, it appeared, presented the risky yet golden chance to please one’s soul and the souls of the significant others.

“Whatever you do, just know you are dealing with politicians,” said Pastor Kariuki.

“I will be. But remember a risky investment bears the best results. I can’t keep on being afraid while people move on with their lives,” Beni replied.

 “My greatest fear of the future has to do with what we will tell our children,” added Elias.

Elias had been looking out of the window all the time Beni had been talking. It was when he made the remark that it occurred to everyone present that he had not been merely looking outside, preoccupied with the snow-white spectacle created by the migrating butterflies. Clearly, he had not been gazing at scores of children dutifully making their way to Sunday school. Visibly unsure of the implication of Elias’ words, Pastor Kariuki looked at him inquisitively.

“I mean, will we tell our children that they will be leading the life they will be living because we were afraid?” spoke Elias.

“Think about that. Even as I wrestle with my soul, I know it is right to remain honest, but is it appropriate?” Beni added.

“Fellas, got to be moving. Have to prepare for the adult service.” Pastor said.

The rest of the group rose and left too. When he remained alone in his house, Beni was sure that had not been one of the usual Sunday meetings they held in their plot. Such meetings happened each week in the morning. Sunday was the only day the male residents of the plot got to meet and catch up on the happenings of the week. On this particular morning, Beni’s best friend had coincidentally been present. This friend had noticed a note on the table. Upon picking it, the first few lines on it told him that Beni was being invited to a business deal by the mayor’s son. That is how the conversation had begun.

 As he walked to the bathroom, Beni promised to leave the conversation behind. The bathroom was his place of meditation. It is here that he made and broke major decisions in his life. He decided which girl to pursue and which numbers to delete from his phonebook. In this bathroom, Beni had composed many poems, none of which he had written down yet. 

Here, still, he came up with the first sketch of the novel he always thought about writing. The bathroom, so filled with artistic inspiration, had unfortunately played the biggest obstacle to his ambition of writing his novel. This was because every morning, the characters and events in his future book kept changing.  In one case, he decided to kill the character he had so painstakingly created for a whole week. Because of this circumstance, Beni’s ambition to get published remained an elusive endevour. 

He closed the door an hour later and made his way to the stage. The angelic voices of Sunday school kids singing floated to him. They stood in a circle with their teacher at the centre. While the rest sang, three others, apparently too young for their minds to register what was happening, played hide-and-seek. To these three younger ones, the imploring voices of the older kids could not erode the sweetness of play. They made Beni think of the bliss of living in ignorance. And he almost smiled as he considered their hide-and-seek game a sort of inadvertent hiding from the call to go to heaven. That was the message of the children’s song, “Matunda ya Mbinguni.” 

In their delightful innocence, they drove Beni’s mind to an uneasy imagination. He wanted to go back to his days as a child; days when there was very little to worry about: waking up for school, exams and punishment. Childhood had allowed him to dream. In childhood, he had fancied answering when asked what he wanted to be when he grew up. Growing up he had, but problems had set in when he realized that none of his dreams had the intention of becoming true. 

He chose a lonely spot from which to wait for a vehicle to Maralal town. From that point he noticed that the usual traffic in and out Village Connections Bar had started. Sunday or no Sunday, life goes on, he thought. One of the men got out of the bar and dared the Christians singing in a nearby church to bring God to spill his beer. Even with his crowded mind, Beni considered that both talent and inspiration were lacking in the drunk man’s words. But the words proved what his friend liked saying: “On Sunday, there are two types of people in the world, those who attend fellowship and those who attend swallowship.” 

He was glad when an NGO Landcruiser he had waved stopped to pick him. He was in time for the meeting at Yare Camel Safari Club.  

SHREWD BENI SAMBURU-LIZED HIS NAME

Wesonga Robert.

wesongarobert@yahoo.com

“‘What’s in a name? What is called a rose, will by any other name, still smell as sweet.’” Beni began. “Those are the words of Juliet in Shakespeare’s tragedy, Romeo and Juliet.” Concluding that I had not understood him, my friend then proceeded to explain what he had meant: “What matters is not the name, but the substance of what is being named.” 

At this point I remembered. My brief reminiscence took me to a time when I asked my grandfather what the term OGIRIMITI meant. I was then in class eight and curiosity was getting to its peak. The old man did not just tell me what that word meant; he went into the history of the LUHYA-lization of English words. Now, I know that OGIRIMITI and ISAMANZI are luhya versions of the English words “agreement” and “a summon” respectively.

One weekend when I could no longer bear the cold that had come over me; I lazily walked to a dispensary situated at Kisima. It is here that I came face to face with what the extravagance in naming can lead to, if left completely unchecked.  “Container Lengarum!” called a nurse’s voice from the Consultation Room. 

Oblivious of the true meaning, I believed that the nurse was asking a certain Lengarum to bring a container.  Surprisingly, a woman I was sitting next to responded and rose with her child. It is then that I discovered that Container Lengarum was the name of the child. Surprised I was because that was years ago before I encountered more startling names. 

On one occasion, an NGO leader gave Beni a job to type the names of beneficiaries of a donation. It is during this venture that he came across names that made him call me to witness. I advised Beni to wait for the client to come the following day before printing the names, just to be sure that those names were supposed to be what they actually were. 

I wondered what on earth would motivate a parent to give a child a name like: Woollen Julia Lerikwei, Assasin Ram Ram, Imagine Ng’arua. There is one set of parents who took this art to the absolute beyond which there can be nothing. These parents named their son after a male genital part that begins with letter ‘P’! When they were told to change the name to DENIS, they insisted that they could not change because their radio had said the name at the time of his birth.   

A conversation with a friend who is a native of the district would later reveal the art behind this naming. Children are sometimes given a name of a known visitor who happens to be in their home, village or town at the time of their birth. If for example Kinyanjui visited Leleur’s home, a daughter born on that day could be called Sacrament Kinyanjui Leleur. The difference in gender between the visitor and the child in this case does not matter. This means that the child’s ‘home’ name is Kinyanjui and it is to that name that she will have to answer most times because the first one is a Christian name and the last is the family name.

Beni reasons that this experience in the naming holds the key in reducing tribalism. Without regard to tribe, each of the main tribes living in Samburu exploits this liberty in naming. It is only in here that you come across such combinations like Nyongesa Lempara, Wangui Edapar, Adolfo Lemantile, Lesonga Napanu and Onyango Lobei.

This freedom of naming has not been enjoyed without its own complications. In some cases, natives of the district have rightfully complained that sometimes non-locals residing in the area have samburulized their names so that they can benefit from some of the programmes in the area. Such programmes are primarily meant to uplift the standards of the disadvantaged natives. 

This explains how people like, Lesonga Lengoseg or Lendingi Anzeki, have managed to queue and get some of the relief food, or even qualified for a bursary. Because of the possible benefit, I am working towards Samburulizing my name. Beni has moved with speed and he is now called: Benedict Nyagesasi Lelkipayengi.

HOW MY FRIEND WILL NOT MARRY SOON

 By Wesonga Robert

wesongarobert@yahoo.com

Beni is a man of faith. From the onset of his life here, he projected that within a couple of years, he would select a suitable girl from the community and marry. This, he told me, was part of his original design to not only render his service to the community, but also become sufficiently desirous, as to save a daughter of a woman from dreaded singlehood.

To reach this end, my friend first set out to learn the Samburu language in as short a time as possible.  This, however, was not easy because the nature of Beni’s job did not afford him an easy opportunity to learn the language. I did not want to dampen my friend’s spirit by telling him what I already was sure of: it is not easy to get a reliable person to teach one a language outside classroom. 

Having been a resident of Samburu long before Beni, I had abandoned the venture when I discovered that the tout, Lobash, who offered to teach me the language, only insisted on a unique syllabus. He decided that I understand the vulgarities and obscenities first, before any meaningful knowledge could be introduced.  

Shortly after making his intentions clear to me, I tried my best to help Beni find the best person in the circumstances to teach him. After going through a list of potential teachers, we settled on an old man of about fifty five. The man, Lempilei, is a retired soldier who walks around town redoing combat drills. These drill he only does them when the level of blood in his alcohol becomes too low for his sanity. This does not happen infrequently. 

On being conducted, the retired soldier agreed to give his lessons absolutely free of charge; but gave a condition. Beni had only to buy him a drink every evening they had a lesson. After looking at the man, Beni determined that his class and taste were not beyond the infamous Trigger Brandy. 

It is needless to mention what this cost Beni in the fullness of time. Only these days can he acknowledge the unnecessarily high cost of his ambitious course. He regretfully says that what he spent was enough to make his sister, Moraa, go through a certificate course in any of the backstreet colleges you know. Besides buying drink for the old man, Beni himself had to drink. 

After three weeks, Beni began to indicate that the old man was not after all wasting his money for nothing. In his conversations, he began throwing in Samburu expressions and exclamations. Never mind that sometimes this resulted in looks of shock on the faces of listeners who knew the language. One of them was honest enough to warn him that if he did not take care, he would one day say something terribly scandalous. On this occasion, he had loudly greeted a female workmate, calling her NANYORAI (In Samburu, My Love). 

The lady did not respond to the greeting, much to Beni’s surprise. She instead put her hands on her waist, and while shaking her head vehemently, lectured Beni on the need to respect other people’s wives. As if to confirm that whatever the gods want to embarrass, they give an oversized ambition, Beni did not heed any of the warnings.

A day would come when Beni thought that it was time to give practical shape to his knowledge. Having acquired what he imagined was an above average knowledge of the Samburu language and its imagery; he identified a girl and decided to approach her. On that afternoon, Beni confessed to the girl how the sun had started shining since her arrival in the neighbourhood. Beni even got poetic and requested his target of adoration to look at the sun. He then educated her that the sun was right then on the Tropic of Capricorn, heading direct to the Equator, in her heart. He went on to prophesy that his heart would soon take the same route. Not yet satisfied that he had created the right impression, he dropped a couple of rhymes he had composed especially for this occasion:

When I returned alone on the long lonely path
The dark fearsome night was cold in its death
And there was no moonlight the path to bath
And the naked stars did not dance the sky’s breadth

That first day, Beni almost told her that she was beautiful. He however decided to save the best for last; when he would deliver his deepest intentions to the girl.

Several weeks later, Beni invited the girl to take a stroll with him. That afternoon Beni put all his linguistic resources at his disposal. After telling Ntaini, as the girl was called, that she was the most beautiful thing to ever happen to humanity since the Egyptian queen Nefertiti, he promised to bring her the sun if she accepted his marriage proposal. Then in Samburu, Beni dropped the line he had been rehearsing for months: “Ntaini, you are so beautiful; you are very much a cow.” He said the words and then waited for a smile, and the dropping of the eyes that invariably follows such flattery. Surprisingly, Ntaini handed Beni the hottest slap he has ever received from a female Homo Sapien. 

I led Beni in finding out from the old man why what had happened, had happened. Upon hearing the story, the old man spoke with the greatest disinterest one can muster. “When I told you that in Samburu cows are precious and are likened to beautiful women, I did not mean it literally. I said so because in our community cows are precious and invaluable. And so are beautiful women. Go sit down and begin to think straight.” 

It then emerged that girl had not lived in Samburu long enough to appreciate the depth of the imagery of her people’s language.  That day I went to bed sorry that my effort to help my friend learn Samburu had made him lose the one thing he had so badly wanted. I resigned to the knowledge that Beni would be looking for a wife for the next very many years.