BENI AT YARE CAMEL CLUB

As Beni made his way past the security guard posted at the gate of YARE CAMEL AND SAFARI CLUB, he decided he was going to forget about the man in the Landcruiser. He let his mind wander freely. He let it drift with the Magic Carpet, and for a moment, allowed it to rest upon his traveling experiences. And for this fleeting moment, he thought he must have been bewitched. It is only witchcraft that can make a man subject himself to hardships when there was absolutely nothing in police records to prove that he had committed any crime. Beni wondered what else it could be. What else could it be, rather than witchcraft? If it was not this, then Beni could bet he was crazy to expel himself from the comfort of his home and live far away, like one who was serving a prison sentence. 

Beni told me he thought about his early morning travels. He said these things with such clarity of mind that would summon attention, even from the most attention-deficit listener. He wondered why the worst always insisted on happening every time he traveled. Things occurred to him every time, yet traveling was not originally designed to be a punishment. Sometimes, because of worldly urgencies, many a time and oft, Beni has had to stand out at night and endure the biting cold as it hit hard upon his face. This discomfort has invariably come to him with extreme torture to the mind. 

I could not agree with Beni more. Out here, could be somewhere in Kisima or some other such place, you must have belief when waiting for a vehicle at night. Even as your face remains tilted downwards to mitigate the hazards of the cold, your eyebrows must be left elevated at an angle. They must keep the faith. You must stay the hope, as the eyes peer at the distant darkened horizon for any sign of light originating from vehicle headlamps. Sometimes the light of a distant shooting star fools you and so you wait with bated expectancy. 

To make the matter a little worse, a vehicle might finally appear only for you to discover goats bleating inside a lorry. Even with all these, you are not to wonder. You are not to wonder as the driver flings shame out of the window and invites you to join the animals at the back for the journey to Nyahururu. You should not be puzzled as he quotes a fee no less than that expected by drivers of Nissan matatus. 

On such dreary nights, rare has been the comfort. The moments of such infrequent comfort have been scarce and far between. As if to repay such erratic kindness of nature, he has stood under the moonlit Samburu skies and beheld the romance. Beni has even composed a few lines as a result. He has looked at the stars, and shifted his gaze to look at the beauty of the landscape; a landscape that occasionally gets bathed in the uninhibited ambiance of the Savannah moonlight. Beni roused himself from this reverie as he made his way below the KARIBU sign at the main entrance to the club.

He had never been to the club before. Nevertheless, he had noticed with disinterest, the greying timber walls as he passed by on the numerous occasions he went to Maralal town. When he started making his way down the main hallway, he began to realize that Yare was one of those places that exemplify the sometimes hidden contrast between outward appearance and the substance of the interior. The walls inside were lined with polished oak wood. Not being in any particular hurry, he decided to get into some of the rooms he found wide open. 

From the expertly designed roof, chandeliers that held jewels of bulbs hung. The light that streamed in through the windows being sufficient, Beni was not afforded the sight that the bulbs could certainly inspire when lighted. Climbers of varying lengths and shades of green were allowed to meander their way around the rooms, finally finding their passageway through the windows, and eventually into the freedom of outside. The pots that nourished these flowers were bedecked with layer upon layer of awe-inspiring Samburu beads.

The meeting between him and the mayor’s son was to take place in the main restaurant which also served as a bar. At the time he walked in, the place was deserted. Low leather sofa seats sparsely occupied the room.  He chose one of the seats that was near the window and sat down to admire the numerous trophies that had been won in the ten-year history of international camel racing. Adjacent to the cabinet that held the impressive-looking trophies, was a list of the winners. 

Beni looked at the names of Europeans and wondered what desire on earth would transport a man or woman from Europe to come to Samburu and ride a camel. He had once traveled from Kisima to witness such races but had since stopped when he discovered that it was impossible for a camel to run. On this ocassion, the camels were continuously expelling the contents of their stomachs, and smearing them on their hindquarters. Besides, they merely hobbled on the sandy paths producing indescribable sounds. 

All the while, the riders were jerked up and down in slow but violent enough movements. Beni wondered where the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was as those it was supposed to protect were publicly mistreated, and what’s more, on international stage. He had stopped short of writing to SPCA when he noticed the profuse pleasure with which some of the riders went through the activity.

He would have gone on with his mental condemnation of camel racing had he not heard the approach of footsteps. Then he walked in. He was dressed in khaki trousers with a browning cotton shirt to match. On his left hand was what appeared to be an original Swiss wristwatch. Beni could not place a price on it, but anyone could guess that it was not very cheap. He walked towards Beni with the confident steps of a man who was not living on borrowed time. Rather than be called fat, he could politely be described as a man whose bones were very far away from his skin.  That is why, together with his confident steps and short stature, he also seemed to roll on the ground like one of those Roger Federer tennis balls. 

Beni rose from the seat, and while slightly tipping his cap, offered a well-practiced handshake. He was sure this was the mayor’s son he was waiting for. As Beni went back to the seat, all the while smiling broadly, the man did not speak. He instead dropped a series of syllables that had the same sounding as:     

     

            “Nikuuzie nini?”

            “Pilsner baridi,” Beni replied hating himself for having gone through all the dramatics for a bar tender. 

He had to wait. He prayed that the mayor’s son would turn up before he exhausted the little money he had. He could ill afford more than three beers at Yare.

BENI FORCES ME DOWN MEMORY LANE

The spirit of home was upon the souls of the folks. It was the spirit of home, fused with that of Christmas. And it was doing its rounds among the folks. These were the folks who had traveled home after absences of varying lengths. For some, the spirit motivated an inspiration for them to show how different they were from those they had left behind for months; or even years. If you were among these, like many of us, you were home without being there. You left in the morning, breathing the garden-fresh air characteristic of the village environment, and came back in the evening weighed down by the weary ways of the town you still swaggered around with. 

Consequently, the village had a new species. This temporary creation imagined that tumbling late into their mothers’ houses after taking cheap beer at the market centres was any cooler than the vulgarity of a man who had no reservations about sticking to ordinary chang’aa. If you were among these, you waved tamely at the villagers who called your name and walked away, escaping their stare and fearing condemnation for not knowing them. Sometimes you almost took off fearing they were just about to ask for a kilo of sugar. You sped off, but left them with their self-esteem and dignified sense of living intact.

As Beni relayed these thoughts while we seeped tea in his house, I realized I was not alone. Momentarily, I struggled hard to avoid the silent feeling of betrayal that had walked the veins of my soul all the time I was home. It was a feeling that came to me when I noticed the little orphaned boy hardly had a fabric to cover his back. What remained of the second-hand shirt I had brought a year earlier were mere shreds holding desperately to an equally worn out collar. The boy still came running to meet me at the gate, and while smiling, took my bag. 

The boy would later bring me a neatly folded report card. He stood looking intently at my eyes as I went through it. There it was. 3 out of 67. And there was the teacher’s comment too: “great potential resting on young shoulders.” Then, this burning sensation had come to my eyes. I had thought they were tears but remembered that my father had once told me that big boys don’t cry. So I tried to hold them back. But the feeling did not completely go away. It was instead replaced by a heaviness that settled deep in my breast. It was the heaviness that settles in the hearts of mourners who witness a tear drop from the eyes of a widow. The mourners must surely feel heart wrenched as the teardrop gently falls in the dust around her husband’s grave.   

This feeling was from time to time suppressed by the ease, generosity and honesty of our village folks. Their handshake was firm and their gaze into your eyes genuine. They welcomed you to their homes where it was impossible not taste of the food, however satisfied. They would look at you and remark that life wasn’t treating you kindly if they noticed your shirt hanging loosely on your shoulders. You would hear them say that your poor eating habits contributed even more to your lean frame. But most of all, their laughter would ring to the core of your being. This laughter would bring with it their faith in life. Seemingly, this faith had made them realize that life was not just about economic struggles; struggles that invariably leave you buffeted by unforgiving torrents of modern living. 

The feeling almost left you when you sat under the mango tree on hot afternoons. You looked up at the birds tweeting among the leaves, and abandoned your heart to fly away with the gentle breeze that went past your eyebrows. It almost completely left you, this feeling, as you weaved the tale of your childhood. Nostalgic reminiscences of the days in grazing fields would attempt to drown it. It reminded me of the law of the grazing fields: YOU MUST FIGHT. EVEN IF YOU ARE TO LOSE, FIGHT, YOU MUST. Funny? You don’t know the half of it yet. You don’t even know how I would go home with a swollen lip but never betrayed a friend with whom I had fought. It was always: “I fell while chasing Dibuoro (a cow)”. These fights ended by the riverside, and grudges, like tired scales, peeled off.

Many will certainly remember the moonlit hide-and-seek games in the village at Christmas. I recall mine. They went long into the night and almost always ended with us being whipped and forced to sleep by our aggressive uncles. If you care, I will even mention how I once caught my eldest cousin during one of these games. 

I found him vibrating on top of Baibe, our neighbour’s daughter. The two were supposed to be hiding. I had searched far off only to find them under the Olusiola tree near our chicken house. Of course I took some time to watch the moonlight play on Colly’s naked backside; and listen to Baibe’s whimpering before I coughed to stop them. Although under my cousin she appeared to be struggling to free herself, you should have heard how Baibe clicked when I interrupted. That night I slept on the floor. My cousin would not share his bed with one who had interfered with his sugarcane chewing experience.

For the briefest of moments, the feeling left you as you walked in the poetry of the tantalizing sunset. The rose-colored luminous rays filtering through sugarcane plantations suddenly took it away. And voices of children shouting “sikuukuu” carried on what the sunset left behind. But only for a time. 

These beautiful things made you want to ignore the feeling that you had not done what you ought to. But I guess you realize the feeling won’t just go away. Maybe, like me, you will have time to make up. Even now, as the feeling slowly subsides with the widening space and time between me and home, I must regret that I allowed Beni to force me down memory lane.