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.