BENI AND THE MIDDLE-FINGURE PHILOSOPHY

By Wesonga Robert

wesongarobert@yahoo.com

I have never been to heaven. I can swear upon any religious book that I have never been there. If, in Dr. King’s fashion, my hitherto absence from heaven can be likened to poisoning, then part of the postmortem will read my failure to die.  He stopped. Maybe dying should not have been a good example, but the manner in which Beni said it made it the perfect anecdote. As he went on, anyone would have realized that Beni’s words could not at any time be reduced to the ranting of a man frustrated on his birthday.

He rose up and served two other cups of rigid Nescafe’. Kenny Rogers was once more persuading people to become sentimental at sunset.  His performance of “The Gambler” was in tandem with the reddish-yellowing element of the sun that was now fast disappearing in the western horizon. While the coffee was tantalizing, the setting sun inspired a feeling of nostalgia; a nostalgia emphasized by the thought that when a day ended it ended. 

In a country where many tasteless things seemed not to want to end, you felt nice with the assurance that at least there are some good things that ended. Where bad politics was endless, a beautiful shiny day in the Samburu plains always came to an end. It did not just end; you also remained assured that there was another day coming on the following day.

He was once more doing one thing that he really disliked doing in the evening. And this thing he was doing was now stopping him from savouring his devotion to KBC’s Sundowner. He was thinking. The ending of a day is not a lie. In fact, a day is not even political. In this African Savannah of which Samburu was part, a day began at six in the morning and ended at six in the evening. And he began to speak.

            “When the mayor’s son called, I thought that he had something important tell me. I didn’t expect him to conjure up a threat.”

            “What did he say in particular?” asked Njoro.

            “That there are so many things I ought to know about Samburu,” Beni continued.

            “Like what?” Njoro pushed.

            “Well, he didn’t say it quite openly. But I guessed he wanted me to understand that the   forest I was complaining about had not been planted by anyone. He seemed to want to  make me understand that there is a limit to the things I should talk about in this district. I find that middle-fingure kind of philosophy most distressing.”

            “Middle-fingure philosophy,” Njoro said with a chuckle, “I like the sound of it. However, if I were you, I would listen to that timely advice. Especially now that it was offered free of charge.”

            “I don’t need his advice. I may not know exactly what to do with my life; but I know          exactly what I don’t want to do with it. And that is listening to such fellows.” Beni            declared with a clear note of defiance in his voice.

That somehow brought an end to that bit of conversation. The two men sat in silence and seeped their coffee. Even in this silence, they understood each other perfectly. To them, silence did not mean any tension. It meant a rare moment of reflection. As Beni moved to a corner of his room and switched on his secondhand HP desktop, Njoro picked up Beni’s poetry manuscript from a stack of books at a level under the table and began flipping through the pages. 

Beni had initiated an idea to write environmentally conscious poems. Besides, he had sent invitations to friends he knew telling them of his project. The result of the venture was that he now had countless pieces.

He was a little disappointed. Some of the pieces he had were actually what one of his friends had said were paragraphs forcefully turned into verses. They lacked conviction though it was clear that their writers insisted more on the message. The effort of the writers notwithstanding, Beni felt that art should not be sacrificed on the altar of preaching in support of social causes. Regardless, it was good way to start doing something important. 

As he sat in front of his computer, he began creating a Facebook group which he had conceived to name: THE SAMBURU INITIATIVE ON ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS. Then the thought of the morning heat came back to him. It had hardly been eleven but the heat outside had already started to build. It had been the morning of this day. No, the heat had not just started to build, it had begun to walk. 

On some afternoons the heat became so real; so palpable that it could be sliced into tangible bits with a knife. Even this evening as he went on doing his work, a minor heat wave wafted into the room. He wanted to believe it had to do with the coffee but it was not. It was minor heat wave but it carried the essence of a heat-inspired brutality that was always there in the latter part of most afternoons.

Shuddering at this junior heat wave that came in and left as suddenly as it had entered, Beni felt nothing other than disgust for anyone who came up with narrow middle-fingure philosophies in the face of the tragic onslaught of man on the environment. It had to be a constricted middle-fingure philosophy that told people to mind their own business just because you were thought to be aliens; visitors who must not go poking their nose into the affairs of a district in which they were not born. 

Njoro interrupted his line of thought when he started reading, rather loudly, one of the poems Beni had written. Beni was almost embarrassed that it was his poem Njoro was reading, but he thought it sounded good:

POOR GREY FOREST

You yawn in crackles of fire; and go grey
Poor Grey Forest, once dark in your day
The gaps in your mouth send shivers
For long dried and gone are the rivers

Rivers that once flowed gracefully
From your rich bowels incessantly

I won’t feed you grey hungry forest
You’ll yawn and yodel to your own rest
You ask them what they do; what they did.
Ask them where they got that deed,
The deed they brandish as you bleed.

I will watch the red western sun set on you,
Die! Go home; for you, I won’t live in rue
I too, will follow you, Poor Grey Forest
I too, starve, Poor Once-Dark-Forest.

                                                                                    ………………………….. TO BE CONTINUED.