By Ng’ang’a Mbugua
At the height of the struggle for freedom, my grandfather,
Samuel Munyiri, was arrested by the colonial and detained at the Manyani
Detention Camp. The following day, very early in the morning, my grandmother,
Margaret Wambui, knocked on the door of the white district commissioner's
residence in Nakuru.
When he answered the door, she said to him: "Since you have detained my husband, I have come to live with you". Embarrassed, no doubt, about how to explain his predicament to his memsahib, the DC asked my grandmother to go back home and wait for her husband to be released from detention. Sure enough, my grandfather, who had been detained for supporting the Mau Mau, was released soon after.
To ensure that my grandmother did not put him in yet another spot of bother, the DC relocated the couple to Kiambu where my grandfather found a job as a milking man at the farm of a white settler that he only identified as Lord Gordon. My grandmother's recollection of his service there was that her family had plenty of milk. As a result, she used to encourage her children, my mother included, to drink a lot of milk with little blobs of Ugali (maize meal).
Years later, when my grandfather bought a one-acre piece of land near the present day Lanet Barracks, this mantra was to be turned on its head. Because my grandmother had to sell milk to her neighbours, she had to ask her children to drink little sips of milk with large blobs of Ugali because the family budget was tight. Wanyororo, by the way, was a nickname for the white settler who broke the virgin land with “nyororo-propelled” earth movers which glided on chains.
The luxuriance of the forest adjacent to the farm was to inspire my most recently published reader, The Bird Boy. Incidentally, the character of the grandmother in the story was inspired by my own grandmother. The destruction of the forest, occasioned by a decision to use the trees to provide polls for the Kenya Posts and Telecommunication Company, inspired my other reader, Susana The Brave. Thankfully, just as I had dreamed it in Susana The Brave, there have been concerted efforts to rehabilitate the forest in recent years. Other social and cultural influences that I imbibed at this time often show up in my other creative works, including some of the nostalgic passages in Terrorists of The Aberdare.
Growing up, my grandmother - a jovial, tall, energetic and slim woman with a ready smile and a hearty laugh - taught me many important cultural and historical lessons through her fireside stories. But I did not know that she was illiterate until one day when I gave her my math book and asked her to help me with a sum. I was a young boy then. When she told me "I don't know how to read", she made me wonder then and many times later how it felt to be unable to read and write.
When he answered the door, she said to him: "Since you have detained my husband, I have come to live with you". Embarrassed, no doubt, about how to explain his predicament to his memsahib, the DC asked my grandmother to go back home and wait for her husband to be released from detention. Sure enough, my grandfather, who had been detained for supporting the Mau Mau, was released soon after.
To ensure that my grandmother did not put him in yet another spot of bother, the DC relocated the couple to Kiambu where my grandfather found a job as a milking man at the farm of a white settler that he only identified as Lord Gordon. My grandmother's recollection of his service there was that her family had plenty of milk. As a result, she used to encourage her children, my mother included, to drink a lot of milk with little blobs of Ugali (maize meal).
Years later, when my grandfather bought a one-acre piece of land near the present day Lanet Barracks, this mantra was to be turned on its head. Because my grandmother had to sell milk to her neighbours, she had to ask her children to drink little sips of milk with large blobs of Ugali because the family budget was tight. Wanyororo, by the way, was a nickname for the white settler who broke the virgin land with “nyororo-propelled” earth movers which glided on chains.
The luxuriance of the forest adjacent to the farm was to inspire my most recently published reader, The Bird Boy. Incidentally, the character of the grandmother in the story was inspired by my own grandmother. The destruction of the forest, occasioned by a decision to use the trees to provide polls for the Kenya Posts and Telecommunication Company, inspired my other reader, Susana The Brave. Thankfully, just as I had dreamed it in Susana The Brave, there have been concerted efforts to rehabilitate the forest in recent years. Other social and cultural influences that I imbibed at this time often show up in my other creative works, including some of the nostalgic passages in Terrorists of The Aberdare.
Growing up, my grandmother - a jovial, tall, energetic and slim woman with a ready smile and a hearty laugh - taught me many important cultural and historical lessons through her fireside stories. But I did not know that she was illiterate until one day when I gave her my math book and asked her to help me with a sum. I was a young boy then. When she told me "I don't know how to read", she made me wonder then and many times later how it felt to be unable to read and write.
At some point, she enrolled in an
adult education class and learnt to spell her maiden name.
And she would sing: "W na A,
waaa; M na B, mbuu; U na E." It sounded like fun to her but she dropped
after some time to take care of important stuff in her life, including her
livestock and shambas.
Learning to read and write reminded
her of her youthful days. Though her father did not allow her to attend school,
she wanted to write love letters just like the girls who had some
education.
One day, she told me, she and her
sister wrote letters to their boyfriends, put them in envelopes and walked a
long distance to the nearest telephone pole. There, they dug a small hole,
buried the envelopes and beseeched the telephone lines to dispatch their
missives to their loved ones.
Interestingly, my grandfather, who
was barely literate himself, would speak English "through the nose"
as we used to say, on account of having spent countless hours with Lord Gordon.
As to whether he could write as well, I never got to find out largely because
in my formative years, he spent most of his time in Milili, near Narok town,
renting land and growing potatoes. My eldest uncle would later join him in the
trade whose fruits we only enjoyed when my grandfather returned him on
Christmas eve every year carrying a kilo of beef and a loaf of bread.
Once, one of my uncles claimed, after having had a heavy evening meal that he would not eat anything else for the day "even if someone comes with meat". No sooner were the words out of his mouth than we heard a knock on the door. Grandfather had made a surprise visit. And he was carrying meat. Brethren, he ate some time despite his vow.
Anyway, I was telling you about my grandmother. To disguise her deficiency in English, my grandmother and some of her friends invented a language but was basically imitating English albeit light heartedly.
"Bos Gwas," she would call me.
"Wis mwes gas?" she would ask by way of greeting.
"Yes!" I would answer.
"Das this mus gus das. Nis gus kas." meaning she was going to the farm and would be back. Trouble was, I could not call her name, cucu, in kiuknglish because the 's' sounded odd if repeated.
But I loved it when other women her age would chat with her and call her "Nyis nas was Ngas is".
Once, one of my uncles claimed, after having had a heavy evening meal that he would not eat anything else for the day "even if someone comes with meat". No sooner were the words out of his mouth than we heard a knock on the door. Grandfather had made a surprise visit. And he was carrying meat. Brethren, he ate some time despite his vow.
Anyway, I was telling you about my grandmother. To disguise her deficiency in English, my grandmother and some of her friends invented a language but was basically imitating English albeit light heartedly.
"Bos Gwas," she would call me.
"Wis mwes gas?" she would ask by way of greeting.
"Yes!" I would answer.
"Das this mus gus das. Nis gus kas." meaning she was going to the farm and would be back. Trouble was, I could not call her name, cucu, in kiuknglish because the 's' sounded odd if repeated.
But I loved it when other women her age would chat with her and call her "Nyis nas was Ngas is".
Hearing her say "Yeees!"
one would have thought she knew the white man's language through and through.
In those days, I used to live with my mother in Bangladesh, a small estate in the outskirts of Nakuru town, and would go upcountry to live with my grandmother during school holidays. Then, she had a large family: My and uncles, all of who were in their early twenties or late teens and occasional distant relatives.
In the evening, we would sit around the hearth, telling folk tales, swapping riddles and other word games. I was always amazed that my grandmother knew so many stories. Hearing her rendering them as the fire crackled and sent ominous shadows into the dark night air that seeped through the cracks of her timber kitchen, I could imagine the villains lurking in the shadows. Invariably, all the heroes in her stories were young boys. This made me brave. It also made me want to become a story teller. Years later, when I would join Egerton University to study English and Literature, I always chuckled that I would get a degree that my grandmother so richly deserved. Indeed, one day, my maternal great grandmother, an equally gifted story teller whose two-room house was not too far from my grandmother's asked me what I was studying at the university.
"Story telling," I told her since I had no other way of explaining it. She too could not understand how the stories we told in the evenings could be the subject of a university degree. But when I wanted to do my oral literature "research" I could always count on their rich repertoire of stories. She was, in her own way, an oral artist, a repository of cultural, family and historical knowledge.
My grandmother was a strong and courageous woman. Once, when my grandfather was involved in a drunken brawl with two men in Banana Hill, he went him bleeding, if my recollection of the tale is correct. On learning who had bloodied my grandfather's nose, my grandmother set out to look for them. By the time she was done bloodying their noses with her knuckles, they had learnt the importance of keeping a safe distance between themselves and my grandfather.
Another time, when I was a teenager, a neighbour called "Macho" on account of his tendency to steal anything he set his eyes on, made away with all my grandmother's cookery and cutlery. Not long after, he pretended to be passing by. When my grandmother saw him, she started punching a banana stem as she chastised him for his thievery. Macho took to his heels when the banana tree keeled over and fell with a thud. You could see my grandmothers' molars as she laughed her head off retelling that tale. My father once faced her monumental wrath -never I - but the story, which my grandmother loved to retell, sounded like a comic adventure. And she embellished it every time she recalled the incident.
In those days, I used to live with my mother in Bangladesh, a small estate in the outskirts of Nakuru town, and would go upcountry to live with my grandmother during school holidays. Then, she had a large family: My and uncles, all of who were in their early twenties or late teens and occasional distant relatives.
In the evening, we would sit around the hearth, telling folk tales, swapping riddles and other word games. I was always amazed that my grandmother knew so many stories. Hearing her rendering them as the fire crackled and sent ominous shadows into the dark night air that seeped through the cracks of her timber kitchen, I could imagine the villains lurking in the shadows. Invariably, all the heroes in her stories were young boys. This made me brave. It also made me want to become a story teller. Years later, when I would join Egerton University to study English and Literature, I always chuckled that I would get a degree that my grandmother so richly deserved. Indeed, one day, my maternal great grandmother, an equally gifted story teller whose two-room house was not too far from my grandmother's asked me what I was studying at the university.
"Story telling," I told her since I had no other way of explaining it. She too could not understand how the stories we told in the evenings could be the subject of a university degree. But when I wanted to do my oral literature "research" I could always count on their rich repertoire of stories. She was, in her own way, an oral artist, a repository of cultural, family and historical knowledge.
My grandmother was a strong and courageous woman. Once, when my grandfather was involved in a drunken brawl with two men in Banana Hill, he went him bleeding, if my recollection of the tale is correct. On learning who had bloodied my grandfather's nose, my grandmother set out to look for them. By the time she was done bloodying their noses with her knuckles, they had learnt the importance of keeping a safe distance between themselves and my grandfather.
Another time, when I was a teenager, a neighbour called "Macho" on account of his tendency to steal anything he set his eyes on, made away with all my grandmother's cookery and cutlery. Not long after, he pretended to be passing by. When my grandmother saw him, she started punching a banana stem as she chastised him for his thievery. Macho took to his heels when the banana tree keeled over and fell with a thud. You could see my grandmothers' molars as she laughed her head off retelling that tale. My father once faced her monumental wrath -never I - but the story, which my grandmother loved to retell, sounded like a comic adventure. And she embellished it every time she recalled the incident.
Because I received nothing but favours from her for as long
as I can remember, she became my closest friend, confidante, tutor, mentor and ally
even when our family was rocked by stormy feuds. In later years, she became my
neighbour when I bought a small parcel next to her. She became the manager,
collecting rent, running the farm and keeping the accounts, modest as they were. In a strange twist, our relationship
would become more complicated in her twilight years as she helped me navigate
the curious world of cultural obligations.
In all the years that I have known her, I have never seen my grandmother taken ill. Sometimes I would complain of a headache and she would rub onion leaves on my forehead and the headache would go away. When I came down with a fever or some other condition, she would boil concoctions mixed with chicken soup and viola! I would be well again. But never once was she taken ill... until about two years ago.
One day, my grandfather's brother brought her some honey he had bought from some bee keepers in the neighbourhood. She shared the honey with her eldest son, my uncle. But as they were eating it, she complained that a bee sting had lodged itself in her tongue. My uncle tried to look for it but the poor light from the tin lamp and hearth flame was not enough. A week later, she went to see a doctor and repeated her tale.
"It is not a bee sting," the doctor said after examining her. She did not believe him. A few months later the pain was back and thus began her intermittent trips to hospitals, including admissions. She was later diagnosed with cancer of the throat area, the same condition that had led my grandfather to die of starvation over a decade earlier. One doctor recommended that my grandmother's tongue be cut off. She refused. Her tongue was her life. She was talkative to the point of being garrulous. How could she live without it?
Desperate to heed the doctor's advice, my uncle called me.
"What do we do now and your grandmother is adamant?"
"Respect her wishes," I said. She kept her tongue but as the disease devoured it and throat, it became increasingly harder for her to eat or drink or even talk. When I saw her alive the last time, she looked nothing like the most favourite woman that she had been in my life. She managed a crooked smile but even lifting her hand to reach mine was a struggle. I held her calloused palm in mine.
"Be strong," I said to her but my words sounded hollow. How could she be strong in the face of such monumental pain and helplessness? A day before the world marked the World Cancer Day, she passed on.
If, by some miracle, I were to see her in less painful circumstances I would call out her name in Kiuknglish: "Shosh shosh."
And if she could speak she would answer in that singsong that was her voice all the years I have known her: "Yes, Bos gwas!"
And I would say to her: "Nis wes gas... Ngas is as kos ras this mes."
And she would say: "Yes!"
In all the years that I have known her, I have never seen my grandmother taken ill. Sometimes I would complain of a headache and she would rub onion leaves on my forehead and the headache would go away. When I came down with a fever or some other condition, she would boil concoctions mixed with chicken soup and viola! I would be well again. But never once was she taken ill... until about two years ago.
One day, my grandfather's brother brought her some honey he had bought from some bee keepers in the neighbourhood. She shared the honey with her eldest son, my uncle. But as they were eating it, she complained that a bee sting had lodged itself in her tongue. My uncle tried to look for it but the poor light from the tin lamp and hearth flame was not enough. A week later, she went to see a doctor and repeated her tale.
"It is not a bee sting," the doctor said after examining her. She did not believe him. A few months later the pain was back and thus began her intermittent trips to hospitals, including admissions. She was later diagnosed with cancer of the throat area, the same condition that had led my grandfather to die of starvation over a decade earlier. One doctor recommended that my grandmother's tongue be cut off. She refused. Her tongue was her life. She was talkative to the point of being garrulous. How could she live without it?
Desperate to heed the doctor's advice, my uncle called me.
"What do we do now and your grandmother is adamant?"
"Respect her wishes," I said. She kept her tongue but as the disease devoured it and throat, it became increasingly harder for her to eat or drink or even talk. When I saw her alive the last time, she looked nothing like the most favourite woman that she had been in my life. She managed a crooked smile but even lifting her hand to reach mine was a struggle. I held her calloused palm in mine.
"Be strong," I said to her but my words sounded hollow. How could she be strong in the face of such monumental pain and helplessness? A day before the world marked the World Cancer Day, she passed on.
If, by some miracle, I were to see her in less painful circumstances I would call out her name in Kiuknglish: "Shosh shosh."
And if she could speak she would answer in that singsong that was her voice all the years I have known her: "Yes, Bos gwas!"
And I would say to her: "Nis wes gas... Ngas is as kos ras this mes."
And she would say: "Yes!"
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