by Esweram Anyango

It was the day I have been waiting for. I woke up from the land of slumber just at the crack of dawn.  The birds were singing melodiously, cows were mooing, goats were bleating and bulls were bellowing, just to cherish the new day.

I gave thanks to God then sprang out of my bed, leaving my blanket in a sympathetic heap.  Tip-toed to the frog’s kingdom where I took a blood-curdling shower that left me shivering like a malaria stricken patient.  The sun’s rays were colouring the eastern horizon orange. This signaled the prosperity of the day.

I walked into our bungalow where I took a finger-licking breakfast.  After eating I clothed myself in my best attire.  My honest mirror told me I was impeccable and I walked majestically to school. 

When I arrived everything was quiet, like a deserted cemetery.  A plethora of questions criss-crossed my mind, but when I entered the classroom the first question my teacher asked was, “Have you left your mother at home?”

That question made me stare at him.  I could not speak for what came into my mind was that my lovely and caring mother had gone to the land of no return.  I tried to tell the teacher that my mother was at the hospital, but before I could finish he told me my mother had passed away.

Without wasting time or asking any more questions I dashed like an arrow up the stairs to my room where I spent countless hours thinking of how my life will be without my lovely Mum.  It seemed like the world won’t want me. Where will I stay? Whom will give me food like my Mum? How will I go to school?  I thought in my heart that it was the end of my schooling.

The day when my Mum was taken to be put in the ground, people shed their tears, but before a minute, my drunk father stood up with anger.  He walked to the wall where he hung his rifle and took it off the wall.  “Get out of my compound before my anger reaches the boiling point and I blow holes in your heads,” he snapped.  The people ran out of the compound as if they were face to face with the devil himself.

“Aacuch,” the pastor sneezed as father walked closer and closer to the grave.  The pastor told him to cool down in the name of God.  With God’s strength he did calm down and the people came back to help my mother go to the land of no return.

After a few minutes in the jungle of needle-sharp thorns, my mother’s friends sat down and talked about who will take me and treat me like their own child.  One of my mother’s friends took me.  The first two weeks she treated me well, but after one month I was treated like a street child.  I was the house help.  Going to school was over.  In the morning I was given work that I could not even finish until late at night.  So often I remembered the way my mother loved me.  That made me shed tears when I recalled her words of love.  No one here talked to me like my lovely Mum.

I remembered a story my mother told me before going to my poor bed made of grasses.  When the work became too much, I walked slowly away to be a street girl in Nairobi.  There I was eating left-overs which were thrown away.  I suffered through thick and thin, but since God does not forsake his people I was found and taken to a nearby children’s home.  That is where I was helped.

Since that day I have learned that the road of success is not straight.  There is a road called failure, a loop called confusion, speed bumps, caution lights and flat tires.  But if you have a spare called Determination and an engine called Perseverance, insurance called Faith and a driver called Jesus, then you will make it to a place called Success.

I look out of the grimy window of the bus.  It is early morning, the sky bruised with purple clouds rushing by as if they were in a hurry to get somewhere else.  I will be sitting on the bus for eight hours, a long enough time to get comfortable with chickens riding in the back and  the young man, my escort from Nairobi, sitting next to me.

A stout middle aged woman in a flowered head scarf sits next to a young man with curly black hair, his arm around the woman.  He is whispering in her ear and I wondered if he is her son.  But the way he looked at her, his eyes half closed, I think I am mistaken and he is her lover.  At least I hope that is true.  His voice murmuring sounds of love.  I feel a stab of loneliness, but couldn’t turn my eyes away.  I don’t know why I was so taken by them but I suspect it was because he was so much younger than she was.  The woman stared at him thoughtfully, a no nonsense look about her as she offers him a banana to eat. I wanted to take their love with me, and indeed it did trail me through my Kenyan journey, glimpses here and there of peoples lives.  That’s what I’ve come for as much as the sights.  Even though I would only be riding on the side lines, viewing people as I do from my seat on the bus, only glimpsing the secret heaviness of their experiences, I hoped it would be enough to understand a bit of the intimacy of lives lived in extreme conditions, without the distractions of television, movies, radio, or even street lights.

I turned back to the window, to the smudge mark where my nose had been pressed and watch as we make our way across a mountainous landscape.  I open the window and stare out, not thinking, just letting the passing images sink into my mind.  I’m surprised at how Chinese Corporations have taken over the construction of  the roads, buildings, dams, and bridges.  I see evidence of other Big Corporations when I look out at the growing corn fields and see signs for Monsanto projects.   I wonder what other big corporations besides Nestle will buy up the water-ways and water rights and then sell bottled water back to the people.

I also wonder at what kind of culture will develop with so much natural resources and wealth in the hands of the Corporate world.  What creative skills have people developed from surviving such wealth in the midst of living in such very poor conditions.  The engine grinds as we make our way up, the road winding and twisting and shimmering in the heat.  We drive past a steady stream of people and as we pass one small village to another, I glimpse collapsing wooden stalls, men pulling carts, bicycles piled high with sticks for cooking or building, women sitting on top of bundles of clothes for sale, pieces of plastic sheltering families and sheep and cows wandering about freely nosing the garbage left on the sides of the streets.

The sky has become overcast, the air thick with the smell of burning wood, a smell I will find everywhere for people here cook over wood fires.  As the bus makes its way slowly along the rocky road, I watch three women walk briskly and purposefully and I wonder what they actually were like, as individuals, the things that made them different from all others.

I listen to the lingering voices floating through the bus, joined with the clucking of the chickens sitting regally in the back seat and feel happy as the bus leans one way and lurches another, very slowly making its way over boulders and muddy ruts.  I thought this would only last a few minutes, but, as it turned out, it lasted our whole long ride.

“I’m sorry for being such a poor traveling companion,”I  say, apologizing to my escort on this long bus trip.  He has left me alone to look out the window or to nod off now and then for the past hour.

“Oh, it’s not poor company,” he grins. “It’s called resting.”
He speaks of wanting a family but worries his children will grow to hate him if he can’t feed them and educate them.
“Do you have a girlfriend?
“Yes.”
“What do you do for fun?”I ask.
“Oh we take nature walks and,” he pauses,”we like to just sit and look at one another.” A shy smile creeps into his lips.
I felt deeply touched by the simplicity of their love.
“How do you like your new President?” I ask.
“New face, same thing,” he said without hesitation, his dark eyes steady on me.  “I’m not political.  Nothing has changed, even after our independence.  Now, I believe I must change myself and how I relate to people and they will change how they relate.”
I fold away in my memory his dark eyes and lovely smile.  I feel a stranger to this new place and far away from the automobiles, jets, the latest technology, the high-speed this and cable that, the you made it you get to be rich life in America, but his words remind me that when Big Corporations control governments, governments are unable to govern, and that feels very familiar.

by Edwi

I didn’t tuck my shirt,
I didn’t mess in the kitchen.
I didn’t mash teacher’s chalk
the one he always holds tenderly.

I didn’t annoy the director
by smearing muddy fingerprints
on prestine walls,
or turn the school water tank into
Thompson Falls.

There is an endless list of evil
things I didn’t do,
like sneaking out of school in full
school attire.

For sure-
Even as I write this with
A pure and innocent heart
I didn’t do my homeowrk
So I am doomed right from the start.