by Rob Spillman
It was a source of terrible fear for me that I could never love her. I covered that betrayal with a complicated imagery that had no connection to my gut: O Nubian Princess, and other bad poetry. She moved to my bedroom for a while, next to the faux-Kente wall hanging, but my mother took her back to her pulpit.
Over the years, I learned to look at her amiably. She filled me with a fake nostalgia that was exactly what I felt I should be feeling because a lot of poetry-loving black people seemed to be spontaneously feeling this. I never again attempted to look beyond her costume.
She is younger than me now; I can see that she has girlishness about her. Her eyes are the artist’s only real success: they suggest mischief, serenity, vulnerability and a weary wisdom.
I find myself desiring her. And I am willing to admit that this could be too because she has started to look like it is funky to look somewhere in this new Zap Mama, Erykah Badu, Alek Wek, polenta and sushi world.
I look up at the picture again.
Then I see it.
Ha!
Everything: the slight smile, the angle of her head and shoulders, the mild flirtation with the artist. I know you want me, I know something you don’t.
Mona Lisa: nothing says otherwise. The truth is that I never saw the smile. Her thick lips were such a war between my intellect and emotion. I never noticed the smile. The artist was painting “An African Mona Lisa.”
The woman’s expression is odd. In Kenya, you will only see such an expression in girls who went to private schools, or were brought up in the richer suburbs of the larger towns.
That look, that slight toying smile, could not have happened with an actual Nandi woman. The lips too. The mouth strives too hard for symmetry, to apologise for its thickness. That mouth is meant to break open like the flesh of a clapping Sunday.
The eyes are enormous: Oxfam eyes, urging the viewer to care.
Later I wander behind the garage, which smells of old oil and rat nest and childhood, and light a cigarette, pocket-radio rhumba in the sound of an afternoon breeze, as clothes flutter on a childhood clothesline I once perched on, batlike, and entered a bestial world of naked gums, flailing laughter, and snarling toenails on orange Bata flip-flops, this world-stopping surge of fear always brought back to sanity by my radar, my big brother Jimmy, as certain as my bed, as sure as a ceiling.
There is a line of old cedars to my left, nappy and grey-furred, they refused to look like television Christmas trees, stooping and bowed, never arranging to rise sharply to a peak, where a star would sit, the twinkling graph points of television life, like washed pine forests in Canada. One of our cedars once had a woodpecker, and its hole, long abandoned, was a place to hide meaningful nothings, the woodpecker mattered most because it helped us map out a world of similarity with a thing from television: Woody Woodpecker.
My young uncle Kadogo lived with us once, during the Amin years—when my mother’s family was starting to scatter in Uganda, they would eventually spread to Kenya, Rwanda, Lesotho, South Africa, New York and Europe. I was maybe five the year that Kadogo killed one cedar by loping its head off for a Christmas tree, cheered on by us, happy to find a possible and symmetric tree. It still stands, creaking and threatening, brown and naked.
When I was seven, in 1978, Kenyatta died, and school was closed for months it seemed, and all there was on television was Kenyatta, Kenyatta, songs, dirges and the stench of fear everywhere you lifted your mental nostrils—powerful instruments when you are seven. Idi Amin was a subject of horror in our household, so much of my mother’s family remained in Uganda, and we were always primed to expect the worst. One of my father’s best friends traveled there on a business trip and disappeared. His remains were found buried in a mass grave, years later, after Amin’s government fell. After Kenyatta died, Amin loomed in my mind for years, a man of squirming intestine laughter.
But that long long holiday, with its whispers and frissons, was the sweet and tart and memorable. Parents were distracted; and the fear made us seek fun with some aggression.
There were some sparkling days: my mother was at work, and we would sneak through the hedge to play with the neighbours, Georgie and Antonina, whose parents worked for Kenya Co-operative Creameries, and who had a Kiwashili sex manual in their bedroom drawer, which we often browsed.
A whole quarter acre of ripe maize filled the back of their garden. One day, we ran, leaves crackling and breaking, and played, sun hot and sure, soft feathers and grass in an abandoned bird’s nest, smelling rotting and feathery; rats’ nests and mongrel puppies; yellow and brown bumble bees which we tied with string and let fly. Hot syrup sweat dripped into eyes and stung, and I was lost in this wheat coloured world of flapping leaves and bare feet digging into hot soil, familiar things now had some momentum.
We forgot to sneak back in time, and as we came out of the fence, there was mum, a belt in hand, face stony and silent. When she gets angry she does not talk.
At the corner of this fence, there was a dead log, an old eucalyptus tree, and an abandoned car we had mutilated. We had turned it into a clubhouse of sorts. A friend of my father’s had left it in his care—a year or so later, my father would nearly kill us, when he saw the condition we had left it, our names scrawled all over the paintwork.
As we followed mum, pleading, I stopped for a moment to perform the ritual of this place—every time we knocked on the old log, ants would come streaming out—the idea of this, this sprawl of chaotic black squiggles, immeasurable, and as reliable as a clock, is still a marker for me, of nature’s invisible precisions. Every time, we pounded on them, to kill as many as possible, and lo and behold, they would stream out the next time we came. Here it was: the hidden order of the floppy head of an incorrect cedar Christmas tree, shaking a drooping and bearded head, in a wind that resonated with pungent choices discarded, for the glitter of a shallow and powerful thing.
I wake up early the next morning, and walk out of the gate, and up the hill to catch a view of the lake and town.
We live in a house on the slopes of Menengai Crater.
Ten miles above us, on this hill is Africa’s second largest caldera, after Ngorongoro. There is a road to the summit, and from there you can see the massive saucer-shaped crater—twelve by eight kilometres wide, five hundred metres deep, on its sheer cliffs. It was formed eight thousand years ago—after its last major eruption.
Over a hundred and twenty years ago, one of the decisive battles of a great war is said to have taken place here. For centuries the Maa military complex—a cattle keeping civilization—had dominated much of Kenya’s hinterland. As the cattle were the currency of trade for many Kenyan societies, including my own, the Gikuyu, the Masai’s great herds made them the wealthiest society in the Rift Valley. They were our bank of protein. Because of this, most of Kenya’s towns are named by the Masai. Nakuru means Dusty Place. Menengai is said to mean Place of Corpses.
In the nineteenth century, there was a series of civil wars among the Masai; a great Rinderpest plague; and the famine of 1870—this significantly weakened the Masai, and they have never recovered their power: especially after their Laibon, Lenana, was tricked by the British, and they gave up much of their lands. It is said one of the decisive Masai battles was fought at Menengai Crater. Ilaikipiak Morans (warriors) were thrown in the calderas. Most people in this area refuse to go down the crater.
There are stories about the rising jets of steam; that they are the ghosts of old Masai warriors trying to make their way up to heaven while being pulled back by the gravity of hell. For years there were stories about a giant fog-coloured umbrella that rises above the floor when it rains, and covers the crater, so the ground below remains dry. There are also stories, lots of them, about people who disappeared down the crater for days, and were found later, disoriented; they could not remember what happened. When I was a child, there was much talk of a humming sound—like a distant diesel engine, some say, that throbs and disappears after a few minutes. I have heard it
many times—a muffled rotor blade—as if some underground helicopter is stirring the bowels of the earth. Many Christians come to the caves just below the cliffs, to pray and fast.
Every decade or so, when drought hits, Masai elders call out to their youth, some in school, some even in college, and they send them out to the towns to look for pasture. For some of these young men, this is the first and maybe the only time they will get to walk through the old grazing routes; through the barbed wire fences and industrial areas, and small farms and leafy suburbs that were once a part of their vast lands.
This year, towns all over Kenya are flooded with Masai cattle—this area was once Masai lands. Everybody is talking about it—there are some battles. The Morans always lose—the pattern has reversed: power was in the hands of the cattle-keepers two hundred years ago—now it is in the hands of former peasants. They adapted to the changing world faster. A hundred years ago, any surplus of grain would buy cattle: the Gikuyu would buy cattle from the Masai. By 1920, surpluses were converted into cash, and the economy of the Masai foundered.
Our new home, five hundred metres from the house I was brought up in, is on the last line before the blue gum forest that extends all the way to the rim of Menengai Crater.
I heard them come in last night, the Morans with their cattle. The strong smell of urine and dung flooded our house; and old throaty songs, and the cow bells. They sang the whole night, and for a while I could pretend that time had rolled back, and I sat among them, as a biblical nomad, or much as my great-grandparents would have.
The two ideas are mixed up in my head.
Throughout my childhood: this view, of flamingos, lake and town in front of us, of the loom and shadow of Menengai and rain clouds gathering and rumbling behind us, the bible, a smoky memory of a time before that.
Some Masai proverbs:
Hold respect like a club. A thing flawed within is unmaintainable.
Quiet, young man! You are not like firewood, which can be burnt. The tongue is not straight, it will say anything. The tongue has no joint. A monkey does not see itself. Impetuosity cannot jump a hedge. Tomorrow praises itself.
Never take two paths, the pelvis will collapse. Don’t kneel down when water is far away.
Remember that a worm can destroy a whole plain. Home is to be alive, it is not a place. Never let wanderers lead you to bottle-necked places. The ear penetrates darkness. Zig-zag is the way to success. The well-fed belly does not know the unfed belly. Never tempt warriors with cattle.
After breakfast, I set off to walk all the way down to town. I will take, instead of coins for change, a bunch of tropical mints.
I know this road very well. At the Provincial Commissioner’s houses, where there is a triangular roundabout, is the boundary of rain. If it is raining in town, down below, this rain stops right here. We get our rain from the Subukia hills, beyond the crater behind my back. From this roundabout you can see Hyrax Hill to the left—a Prehistoric Site. The jacaranda lined road begins—old colonial homes from the 1930s in large one acre plots line the street all the way to St. Christopher’s church. Rain from town will stop right here.
You swoop downhill, past Waterworks, stop at the small kiosk for a cold Coke, in a tray in front of the kiosk, there are three rows of round red tomatoes and several bunches of kale, as there have been for years. There is a small gathering of Maragoli speakers on the bench drinking tea and chatting.
I turn into the vacant plot, for the short cut that is not really shorter, to your left an open stream—rainwater drains. And rocky paths. Some aloe and sisal plants. Grass. Goats.
There is a small faded house here, right at the corner, with a large rocky garden that stretches downhill to border State House. It has a swimming pool, now grey and green and empty.
It is one of several houses that were given to the children of Old Man Bomett—whose sister was married to the President.
A short gnarled old tree, that has twisted around and back on itself like a dog leaning to nibble an itch in its back; it has a rich brown bark, few leaves and orange flowers that look like anemones. It must have been common in this area before memories of Surrey and Anglo-Bangalore changed the landscape in the 1930s: jacaranda and eucalyptus and straight stems, in straight lines. You can find this tree all over the wild parts of the crater forest. Its pretty red seeds are used to make jewellery. I don’t know its name.
Here are the elements of power and influence: here, small memories of old old people, the Sirikwa live at Hyrax Hill, they built irrigation canals at the escarpment I can see from here.
Then there is the rumble of the Masai—more recent, all feared, and who dominated all the landscape I can see—and whose power now mostly rests in names—most of the towns and rivers and lakes were named by the Masai.
Then, this century, squat and awkward comes the stone and railway lines, the jacarandas and rockeries, the single-room dorm houses for cheap African labour; the red-faced discomforts of large colonial homes with small windows and geometrical gardens—all fading now, but still dominant. The solid matter of this town, beaten and stretched. Rusting and rearranged and built upon.
And now, streaming down the wires the British built their roads, and satellites; and the ones we built in the last forty years, somewhat shoddily, but based on their model.
In the 1970s, America arrives, gum chewing America—a colour, a tone, an attitude, slouching and grinning.
And brewing inside this space are sixty languages and as many micro-nations, angling into this young Nation, twisting and turning and asking to be Kenyan—a thing still unclear, picking here, choosing there; stealing here, and there—disembowelling that which came before, remaking it. Being Kenyan is not yet a commitment, not enough forces have gathered within us to remake the space we occupy.
In January, dry wind would blow into town, a fan shaped blow-torch; and grass would singe; and life claw backwards and backwards and summersault into the horizon, in the escarpment in the distance we could see springs of dust rise.
Reading all those distant English books as a child, the idea of spring made its way into my picture of this place. We have no real spring—we are on the equator. But for me, spring was every morning, dew and soft mists, and the lake still and blue in the distance, sometimes all pink with flamingoes rippling with a breeze, and rising like leaves to whirl against the sky. Summer is midday, the sun above your head, and you have no shadow. Autumn is September, when the jacaranda trees shed all their purple flowers and the short rains began—and the idea of an autumn, of a spring was resident in the imagination of the English Settlers who planned this suburb, and thought of blooms and bees and White highlands made into a new English countryside.
So, in a way, spring has come to be a real thing in Milimani. You read about it in English books, and you experience it with your senses here. But—here is the curse of the Post Colonial: it means nothing here, you can do nothing meaningful with it. All it does is allow you to have false ambitions, to place yourself in a fake middle-class future.
Sometimes you catch a glimpse of what this all was before. On the slopes of this giant caldera, the soil is a flat brown, no red at all in it; and this place was full of light rocks. You can still see them in gardens, piled up into rockeries and stashed away in little forgotten patches. A curse lingers in what was rock and wheat coloured grass and sharp thorny bushes, all now lawn and spring and hedge and red brick homes in two acre plots.
You can see it all laid bare in dry January.
I walk. Small maize, beans and kale plots; and to your left, you stare down at the bowels of State House, Nakuru: sleeping plainclothes policemen—red socks and grey shoes for all to see; scurrying servants, and Mercedes-Benzes—of every kind and length and colour.
When the path levels, there are all manner of ferns and small wild flowers—you step across the stream and cut through the fallen kei apple hedge, and into the grand mossy and old buildings of the Medical Training Centre at the War Memorial Hospital—w
here all the Wainaina children were born.
The hospital has white picket fences, thick lawns and a thick silence that makes me think of silent screams.
I was circumcised here, at thirteen. Became a man.
My father hemmed-hawed at the parking lot at 2 p.m. on a Monday afternoon. Talking about—uh—sexual intercourse—and the, uh—responsibilities of . . . uh . . . man. A bored nurse laughed when I told her that I would not take off my clothes in front of her. The doctor, an Iranian, kept fussing and telling me I should have done the operation when I was a baby. I watched, my cock swelling like a balloon, then fascinated as he cut and I felt nothing.
I bounced out of the room in half an hour ready to tell the world I was pain-free and manly. My mother found me, an hour later, leaning against a jacaranda tree and moaning in pain, after fainting.
At the main building, I turn back into the main road, a dead straight road that starts at the gates of State House, Nakuru, goes past the hospital and meets the newspaper sellers, the bougainvillea range of mountains, the tarmacked walkway, through the bougainvillea, to the cemetery, some churches, the louder and more chaotic Provincial General Hospital. The path branches, at some point, into town—all this area is a boundary between the leafier sections of town—broken cleanly by the railway; and the old African and Indian sections of the town—now a widely spread and messy city of nearly a million.
I walk down the straight road. When I was in high school, I once saw President Moi driving out on this road on his own in a VW combi. He had a jaunty hat on—and nobody by his side. It did not seem possible.
I cross the road, an old house at the corner, on stilts, the sellers of young plants for gardens, the giant bougainvillea that lines the entrance to town, that borders the railway, which cuts the town in half—leafy suburbs and jacarandas, the Colonial old Nakuru on one side, and on the other the town centre—a mix of many things: old Masailand; pioneer Gikuyuland; Gujarat; Punjaab; the Kalenjin Highlands—now Kenya’s power centre; food processing; Norfolk, England; the Provincial Headquarters; zebra-patterned curio shops; paleontologists in town from the hills to buy goods; tourvans and flamingoes; a refuge for orphans from ethnic clashes; hundreds of churches; schools; games; NGO people in huge SUVs; our New Kenya; corrugated iron; farmers coming to buy groceries, feed and seed; traffic from the Port of Mombasa, to Kisumu, Uganda, Rwanda and even Congo.
