fragmenting of hearts during a father-son wrestling match, or the pain of pleading, “Stay. I’m sorry.”
To protect new post-independence citizen children, parents like him repainted illusions of a “future Kenya,” while shouting out words of the national anthem as if volume alone would re-create reality. Nyakua . Mouths, ears, and eyes shut, parents partitioned sorrow, purchased more silences and waited for the “better Kenya” to turn up.
Nyipir’s daily covenants with silence had all of a sudden lost their weight. Today the voices of the dead-providing-their-own-witness take over his thoughts with a soundtrack—Babu Kabaselleh’s “Lek Wuonda,” to remind Nyipir that the dying started long ago. Before Pio, Tom, J.M., Argwings, before the red, black, green, and white flag fluttered one midnight in December.
Eeee … lek wuonda . Deceived by dreams.
Nyipir pounds metal to dust, listening helplessly.
Thwack! This is how to beat back seething phantoms.
Thwack! Bury engulfing blackness and its music.
Thwack! How to demand silence.
Aieee!
The usual breeze east of Badda Huri hums over the lava-sprinkled drylands of the Dida Galgalu Desert. Green and beige doum palms at the water point a kilometer away lean west, toward derelict Dida Gola.
Dust in his eyes, inward gaze. Inside Nyipir, secrets stir, and his mouth opens. “Ona icembe riugi ni rituhaga,” he croaks. Witness from fifty-year-old burial grounds. “Ona icembe riugi ni rituhaga.” Nyipir scrambles for silence. Ona icembe riugi ni rituhaga —repetitive, loud-speaking thoughts.
Ajany hears Nyipir. Listens for more. Galgalu hears Nyipir. Knows he is crying. He wanders away, making lines on the earth with his herding stick.
Stillness. Then Nyipir speaks. “A man I knew used to say Ona icembe riugi ni rituhaga before we dug the graves.”
Ajany hears “ dug the graves .”
Nyipir spits.
He hacks at the ground. Nothing more to add. Glut of shadows. Shadows of phantoms.
What endures?
A disappearing mother, heaving silences, and the desire to vomit out anguish. Head throbs, fists clench and unclench. Ajany teeters on the edges of inside fog. Liquid slides down her lips. Nosebleed, small tears.
She flees.
Dashes into the dimly lit interior of their splintering pink house that at night becomes a sparkle-crackle of parts being chomped down by unseen termites.
Wuoth Ogik was once a sanctuary crammed with the music of rangeland life: a father’s hollow cough, herders’ sibilant whistles, day handing over life to the night, a mother’s sudden, haunted cry, a brother singing water songs to camels. What endures? A father sighing Aiee! Talkative shadows, crumbling walls, scent of dung and dream, reflections of long-ago clattering of polished Ajua stones falling into a brown wooden board of fourteen holes; the lives of cows, sheep, goats, and camels;three mangy beige-and-black descendants of a fierce mongrel herding dog with a touch of hyena.
What endures?
Elastic time.
Another junction. Brazil’s Atlantic Ocean, São Salvador da Bahia de Todos os Santos. Five days ago, Ajany had been there, staring at a collage of deep-blue skies, fluffy clouds, and a spread-out view of the beige and frothing ocean. Pre-Christmas exhilaration sprinkled with the beat of a mild pulse of terror attached to dread, of waiting and stillness. She had tried to phone Odidi. She had also been waiting for others, the law keepers, to come for her, had expected up to the end, before the plane strained for high skies, to be stopped and caught. She had expected all these others to reach her first, but instead Nyipir had phoned from Kenya.
“B-baba.” Afraid he knew what she had just done.
But he had whispered, “Odidi’s gone.”
At first she had deleted what she thought she had heard. Did not ask what gone meant. Listened when Baba had said, “Come home, nyara .” He added, “Come home. Please?” His voice had been low and aged.
She had left Bahia with an
To protect new post-independence citizen children, parents like him repainted illusions of a “future Kenya,” while shouting out words of the national anthem as if volume alone would re-create reality. Nyakua . Mouths, ears, and eyes shut, parents partitioned sorrow, purchased more silences and waited for the “better Kenya” to turn up.
Nyipir’s daily covenants with silence had all of a sudden lost their weight. Today the voices of the dead-providing-their-own-witness take over his thoughts with a soundtrack—Babu Kabaselleh’s “Lek Wuonda,” to remind Nyipir that the dying started long ago. Before Pio, Tom, J.M., Argwings, before the red, black, green, and white flag fluttered one midnight in December.
Eeee … lek wuonda . Deceived by dreams.
Nyipir pounds metal to dust, listening helplessly.
Thwack! This is how to beat back seething phantoms.
Thwack! Bury engulfing blackness and its music.
Thwack! How to demand silence.
Aieee!
The usual breeze east of Badda Huri hums over the lava-sprinkled drylands of the Dida Galgalu Desert. Green and beige doum palms at the water point a kilometer away lean west, toward derelict Dida Gola.
Dust in his eyes, inward gaze. Inside Nyipir, secrets stir, and his mouth opens. “Ona icembe riugi ni rituhaga,” he croaks. Witness from fifty-year-old burial grounds. “Ona icembe riugi ni rituhaga.” Nyipir scrambles for silence. Ona icembe riugi ni rituhaga —repetitive, loud-speaking thoughts.
Ajany hears Nyipir. Listens for more. Galgalu hears Nyipir. Knows he is crying. He wanders away, making lines on the earth with his herding stick.
Stillness. Then Nyipir speaks. “A man I knew used to say Ona icembe riugi ni rituhaga before we dug the graves.”
Ajany hears “ dug the graves .”
Nyipir spits.
He hacks at the ground. Nothing more to add. Glut of shadows. Shadows of phantoms.
What endures?
A disappearing mother, heaving silences, and the desire to vomit out anguish. Head throbs, fists clench and unclench. Ajany teeters on the edges of inside fog. Liquid slides down her lips. Nosebleed, small tears.
She flees.
Dashes into the dimly lit interior of their splintering pink house that at night becomes a sparkle-crackle of parts being chomped down by unseen termites.
Wuoth Ogik was once a sanctuary crammed with the music of rangeland life: a father’s hollow cough, herders’ sibilant whistles, day handing over life to the night, a mother’s sudden, haunted cry, a brother singing water songs to camels. What endures? A father sighing Aiee! Talkative shadows, crumbling walls, scent of dung and dream, reflections of long-ago clattering of polished Ajua stones falling into a brown wooden board of fourteen holes; the lives of cows, sheep, goats, and camels;three mangy beige-and-black descendants of a fierce mongrel herding dog with a touch of hyena.
What endures?
Elastic time.
Another junction. Brazil’s Atlantic Ocean, São Salvador da Bahia de Todos os Santos. Five days ago, Ajany had been there, staring at a collage of deep-blue skies, fluffy clouds, and a spread-out view of the beige and frothing ocean. Pre-Christmas exhilaration sprinkled with the beat of a mild pulse of terror attached to dread, of waiting and stillness. She had tried to phone Odidi. She had also been waiting for others, the law keepers, to come for her, had expected up to the end, before the plane strained for high skies, to be stopped and caught. She had expected all these others to reach her first, but instead Nyipir had phoned from Kenya.
“B-baba.” Afraid he knew what she had just done.
But he had whispered, “Odidi’s gone.”
At first she had deleted what she thought she had heard. Did not ask what gone meant. Listened when Baba had said, “Come home, nyara .” He added, “Come home. Please?” His voice had been low and aged.
She had left Bahia with an
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