Where runners still run at night, but you must face off with them

Where runners still run at night, but you must face off with them

It is now one week since I was at my shags – yes, my roots, my village, my home!  I had planned to stay for as long as I was loaded.  That plan lasted only two days.  I travelled from Eldoret to Kisumu, then from Kisumu to the local centre of Dudi.  This was on a Friday, the third.  I alighted and immediately removed my mask, since no one, repeat no one, was having a facemask.  The stage people had even joked that, “See a Nairobi person has alighted and brought corona to the village, that is why he has a facemask.  We hope he does not spread it to us who do not have it.”.  They said it loud enough for my benefit.  It worked.

I therefore alighted at Dudi which is in Siaya county.  The travel from Kisumu has just taken about 45-minutes.  My home is about four kilometres from Dudi.  I would get a motorbike from Dudi, just because I was loaded with some items that I had shopped from the local duka.  Otherwise, I would have just walked home and would have been there in about forty-minutes.  It was just about one kilometre from Dudi that I crossed counties from Siaya to Butere-Mumias.  This junction used to have the home of Grace Ogot, the late, and her huzy Prof. Bethwel Ogot.  That home is for sure in Western province.  

I remember the politics of those days, when Grace wanted to be the member of parliament for Gem, where Dudi is.  She got her brakes since it was claimed that she was a resident of the then Kakamega country, before it was hived off into Butere-Mumias.  It was stated that she could not represent people in a county where she did not even reside!  It took some time, but I observed that immaculate home at that junction vacated then completely fall into dilapidation as the Ogot couple moved out and set home in Gem.  Of course, Grace would later become the MP for Gem and serve in that role for two terms.

Those were just memories as I made the right turn on that junction.  Had I not made that right turn, then I would continue being in Siaya county as I went through to Muhaka market, which I know and had frequented, and the rest of the boundary villages, that are just across my home.  Well, I made the right turn and was in a different county.  One more kilometre and I almost got to my primary school.  Almost, since a new road now diverts to the left instead of the traditional road that would have gone past my primary school before the left turn after the primary.

I could see the ironsheet roofing of that long block of my primary.  This was a new block for sure.  This is the place where I studied from class three to eight.  That is the place that moulded me to the form that I have taken into my adulthood.  I remember when I reported for that class three interview, having just come from Kapsabet DEB.  My dad took me to that school in the afternoon on his bike.  I arrived at the school compound and was taken to the headteacher’s office.  

At that point in time the block housing all classes, with the staff room and HM’s office in the middle of it, was a long block with earthen walls and bare floor.  There were no doors or window structures in any of the rooms on that whole long train, apart from the HM’s office.  Each class just had holes on the whole to define windows and doors.  You could, and it happened, that students that got in and out of class through the windows.  It looked strange, having come from Kapsabet town where I had been in a proper classroom made of building blocks, with a set of glass windows and lockable doors.

I had aced that interview conducted at the HM’s office.  It was a verbal one, just on general issues, I believe probably Geography, languages and History.  It is a bit vivid many years later.  However, this I know for sure, that my dad was given a final warning as we left the school ready for my day 1 the next day, “Let not your son come to school with those shoes.  Shoes are for teachers.  Students come here barefoot.”

That warning was strange and I even thought it impossible, since Kapsabet DEB standards were still etched on my mind.

As sure as the sun rises on the East, I was woken up very early the next day to join my siblings into the morning run to school.  And surely all of us were bare foot as we walked the three or so kilometres to school.  I was not just running to school, but I had with me a load of cow dung, wrapped with banana leaves or carried on a cut piece of banana bark.  I was also hauling a piece of euphorbia branch.  

It was a welcome like no other.  The dung would be mixed with the soil that the girls had carried in the same process, to make the material for use in smearing the floor and walls of all classes.  This smearing activity was to be done every Friday from ten to lunch break.  The classes would be hopefully dry after the afternoon ready for the upper classes who were taking afternoon classes.  The boys would use the euphorbia to beef up the fence on the same Friday as the girls were doing the smearing.

I have never been in culture shock!  There was nothing like this in Kapsabet.  In Kapsabet I would be a smartly dressed child walking to school across the Kenya Prisons compound, though I had to take the long route round, since the school gate was on the other side of the shared fence.  But here at Luanda Doho primary school?  None of that!  This was a different ball game.  I would have easily given up my schooling in that third year, but something strange happened that changed all that.  I became that ‘clever boy from Nairobi’.  That title remained as I led my class through the many years of toil and would five years later break an academic record that stands solid to this day, many years later.  That is a story for another day.

Back to the present, and on this Friday, just know that I was passing by next to my primary school on my right, which I could clearly see as the motorbike roared on.  I was at my homestead around one, having been riding for just about ten minutes.  My Diriko village never ceases to amaze me, many years since I knew it.  Despite civilization that has been going on forever, that place remains the greenest place that I have ever seen.  It is still full of trees, grass, live fences and all manner of greenery.  The green carpet is occasionally broken by the presence of some footpath, some house, some farmland that has been harvested and is now bare.  However, there is plenty of grass going around and it grows upto the edges of the house.  The air was fresh and inviting as I got to the homestead.  

My home is perched in a gentle hill.  There is a mango tree that generally marks the centre of the compound.  The mango tree under which I spend most of the daylight hours, doing nothing, just listening to FM radio on the phone and chewing through a long stave of sugarcane.  I could see across the valley to the other side, which is Siaya country by administration.  

I could also still see the other side of the other valley.  That side has the Manyulia market and the road to Butere.  When days were good, over twenty years ago, the same Manyulia market was the place to get to first, if you intended to take the train that stopped at Namasoli halt, just a stone throw from that market.  The train would take you to Butere ‘end of railway line’ on one end, or take you on the opposite direction to Kisumu, then Nairobi, then Mombasa.

I was so relaxed under the shade that I did not even realize how soon the rain would creep in on this Friday.  It did creep in, but saying that would be lying.  Our rain is seen across the valley from many miles as it progressively comes over towards Diriko village.  You can see it whiten the greenery on the horizon as it makes its way from Shiatsala towards Manyulia.  You observe it as it makes gains, whitening the background and enveloping that greenery, until it finally hits home.  And hitting home it does.  

When the rain pounds on the ironsheets of the houses on the compound, you can hear the sound loud and clear.  There are usually no ceiling boards on our home houses.  That means that the start of the rain also marks the end of any talking for those gathered in any house.  You cannot converse when it rains.  The drumming on the roof is so loud that you just survive the ear-shattering sound that persists until the rain subsides.  I am no stranger to this and so the rain welcomed me on this Friday just about six in the evening and I liked the ear-shatter as it lasted.  It however did not persist for long.  It was just a short drizzle.

Finally, I was done with dinner, and I was off to my house.  My house is located about one-hundred metres from the main house, just next to the entrance gate area.  In Luhya tradition, a boy should build his own house as early as he has been initiated, this should be at around fourteen years, just about the time one finishes primary school.  Once you are past initiation, you are expected to setup your own house and start ‘being a man’.  

And building a house is not just a saying.  It is the full works – get the posts, cut the rafters, cut the grass and then carry the posts, grass and rafters to the building site.  After that, dig the holes, plant the posts, trim their tops, hammer the roof structure, rafter the whole structure on the walls and roof, fill in the ‘baked’ soil on the walls and do the thatching... and start your life in that structure.

From then on, you should not bother your mother with any requests for food.  You should provide your own food by getting someone to cook for you, read, marry.  If you delay this inevitable of getting your person to cook for you, then your options are to stick to your father’s side at mealtimes, so that you benefit from the food that your mother(s) provide to your father, or alternatively, sort yourself out.  You could plead with your mother to make food for you, but there were no guarantees.  She would likely tell you to get your own cooker, on your face.  You therefore had to go slow on food issues or learn to become your father’s friend.  

The other methods of survival once you have your house, also known as Lisimba, or simba, or lion in English, is to start visiting your sisters-in-law and be lucky to get some food from them.  That is why in western culture the ‘shemeji’ is an important person.  Of course, the husbands of the shemeji’s do not take it very lightly when you frequent their houses.  They start hinting that you should be giving them a ‘shemeji’ too.  Believe me, after you build a house in western Kenya culture, then it is now survival for the fittest!

That is not all.  When you get a house you are on your own and you must survive, both for your own sake, and for the sake of the whole homestead.  The man, or men if you are lucky, protect the homestead.  They deal with the dangers that may arise.  It is their job to keep everyone safe.  The houses at our homesteads usually do not have washrooms within the structures.  You have to get out of the house to obey that nature call at the external shared washroom or the natural greenery, depending the type of call.  

Despite all dangers being manifested in the night, be it wild animals, fear of the unknown, fear for the sake of fear, or even bad elements, the men must be ready to get out in the pitch dark of the night and face the darkness.  The women and children are exempt from this compulsory going out business, and they are allowed to relieve themselves in containers in the house if it means so, or, to wake up the men in the house to take them out for the call.

I was therefore alone in my big three-bedroom house that was unusually dark and quiet.  The house does not yet have power supply, though the wiring has been done and just awaits supply.  I therefore got into the house with my kerosene lantern and would soon prepare to sleep, after blowing it out.  It was hardly nine.  I am used to sleeping the next day.  This was just too early.  This was going to be an interesting night.  It was cold due to lack of a ceiling cover, and the environment was generally cold anyway.  It was eerie quiet.  Even a leaf dropping onto the ironsheet roof, from the nearby other mango tree just next to my house, made a loud cling on the iron, based on the circumstances.

Anyway, I forced myself to bed and soothed myself to sleep by listening to FM radio on my phone.  At some point I did fall asleep and somehow switched off the radio.  The night remained quiet.  The ironsheet roof remained the cover of the house.  I slept.  Something woke me up at some point in the night.  I thought I heard something brush through the ironsheets.  It was as brief as a five second thing.  It stopped.  I was still thinking about it when a bird, for sure, flew into the darkness of the house.  

I could then hear it flapping its wings and it circled round and round and round inside the house, probably flying on the roof area.  If it had got into the house through the gap between the walls and the iroonsheet roof, then that bird would have a hard time making its way out of the pitch darkness of the house and out to the external world.  And it was true.  The bird moved round and round and round.  There was no way of getting it out.  It would have to get out on its own, when its time was right.  I ignored it, left it to do its rounds, and got back to sleep.

The call of nature came knocking at some point in the dark quiet night.  The men must go out.  That was the law.  I so I had to get out.  With torch at hand and slasher on the other, I quietly groped through the darkness of the house to trace the doors, opening them one at a time, in the darkness, trying to keep the opening sound as soundless as possible.  

I had a torch alright, but I have survived this type of life for many years and know the use of a torch at such a time.  You need to keep your eyes accustomed to the dark when you wake up and get out.  A torch beam would spoil your otherwise good visibility in the night.  You keep the torch off, you let your eyes adjust to the invisibility of the darkness.  The torch is an emergency tool, just like the weapon.  It is not to be used, until and unless it is necessary.

I unbolted the outer door and was out of the house, in the pitch darkness.  It was dark alright.  There was zero visibility.  I for sure could not see anything in the night.  I was soon back to the house to continue the rest of the sleep until morning.  Saturday is church day the compound was quiet for most day, as I continued taking my stop under the main mango tree.  Later that day my sister-in-law lamented over some night runner, or runners, who have refused to give her house any peace by their persistent walks in the night.  

That under-the-mango-tree rest also brought a moment of reflection.  I had already spent almost three thousand shillings by the evening of the second day.  And the news that I had landed had not yet done its proper rounds.  I knew that I would be badly broke when the locality gets to know that their son from the city was at the village.  

I just had to save myself by leaving when Sunday dawned, traversing the same greenery back to Dudi, then back to Kisumu.  Of course, that night bird had disturbed my night for a second time, and those strange sounds like roof sheets being brushed by a stick still persisted on this second night.  To cap it all, I still had to go out in the pitch dark of Saturday night, but was still unlucky not to shine the spotlight on some bad guy, maybe next time.

Since slipping away from shags on September 5, I have done three long runs, with the last one being having been just today at this altitude of 2100m here in Eldoret.  Today’s run, just like the rest of them has been difficult to handle.  My legs feel strained and the cross-country route through the partly muddy trails do not help much.  I average 5.30min per kilometre and I feel like hell on earth after every run!  

I long to go back to Nairobi, where the altitude is a bit favourable at 1800m.  I long to be back to the city, where corona is still real and facemasks have some semblance of being effective.  Nonetheless, corona remains real and those in denial should quickly get back to the reality of the situation.  When you have 225,736,297 global infections* and 4,648,356 deaths, with 243,725 and 4,906 respectively, being the numbers for Kenya, then you need no more convincing that corona is a real deal.

*source: worldometers website

WWB, the Coach, Eldoret, Kenya, Sep. 13, 2021

Of corona fatigue and greetings at every stop – my Western Kenya dilemma

Of corona fatigue and greetings at every stop – my Western Kenya dilemma

I have now done three runs since that incident in Nakuru, where I almost broke a leg through a motorbike incident.  The last of those being today, where I did the five circuits around Eldy on that half-marathon route near Pioneer estate.  Those three runs in the last two weeks have proved to me that the left foot may take longer that I thought before it gets back to full recovery.  I can run alright, but I feel a pain that lasts for over three hours after such a run.  The foot still looks swollen, compared to my right.  I however remain hopeful that the foot shall be back to perfection by the time I am doing the StanChart Nairobi International marathon to be done virtually from Oct. 29 to 31.

I have travelled to Bungoma, then Malakisi and back to Eldoret in the same two-week time.  The travel from Eldoret to Bungoma took about two hours, since I left Eldoret at about 7.30am and was at Kanduyi Bungoma minutes past 9.40am.  This matatus to Bungoma did not fail to disappoint.  It was the seven-seater ‘nguruwe’ type.  Even before the boredom overtook us and we began to talk, the luggage from the boot had already fallen on the road twice.  Each fall was brought to the driver’s attention by other vehicles that hooted ceaselessly, forcing the driver to stop and then walk back to pick the fallen gunny bags.

However, the Sunday religious programme on the loud radio was the tiebreaker on the boredom.  The topic of discussion on the radio was some preaching, followed by callers asking a range of questions.  One of the questions was what the pastor could do to help a girl child rejected by both parents, who have separated and remarried.  The pastor had advised that the girl should approach one of the parents for help.

“Sasa sikia,” the passenger in the middle of our back seat hit me with a nudge to get my attention.

“Eh, ati?,” I forced myself to say something.  I am not usually the talking type on public service vehicles.  I even feel shame-on-myself to answer a phone in public vehicles.  So, I was a bit reluctant to engage.

“Sasa badala pastor akubali kusaidia mtoto, hata na sadaka au kumpaka makazi, yeye anamrudisha kwa wazazi wenye wamemkataa!”

This issue would become a subject discussed by mainly the next passenger, and another who volunteered to join in, just seated on the front row.  They said that pastors were more interested in offerings than helping others.  They even reminded all and sundry in the 7-seater the reason why they themselves do not even go to church, saying that the church is for the women, who seem to like pastors.  I do know if I was hearing right, but coincidentally it was a men-only matatu on this travel to Bungoma.

From Kanduyi, which is the highway centre, before one diverts to Bungoma town that is some three of so kilometres away, I was to head to Malakisi town.  However, there is still no public service vehicle that can take you from Bungoma to Malakisi.  You have to take a Malaba vehicle and alight at the Kimaeti centre, which is about a 20-minutes drive.  That short drive costs you one-hundred shillings, instead of one-fifty, the conductor reminded me.

We had gotten to a Police road block just before Kimaeti stage.  The matatu just slowed down and passed that blockage without the customary stop expected of such a matatu at such a place.  The driver just hooted and passed by.  He later told the conductor that the Police wanted to check on their masks, yet they were not Nairobi people.

“Sisi ni watu wa mashambani.  Hatuvai mask sisi.  Masks ni za watu wa Nairobi.”

I was seated just next to the driver, with my mask on.  The driver and all the rest of the people in the matatus did not have their facemasks.  I was the only odd one out.  How his statement had turned to be correct?  From Kimaeti I had the option of walking the ten kilometres to Malakisi, or getting a motorbike for one hundred shillings.  I was carrying a load and hence opted for a motorbike.  It rode me through the dry weather road all the way to a river crossing that was now closed for the construction of a bridge.  A vehicle would not be able to pass by.

We diverted onto a temporary crossing just next to the closed road.  This temp crossing consisted of just three thin wooden planks laid across the river waters down there.  The planks had gaps between them that a motorbike tyre could easily slip through.  We somehow crossed that section and rejoined the dry weather road, and would soon enough be in Malakisi.  

I however noted that the motorbike did not make the usual turn to the town on the road that I had known before.  He instead went ahead for over four hundred metres, before turning left to somehow emerge at Malakisi centre.  I later learnt that a bridge on the original road to Malakisi had collapsed and it was yet to be replaced.  I believe that Malakisi is the only divisional headquarters in Kenya that does not have public service vehicle access.

I alighted at the small town of countable shops on either sides of the single dry weather road, and kept walking along.  I would in a moment pass the BAT factory that I have known for long, on my left, as I kept going on the main road to my hosts house about a kilometre away.  Then this tarmac road from nowhere just hit me from nowhere.  It just started from the middle of the dry weather road at a Y-junction, and it continued into my left.  

I would be going to my destination on the right side just next to the junction.  I was later informed that the tarmac road is in Busia county, who had decided to fund the tarmac in their county, while their counterparts from Bungoma who own Malakisi, had decided not to do such a project.  The tarmac therefore had to start/end at the boundary between the two counties.  Talk about one country, two counties!

I was already visiting Angurai market, about five kilometres away, by the evening of this same Sunday, August 29.  The market day on this Sunday remained the typical market scene that I had known ever since.  I had stayed in this region for about three months after my secondary school education and the region had remained largely unchanged.  By the time of this visit to the market, I had already been warned by my hosts not to try being a ‘Nairobian’ by putting on my facemask.  Such a show would make the ‘rural folks’ look bad.  I had therefore left my mask in the house even as I walked through the market.  And… true to the warning, there was nobody, repeat, nobody, repeat again, nobody was having a facemask.  Life was as usual as it should be.  Corona did not exist.  It was a Nairobi disease.

I took a day rest after that Sunday and was out of Malakisi on a Tuesday.  I travelled differently on this Tuesday.  Instead of a motorbike back to Kimaeti to get to the Malaba-Bungoma road, I got a motorbike for one-hundred and fifty shillings for about a fifteen-kilometre ride to Mayanja, located on the T-junction on the Chwele-Bungoma road.  I got there in less than thirty-minutes.  I was to get a matatu from Mayanja to Bungoma, but the matatus were taking their time to appear.  It was also a market day, so it seemed, judging by the number of people around Mayanja, and the type of wares that were laid out.  There was nobody with a facemask, apart from the Nairobian in me.

“You Nairobian,” a stranger approached my location at the side of the road, “Can I take you to Bungoma?  I have a bike!”

The roughly dressed person was a motorbike person looking out for business.

“I am waiting for a matatu, since they shall charge me seventy shillings”

“Ah, Nairobian, just promote me.  I shall take you to Bungoma with seventy.”

I found myself astride another bike, and was even joined by a second passenger on this trip to Kanduyi.  I would soon pass by KIbabii University, then Cardinal Otunga school.  This is a school that I had visited at least once during one of my past visits to Malakisi.  I remembered my niece Esther, who is now publishing books in droves, who was in this school and I attended one of those visiting days.  The motorbike rider would even joke that ‘those girls have been chased out of school due to lack of school fees’, while pointing to a group of five or so girls in their white blouses and light blue skirts walking besides the road past the school, as we rode along.  I reminded the rider that education was free, and he was like, ‘which Kenya do you live in?’

The ride from Mayanja to Kanduyi took about ten minutes.  I guessed that it must have been a distance that was less than ten kilometres.  It did not take any time to get the matatu to Eldoret that was just waiting for me to fill it up before it starts its journey towards Eldoret.  We left at 11.15am.  I sat next to the driver.  Most people in the matatu had their facemasks on alright, but mainly hanging by their chins, including the driver seated next to me.

It did not take long before he asked the conductor for money.

“Hebu lete fifty haraka, roadblock iko mbele.”

The conductor handed over a fifty just from behind my head.

We soon got to the roadblock and the cop came to the driver’s window.  He did not even look at anything.  No windscreen stickers, no driving license.  He just ‘greeted’ the driver, after which the driver took off.

“Umewazoesha vibaya,” the conductor told his driver after that stop, when the vehicle was gone for over a minute.

“Usipopeana fifty, utaenda kortini ulipe thao forty.  Sasa gani afadhali kati ya hizo?  Kazi ya matatu ni lazimu ulipie route, ukitaka kufanya biashara kwa hiyo route”

The same ‘greetings’ would be done two more times before we got to Eldoret at 1.30pm.  I was faced with a moral dilemma.  What should you do in the face of people not putting on their facemasks and drivers greeting the police at every stop?

WWB, the Coach, Eldoret, Kenya, Sept. 2, 2021