By Ray Mwihaki
It rained worms in the fifth year after the springs coughed their last. That morning, the entire village of Kiawamagira – women, children, men, and shapeshifters – prepared to go up the hill to the last mugumo tree to pray to the God of Kuyu and Umi. Each season, we would make a sacrifice at the tree to try to entice the clouds to come over the village in the valley. But season after season, the rains would pass our village by.
It was not wet but it was not dry either. The pipes that joined Kiawamagira to the water board grid 286 years after Nairobi had been connected, still coughed water and were the pride of every home. But for a failing farming community like ours, the water was no salvation. The yellowing plants mocked us. The sight of thinning cattle taunted us. And no matter how much we boiled the pipe-borne water, our teeth continued to turn brown.
We had come to believe that the failing rains were the reason the soil had started to kill most of what we tried to plant, the reason the village could not grow and the reason we could not leave. The ones who tried to leave would be struck by great misfortune and would have to return and live in squalor.
And the ones who were enchanted by the beauty of the valley and came to live there? Their fate would be sealed once they broke the ground they settled on. They would become one with the valley and all their deeds and misdeeds would carry the curse of Kiawamagira.
But Maahinda, the eldest son of the village, had promised that all this would soon be over. We just had to wait for a sign, go up the hill to where the decree was made by his grandfather, my great-grandfather, and unravel the net that his words had woven around us.
On that morning, the morning of the cursed shower, we buried our cell phones in a pit near the old spring, shaved our heads, and bound our necks with belts. We dug up the remains of our father’s fathers and stitched a bit of what was left on the collars of our everyday shirts.
I felt a shiver as daddy roughly stitched a patch of my great-grandfather’s rotting tweed jacket onto my tattered brownie uniform. I stared into daddy’s eyes and imagined what my great-grandfather must have looked like. I knew he must have been tall, but I doubted I would see the red rage that stared at me from the depths of daddy’s eyes.
That evening, there was a feast in every home, including ours. Mami had slaughtered and grilled our fattest bull. She spiced the carcass with lemon and garlic, and a bitter herb that was meant to keep us from getting too full too quickly.
“Where did you find spinach, Mami?” I asked. She always told me a story as I ate my dinner. It brought colour to the meal and I could almost taste what food must have tasted like when Kiawamagira was green and rivers flowed through it. I would feel the warmth of the bonfire that led lost travelers home. Though I had never seen strangers welcomed the way they were in Mami’s stories, I hoped I would see it someday.
“Eat your vegetables, Kui,” Mami whispered as she threw a worried glance in the direction of daddy who sat in a corner of the room, “and be grateful to Umi that you have green on your plate. Do you know how many people are starving in this village? Some only have the marrow from their cows to eat.”
“The girl asked a simple question.” Daddy’s rugged voice rose from the shadows cast by the peeling Cowboy cartons nailed to the mabati. “Tell me. Me, I want to know if you have been singing that silly song to the food. Poisoning me. Poisoning the girl with your tall tales.”
“Your daughter needs to know the laws of this land. If singing your father’s decree will keep us from starving and save this village for Kui’s children, I shall sing at the top of my lungs!”
“Where do you think telling her these things will get her?”
“They will keep her alive. They will teach her how to save this village. She is the only child left in your forefather’s lineage. You and I both know the long and short of those tales. We were there when it all began. She needs to know where we started to go wrong.”
“Nonsense! We are in the modern age! We have piped water and people wanting to buy our land. Don’t start to reason with your heart like Baba Njoki and his people. He wanted to give strangers our land. He wanted us to share the little that we have. Use your head! We need money to survive. We can’t go giving away our birthright to every beggar who comes our way!”
“We have always had plenty. We could always share. Even now when the curse…”
“The curse, eh?” Daddy sneered. “What about it, woman?”
“I am afraid.”
“Of what? A tree and a few words? What can it do?”
“Kill us. Like it killed Baba Njoki. Hanging by his belt, suspended on nothing but air.”
The laughter that released itself from my father’s throat cut the silence of the night like dawn cuts the darkness.
“The tree did nothing to him! You don’t even know the half of it. Baba Njoki was weak.”
“You also died that day. You are not the man I knew.”
“Eh, do I look dead to you?” He thumped his chest. “I am strong. I came back stronger the day Baba Njoki hanged.”
“Na uria nda gaya,
Mundu ona uriko
Ndakanagerie
Gutunyana kana kuuragana…”
“Weh, you girl! Don’t sing that song in this house!” Daddy kicked the table so hard the food flew and landed close to my chair. I slid under the table, grabbed a piece of meat from the floor and tore into it.
***
“As I have divided
Let no one
Try
To steal, to kill,
The matter is sealed
Before the god of Uyu and Umi
If anyone comes
To seek a home or food
Give, share
You with plenty
And this clan shall thrive…”
“…Whoever goes against this word, shall die
Even if they repent
For wherever there is no light,
No growth shall be
Kill him
Let their lineage disappear
And, Kiawamagira thrive and live forever!
That is my decree
And so shall it be, by God.”
Mami’s voice danced with the sound of the howling trees, lulling me in spite of the cutting words of caution that the song carried. She had sung my great-grandfather’s decree every night for as long as I could remember. Sometimes, she would tell me the story of the first trip they made up the hill to the mugumo tree.
“Where your guka’s father was, God was,” she whispered as she tucked the blanket under my shoulder. “That time, Kui, that first time we went up with him, we were sure one of us would die. I had heard the stories from before we came here. Stories of how the mugumo tree would kill anyone who had stolen or murdered, or refused to share their bountiful produce. But that year, we all came back alive. Until the time we went up without him.”
I had found love for my great-grandfather in the way she mimicked his voice. Her big brown eyes glowed against the flame of the pressure lamp. Her cheeks filled up as her lips curved into a smile.
“Is that when he left us?” I asked
She nodded. “And the rains left us too…”
“And the springs dried. And It came to take the small and beautiful. Now we wait for our forefathers to call for us, we wait to hear our punishment,” I concluded, knowing the tale all too well.
“That’s also the year you were born. Five years ago tomorrow.”
I drifted off to sleep with the image of a lush, green valley spotted with grazing cattle and fruits of every kind. I imagined my great-grandfather standing tall in the beautiful wilderness that had been his inheritance and the stories that must have nestled his dimples, the same ones that he had left behind on our faces.
***
Early the next morning, before the first light, we made our way to the old mugumo tree that rose majestically at the centre of Maahinda’s farm, at the highest point of the village where Kiawamagira’s 8-mile road kissed the railway. Its leaves hummed the song of lost causes and its trunk cast a shadow across our path as we walked up the hill. Maahinda, my father, and the three village elders marched ahead, leaving a space where Baba Njoki should have been. Their wives and children followed, and the rest of the village trailed behind.
The branches shook violently against the wind as Maahinda touched his head to the last cut he had made on its bark. One by one, all the elders lay their heads against the foot of the tree and we circled around them.
We waited for the belts around our necks to be pulled taut against our delicate skin. We waited for branches to fall and seal the fate of entire families. We waited for our fathers’ forefathers to wake. We waited for God to speak. We waited, until a rag doll with twelve red stitches, some sewn between its legs, others around its chest and some still on its head, fell on my head.
“The word has been spoken,” Maahinda announced. “Go back to your homes. Kui shall save us all.”
I stood transfixed under the mugumo tree, staring at the rag doll, wondering if I should pick it up and sing to it the songs Mami sang to me. I crouched beside it and gently caressed it. I felt a sharp pinch between my legs when I touched the set of stitches between its legs. Everything went quiet. Until the edge of Mama Njoki’s Women’s Guild wrapper touched my arm and suddenly, I was up in the branches of the mugumo tree, soaking wet. I saw my father, Maahinda, and Baba Njoki sitting by a stream that stemmed from the tree. I tried to scream for them to let me down but, like the rag doll, I had no mouth.
***
“I have no children left, my brothers,” Maahinda began. “No wife, no parents, only you and this land, the pride of our grandfather who has joined our ancestors. It is our time now. Let’s get our land back from the squatters and these women who bear you no men.”
My father’s face lit up. “Heh, imagine the money we can get, Baba Njoki. We won’t need to rely on the rain for food. We can buy it from the peasants!”
Baba Njoki glared at the two men. “These people have done nothing to us, Maahinda. As for wives and children, we are blessed by God and truly, I have no interest in taking any more than I already have.”
“Baba Njoki, everyone knows that Njoki isn’t yours.” Maahinda sneered. “She came with that woman who hasn’t given you a child in all the years you have been married. Now you want them to inherit what was meant to be for our lineage without paying a cent?”
“When I married her, Njoki became my daughter – my flesh and blood.”
“Eh, so you think I cannot make a wife out of her?” My father laughed. “You can’t tell me you don’t see how her hips are filling up and those nyonyos poking through her shirt. If I could even have one day with her, I would save the juices of her youth and sip from them forever. “
“Over my dead body!”
“That can be arranged,” Maahinda retorted. “Baba Njoki, you need to accept that Njoki is not our blood. She is fair game. If you shall not let us take back the land we have shared with the squatters, then at least let your brother have some fun with her.”
“The words of our grandfather are more important than a few extra coins. I shall not be party to this!” Baba Njoki rose from the rock he was sitting on and headed down the hill.
Maahinda turned to my father. “What if I told you that if you strike the mugumo tree with this axe, you can have Njoki after the ceremony tomorrow?”
“Give me the axe,” said father.
When I came back to my body, it had been a day since the ritual. Mama Njoki was between my raised legs. Her face was pale and her eyes but a slit.
I wailed for my mother and pleaded with her to stop, but she did not look up from the tender bit of my flesh that she was sewing. As she made each agonizing stitch, the clouds drew closer. And with each feeble wail I let out, they grew heavier. When she was done, she let out a scream that shook the earth under me and rolled me down the hill, limp.
* * *
They walked in excited steps on the beaten path, careful not to step in the puddles of water. Aimless banter flying from one’s lips to the other’s ears. They filled the silence the birds had left with the laughter and the eagerness of youth. They sat down by the seasonal stream, next to the lone mabati house, their Palito radio squeaking some reggae tune. Muthoni tried to sing along but seemed to be singing a different song altogether. Njambi stood and shook her behind, grabbing her hair in reckless abandon.
I watched them from the hole in the mabati wall. I knew It was coming. I could smell it. The same scent had hung in the air when Mama Njoki was between my legs those many years ago. It was also the same scent in my dreams.
Everything I had seen in my dreams was happening in real life: for days the sun had scorched the plants, then the rains had flooded the road, killing two cows and leaving pools of murky water everywhere. Now, it was time for It to come for the young and vibrant. The ones whose youth spoke to the earth and calmed the storm that threatened to rise. They were the perfect target. At the wrong place, at exactly the right time. They fit the last piece of the puzzle perfectly. I felt the butterflies fluttering in my belly.
“One…”
I heard a growl above the music and laughter, I was sure of it. I subconsciously touched the scar where my left ear had been; I could feel warm fluid ooze out of it. It was close.
“Two…”
Every five years, It came to take a share of the succulent, unadulterated beauty of the village. And each time, I would get twelve stitches. I no longer remember the pain, but the visions that came in those moments remained. Now, I was one scar shy of saving the village, of “Welcoming the new age of development,” as Maahinda said.
“Three…”
We had all come to terms with it. After all, it was a small sacrifice for the bountiful harvests that came right after. We knew when It would come calling and made sure to stay off Its path. Someone had failed to warn these two, or maybe they had chosen to ignore the warning. They were playing peak-a-boo with the devil and the ‘boo’ was not too far off…
I always wanted to be as beautiful as Muthoni and as flexible as Njambi. I imagined myself in Muthoni’s curvy ebony body, her luscious lips on my round brown face, and her leggy form gyrating to the tunes of a famous artiste. But I knew it would never be. I thought to warn them, but I needed to see It. To see that it wasn’t just a dream, something that shook the core of my being in fear. I needed proof.
“Four…”
Its scent hung heavy in the air, putrid like the rotting carcass of a dead dog by the roadside. The butterflies in my belly fluttered with intent, as if they wanted to escape through my throat and witness it for themselves. They choked me. My eyes glistened.
I blinked.
“Five…”
I stood there watching Its shadow come over the girls like a blanket. It was dark, human-like. It moved purposefully above the unsuspecting beauties. Grunting and puffing above the reggae tunes being coughed out by the Palito. Then the screams began and I could no longer hold the butterflies back. I released the cloud of flying colour and grace just as It descended.
In my head, an assault of images from the day after I was chosen descended like boulders.
A woman in a Women’s Guild headwrap ripped out souls from the wombs of women whose husbands had licked her juices. I saw my father dance with the young beauties of the village, drawing their spirits out as they gyrated to the rhythm of the crickets by the stream. He pulped those spirits and drank their youth.
Njoki. Njoki had tried to escape his snare but his cloud had descended upon her with the same fury I always saw in his eyes. The glee on his face as he buried Njoki’s pulp in the pavement outside Number 28, Kijabe Street, burned like an eclipse in my psyche.
I blinked.
They were gone. The girls, the images, the butterflies. The stream had turned pink. It was beautiful. I stepped out to take in the newly cleansed village, and there my father was.
It.
****
“Mami, let’s get away from here.”
Mami got into bed with me, as she did every night after It had come. “And go where?”
“Let’s go to the city.”
“What would we be doing in Nairobi?”
“Don’t you ever want to see the development that Uncle Maahinda and da-” I sighed, unable to speak his name. Dusk had turned to night since It had come, and rage continued to eat a hole in my gut. I could not eat, no matter how much my mother pleaded with me. I could not believe that a great man like my great-grandfather could have borne the same blood as Maahinda and my father. “I’d like to see what they are on about.”
“Kui, this is the only home I have ever known and you know what happens to people who leave. It’s too big a risk.”
“Mami, remember the day I was chosen?”
She blew out the candle. “How could I forget, Kui?” I heard the tremor in her voice. “Every time after that, you have had to pay the price for our rain.”
“I have had it better than those It has taken.”
The room fell silent. My mother’s body stiffened. Her sobs shook the bed.
“I shall not be here when Mama Njoki comes calling again.” I continued.
Mami fiddled with the leso that she had wrapped around her waist, knocking into me as she did it. I cried out in pain.
“Shh… take this. This will get you to the city.” Mami pulled my hand towards her and pressed a bundle wrapped in a handkerchief into it. “Leave now and wait by the railway. There’s a train that comes by at midnight. It shall get you to the city in an hour.”
“What of you?”
“I will be here waiting for you.” She got out of bed, found the matches on a stool beside it and lit the candle. “I always knew that you would leave, just as I know that you will come back.”
She left my room, unlocked the wooden door to the house, and slipped into the darkness of the room where It slept.
***
It was not difficult to find Kijabe Street. All I had to do was go west along Nairobi River, which reeked of sewerage and despair. I could see why Maahinda was enchanted by the city’s development. Here, glass buildings lined every street almost kissing the sky, roads were paved, and it smelt like affluence. Yellow lamps lit the streets, lulling the street urchins to sleep with their white noise. No dust, no flies or donkeys braying. On Kijabe Street, the last row of houses closest to the river were made of pre-colonial stone.
I stood glued to the pavement outside Number 28. I could feel Njoki’s cries below me.
“You came,” her voice floated in the wind.
“Show yourself.”
“Free me, and I will.”
“How?”
“You know the song that heals the land. Sing it to the land, loud, and I shall be found.”
I could no longer stand to listen to the song that had doomed us all. But somehow, it escaped my lips.
“Na uria nda gaya,
Mundu ona uriko
Ndakanagerie…”
The pavement began to heat up and the wind stood still. The words cut my tongue like razors as they left my lips.
“Gutunyana kana kuuragana
Uhoro ucio ni nda tiriha
Mbere ya ngai wa Kuyu na Umi
Mundu ona uriko
Oka gucaria ha guikara kana irio
No muhaka, mumuhee
Inyui mwi na nyingi
Niguo ruriri rwitu rwarame…”
I could feel Njoki’s spirit reintegrate under my feet as each drop of blood fell from my lips to the ground.
“Oria ugacejia uria ndaiga, niagukua
Ona e cokerera,
Haria hatari utheri,
Gutingetherema.
Ni oragwo,
Ruriri rwake ruthire
Kiawamagira guthere na guture tene na tene!
O oguo niguo ndaiga
Thai thathaiya ngai, thai.”
My feet were burning but I could not move. Njoki tore through the ground, throwing me so far in the air; my head hit the street lamps seven feet above me. I landed right at her feet, beside the hole she had emerged from. Every inch of my body moaned. The rubble cut through my dress and into my flesh. I winced as I touched a wound on my calf. I yearned for Mami’s tumbukiza, the steaming broth with chunks of meat and vegetables that seemed to heal all wounds.
Njoki smiled at me. “I have been waiting for you, Kui. Shall we go home?”
“In a minute.” I whispered.
***
The rain had started to fall in Kiawamagira. People woke up to flowing rivers and streams bubbling. Rain mites flew over the village and danced with the butterflies. Mama Njoki let out a wail that drew thunder and lightning to the village. My father was struck and so was Maahinda.
My mother danced in the rain, trying to catch butterflies.
“Kui, you have made me proud,” she whispered.
