I’m an avid enthusiast for historical events and accounts, and in my indulgence, I have read about many atrocities committed by human beings against fellow human beings. Events that stripped the world of her dignity. The Trans-Atlantic trade, The American civil war, the invasion and conquering of Africa, the Great War, The Holocaust, The Biafran War, The war in Afghanistan, the Rwandan genocide, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Kenyan PEV. There are countless accounts dating back to the crusades in the 11th and 12th centuries. Yet, I find it unbelievably bewildering that in spite of all the bloodshed, anger, fear, trauma, pain, insurmountable loss and destruction; the world remains undestroyed, established and thriving. That somehow reconciliation and reconstruction happens, albeit in subtle ways that we are oblivious to. That the world, the earth, patches up her scars intricately and delicately and quietly so. That love is still able to exist among us. This phenomenon is in itself a sublime and ethereal characteristic about existence that I will never put my head around.
A tablespoon for both functions?
Most people, not all people, most,
Most people desire to love, and to be loved.
Most people are incapable of both.
Most people have chosen to be incapable.
Incapable, to fail on both scores.
To fail on loving and to fail on being loved.
Now we’ve read Plato, we’ve read Paul’s epistle to Corinthians,
We have asked Uncle Google and we have read books.
Now none of these can, with certainty define love for us.
I have no idea what love is, really.
I however have always thought, tentatively, carefully, that love could be an energy.
Now I know I have to support my argument,
and I have not much substantial evidence with which to.
I also know that I desire to love and be loved.
That I know for sure.
I also know that I had to rid my aura of all bitterness,
of all anger, of all apathy. It was a process I should tell you.
And I had to go through the process. Why?
Because this energy called love doesn’t come in potions.
It’s not medicine I could buy from a pharmacy.
It’s not a potion that I could take to “have” love.
I thought, again, that love, this energy is within.
Within and should be allowed to come alive.
You rid your aura of apathy, you allow for love to exist.
Or, or you convert, you convert anger into love.
Now most people refuse to do this.
Most people refuse to go through the process.
And love, my dear is not medicine,
medicine for which you will be prescribed.
You won’t take 2 tablespoons of it from a bottle.
2 tablespoons, one for loving, one for being loved.
It won’t work.
Chocolate,Toffee, Caramel, Ebony? Textured hair or a mass of steel wool?
I have always reprimanded my niece for thinking, innocently, that she would be more agreeable aesthetically if she were white, blond with long silky hair that doesn’t tangle and shrink up when it comes to contact with water or whenever it feels right to shrink up. But seriously why do I usually expect my niece to know that she shouldn’t be white to be beautiful? I mean when in the first place did we, black Africans, or chocolate or brown or whichever other complexion there is that describes us, slip? When did we slip, slightly or greatly, enough to make our own children think that the definition of an aesthetically pleasing person shall be one with white skin and type 1a or 1b but not 4c or 4a hair? Problems need more than be nipped at the bud, they need be uprooted, and the problem here is the mentality, the attitude with which we and in extension our children approach this “colour of the skin and hair texture in relation to beauty” issue. Which is just a branch of the tree that is racial bias. Now ours is a highly diversified family and one of my father’s brothers is married to a white american. See you should have seen the excitement that would ripple around us kids like a wave whenever we’d here that Uncle States was coming East with his kids! I will speak exclusively for myself lest I get into trouble with my cousins for probably exaggerating their feelings or reactions towards Uncle S’s travelling. So I would spend days playing scenarios in my head, scenarios of possible conversation between his mixed race children and me. God they were worth every minute I spent on them those fantasies! But Uncle S would arrive together with his children and I would never have enough courage to start or jump into a conversation with them. I always felt so inferior both in language and status(my black, black face and feet that have never been to the US! How could I speak to white people? Why would I want to embarrass myself? For gods sake they-my cousins- were white!!!! Wazungu!!!). Now if you knew me then you would know that I wasn’t exactly an academic dullard, and my English wasn’t bad, I couldn’t utter a word to/with them and not be awkward about it nonetheless! I particularly remember this one time they came around and my father was having conversation with my cousins. I was in some corner watching and listening ever so shyly, hanging on to every word they spoke so I’d speak it later(the accent especially!) Then my father asks his nephew about the time their plane landed in Nairobi and his nephew, my cousin answered him that they got here at 11. Now we all know that Americans answer questions with statements or words spoken with a sharp rising intonation that sounds more or less like a question. He said, “Eleven?”. Jesus Christ was I fascinated! I was so intrigued. I heard “ilevn?” and that was how I began stating the time in school. I would walk around hoping that someone would ask me what time it was so I’d get a chance to say “ilevn?” Or “sevn?” like I was asking them too. There were so many words I would pick from my cousins’ mouths and plant in my own(plus the accent!) At night I would discreetly get up from bed to kneel beside it and pray(after everybody had slept). I always prayed after “sleeping” for a while because I thought it was sacrilegious to let people see you pray. So I’d pray to, no, beg God to please, kindly, mercifully, give me long silky hair(I wanted it like Rebecitta’s from some soap in those days) because I felt it’d take that for me to be as beautiful and as graceful as my cousins. I’d also beg God to lighten my skin and I’d promise to follow all the commandments in return blah blah. I was convinced you see, that I wasn’t in a body fit for beauty my complexion and hair texture and accent withstanding. Today I reprimand my overly gorgeous niece when she dares hold the very opinions I held about a decade and some years ago. I remind her everyday just how impossibly beautiful she is with those large eyes of hers and surprised eyebrows. But really where does it all start? Where do kids like myself and now my niece get this sick idea from? I know the topic of race has been recurrent, boringly recurrent but I will talk about it regardless, because we really needed to have uprooted that tree in 1810!
My uncle’s amazing family has nothing to do with my self-esteem issues of the mid-2000’s. They are considered black Americans in their country in fact.
I WANT TO BE FATHERS!
I ever so diligently respect and adore my father, yes in the African way. The standard African way, not the bourgie African way. I have wanted to be my father so many times, because as a child I have marveled at how untroubled it must be to him. I have always been sure that the man is more than sated to be what he is. I’m still tentatively sure that it must be thrillingly awesome to be my father. I mean, our fathers are so imperfect but are treated perfectly in their homes. They are the very men our mothers complain about, the very men our mothers go to church about, to pray for, to furtively intercede for in the name of choir practice and women’s guild fellowships and what not. Still the treatment they receive in these homes is the kind that befits royalties by all standards. Our fathers have no idea where salt, tomatoes or vegetables come from, they’ll get the lion’s share after food is cooked nonetheless. To just come home and sit in the sitting room, hungry but unbothered about food preparation must be nice. The other day I happened to be in an elderly couple’s home at around 6 o’clock in the evening, so I was asked to wait in the sitting room where the man was relaxing on the seat as the woman finds me what I’d come for. So I sat there stealing occasional glances at the photographs on the wall, yellowed with age in the dusty vintage picture frames. The man was generous with stories and folk tales and of all the things he said, the most intriguing must have been this “Mimi nalala hapa nimeboeka tu, nangoja mama alete Ugali nikule nilale.” This loosely translates to “I’m lying here bored and am waiting for her to bring Ugali so I eat and sleep.” Man those words thrilled me! I wanted to be a married man. I even willed the universe to make me one right away. To just come from wherever, kick your shoes off and relax about as somebody else goes to whichever extents to ensure you eat and drink must be exciting, must be soothing. In these parts of the world children, both boys and girls, grow up aspiring to be fathers, never mothers. Because fathers eat the biggest pieces of meat and use the fanciest of cutlery and crockery. Because fathers have their laundry done for them and their shoes cleaned. Because fathers are listened to when they speak. Because unlike fathers, mothers serve everybody else and remain in the kitchen eating the little food in the pot. So children want to be fathers. When children play “Chavana” or “Kalongolongo” which literally means playing pretend- home setting, every child wants to play father, regardless of the child’s gender. So I have, guiltily, wanted to be fathers, to just relax and get everything nice. To have an annoyingly demanding self, to be exhilaratingly intolerable and revered regardless. To be feared in illogical ways. To be assumed highly knowledgeable. You see I want to be fathers because I want luxury, because I think it’s not as burdensome as being mothers. I know I’m built to be mothers, anatomically, I want to live like fathers nevertheless. To lounge and get served with evening tea. To be approached with caution. To have food brought to me when I’m hungry and bored. To wear all my shirts and trousers and not to have to care about where the next set of clean clothes will come from. To get away with saying unreasonable things and doing foolish things because they are fathers.
I want to be my father and all other fathers I know. Unreasonable right? I want to regardless.
Being a University student in Kenya in this time and day is pretty challenging I must admit. You all see these young men and women out here in their nice clothes and glowing faces and you all assume they must be living it out smoothly and easily. Well smoothly and easily are pretty much not the adverbs to describe the act of living in the universities today. These young people skip multiple meals just to make sure they have bus fare to get to school, or just to make sure they have 150 kshs for tokens or something. Most of them have parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers, sisters…etc. But such is adulting they said. You gotta be on your own. There’s so much out here, so much desperation for money from University Students, not for spoiling themselves rotten but basically and merely for food, rent or school fees. Affording health services is out of the question. No insurance covers!
People in the upper and middle class zones, unfortunately, take advantage of this desperation and misuse or even abuse the young people’s readiness to do whatever it takes to earn them a shilling.
Today I want to urge my fellow young people that all these is passing. It will be okay in future when you will owe no one your success, when you don’t have to face the awkwardness of feeling indebted to an individual or a group for your success. So hang on in there, never give up, don’t wallow in self pity, face each day as it comes, do side hustles and remain focused to the course. It shall pass.
Sensibility!
“Masculinity is a hard, small cage and we put boys in this cage.”
_Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
I want to embrace my womanhood. To thrive in it and let it thrive in me. My liberal womanhood. I really want to soak myself in it’s lustre but I’m as worried as I shouldn’t be.
Woman is defined as an adult human female.
Man is defined as an adult human male.
When my breasts had just begun being sensitive to touch-as they do when you are nine or thirteen, whichever, these two beautiful stubborn mounds of wonder- I noticed that most adult female people preferred the title “lady” to the title “woman”, they’d rather be “girl” for the rest of their lives than be “woman”. I noticed the spite and dissatisfaction with which an adult female person would look at anyone calling them “woman”. At a tender pubescent age I was made by my surroundings to know that the adjective/noun “woman” is to be associated with impurity, promiscuity, obscenity, vulgarity, degradation and old age among many other despicable nouns. I grew up speaking Swahili and some English. The ridicule poured generously on the noun woman is more pronounced in Swahili. Woman in Swahili is Mwanamke and I know it is not a much appreciated noun. Several times I have seen people use it as a derogatory term. To insult and injure. Each of these times I have been hurt and angered. Yet with all this scorn surrounding the term “woman”, there’s all that delight with which it’s antonym “man” is being addressed with. I see boys as young as nine trying hard to be addressed as men. Initiation rites in most parts of the world are mostly all about converting “boys” into “men” with so much glee and dance and food and celebration. It’s usually a season of immense pride for the boy and his parents especially because being referred to as a “man” is so elevating, empowering, so purifying that every male teenager must look forward to. Look forward to being a man, pontifical and noble yet dangerously lascivious. How euphoric! It’s the same in Swahili. The Swahili word for man is Mwanamume and oh hail the Mwanamume! We exalt you! You are a sublime noun that every young male wants. You are infallible! How grand! Just how! I find this subjectivity extremely appalling. Dear beautiful adult female, please allow yourself to be a woman and remember to call me if it hurts. Find me and slap me twice across the face and tell me that it ached to be a woman that it scorched, that it made you filthy. I might withdraw my opinions. I also know that there is a significant number of women(I love using this word. I want to use it. I also want you to not feel tainted by it my love) prefer to be addressed as “MS.”, “Miss…” or as “Mrs….” I choose not to be bothered by your wish to have a preference. You have not much choice I know. We have to choose one if we must have an honorific before our name. However, it does bother me that there was need for having three different titles for the female human being each of which is wholly dependent upon her marital status I won’t pretend that I like being asked to clarify whether I’m a MS., Miss. or Mrs.. I have to choose. Unlike my brother who was a Mr. from birth, unlike my father whose salutation is in no way affected by my mother’s existence. Why? And so we raise boys with all this assumption of masculine superiority and feminine inferiority heaped upon their little backs. We call them lions and tell them to be men, breathing sphinxes. Not that it’s bad to call boys lions, how I adore those big cats with their stunning mane! There is nothing wrong with it, except that we insist, that we remind them that if they fail in life then they have killed their parents. Wow! This is the small cage that we put boys in. We tell their sisters to be pretty and to get some education to be gentle and less noisy, to be sweet and prayerful, to keep quiet when a man speaks, to have a walking style that will attract a “man”, to wake up at 6 o’clock because girls shouldn’t oversleep, then they’ll find a good man who will appreciate their morally permissible selves and take good care of them. How sweet! We don’t realise what we are doing though, do we? When we preach “Mwanamke ni tabia na Mwanamume ni jasho!” This loosely translates to “A woman is defined by her character and morals while a man is defined by his sweat which is in his toil and earnings”, do we realise the mistake we are making? We(gender notwithstanding) Should All Be Feminists doesn’t translate to all of us wearing lip gloss and stiletto heels. It simply means that we, here I mean everybody regardless of gender, should raise both boys and girls with equal enthusiasm. Tell girls to work their best, tell her that decorum is commendable but certainly not the definition of her success as woman. Tell her that she can sleep till 8 o’clock and work till 10 o’clock in the night, tell them that flaunting and trading their bodies for favours and approval is disgusting and in fact degrading. Tell boys that they are not to kill themselves trying to please girls, and that when they grow into men(correct definition of men) they shouldn’t walk on blades to please women(correct definition of women) who want to lazy around and be moral. Damn girl, be pretty and industrious. Teach boys to let themselves own failure if and when it happens, to cry when overwhelmed with emotions because we all have tears, whoever told them that tears were only found in girls’ tear ducts lied to them. Teach them how to say “I love you” and tell them that they are not obligated to muscle up and that being lighter skinned is not emasculating. Tell sons that it’s the duty of all human beings to do house chores in their respective houses regardless of the number of girls and women in that house, tell him that sexualizing girls and women is contemptible, tell him that men should raise their babies as much as women do and that doing so is not an achievement, not a favour to the woman but a duty, an obligation to parenting. Tell men to relax. Please teach girls to be independent, tell them that it is not required of them to be dependent on a man. That she can be a politician or a plumber…it doesn’t matter. That both her and her partner should be equally able to pay for dates. That she can speak out, that she is not bound to letting only her brothers, father or husband make decisions for her. That when she is an adult she will be a beautiful woman. That being a woman is as glorious as being alive.
I strongly think that the definition of “Woman” as a peremptory/offensive form of address to a woman should be scrapped out of existence.
Be comfortable with being a woman you amazing adult human female.
I want to be Ms. Nambuya
Certainly I will raise feminist, egalitarian children.
YOURS TRULY
Painfully She placed her bosom on the window stool. She did not care that the aged wood hurt her young breasts. She did not want to feel. To feel weakened. Rested on her elbows, her delicate elbows with thin, unharmed skin, she stared into the distance, across the yard, past the graves. She looked, with divine concentration, at the raging storm. She fixed her eyes at the vegetable patch. Her eyes, glassy soft asparagus with the longest lashes. Yolama was in love, she was brutally in love with how the hail hit the leaves, with how the hail tore the leaves into shreds. “That’s what happens when there is no one to protect you.” She thought. Subconsciously she brushed her finger on her thigh, over her scar, this scar that lives. This scar that controls and breathes like an unforgiving adder. A possi of dung beetles scurried past, impatiently looking for a place to shelter. That too awed her, she laughed at their hopelessness. She lived for such moments. She lived to witness suffering. She was one with misery. She laughed at their affliction, she laughed so hard her ribs hurt. Then suddenly, like lightning, her past flooded back, tugging on her wretched heart like a bloody sickle. She cringed. She looked over to the grave, her grandmother’s grave. For the 77th time that month, Yolama wished she could bring her back to life. Her pillar…
On that 7th day, under the skies,
under heavens and the stars, God’s spies,
On that 7th day of knowing him,
partly as a lover, I gave him my heart.
Khuzwayo. My muse. My fairytale. My pact.
Well, I had loved him, for 7 years.
I just hadn’t been able to tell him. Fears. Insecurities.
See, this man gave colour to my nondescript existence.
The sinister curve of his lips.
Bondage. Pestilence.
Khuzwayo . My Khuzwayo with the eyes of a jaguar.
“Don’t just drink any water because it was drawn from a stream Yola!” My grand mother had insisted.
Ignorance, naivety maybe, whichever. My idenity.
That night still lives in my memories.
With how much futility have I tried , tried to erase,
to get rid of these lucid memories. Lethal memories.
Khuzwayo had stumbled into my apartment.
Reeking of exotic rum and tropical fruits.
He drunkenly pulled me to him. My canibal.
As he strangled my scrawny neck I teared. Hugs were banal.
On this day however, he strangled harder. Oblivious.
I teared. Desire. I chocked. His masochist.
“Like the rest of them you haven’t helped! You haven’t driven out my demons! You couldn’t heal my soul. Yolama I want to kill your selfish self. I thought you’d save me!” He rumbled.
I stood dumbfounded. Hapless. Confused.
My tattoo, tribute to him gleamed painfully, ominously,
against my toffee skin. ‘YOURS TRULY KHUZWAYO’
I wished for something deeper than death.
Something more perfect. More ridding.
I couldn’t come to terms with these facts.
That he had only been using me.
That I had been his catharsis…
Catharsis is more beautiful a word even.
He had expected of me a rehabilitation of some sort.
An acquiscent masochist. An asylum.
I remembered with contempt those nights,
those nights in his father’s house.
Those cold nights when he’d tie me against a pillar.
When he’d whip my lovestruck body into a bloody mess.
Then, with the tenderness of a cub,
he’d lick off all my shed blood. He’d cry. Like a lad.
And here I was, failed at being therapeutic.
Failed at healing. I hated myself, I loathed him.
He let go of my throat, I gasped hard. For the acrid air.
I was just about to reach for the door.
I wanted to run, to disappear, to die.
I was just about to reach for the damned door when,
with the might of the wind he pushed me to the bed.
I saw death, I smiled.
He grabbed me by my thighs. His nails dug deep.
They dug so deep into my skin I bled. The pain.
That pain tasted like flowers.
He was determined to drain my life out.
Perhaps he wanted to turn me into a destructed being,
Like he. Just maybe. I already was a masochist.
I was for his sake. By his hand. By his command.
…and as he cut through my left thigh, as he ravished,
as he resurrected by my blood. I couldn’t help but hate.
Hate on life, on humans with their lies so furnished.
…and as life flew past my eyes, I saw in the emptiness,
in the gloom, my grandmother’s eyes shut.
I saw them shut for her eternal sleep….
“Yola darling, because all water is not pure water…”
This scar that lives, this scar that possesses. She wiped a tear that had fallen on the window stool. Only her left eye teared these days. She hoped that her grandmother had pardoned her ignorance. Yolama hoped also that her grandmother understood and did not question the way she lived her life these days. Some day when the reaper comes for her troubled soul, maybe she will meet her grandmother. Maybe Yola would tell her just how much she hated mirrors, just how much the rising sun saddened her…
Nambuya Embalabala
2019
I LOVE YOU, I’M SORRY THAT I DO
I came to in a room so brightly lit it was blinding. My eyes, only wont to blankness shut themselves
Just for a few seconds, minutes, maybe hours or days; I don’t really recall
Honestly I don’t care, not even slightly. Or so think. Perhaps I don’t want to.
Next I opened up my eyes, I was met with a blinding darkness…
The kind that gives you the ecstasy of fear and helplessness. The sweet sensation of vulnerability.
Still fuzzy, confused by the sudden change of the environment. Frankly I preferred this one more; it felt comforting, relaxing.
I tried to move my limbs, that were limp at the moment. No movement. Restraints. Ropes cutting deep into my wrists and ankles, preventing blood flow. Making them numb. Or they just weren’t there anymore.
Frustrated, knowing they still were. I smiled, if only the restraints were tight enough to burst the veins…
Heavy footsteps brought me out of my reverie. They approached slowly but loudly, as if being dragged.
Quickly, a hood I hadn’t noticed before was yanked, impatiently, off my head.
The acrid stench of dried blood assaulted my nose,,, followed by a putrid smell of decaying flesh.
Too much, I couldn’t help but take a long deep breathe. It smelled like fresh roses – of death, newly dug soil and grief. I was smitten…
That’s when I heard the silence; the haunting type, ideal for meditating. Gore images floated in my mind then the familiar screams started. I had come back…
I snapped open my eyes,
Cobwebs decorated the room,
Old rope nooses hanging like Christmas ribbons,
Bats suspended on rusted iron bars
Filth and grime cushioning the rough floor
Slimy, thick fluids leaking from the roof
Wet walls covered with algae
Such an elegant sight, ignored beauty. This is the house, where it all happened…
The memories came rushing in, nearly exploding my dazed mind, slowly the images rearranged to make some sense of the insanity.
I had brought her here, blindfolded, as a surprise.
The giggles of amusement she had made,
The smiles, she was jovial. The glint in her eyes that said “I trust you” when I was just about to blindfold her, how beautifully pathetic.
Little had she known…“I love you so much it hurts,” I had told her. Right before I removed the blindfold, just in time for her to see the axe and mallet crash down on her skull, brains splattered…
A grin of satisfaction, of a proud twisted lover.
She was the most beautiful person ever, I loved her – still do, and for that I had crushed her skull, because I loved her brain more, killed her… the love of my life.
Now I realized the mistake I had made, the reason why I had been brought here and what was to come next…
I could hear my heart thumping through my ears.
I felt the beats of my heart crashing against my ribs, wanting a release from the cage; because it knew it belonged to her.
It wanted to go to her. The force…
My vision blurred because my eyes were meant only for her…
Horror struck me, when I realised that the darkness that lurked deep within had broken free and was devouring my hidden fears and buried desires,
Feeding the monsters I had starved for years; the guilt, the human conscience…
Dread crawled on my skin like maggots, reminding me I was dead inside and rotting rapidly.
I needed to do this, I deserved it after what I had done to her. I know it won’t change the past but I have to.
I close my eyes, I’m surrounded by a lucid light so white,
I open my eyes, I see the axe and the mallet rapidly coming down.
I love you, I am sorry that I do, I think and mean it…
Redemption. Blackness overtakes me. Emptiness. Finality
She lays in a sepulchre in his room
He wishes to free his soul…
It is as beautiful as it is bloody.
His imported casket sits royally in his dressing room.
He awaits his demise staunchly.
***
Published with rights from the author, Ipsy Satricon the ageless stranger .
Appreciation to Ipsy Satricon, the ageless stranger for writing this piece. My edits are just a glitter or two to your masterpiece sir.
BURNT SKIN!
It’s seven minutes past four.
The street was grey, soulless to the core.
The murk soothed my bones. For the crickets,
indifferently I wished death. For peace death begets.
Their mourns, not song to me. Lamentations. Woes.
I passed by a night club. These need be shut down.
It beats me, still, what fun people see in noise. Clowns.
My Scorpion crackles. My Yamaha xs1100. Only one in town.
Through a dark alley. This alley was as dark as it was filthy.
I smiled at the darkness. On the filth lay a woman…
She was asleep, I didn’t care to be stealthy.
She, for some nasty reason, reminded me of Ahera.
She, for some dirty gut reason.
The nostalgia, the wistfullness. The terror.
I wanted so bad to run her over. I saw it, like a vision.
That if I ran her over, that if she bled to death,
That if…forget about it. All horror.
Ahera, the woman who raised me. Or seized my soul?
The woman who gave me all my scars.
All these scars that define my entire person.
I remembered how she’d brand my young body with swastikas and crosses.
I could still taste, bitterly, the acrid smell of my burning skin.
I was her effigy. On my skin she had her legacy trademarked.
On my skin…names, slogans, symbols…burning skin.
Ahera, the only kin I had had…burnt my skin.
The wistfullness, on the eve of my 16th birthday.
How I had locked her in the shack we called home,
and in her home, her shack, I did set her on fire.
The pungent smell of burning flesh. Burning skin.
I was doing the burning. I was sated. What joy.
I remember the smirk on my face. That Monday morning.
That Monday morning that I was arrested. Justice they said.
Justice, for so many years I had sought. I laughed.
Yes. I pleaded guilty. Prison, I thought, was my justice.
“I might find peace in prison, maybe I wouldn’t slit my wrists or tie up a noose…guilty your ladyship!”
These I remember with unwelcome nostalgia…
I’m on the stretch leading to my house.
My fears crop up. This house…
This house, unappolgetically makes my blood curdle
Should I? I contemplate drowning. I see a puddle…
Screw my meaningless life. Screw. Manila. Screw.
I fear her. I love her. I dread her. Manila. My death, cue?
The stench of methamphetamine, the reek of cannabis.
Manila’s body was a hard drugs’ refuge.
She was expecting my baby. See, her body was my church.
She never wanted kids. She hated me. She loved me. She.
She, the love of my life. She, brutal recluse.
Her gory present borne of her gruesome past…
The rape…
Manila…my anorexic seraph. How I loved her dead eyes.
I, this time with stealth, pushed open my front door.
On the wooden floor she lay. Limp. Maybe lifeless…
On her left, a blood stained bayonet glimmered..
Manila!!
…
My world as seen through insanity
NambuyaEmbalabala
Special thanks to Jabulile Sigola ☆☆☆
A LETTER TO MY GREAT GRANDMOTHER
Dear ma,
Hello great grandmother, am sorry it has been decades and I have never reached out, am sorry. Pardon my recalcitrance, you probably are wondering which of your great grandchildren I could be. I am Nambuya, well there are so many of us with that name, but I am the less fair skinned one. My skin is Dark Chocolate , like my father’s. It could be that you have no idea what chocolate is, probably the British consumed it but would never let Kenyans access it, I’m just guessing, I hear they claimed that it’s plant, cocoa can not thrive in East Africa, anyway , my skin roughly has the colour of a grass thatch after the rains. I am that Nambuya. My grandfather was your second son. I hope you did not raise a fist and lament of having a disrespectful great granddaughter who does not care to introduce herself to her elders. Well, too much of my silly introductions, by the way do you know that I’m such a clown? You would have whipped my behind a million times had you been alive. Forget about that…
How is the after-life? Is it another life or just an after life? Is their time and nights? I’m overly curious you see. The world isn’t anything that you left of it except for the fact that human beings and animals still make babies in the same old fashioned way. Today most people own cars and the white man does not rule over any black man, well unlesss they both have reached such a bizarre agreement whose occurrence is highly unlikely. Did I tell you that school is mandatory? Of course I didn’t, but it sure is. I have been learning for all the years that I have been conscious. I bet you think it should be boring, well it is; but I have to work for the kind of future I want. I talk to my cousins in The Netherlands, a far away country, I bet you are wondrring how I do it, well we have phones these days, mobile phones. Some devices that eased communication, they are quite easy to use, and they have cameras through which video calls are made, and you get to hear someone speaking through it from wherever they are. People no longer write letters ma. Can I tell you a secret? You promise not to tell? Well, I have a boyfriend, he was born in Lesotho and raised in Greece. His mother is from the land of Arabs, Pakistan. A boyfriend basically means a male lover. He is kind and has long hair in locks. We could get married and have children or just keep pets instead. Or have one child and one tiger cub. That’s what people do these days. Granny people do the weirdest of things.There is this tiny box, or large if you must have, that shows us people and events across the entire world, it is called a Television Set, just TV works well though. These latter days we see human beings of sane minds touching these boxes just to get healing, I laugh at the whole idea you know. Not because I’m not pious but because I do know that it never works that way, and that most preachers of today are pretentious and suckers for fame and money.
I have been told you were a shrewd critique, you probably would have dismissed these pastors. There is so much corruption and impunity you should be grateful that you are not physically here to witness all these.
I should be going now ma’, I have to go to the mall. It’s like a market place , only that it is not open air. It exists in a big building. My next door neighbour saw your picture hanging on my wall and he thought you must have been witty…he is a friendly man called Albert, his fiance is a military man called Stanley. They are in love. Such is life ma…
Bye.
I must be insane to be writing letters to the dead.
But who cares?
Me, Nambuya with the chocolate skin.
Nambuya Embalabala 