Once, All Africans Could Fly Like Birds

It is a story without a plot, without a prologue, without inspiration. Let's just say it is not a story after all, but words. Words woven; many of them to sentences and paragraphs just so to make some sense. To at least convey some kind of information to a reader, and only a reader. You cannot get to see the sense in those words unless you take a solemn time with them.

i am 21 , did you hear that? i am 21... twendy-woone,,, but i dont feel a thing. i dont feel like i am twenty-one, neither do i feel like i am any age, sometimes i feel a teenager, but i think not,, may be i am in fifties or thirties.. but i am not. time tells me that i am 21,, and yes twenty-one i am me.

and twenty one i wish i were not me. i want to write this but i am hungry and i dont think i want to cook. i dont know or i am not sure that after eating i will be in a position to write this. why am i writing it after all. why am i writing it especially on this software that i have never used before- word pad. where all my sentence-beginners and 'i's are in lower case and where i dont see those green and/or red zigzag lines. the green ones telling me i dont make sense and the red zigzaag telling me how zigzaaaged i am in my spelling. even when it is 21:21 30/10/2014 and mum calls and 'Hello,Hello my voice yells and i hear no reply and i cut off the line and it has taken 00.7 seconds, i mean 7 seconds and i miss her after a while and i know or i try to remember how it was like the day she brought me to this earth and i cant know because there is a feeling of remorse on the back of my head or somewhere in between my ears.

there is a longing , but i am single. i am single with a keyboard on my thighs, or are they laps. laptops and palmtops. my toes, in between those two tiny toes, i am itchy...it is itchy rather but it is a good itching....kuhu..i dont have its english equivalent in my vocabulary even the old i am or i have to be. that is soceity to blame. society not soceity. raia, ruriri. or it could be me to blame for i do of course have the power or at least i have been having the power; possessing every bit of it in the past and even right now,,, to know and demand to know and enquire. enquire.

yet i have been so quiet all along, i have not said exactly what i have always wanted, what my heart desires most has never been conveyed in my mouth...my lips, my tounge..tang. that tounge that has been for a period 5 years in flames...i felt stupid showing it to the school nurse,, a woman of a respectable motherly age, i felt like a toddler in his mother's craddle... my toungern...i dont know what is wrong....inflated,,flammable,,inflammable one of those was included in the symptomps list and then came, what have you people been eating?" i wasnt alone,, a horde of other students had the same problem,,,those five years down the line and i decide to finally disclose it to dad...he says homma... homa.. that chic wanted me to show her my tounge and No!! No!! No!! My mum said i should ne'er do that!...i acted the mama's boy to huurrt her ..period. Your bro still has the same problem,,,ni kihoma..kihomma. ok, i go silent i dint expect it to be so,,i had this idea...when saliva and semen mix,, the result is a tounge complication,,thoungern. with a whole map of the world thing around it and itself vulnerable

being calm can be disadvantages...that is not! my writing..it is from+8988 twitter,,it's a tweet..he doesn't know i have read it and frowned at the first contact--reading contanct with the word disadvantages...i think it should be..it should be..perhaps it should just remain and be published...well it is not good! to do that but it is not good! to have all these back draws in life. Mistakes,,, human nature and mistakes are friends big time.

i want to flapp my ear..only the left ear Simon,,and it's not like the goat or the cow...like a human..a human being. and not crushing your teeth with your mind on the ears,, grinding teeth grudgingly,,no! just letting it flow... letting the words flow..this time not words but the ear..only the left of the two.. just letting it swing...like Jet Lee's...it's not about hypersensitivity... not being a werewolf...just a muscle stretch that's all. a muscle stretch. gym. you should show it in talent show. the ear.. that was second year high schoool...sophomore i wanted to call myself and my buddies were out of the loop on that one like my..my room mate buddy is,,he thinks i am busy heating these things humans eat,,,heat to eat.. they can't eat raw..njithi. he is out there and i am in here,,,i am not writing,,typing...

i think i should just let this go..just let it hault and then just let reality rule..only i need to record some of the things that happen..those liitle details that make up life. i meant to say little, pardon me. i know you know the correct spelling so why be bothered when i make a deliberate mistake? every human beaing is a mistake. they show that in the very way they talk, talk and sing, talk and laugh, speak. it is never the same. each has there own unique way of doing those things and they with their lying little things they call brains... they say when a person easens their facial tissues and brightens their eyes...that that is a smile... and when there is sound after that similar procedure,,,it is laughter. and that sound is never really the same...every particle of it is ..is different! it is all split up..it pours in a lot more different ways ..it reverberates differently... it is just like a new born ..and yet we call it laughter. and we think what we do is laugh. luaghing. laughing. pwahaha! Hahaha! hehe! HuHu! ...these are lies,, i have never heard myself -laugh- ..in fact i dont know how i laugh but i think there are lots of e's in my laughter..eeee.. a lot of eee's.

i dont want to read this to you, i want you to read,,! that is why it is typed...written... then you'll pronounce it your own way..you will laugh it your own way...you'll talk it your own way...and that will not be a lie. it will be the whole damn truth. cause then you will be single.. a single unit alone there somewhere..without knowledge of what is good and what is bad,,what to do and not what to do...and maybe by borrowing from experience or from who-knows-from-where knowledge,,,in-born intelligence... you shall surely advance yourself in the attempt to understand these words... they are not pro..they are part of the whole...for when you read up to the very last word...something will happen...and just to warn you...what will happen will be a lie.. your brain shall sieve this whole and leave you with only one word or a phrase to offer as the summary of all this... maybe it shall be a disclaimer of i as the writer,,,or an approval...whatever it is..it is bound to happen anyway.

i need to think of a way to have some food on the table...no on my lap... and then i will think of a way to continue with this... i just want to go back..going back to me... 

 we are faced with the paradox of a people describing and identifying themselves by means of a foreign language which embodies the values and categories from which they are seeking to free themselves

why am I going back to me

why is there need to go back to me

what happens when I go back to me

who have I become that raises the need to go back to the self I was

what exactly was I then

are there environmental pressures that prompt my going back to me

when I am back to me, will I be alone

Infantry, probably not what we would in our wildest dreams want to become, again. Childhood nostalgia catches us often and what is left in our minds is wana… wanna… not wanna be’s.. but let you face it, that time you really,,or rather we really wanted to be… anything from wakagukua to kagunyu,,, every soul yearned to be of an identity as peculiar as the clouds in what was the heavens to us. The soul also wanted to build a house for itself,- somehow through the obvious intrusions of reality we saw the inevitable need to have a roof for ourselves and our little creatures we would bear… no some of them would be purchased from a supermarket,,,or a market for that matter,, and others ‘dropped-off’ by the aeroplanes flying in the skies… the heavens. Those noisy huge birds that everyone revered with a longing… “Look! It’s a ndege… ndege! Ndege! And that word formed its uniquely equivocal image in the minds of little ones. Ndege is Swahili for bird… but this ndege is the plane. That plane so amenable as to be accustomed with the noble duty of bringing in lives… “You see the ndege, it brought you!” small wonder why it never came for me. And closer to it in association… the angels …those creatures with whiteness of cleansing… purity… with wings like of an eagle… probably a huge eagle…messengers of good from God… they brought you!

All this perhaps to hide or restrain or protect the little mind from what was corruption of the mind… of norms… of not wanting it be so open to them so early the beauty of being adults… that they would be in some obligations that serve to increase the community,, ruriri. Perhaps our idea of the house was more or less inclined to the impression our parents house created in our little brains… the gable roof… and also what we saw others do… the thatch… the thatch intrigued… it was of more affordability degree than the iron roof and definitely was the subject of experiment… something just never left the brain of how one could simply get reeds freely from a wet area, which was in need of control, so to speak, and out of it make a roof for himself and ‘themselves’… or forage grass from the richness of the savannah or from the hilly undulating of the near equatorial of the West and with all the free nature’s gifts have that roof of his head… and of course after a while go back for a refill… the cyclical thread of nature and man was endless since he only depended on what nature would replicate naturally without obvious deprivation.

That whole cycle was a subject of awe… and just how that whole house-building activity was… another of its infinity… the men for the pillars…the pillars in the same cyclical roundness… and the conical roundness for the roof… and the women for the daub and the arrangement of the thatch on the roof… every one of the society’s hand was in hand… oh and there we little kids watched and keenly fed to our little heads what was to be our future as long as we remained in the ruriri.

And just how come the other day a bunch of the same kids though on a different generational placement had a box design for a house,, and just how delicate they showed the house was by use of decomposing maize stalks… and well just how proud they were of their menial job… “Mum, hatutakuwa tukiishi huko,” huko to denote the cubical…cuboidal stone and concrete house…iron roof definitely… “tumejenga nyumba yetu.” Yea, only they could not differentiate a square from a triangle.

Then the whole house-building idea or ordeal bounced and we found ourselves taking our lunch in the seclusion of the loving shade of the bushy mikinyei’s… trees… the umbrella acacias.. umbrella from acacia.. mukinyei… toothbrush… never seen a toothbrush except the live one… mukinyei… or the beautiful mswaki tree… a gift.. a medical gift to the people of the ASALs.

And then that inflicting of responsibility … some people would say… and I would, matter-of-factly, join them in saying that I was surely put in an exploitorial vulnerability… but not so since well, there was delight in knowing that lives, all lives in the family actually did look up onto me… nothing was hurting in changing the little boy’s nappies or preparing the smoothy for the hungry little stomach… or the ucuru … nothing really was absurd in preparing a meal and serving it to hungry men who would therehencefore gnaw with furrowing sounds of starving beasts that have just found nyama choma. In fact there was delight in seeing the happy little faces smile back to me… and in knowing that really I have put myself… or rather society has put myself in a position of providing to it what is the most important of its elements. Its actual backbone of survival, and without which there would not be civilization. I didnt lose nothing when I was in that position…I fed them and myself too. If I wanted, I had in my power to choose to do good or evil.. evil to mean be a cause of a lost life… and you know having that power was really the whole matter in life…

They would spend most of their times sharing ideas… no, trying to understand the whole matter in life… and not do it… that is, not come to it only so end up in some wise sayings and/or rules… which definitely were magnetical to me… I would then have the power to choose the wise from the foolish… choosing.. choosing to ensure that the offspring was what I had wanted to be… but even if the back draw was there… I think they were also wise in ensuring those ties bound… even if it meant that I wasn’t the one left to choose… but then so my presence in a household was by all means an investment… and a blessing… I just had to get used to life… my very right life which, I don’t know… others thought wasn’t right?

Sexually… I really don’t know why they were against the pleasure principal… why their wild ideas had it that they settled to that… sometimes some of us don’t even know the importance of that thing anyway… that a man can have two minutes on me tonight… and then the following night another two minutes… and so on and so forth… but the thought in me that this thing is good is there… but I don’t know why …or the goodness just ends after the two minutes and after his groans that suggest some climaxical pleasure… and I know that a seed is now henceforth be depicted in the inflation of my stomach… and a child shall after some counts of the moon cycle be born!

But then maybe it was right that I get initiated into this hazy world I am and all of my kind are meant to be… that of provision,,, well the man might be the hunter and the gatherer… but he does that only for he has a family… and then I take it from there Kuzaa sio kazi, … wira ni kurera… and I think naturally these people dint like the kind of us who demand things like bed activities from them… he comes to me one night,,, the next night if someone else is pregnant he goes to another… sowing seed is his decision of choice… if a hole has seed already developing then he ensures another hole gets one… all for the good of us all… we shall need these little ones to herd our cattle and sheep and goats… others to bring us more… all to maintain the wealth we are slowly creating, bits by bits. As the eldest wife, I know that… and when he needed a second wife, I sourced her for him… one I knew would be a great accompaniment for our wealth-building…

Perhaps this thing never reaches my climax because we have little attachment to it… but he does because ruriri has made me so beautiful with the facial incisions and miigathi in my ears and my neck… all this to ignite his passion for me… to show the society’s upholstery of what is beautiful… of the care it invests in the little things in life… the colours on my neck… the color on my skin… when I am dancing off my little tits in a communal celebration… kugoiya… we mwari wa kagoiya-ii ndugoiye rimwe tuinuke…aggrgaa hggh aggrgaa

Sometimes he shows it all to me… I make sure he feeds so well anyway and there is not much in his days except the herding and the wild killings… his job… and I am right there staring in his eyes… sometimes I close my eyes and he closes his too and there and then the two-minute thing is broken and I know that this is all life to me… our life is great it takes him a great sacrifice and commitment of love making to the stubborn me I have become… to the solitary of my soul for pleasure… it takes his God-given talents to woo me to the world out of my world and there I lie the happiest woman… the society is all happy in me… and tomorrow another woman shall have it… and we shall bear happy children … for they are out of happiness.

Itaha,, that passer-by who comes and I give them itaha… mukimo from my ikumbi.. it is all freely given we don’t expect a goat in return or in exchange of the food… irio cia nda itiumaga mburi.. and then I am grinding and gukia ucuru for us all… the whole industry is in my house… and then my toddler, second-born is suffering… a thorn has accidentally pierced the precious little creature… and the concoction of the herbslady helps…

In the evening I know I will go and sing my shuka off my waist and weekly I know we… we are going to pray.. thaai… I realize that there is somewhat a power above us that helps in our provision of the rains and the harvests… of the children and wealth..even if I am part of the wealth owed to a man… and yes this power is out there, and more so in the very me.. and in the very little thing I touch… the cyclical roundness.. the pattern just continues… this cause that… and I tell that to my children and grandchildren… I tell of the beauty of the woman in ruriri to my daughters when they come to my kitchen and learn the dos and donts of my little industry… mburi ya icegu.. my dearest lamb with the huge horns I make sure it grows fat and wide and strong… every evening, in every household, food cooks… and when I am out of my oil preserves, I know the mburi ya icegu shall be in hand… with a consequent replacement. In my kiriri, I sleep off my day compactness of tiresome spasms and mind you, I am away from my soul-mate… no, just call him mzee… he needs to talk to his little boys of what it is like to be a man… just like I have told my daughters of being a woman… and a good one for that matter. Ours is such a wide gap, of gender and its role.

Nothing changed. Nothing seemed to change. Life was as it was. As we had woven it. All the patterns were still intact, until one day I was alienated from my mzee, not death did us apart, not age that would have me in the forest as free meal gift to the beasts since I wouldn’t provide anymore and would reversely be provided for which in its very sense would nullify my existence and hence my appropriate position and role in my very world… not any of that happened to me. The moon still gave us the days… we still tied the knots to mark the end of a day until I was being tortured by some people, I came to realize… they were the people the visionary of our ruriri had been talking about… those whose placement in human-being’s historical spans had a superiority upper hand… their industry unlike my little icegu had given them the government… and the cannon, their greatest weapon… it was incomparable to the weak machetes our blacksmiths made, as though with magic, from ores from soil! Cuma…chuma… it was a good ally… a stronger ally than the wood even if it were of the oldest muiri… cannons, our boys, only some of them had gone to mbaara… war… mbaara sounded like fire to me.. chaos a lot of chaos.. and somehow in its overall design there was strategy… the outcome of every war… Second World War… I now knew that out there, there was, beside God, other of our kind, so many of them…

And some came to this place of darkness, darkness that we saw light in, but to them was darkness because we had never shown of an interest of showing it to them, or having them to us. It was rich darkness, for the sun bathed in it all year round… and even in detainment it still did shine… it was in our very hope that some of the things, actually most of the things we passed on to our posterity our creations from our own flesh and blood, would preserve us, and who knows, they would advance in our thinking when the time came and they were old men of no use any more other than drinking from the concoctions that would numb their nerves and all along talk… talk of summaries of life.. thimo.. measures of life…of mere existence perhaps. Perhaps they would decide to inscribe the thimos in our very articles of existence, the nyungus …in our attire.. in our cuma… and even in our huts… perhaps they would see the perishability of the articles and in the hope to create a history of a countless number of the moon cycles look for slates, for paper… or an equivalent from who-knows. Perhaps our art would now start being solely seen as pure aesthetic… perhaps … perhaps… but it wasn’t perhaps anymore. All the dreams we had, we saw them right in our eyes in the existence of a people stronger than we were. There was a distraught on the case of the people’s skin but who cares, this people would have us utterly distorted when our kind decided to oppose them, after realizing that it was really a bad idea to do what our society, ruriri, believed in and upheld with our very own fibers… irio cia nda itiumaga mburi… we gave them the itaha, which in their case was the land, and they seemed to search things we never knew we had… the mines, don’t know.

Well, it was a bad idea,… we should have had the thinking of our old men into digging of ways to find power of weaponry… but I and many others were now detained… and tortured… there was the muma we had taken… all this despite the prevailing peaceful stay we had earlier on had with these precious travellers… passers-by who turned out to be home-comers… and we were the passengers… I don’t know how I am managing to type this using these fingers for all I know is that they could be twitched until they, inversely touched the top of my wrist … my old friend was tortured and the only thing she saw last was the torturor… a conditioned son of ours… our very own sons had been contracted with this white virus that was spreading profusely… and I dint know where my little daughters were… where I had left them… my mzee was in kamiti… I dint know how the whole prison thing worked but I guess we were maybe in the same prison only it seemed a so huge gap… like his prison was on top of Kirinyaga and I was in Nyandarua… all between us the wild hostility… the jungle of dreams and whimsical longings.

But our sons fought on,, though it was clear as the snow of the Kirinyaga that it was a losing end… our women,, they were involved too… somehow we did not exactly see it as a resistance to change, but as solidarity of the right to be who we were… may be there was a good cause for our resistance… for in the dark tunnels of our rich mountains lay our hopes… our hair grew thick and hard… long and brittle… all by itself… it was our mark of the adaptability degree to our very land… and we took from them the cannons… some of us made such for ourselves… and in rui ruiru the waters changed color… the blood of the white man and the blood of the black too,,, together it was flowing in the waters… and there was not any difference…

And then there were no evening dances any more, my tits had grown slender and minute from the depression and tension I had been subjected to… they had said that the dances were evil and they were done to evoke evil spirits… that we Africans had marginal religions that were very primitive… even the thimos dint matter anymore… there was a book that was translated to my language and which had another book on the inside called thimo… it talked of mutumia ngatha… mutumia ngatha and her husband… polygamy and its life wasn’t to be found in this firm religion… I don’t really know if anything had changed… if time had changed… I was told it was August… not mworia nyoni… of January, not mugaa… of July not muthathana… and I wish I had been taught of the 1 2 3 my boys did when they were counting the cattle heads when time came ariithi makiinuka…

The moon still had its brilliance on me, I wanted to tie the knot but what for, the day had a numerical equivalence in the calendar… something to do with the year 1963… and someone was hoisting a flag, so we were told, on our great Kirima gia Kiringaya… now Mount Kenya… we watched all through that night … facing Mt. Kenya… and behind us the snores from a small box .. a radio… we simply called it ridio because it was a new addition to our industry… and the following morning, I changed.

Yes, only when I changed did I really fully absorb into my whole self the immense feeling of change itself… of loss,  of gain, of everything. It was simple, there was a person with a thing with a wheel that he stepped sequentially and by so doing made some ‘beautiful’ things they called clothing. And I was there wearing the white-mans self. It felt great and relieving wearing that which belonged to my master, to the very one who had me beaten up and brutalized perhaps for a good cause.

And my self, though now somehow reincarnated… would now learn from my master, a title he only deserved for the kind of superiority he claimed over those of my kind… and then we decided to learn from him… to know his language… besides he had things we never had… I wanted to go to where he came from… to have his company was to me like spending life in the paradise, the magical place he told me from his Bible that the good-doers would go and spend life eternal ,,, his school was great, his math was great too and I didn’t know why I had to spend all those years preparing for what he called the world… you know the world of jobs, of family, mostly of working… now that maybe there were no more animal preserves in the wild, or the shambas were not producing any more, and to make them produce, I needed to learn how to… but I couldn’t as much as my brothers would… they were thought to be more susceptible of the privilege, which they would then pass on to us in the family… an idea which I was for all the least reason okay with since after all I would get to learn those things! I would get to change!

These people, they saw me foolish and they were proud beasts… that is my opinion… perhaps I should get a share of the education virus and experience it my own way… and now I know, after a recitation of what is clearly a record of time in their history which they called the Age of Reasoning, after the opinions of others that my brain was more into humanities than the sciences, after a mind-opening… I am still me. I am me in many ways… I am the me who was a cheerful family lover and who didn’t care so much as long as she was doing what was expected of her… but then there is that part of me that, now that my education is equaled to that of my brothers, tends to be like them, though not so. Come on, I can Hunt!

I don’t know,,, they still hunt..for me, for money,, but it is all life in a whole new dimension… cannon-ical in its very existence,, food now costs money, and a hell lot of it… I too cost money… art costs money… that nyungu is no longer seen often but it costs money too… and I don’t know what is what and which is which… it’s like that change gave birth to twins, but in our own ignorance preferred one to another… or rather decided to adorn and take much attention to the white one than we accorded to the other black fellow… this whole world of whiteness is collapsing in my eyes and my very self, it is so huge and vast that its split-ups are the very magma of the colossal damage from the inside… and though I refuse to look around me,,, there still is that tearful whisper, a whisper full of life and virginity, an innocent whisper, coming from a life abandoned… or rather a balanced life.

 He died, it must have been that toxical liver he ate, a snake-bitten goat liver… and there was no hospital nearby, there was no doctor nearby, and to say the least, there were few such kind… whatever happened to the herbslady in our village…mugo! Where are you? … and then there is the man I heard who was diagnosed with a kidney failure and to everyone’s surprise chose not to continue with the treatment and instead await death… accept death instead of the poverty that was knocking on the door to the family which was poor anyway… life to me has been a mere struggle of survival,, I still shake when I talk.. and I know how to operate my mobile phone, thanks to my granddaughter, and I put it a little bit further away from my ear when I am on the phone (unless I want to revive the pain in the ears… whatever happened in the torture). Perhaps that torture was all I had to go through in order to have this phone and this computer and that bank on the other side of the road… that matatu I take to Nairobi or Thika for a family get-together…no for uthoni…these things are still there… a long-distant relative got married off to a mzungu of Australian origin… they also came from Australia? I hear they went there before they did come to Africa and had, with the cannon, the Aborigins off the ground and established a white Australia… and the America we know or hear of today was not America some time back in history… colonization…

On Sunday I go to church, and the only worry is whether or not I have sadaka… otherwise I know I will hear of something that will sound to my ears as repetition of something I have always heard before, over a long time… there is the guild and the choir,, there is the praise… sometimes new members join… and then there is that virus again this time of deception..somebody, a form-two drop-out has been calling himself a doctor, and a prophet too… these names, always repulsive of them… and never reverence to them. But don’t under-estimate the power of the church, otherwise you will have to bury yourself.

And then my daughter is talking to me about breaking the chains of unduire... something she detests and with kinyururi says that they were so primitive and in darkness... she means to say associated with the devil... worshipping Ngai wa Kirinyaga? That was not the way to do about life... she said her lot was in light for they had a religion... and a strong one for that matter... and then the granddaughter is like living in two worlds... I can see it ..I can see her bi-self... she was taught to go to church, well and good and she grew so much attached to that virtue and now... I cannot tell when I look at her whether she is a person I was when I was going to the church... or even now that I am still a Christian... she seems to have this dualness ...this other life that always jumps ahead of this other one... sometimes for good, sometimes for bad. At the beginning it was never, and was indeed an abomination, for a Christian to lie... and now i see it all the time, and it is like, who cares?

My grandboys, they are real players... that drug thing has even caught my granddaughters, and the partying thing, it could be a repetition of the kugoiya in the past except this with the thing they call kusugua... it is all different... the boys never grow old enough to come up with thimos and lead the community, they are drunk as soon they are born,, initiation for the boys... and the girls, all is yours...  I must say though, i think there is beauty in this life... only I dont know or i am not sure of its endurability... how long it shall endure that is.

In a day, one sees a lot of things. A mountain of things. We see of movies, we see of the televisions, and some of us, my grandboys... they see of erotical beings in graphical avenues... we see them in indulgence, and we think life is about sex, money and power... my grandboys, they seem not to withstand it... everything corrupts their minds... i see them struggle... and i dont know should i tell them these things? Should i tell them of the importance of finding and making love to a woman? A real woman? Should i tell them of wealth-building and not that blow-off thing they do with their dismal salaries at the end of the month? What wisdom, tell me can i borrow from the abandoned twin, that is going to help me salvage a generation on the brinks of extinction?

And to you, my granddaughters, i wish to leave this to you, of the blessing and curse that is seen in our very beings. Such is the duality that clings on to us whether we like it or not... being producers, our place in the chain is of inevitable importance and being so comes with shortcomings, ...we are fragile, but that does not mean that we are not powerful... we are  beautiful but every month we become ugly, we are vulnerable but that does not refute the fact that we are in many ways immune in our systems, something that soars up higher than our brothers... we might be physically weak but we only us, are known to have the power to control the world’s strongest men. And you definitely know what this means. Sometimes when i am in the mind of my grandboys, sometimes i am in that of my late husband...other times in the minds of my very own sons and sons-in-laws and when i am in these little minds, i am ever true with the fact that the only  place true answers can be found is only in ourselves. You people, my daughters.

There is a reason why history had us invisible for the better part of its existence... there is a reason why that became us, why we were made ourselves by us being invisible... it only made us more and more powerful and adaptable ... there is a very strong reason why we were, despite all that, somehow in the every activity our culture carried through... and there is an all the more reason why we needed to be educated... not to turn ourselves into attractive independent beasts, no, but to harden us... to make us a people better than we were and to consequently make us make our societies better and stronger in virtue and in leadership...

We didnt have to lead the people,,to always be on the fore front in decision-making... that wasnt really that neccessary... but for sure our existence was very neccessary... and it is actually more neccessary now than it were a hundred years ago, even fifty years ago... or ten years ago... it is like the necessity increases with time... and who knows one day we might as well find that it is too late... and that will be a time when no one will be themselves anymore... when the only thing that will differentiate ourselves from every other person will be the little bras on our chests... and that time, my daughters, i wouldn’t like it to be very soon... neither would i want it to come at all.

In one part of this world, one part that represents many parts of this world, some of my daughters do this and that... and in another part of this world... one of my grandboys respond to this and that... in many parts of the world, confusion rules ... and people dont want rules any more... they say we must accept change and that we should get used to it... that my daughters should be allowed the dignity of choosing what to wear every morning of every day and never be told to wear this or that... and as it were, in this world choices of attire are as many as the sand grains in the beach... unlike when that tailor came to our village and everyone was dressed to the new white self... we see options lying everywhere...on the streets, in the clubs, in the churches and more so in that other world that exists somewhere in the air... the internet... i hear one can create accounts and live in there... in the internet... all kinds of accounts and sites and groups and one needs bundles to access such... and there and then we know there are a lot of choices to be made concerning the reasons for the existence of those accounts

That one can see people living in those distant places, and speak to them as i am speaking to you now when i can see you face-to-face is awesome... i wished that would happen to me when i was younger like you are now... and there it goes... i am caught up in this all-around-me worldly roundness... inside this circle... inside my hut i left for the gable cuboidal house... oh it reminds me very much of my former me... of me actually... this time there are a lot of things in my circle... all which demand my attention... or not at all

The Need

You know, i should give you people a story... but i wont for i know what you will say... go and have it on the screens then you wont have to ask us to listen to you... and therefore for that reason instead i will just say it directly...in my time there were no nails ..those that join a piece of wood to another... we used to tie the joints... with natural thread of course... mukoe.. and to my point, i wont say i will hit the nail on the head... maybe i will do something else something like just talking the truth aria ma uconore ngoma,,, why have i said that either?

But you are wise and i know you know and i dont want you to get bored... bored of listening to me... like you have a lot in life to care... things that cannot in any way bore you... like in order to come to me, it has taken you a long trek and now you are tired and dont need to listen to anything, its alright.. this is what life has made us, even myself... and i don blame anything or anyone for everything you or i have become. In any case to some extent i feel this freedom reigning in every one of my fibers... of my muscles i feel like i have many hearts all around my body and they are all pumping blood... pumping and pumping... i feel like i want to be in tights... that way these hearts will be seen... or i will feel them more... i will enjoy fully this feeling... feeling of freedom... i want also to be loose... i want to feel the air blow my open thighs... i want to accord this gift to this body that matters so much to me... and i want to do all this because well, i loove myself... they compliment me all the time, yea... and now i compliment myself and complete myself

I know i will get that job, they cant be full of my physicue in their eyes, every one of them wants a part of me... if  i am on the other part of the bridge, at least i know i will and must have a boy to take care of me... and if i show myself available, a horde of them... and i dont think money will really be a worry... sometimes it is though and that is why i need that job... so i know in all the most important reasons, i should learn to be reliant to myself... i got this!

And then pleasure, no way i dont want kids... no i am about to have a kid...it was an accident! You know they can take care of that,, the good bear the thing and it is a whole trouble of commitment.. al bear it anyway... people are looking for balls elsewhere and here i am with the gift in my womb... hurray... hurray to myself... only within myself because the others didnt think right of that...it was a premature thing, but i am in college you know... i am above 18 you know, ..but when i am in marriage and dont seem to have a blessing coming my way,,, you must be bewitched you know,,, you should see a doctor you know,,,

And this virus eats us and there is a rumour that a certain injection...tetanus they call it is meant to suppress the fertility in me... am gonna be sterile! But the bed thing, oh like,,, ALL THE TIIME BABY! ... i just feel the guilt thing... like i am to be born in the future and i now i cant be born because when the sperm won, it found a barrier wall... or it didnt swim at all in my vagina... or it got swallowed in the mouth! Or it was a behind thing and eventually got flushed out in the toilet... but all these i know they make my life, my present life, this thing makes it cool... and to hell with the future baby... this life, i dont know if i can provide for them in this life, maybe in another world...a world-to-be

I take shots in one of those film-makers... and it is money for a corruption of a mind somewhere,,, no they make it cool... my body, how can it corrupt a mind? I mean they will do that thing with quality and graphical adjustments,,. Visual effects, and the one on the other end will be erotic ...if they are heterosexual that is, otherwise there are these beside me who dont seem to notice me for they are homo... well... maybe i should not get naked and have photos taken of me... maybe that is a really bad idea... having a copy of me living in the air... and beeing seen by all those hungry people that live in the air too... and probably have me ruin a marriage sex life... i should not be in the porno magazine too... but well, i think i am sexy in it... i am exercising power you know,,

But still i am present in the former humility present of my former me... yes i am there... in the village... i am there... in the church... i am there... and sometimes they dont want me to know these things... they have me in dresses and claim that trousers will corrupt me... i am there... and then suddenly i am not there, i have joined them... i have become a part of the other world... of a world within a world...

And i realize as long as i love doing what i love doing, there is nothing wrong in that... but well,, its like i never feel it... the humane in me... the mother in me... its like it is not there... and i am like lost, am like a buffalo, the one we called mbogo ya nduiki... or the elephant that kills a human being and is as a consequence gotten rid of the family, its own family,,, and you know with elephants and this family thing...

Those carols,,, i only hear themgood when i am high... those go-spel songs,, well, they are good to whine... and much of me is actually an effect of them... i am talking of the society.. of them... my peers...them,,, or maybe it is all because of ME!

Now i wont give you a story, i will just lean on the part that i will have to mind my own business... on the part that i will have to lean to my tribe,,, everything happening tells me to... and on the part that i dont know what my children shall be like... well they will have degrees and lack jobs, that is the life... but you know will they be just like beasts hunting for money and positions and deals and crowning all that up with an orgy or sucking it up with a heroine dose? Will they kill each other if they dint have any of these and others have... will they kill each other and dont feel a thing?

And wait, that time, my childhood, shall it all be forgotten...buried deep in the dusts and left to rot?... shall we have to only talk of the pyramids, of the Great Zimbabwe... of the adobe in Malawi? Shall we have to look at those things and associate them with dont know...illuminati for the pyramid and for all we know we are a people living in the past,, or to put it rather radically,, a people now forgotten...living but forgotten...living speaking not what their ancestor coined as a language...living in the past... and not living at all because the very corruption of our cultures would have to mean that extinction became of us a long time ago.

I know i cannot make you go years back, even if it were twenty years, back in history... i know it cannot happen that way... it shall be a digression of the highest order and even a felony .. but ...i wont use but... its just that i hear that other twin,, she might have come from the desert where we condemned her to be... but she is still alive... miracles do happen

In this darkness or in this light... whichever it is... she demands our attention... just look at her... there is that kind of beauty that tells not of guilt... not of plasticity... but of reality... that beauty that lies in every beholder... the innocence that melts every living soul...the longing that attracts every living particle.. that revatilizes feelings... that, in its very lightness overcomes the gravity of this Newtonian world... every little thing in life begins to have a meaning... even the minutest of the particles...even the slightest drop of paint... and they all work to draw this most beautiful world ,,one that claims its position only in the fantasy of the most powerful minds of the race

These twins are the result of history,, our very own existence...

These twins need a link,, for their own co-existence..

And these twins,, they cannot exist

Not till one of them doesnt

Or none of them does

Then what shall happen?... a people that has in their genetics the very duality of this existence...

I watched my daughter and noticed her struggle with duality... and i must say it is never a life worth living ... and i looked at myself and found that i was in a trinity... and i am still surviving... perhaps then i thought, when these twins have no breath in this world, then the duality shall be one... and this,, i dont know,,, i dont seem to like it and that is why i want to go back to me.. just as a preliminary action

I recently had the big chop... i couldnt stand anymore of the thickness of my head... i dont know why i cant just have, naturally, the flowing flimsy hair,,,like that of the white or the Arabic or that of the Indian... for mine,, the sheep wool is better-of... so i can accidentally bend over and when i stand you will be surprised i had a hair kofia... you can for worse love me this week because of my hair and realize it was only a crush and you have moved on because i changed my hairstyle... yea, i can go around floating in the air and the wind and with the green or the yellow or the gold on my head... that cost money bro... and that is a beauty i buy so often than not...

I must put on those little things while i am in the shower, or when i am sleeping...i have got to be so emotionally and physically attached to my head that much of my world literally revolves around it, and it, like the Sun, only rotates on its own...picking to send light to this or to that... with its own small universe on its back... that is my head

But you know the blow dry is usually another sun to the sun... maybe one of the many reasons why i dont get to feel the heat on me...the immense heat i must say... and sometimes i scratch my palp out when a wig is on me for a long time...when my devil hair struggles to break the chains of the entangles of the plaits... and i know it is time to clean up the mess in the prison upstairs...

I know i should get a conditioner,, i should get washed up... and i know it is not time that gets me the itchiness on my palp... it is just me... only me... and, ‘I will have dread locks”.. but there are the dread-like plaits on my table...and my head is a huge mountain of beauty and complexion...only for a short while and all is gone... the cycle.. the cycle.. the cycle... and more and more hair gets burned up into flames... and more of me has more and more different looks and styles...i am unpredictable... i am unstable... and that becomes me... that is me!

Then i dont want to be seen...”A woman, they say...should have her head covered”... and yes it is covered and covered under it the prison again... of millions of yearning souls... zigzagged,, criss-crossed,, restrained... they are all blacks...strings of blacks that sometime assume mountains...other times undulating hills in a horizon and other times a forest of darkness... akili ni nywele... and i look myself in the mirror and think yes,, a woman should have her head covered... even if it means they will say ill of my husband... that he cannot even have some coins to have my head done... even when i am seen as poor... she should have her head covered...in the night the angels may visit...then they will differentiate...

And this whole color thing... i am colored by the way... i am a bloody colored... and that is not a shortcoming... i am the African queen you know... black beauty... the most beautiful woman in the world... that they said, only some, to one of my own recently... and i am colored! Though in my soul i have this thing for light skin... for jealousy...no,, i mean these light people are good and blessed... i should get IT THAT WAY! Why should it only be them? Surely it isnt like there is any harm in that... then they wont only be the ones to get the first attention...

My delicacy of my flesh is in many ways depicted by the numerous light designs i employ on my clothing... and when i am accidentally caught up in the rains,,, and i am so scared i cant run-they will see me! Or my flip-flops...they are gonna tear up! Ohmy God... my hair is gonna shrink!... and all the universe spins around me hapharzadly with all its mass it is near an outburst... and the result, i cant run in the rain... not when i am dressed like this...its gonna wash me up of everything... the redness of my lips,, oh my how else will i show i know this thing!... and in the darkness a spectator is shouting things like, “She is a Nairobian,”... like it matters

Then the lunatic attacked me,,, i cried,, shouted,, said a name over and over again... and he could not defend me...until i had a chance to run away... perhaps men dont defend us anymore... perhaps they think we deserve all this filth that society lays on us.. veiling us with unfathomable disgust... that a lunatic, a drunkard lunatic would have his drankurd d in my v and then w would go on with life like nothing happened... like i was all alone and somehow i deserved it... wonder why i wouldnt have all the reasons in my favor to strangle the kid that would have the taste of the drankurd d... there would be no reason to bring another double drankurd d only to end up d-ing more of my kind and spreading the virus...

My male friend could not defend me, for all the more reason that i wasnt his... he would die defending a friend who was just using him to get something... that time of my attack, that was the time he declared or rather his intentions on me faced a confession... perhaps he wouldnt find a good reason in him to defend me... i had just used him, and our contract would soon be over... anything more than that would be a liability and a solemn shortcoming on my side and would be taken with the necessary attention it deserved... get used to it

People contract deseases and die and are buried,, get used to it...the living go on and they get used to it... people meet and they get what they want from each other,, get used to it... and i see a world of beasts ,, of cannibals who wont sleep until they have sucked into every juice of a colleague’s thing... property, money... this thing is in the air too... today i have, tomorrow someone is in posession of the same coin that was in my hands yesterday... and today becomes yesterday and tomorrow... we go on and get used to it...

What hasnt changed is that i am still being hunted... and that really is good news on my side for well, for the obvious reasons... and very profound ones... i know that yes i still have the power... the power.. the power boys! To run the world! To run you!

I am not stupid,, i know these things... but then whenever i think of them... i am lost in infinity... there are rules of the game, but even so its like i feel like i dont belong... like i need to belong... you will say i am an African yes,, but that will just be it... like im gonna flood into you and change you, i cant do that... i may have spent all my years in the dark continent but hell yea am a Cardasian and i live by it... my league has always been in Europe... my heart in the Obama country and only a tail is left of me in Africa...so if i die young, you know what to do...

But it is not like there is any to do about me being more Afrocentric...for all the good reasons... i think the dinner wears rock! And high heels were God-sent to blow up my beauty!... i think not to think, to just sit back and have fun... life is too short anyways why should i deny myself of all its goodness!

It doesnt come to me that when the question of a people in a history shall be raised in the future... my description shall be sucked up by the crowed... whose life was exactly what i was and therefore i would not be a concern... This question of the second-coming comes to me all the time... i dont know will any part of me partake of the supper?

And yet i look around and realize that the world and everything in it is right... the idea of wrong is a mind baby... and that idea actually makes the world wrong... and you know, the world doesnt change... it is still right... but we are wrong... we who think it to be wrong, we must be wrong to think so in the first place...

I will find a mate and bear him these kids of duality... kids on whose shoulders shall be the mark of the me i was and of the me i became... what good shall be of the me that will be a result of the two mes? Perhaps they wont like the fate i will have suggested to be theirs... but it shall be a decision that i know shall have to cause a lot of damage... and these little kids, whether they be all daughters, shall be the sacrificial lambs.

  I believe it was for the good reasons that these things happened to me in my past... i believe something of good shall be borne of the grand design of the life in this tropic of the Earth that i live in... and i believe that upholding our differences while at the same time accepting them as our very existence shall be/is the reason to live...to enjoy life..of the beauty of life... and i know that some day men will finally and eventually realize the fulness of life in spending a good time with a woman they love... of the mutuality that kind of association brings... of the goodness that comes alongside it... of the blessing that hides itself in cheerful giving,, in caring .. in the truth...irio cia nda...

Right now there is a need.

Once all Africans could fly like birds.

©Simon21