Every morning I woke up with the fear that this,again,would turn out to be another day filled with the overwhelming feeling of being trapped, strangled, restrained from reaching my true potential.The future very near but I can’t be sure I’m in the right outfit for it.I tried to forget my past failures,but it seemed the harder I tried to forget the more they encroached into my present and crippled my attempts to get on with it. I fought hard to beat my spirit that was despairing and the urge to give up,to just,let things happen.But I couldn’t.In me,during my formation was installed a force greater than me, than my fears ,than my thoughts.Some call it hope.
I t was a force that couldn’t allow me to give in or just let life pass me by.So I opened my eyes and gritted my teeth.
I’d face anything and everything I was afraid of.I asked questions,requested for help,searched beyond my mind,listened to all the music I had pilled up.The Rock,The Jazz,
the bhangra,the mariachi,the kingdom melodies.I read too.I read the news,the sports pages,the lifestyle magazine.I dared.I reached out.I took trips,even to an Island.I visited a dentist.I called my folks and prayed.I read poetry and avoided loud,smokey places and mats and learned a new language.
Then I realized what my greatest fear had been.That I was capable of accomplishing a lot and was just scared of getting up and doing all those things that I fantasized in my dreams.
Within us lies great power that enables us to do all the things we wish in our hearts but are afraid that it may not come out as well as the general standards dictate.
Really,who sets the standards to what is within us?
I write stories,I write poems.the words in my hands are like yarn in a knitter’s hands.
The knitter decides the pattern,color and density of the piece they want to knit,and when to drop the knit,when to end it.Every cook decides when his food is ready.
As he said,the writer is the only one who knows his story.It is his business to write it.

So I write.

Let Me Laugh

Yes, that is the-you are unbelievable- look
Of course I’m startled
I like to laugh
When you tell me not to
When you say-this is serious don’t laugh-
Can’t help the look.

You know I like to laugh
When I’m happy and relaxed
When I’m with you, I laugh.

Laughter
Is the secret ingredient of-
Friendship and love.
To just let go.
To throw you head back
And laugh without care.

Don’t tell me not to laugh
For I laugh not with cynicism
It’s with pleasure, joy and stability
So let me laugh.
May 07

Dry Beds A Rarity

In lower primary,a shower was a once a week issue.If you were not in boarding school,and I wasn’t.I remember the only thing that made me and my siblings different was that we took a shower twice.That was on Wednesday evening.The next one would be on Sunday morning.
Ignore the fact that we wet our beds like taps gone loose.The night mishap was courteously referred to as-planting cabbages.
I grew up next to the Aberdare Forest and if you sipped some water straight out of the tank in the morning and spat out,most of your teeth would follow and the rest would become very loose.
So a regular bath was out of the question,incase you catch pneumonia .The irony was that you would be watering nursery beds until dark barefoot, and in the morning you jumped out of bed and out into the dew.Yet a warm birth was out of the question. In class,there would be a mixture of smells; ammonia in various stages of combustionThough with time,the smell would grow on you and what may have come out strange might have been a thoroughly scrubbed body with the smell of Rexona-still lingering.Many of us used soap smear on our legs in the morning,but it wasn’t scented;just your usual bar soap. Others used melted cooking fat or milking jelly.The teachers had become accustomed too, they didn’t seem to mind.
In class one;however,we had one teacher who causes shivers in my spine to this day.He used to carry out checkups on us daily.He checked everything and for everything.He checked for fleas and lice,long nails,pants,kamisi,,and-underwear-for the boys.He checked for torn pockets, chewed pullover cuffs. Woe to you if you had calves in your herd.They have a tendency to chew on wet clothes.I remember one of my sweaters,the best I had,grey in color,being chewed to the elbow.But the calf that did that learnt it’s lesson
An extra piece had to be crocheted from the elbow to the wrist.It gave the sweater a very table mat look to it.One day the teacher asked-don’t your cows have a pen?-

He checked for hankies and black necks, He embarrassed the boys who didn’t have innerwear by giving them a square piece cut out from a sisal sack-to go sew themselves some-He cut of people’s hair, in a zigzag pattern show it was longer that the acceptable 1cm from the scalp
He laid canes on girls who had lice on their bodies
He cursed our parents and told us how we all would turn out to nothing.He knew our family histories and used that against us.One time he beat me so much I had bumps a my entire behind up to my neck-because I couldn’t speak proper Kiswahili.I always got mixed out and spoke mother tongue, swaying it a bit to sound like kiswahili.I swore I’d never fail the blasted language.
The teacher never complained about the urine thick air of the class room.He never mentioned it
My desk mate gave off so bad sometimes I wanted to throw up,but I guess I had the same effect on her.We sat as far from each other as we could, I remember
One night I was asked to say the night prayer at home.I asked God to help me stop planting cabbages
They said it was wrong to ask God such things.
Though it wasn’t immediate,I stopped wetting my bed at a decent age,and when I had a relapse,it was out of fear of going out alone at night.Who knew what animal may have strayed from the Aberdare forest?
In Highschool,I once wet my bed.I slept on the upper bunk and you can imagine the apologies I had to make.The night before I had drunk cocoa and mugs and mugs of juice.
I went off juice for the rest of the year.

Only In The Dark

The raindrop on my nose bridge
Reminds me of your soft kiss
That slid from my forehead
To my lips, down my chin
‘This one dear, is a prayer for love eternal.’

Our love grew from fragile to strong
As our space we shared
Caring, nurturing
That far into the future
We’d still smile, when we heard Akon’s:
Nobody wanna see us together

Times have passed
The future came and went
And carried you with it afar
Where no doubt a maiden found your worth
And no doubt you repeated the prayer.
‘This one dear dear, is a prayer for a love that holds.’
As you kissed them from fore head to chin.

Now I must go,
To share my sleep with dreams
Where,
In the discomfort of iron bars and rough raymond
The dreams squeeze in.
I could get better
But no,
I want this
This memory of you.
This torture of being reminded,
Of how in the night we hug close
As we listened to Aventura, Arie and Julio.
It was an obsession
Every time we kissed, I became a hero
Coz you were the truth,
My brown skin
I was your indigo girl.

True to the words,
Whenever I need you,
I just close my eyes
And I am with you
Coz this is where we started,
This is the memory of you.
The only thing that ever mattered.

May 07