Growing up in the tiny village of Gaturiri

A couple of weeks ago I visited my old church in the village. The last time I was there was five years ago when I attended my brother’s wedding. It was the same nice church I attended throughout my childhood. Same pews, same congregation just a little bit older, same songs from the timeless kikuyu hymn book, same big bible placed on the same wooden stand at the front, same small room that we used as a backstage during plays…only I who felt different. The Sunday school kids presented a song that went something like “ciana kenai, niturathie iguru kenai…” (Children feel happy we are going to heaven...) a classic tune from back then.  I could picture myself, eighteen years ago standing on the front line singing along to the same tune, dressed in a white ‘staired’ dress, my thin legs tucked in my black mutumba school shoes with a lude shine. This brought a wistful affection of my past, the simple childhood I had at the tiny village of Gaturiri in the outskirts of Karatina, Nyeri County.

My life started on the 15^th of February many years ago. I can imagine it was a difficult period for my Super mum; one for having had to spend valentine’s day in labor and two having  to spend it alone, with my dad having passed away 5 months earlier after only 3 years of being together. But that did not stop my growing up. For as long as I can remember, our house was like a palace to me; it had so many rooms for my little brain to register; rooms that were filled with cries, laughter and noises of me and my two siblings and many other black and white people who fit in a small red box full of knobs with the words great wall inscribed on it. Since electricity was news in our village, my mother had bought a small chloride battery that we would recharge after every 3 weeks for a mere fifty shillings at a privileged neighbor’s house who had already installed the magic light. At night we would use a paraffin lamp whose glass was held with a woven wire to prevent it from breaking.

I started learning chores at an early age despite super mum getting us a house help. A normal Saturday would start off with me expertly placing soot coated sufuria on the three stones fireplace in the “outside kitchen” and preparing us steaming tea. This would be accompanied by a piece of last night’s ugali; the typical breakfast we had for years. I would then run off to the shamba where we had long rows of “mikima” trees, select one with the longest branches, scale it and gather enough twigs to form a broom which I would use to clean the soil paths that meandered all around our palace. I would then let out our beautiful cow “Wamucii” and watch her gracefully graze in the large compound behind the house.  My sister would be assisting the help with the dishes while my mum would be busy preparing an early lunch, which mostly consisted of rice mixed with bananas and potatoes or ugali accompanied by kienyeji greens. During the crops’ seasons, we would have boiled corn and sweet potatoes with tea or assemble under our loyal mango tree with knives, make ourselves comfortable on the dirt and my brother would shake, jiggle and joggle the poor tree to give us enough mangoes for a fruity lunch.

Afternoons would comprise of taking a shower with hot water heated under a blazing bonfire of dried coffee twigs popularly known as “mbuce” and then head off to church for brigade meetings or join my peers to wash clothes by the stream when water made a disappearing act at home. I would then run off to play “mbrikicho” and “koti” with my village mates. At around 6 pm, I would hear my mum shouting my name miles away; that signaled the end of play time. I would hurriedly run home, grab the milk bottle and skip to Mama Judy’s place to pick our milk share. There I would meet her preparing chapatis and I would ogle at them till she handed me one. I would eat half and spare another half to take as an appetizer with the evening tea as my mum prepared supper. On getting home, I would pick the yellow pail, fill it with water from the outside tank, bring it to the main house, rummage under the banana plants behind the kitchen for dried leaves to light the morning fire, confirm if we needed to borrow any salt or onion from our neighbor, clean my feet, walk on my toes, jump on the sofa covered with “loose cover” and switch on the TV just in time to sing along to “Tausi ndege wangu.…” We would then join mum in the kitchen as soon as sleep started creeping on us. Being the last born, I was entitled to sit with her on the low two legged “chair” and sleep on her lap as she narrated story after story of her younger days living with grandma.

Sundays were always early days for me. My mum ensured we attended Sunday school each and every Sunday. She would often dress us in matching clothes; my sister and I. That was not appealing. She would then hand us handkerchiefs with 5 shillings tied onto each with a strict warning not to spend it on “patco” or “sweet mzuri”. Twelve o’clock on the dot would find us back home glued to the TV waiting for Flash, sinbird, William tell, Conan, relic hunter, Walker Texas Ranger…If my memory serves me right, they followed in that order as the years progressed. 3pm was the famous Kuna nuru gizani show and later on the “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday...” (Sung in that tune we all knew). My mum would then position us between her legs and minutes later we would come out with an Alicia Keys look on our hair of “Kanyitithanio”, a popular hairstyle back then. Occasionally, we would go the shopping centre square to enjoy Dj Afro movies at a fee of 5bob. The following day being a school morning, mum would ensure all our books were present in the ugly-looking khaki bags that would be strapped on our bags for the entire week. We would then give our shoes the lude shine, pleat our dresses with a charcoal iron box, go to bed early and wait for the rude interruption of our sweet slumber by the 5.00 am alarm. We shared waking hours with the witches.

Holidays used to be my best days. No school! We would sell mangoes and sugarcane by the roadside which often resulted in a thrashing from my mum simply because we were not allowed to accept money from strangers; how would we sell without accepting money? That always bewildered me.  Mum used to get a lot of visitors and we were always supposed to behave well in their presence or risk getting a distorted wink or whatever they used to do with their faces gesticulating war after the guests leave. Most holidays used to be coffee picking and crop planting season. We would head to the shamba very early in the morning to plant beans. Mum would lead making fine uniformed holes on the ground with a small weeding panga and I would follow closely dropping three beans in each hole and covering it with earth.  We would have an army of workers employed to pick the ripe red coffee berries and that meant waking up early to mum winnowing grains which would later make up lunch for them. My favorite part about coffee days was going to the factory because I would get a chance to weigh myself and enjoy a ride back home on a wheelbarrow. In the evenings I would meet up with my then lover at a designated spot where we would talk a lot of sweet nothings, promise each other heaven, plan our next meeting and just like that our date was done

Holidays especially December were not complete without visiting relatives. The most priceless moments were when my mum would announce that I would be travelling to Nairobi to visit an aunt. I would prepare a week prior. The eve of the journey was spent making sure everything fit in my well-scrubbed khaki bag, mum talking endless about tall buildings and spiral roads, my siblings’ eyes gleaming with envy and making sure my Sunday best was clean and well ironed. I did not sleep on such nights. Early the following morning we would board a “face me” matatu to town with my mum where we would then eat a meal of chai and andazi or few chips retailing at 25 bob then secure a seat in a Nairobi bound 2nk Nissan. As if by tradition, going back home with new clothes after such a visit was by default.

Christmas to me meant new clothes and Chapati. We would wake up very early to Kikuyu Christmas carols playing from the small Panasonic radio often placed on the wall unit covered in a crocheted piece of cloth. My uncle would then arrive with a small goat that they would slaughter with his peers. A freshly cut “muthithinda” tree which served as a Christmas tree would be leaning on the fence outside. I would rush to the shops to gamble my chance of having big balloons to decorate the tree but always ended up with the small ones that would burst with the second blow. You could smell chapati from every corner of the village. I would then take a shower, dress up in a new Cinderella dress and eagerly wait for our close relatives to arrive. Food which mainly comprised of chapatti, pilau njeri, mukimo, soupy peas and carrots stew, and roasted meat would be served around 4.00pm followed by a coveted glass of Quencher orange juice. We would then pose for photos in all manner of styles of which we had to wait a whole week before we could get them from the only photographer our village had.. We would then take a walk around the village; mostly to show of my Kiswahili speaking cousins from Nairobi and of course my new dress. In the evening we would watch Christmas movies, eat leftovers from the day meal, talk endlessly and eventually fall asleep on the couches only to find yourself well tucked in bed the following morning.

Then came the growing up head ache!!