If you come from anywhere past Ruiru, please let’s set a few things straight right off the bat; not every jang’ comes from Kisumu! Kisumu is not a village for the love of Jove! It’s a cosmopolitan city; guys go there to make hay, just like in Nairobi or Nakuru or any other town. Folk pay rent there. There are clubs and Mpesa shops and big banks and streets and coffee houses and hookers. It’s a city, not anyone’s shags. It’s the hub of Nyanza province.
The reason I’m saying this is because everybody who hasn’t been past Kikopey believes that Kisumu is every Luo’s shags. That if I went to shags and, say, Jay Bonyo of KTN went to shags we would bump into each other in a river in Kisumu because, supposedly, by the virtue of our tribe we all come from one place. Nyanza is about, what, over 16,000 km square in size? Some come from the south of it, others from those sides of Siaya. I mean just because you are Kamba doesn’t mean when you go to shags you all end up in Machakos. OK, maybe that’s not the best example, because do Kaos really go to shags? Because the few kaos I know are always left behind in the city to keep the lights on when we all leave for shags. Miss Mulei, what’s the inside story on Kambas and seeking refuge in the city?
When I was in shags I would get calls from people who would go; so Biko, how’z Kisumu? For the longest time I thought it was amusing but then it got tiresome explaining the geography.
I’m from a little sleepy township in South Nyanza called Kendu Bay. You probably haven’t heard of it. It’s a bay town about an hour and a half drive from Kisumu on a private car and about double that in a mat because it will stop in every stage and at some point during the journey the driver will leave you guys stewing in the hot matatu and go have lunch in some hut by the lake.
Kendu is not known for anything, other than the fact that our women are fun loving. That music lives in their bosoms.
We – as is a good part of Nyanza- are generally poor. We grow millet. We grow maize. We grow Cassava. All in subsistence. And we fish. A lot. Our roads aren’t worth talking about. My MP is Eng. James Rege, before him was Adhu Awiti. Both haven’t risen above mediocrity, both have done little more for us than join the nauseating ODM sycophancy. Yes, I’m bitter.
My leaders aren’t rouble rousters like the Khalwales or Waititus of the world. I can’t remember the last time my leader stood up to speak in parliament. But I guess they are simply being Kenduans, they are playing to the DNA of Kendu; we keep our head low, we stay in the shadows and we do our thing without fanfare, without a colorful production. We aren’t extremely learned, but we have gone to school. We wear education on our sleeves; it makes everything seem all right. Like our women, we are fun loving and we love the good things (who doesn’t?). But what keeps our seams together is that we are extremely proud. We won’t beg. We won’t plead. And we won’t kiss anyone’s ass. We are from Kendu Bay.
And so going back to shags always is a moment of pride. Even when the earth has been scorched by the sun and the granaries have been emptied by hunger. Even when hyacinth has chocked half the lake and the fishermen struggle to drag it out of the way because it covers their children’s food. Going back feels right.
I took many pictures while down there last week unfortunately most were just funeral pictures which won’t interest you much. Unless you want to see one of my cousin’s slit open a sheep’s throat with a knife everyone warned him wasn’t sharp enough. It was a mess.
But there are a few pictures you might want to look at, it will give you a glimpse into where I come from:
This road signage – on my way to shags – announces an area. I found it suitably quirky. And now, a little translation for non-speakers. It – roughly – means, “Severed/cut and left behind.” I really don’t know what was cut because well cutting isn’t exactly something we are famous for.
But how you read this road signage is a matter of semantics because if you change your intonation when you pronounce the “ochot” the meaning literally stands on it’s head.
So ochot, if you lean on the ‘cho’ turns the word to mean a hooker. Yes. So in essence the sentence would mean, ‘a hooker left behind’ which would not make this area a place you want to be born in.
My brother and I had theories about how it came to be named thus: My theory was this: So what happened in the 60’s was that some strapping young chaps left Kisumu driving a VW Beetle after a night on the tiles (of course back then they called it something cheesy like “boogie”) with a hooker seated backseat with her shiny purse and loud eye shadow. So as they passed this area she said she wanted to pee because she had had too much gin and Tree Top (remember that juice?). It was 3am. The driver, perhaps a chap called Tito, stamped on the breaks with his swanky Ksh 100 platforms (those were shoes) and pulled over. His homeboy, seated shotgun, chucked for her to step out because that’s how those cars operated back then; 3-doors.
See, his mate wasn’t keen on them picking up the hooker so he raised the argument again, said it still wasn’t a good idea. Said that he didn’t think his mate should drag a woman of rotten repute to his simba. It also didn’t help that the hooker for some reason took too long peeing. The gavel landed in her absence and these “gentlemen” drove off without her.
Next morning villagers woke up to a strange sight; a bleached out yellow yellow in pumps (shoes again) and red lips. She only got integrated because the only bus that plied that route back to Kisumu had broken down and she had to wait for a week for it. Besides she didn’t have any bus fare on her, so some fisherman bachelor guy took her in but after two days hopelessly fell in love with her red cheeks and gaudy long nails. He dutifully made her pregnant. They got many many kids together. The rest is history.
One of my brothers think that some randy old git dragged a hooker home at night but in the morning the hooker woke up, looked around the lavish boma and said, “Mimi siendi mahali!” and then refused to go back to Kisumu. Or wherever she was gotten from.
Way after the Christian Adventists came to my shags in 1906 the Muslim traders landed in Kendu circa 1935. They have never left. They married the locals and introduced Islam.
Meet Hakim. He says he’s 5years older than Moi. Hakim – who’s from Yemen – speaks my mother tongue better than I or anyone else I know.
Hakim is a legend in my village. Not because he has 20 wives and 40 children but because he was the sole diver that rescued the survivors – and fished out the dead – in the worst ship tragedy in Lake Victoria in 1965 where over 42 people died. The story of Hakim’s bravery has turned into folklore. I looked for him in Old Town Kendu where the Muslims live. I found him in his verandah, flanked by his wife and his son Abdul. He talked about that dark misty day, when the lake “rebelled” and how he had to dive to the bottom and disentangle bodies that had died clinging onto each other. How those bodies floated upwards to the surface in slow motion and how, at the shore, bodies were piled up to a “giant’s height” and people traveled far and wide to witness this sweeping death because back then, deaths were rare, especially en mass deaths. And he spoke of the nightmares he experienced after that episode.
He told me how Kenyatta offered to build him a storied building as appreciation and how he turned him down because he was serving Allah. He didn’t need a reward for doing Allah’s work. He told me how Kenyatta then sent the enigmatic Tom Mboya to pursue him and how he politely declined any form of reward.
“How was he in person?” I asked of Tom.
“Kaka dhano,” he said, “just like a human being” and I found that response bottomless, you know how he managed to un-idolize the man in just two words.
I steered the conversation to the topic of his harem of wives.
“How do you manage 20 wives, Hakim?” His wife giggled.
“I don’t tell them my secrets, what I’m thinking,” he muttered.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because then they don’t anticipate my next move,” he said. “Women only give you young men stress because they have learned you. They know what you will do next. ” He said and I dragged my stool closer.
“So keep your thoughts to yourself, yes?”
“Yes.”
“What if they insist on knowing, what if they keep bugging you by whining ‘what are you thinking about baby? Share with me,’ should you tell them you are thinking about them in a green dress to distract them?”
His wife laughed out loud and I detected a tinge of scorn in her laughter.
“No, if she insists change the topic,” he said with finality, which also ended that discussion.
“Do you know all your children by name?”
“No.” he said and I laughed.
“Do you know all your wives by name?”
He stared out at the mosque and seemed to ignore that question. Hakim, do you want to phone a friend? Haha. This old man was cracking me up.
“How do you stay this youthful, Hakim? You look great!”
He offered me a wry smile. “I don’t drink alcohol, I don’t smoke, I sleep early and I pray to Allah for another day.”
“Who is your favorite wife?” then with my tongue in cheek, “Or do you love them all equally?” From the corner of my eye I saw the wife stiffen and concentrate more. Oh, women!
“Yes, I love them equally,” he said sarcastically, and then stared at me dead in the eye, as if to say, if you ask another dumb question like that, I will throw a shoe at you.
Sweet tea was brought out in small cups. We sipped and chatted. I told him I came to bury my mom and he told me stuff that made me feel a whole lot better. With age comes such great wisdom because he told me things that seemed obvious but which he articulated with such depth.
At some point, one of his daughters – a disheveled but gorgeous 19yr old – comes to clear the cups away and he told me while nodding at the girl, “ You can have her if you want.”
“Gee, thanks Hakim, very kind of you,” I laughed. Please wrap her up for me, to go, I wanted to tell him sarcastically now that we are objectifying her daughter.
He’s a pimp, Hakim. But he’s a cool ageing pimp and what’s life without a cool ageing Pimp?
***
Five minutes from our boma and you get to the shore of the lake. I went there every early morning until I came back. And there I would sit and wait for the sun. At 6am the lake is peaceful. It rouses up slowly, like a queen. And the lake is gorgeous at dawn; placid. At this time, a few eager beavers will already be out fishing. Perhaps looking for their breakfast; lean sinewy bare-chested chaps, with tattered shorts. These fellows are generally boisterous, but in the morning they silently steer their boats out as if afraid to wake up the lake. As if afraid to disturb nature.
At precisely 6.33am (I timed it four times) the sun rose, flooding the lake with orange. Where I come from nobody looks at sunrise with arty glasses because perhaps to them it means just another day to survive, another day to stay afloat. Sunrise means life. And it comes and goes.
As I sat there this chap you see in this picture came into the view of the sun and I snapped him. He then raised his hand and shouted a hallo, his voice somewhat disempowered by the lake. He then steered his boat to the shore and asked me if I wanted to see some hippos in some mangroves 5mins away. I almost told him, “If I want to see hippos I will go to KFC,” but I didn’t because I would have to explain what KFC was and I wasn’t in the mood to talk fries. We chatted for five minutes as he stood inside his canoe, which bobbed and heaved in the morning tide.
He didn’t ask for money for the picture I took without his permission because he’s from Kendu, he’s a proud man -we don’t beg. And when I gave him 100 bob (he received it with both open palms, something that touched and embarrassed me at the same time) he lit up like a chandelier and mentioned God and blessings. And off he rowed, into the flooding sunrise.