Lying in bed with a wicked malaria fever, I’d hear the distant sound of a football being kicked in the far distance, and the rising and falling of players’ voices. I was maybe four or five. We lived in charming teachers’ quarters located in a boy’s boarding school—a small town. My dad was the deputy headteacher. He had a beard like Teddy Pendergrass. He was lighter than he is now, (this is before light skins started getting a bad rap). It is amazing to imagine that he was only 34 years old, already married with four children, taking care of scores of his siblings, his wife’s siblings, and sending money back to his parents. Black Tax had risen to his molars.
Our house was big, with a red roof. The teachers’ quarters were laid out in two long rows, separated by a long ribbon of tarmac, framed by manicured cypress hedges: eucalyptus trees and Whistling Pine. I remember lots of trees. The trees, in particular, looked bigger than they were. They climbed into the sky and disappeared into the heavens. There was always a bird perched on the roof and doves lined up atop an electricity line. It rained generously. It seemed colder than it is now because we were always dressed in a sweater. I liked to chew the sleeves of my sweater. It tasted like… a sweater.
I remember my mother as being bigger, full around the hips, and being in every room at the same time. She was a constant presence even when she wasn’t present. Her presence was reassuring. She was a teacher at the local primary school. There had always been relatives living with us since I could peel a banana. Even when we moved to different towns. It never seemed like an intrusion, it seemed natural to live with others, a duty even, to those who had jobs. My mom, only in her late 20s, had long pushed out her fourth child and was already beset on a long path of sacrifice.
I remember my elder sister – five years ahead of me – skinny as a rail and well-mannered. My younger brother was an introvert, liked to climb trees, and stayed there alone playing his solo games. He’s still an introvert but one who can’t dare climb a tree now because he just turned 45. A sister who follows him had just been born. This was circa 1982. Except for a faded memory of one of my aunts force-feeding her porridge by holding back her head and pouring the liquid into her mouth from her cupped palm, her gurgling and kicking her small legs, I don’t remember her. I don’t remember her crying or crawling. It’s almost like she never existed until much later, in a different house and a different town.
Our living room was large and carpet-less but I don’t remember the floor being cold against bare feet. We had an unlit fireplace with a chimney. I never dared look up the chimney because I was convinced ghosts haunted that darkness. The windows had no grills. Burglary was almost unheard of. So were funerals.
At the end of the school day, my dad would come back home and change into his football gear; shorts and a short-sleeved jersey. If you have seen videos of Bob Marley playing football in shorts, that’s how he would gear up; 80s cool. Very tiny shorts. Tight jerseys. Everybody geared up like that. He would then join other teachers and students at the school football pitch. Seldom, I would go watch him play. The football pitch felt so vast and endless and I was fascinated that someone could run its length without dying from lack of air. I remember my dad as good-looking even before I knew what that was. He was of sturdy build and height, with handsome features and a great beard holding his face in its palms. I admired his athleticism and his fitness. Actually, I’ve never seen him with a potbelly- even now as he clocks into his mid-70s. Always trim.
I recall him coming back from the game at dusk. He would open the glass and metal door and part the curtain and his frame would fill the doorway, boots dangling from his neck, his jersey sticking to his body. The house would be very bright and filled with the warmth of domesticity, my mom, and the help in the kitchen. We hadn’t gotten a TV set yet, so the radio would be on, tuned to some channel on short wave frequency. I don’t remember how we passed the time at night as we waited for supper. Maybe we stared at the wall. He would grab me from under my armpits and playfully hurl me towards the roof a few times, as my brother waited for his turn. Then he’d go take a bath.
He was feared by students. Outside the house, he was very stern, and no-nonsense. He carried himself with an air of great authority, like an emperor heading to witness a guillotine. When students saw him they’d run to class or dart through buildings to avoid running into him altogether. Even though he never laid a hand on us, corporal punishment was a thing then and you somehow heard rumours about how he never spared the rod. He was like a different person outside the house. Discipline was his holy grail, that spilled into our home and our lives as adults. I’m grateful for that.
We never feared my dad. He never shouted or raised a hand but he would stare at you with a hard violent look and you’d quickly rethink your ways. A teetotaller, he wasn’t like other fathers who drank and made noise at night or beat up their wives. He was a quiet man with his quiet ways. He hated noise; banging of doors, a wailing child, falling glasses or plates. It drives me insane too. My son, Kim, sticks his fingers in his ears when a loud nduthi trumpets by. We both do. Genetics is a shadow around us.
My dad never went anywhere when he wasn’t at work. He was home a great deal of time. He liked to read his books and mark his exam papers while sitting on the verandah, or next to his Gramophone, a Grundig brand, from there he played Rhumba music. Sure, KBC played artists from Tanzania like Les Wanyika and Renny Sura Mbaya, who I remember my mom loved and sang along to but my childhood is filled predominantly with Rhumba music. It’s in my bones and my white blood cells. My haemoglobin is not denoted as Hb like the rest of you, it’s Hbr. When I cough, it sounds like Super Mazembe. My dad listened to a lot of TPOK Jazz because Franco was a god. I can hear the scratching sounds of the needle on the LP before the sound fills the room. I can see him wiping his records diligently, and gently, and putting them away in the sleeves. You didn’t touch the man’s records or player. He never told you not to, but you just knew not to; just like you knew fire would burn your fingers.
And so the soundtrack of my childhood is characterised by RHUMBA music (check out this event), which is a slow, lingering and seductive tune consisting of guitar, mandolins, banjos, drums, saxophones, trumpets, maracas, pianos, shakers, accordion, a bottle struck with a metal rod (Likembe) and small skin-covered drum the Congolese call Patenge. They were more than bands, they were Orchestras. They made high art. Every house I know played Rhumba. It was the anthem of life. I don’t know how the hell this Congolese music (with Cuban influence) found its way to Kenya, especially amongst the Luos, but it was all I heard.
And I hated it.
I hated it because are you not supposed to hate your father’s music? I hated Tabu Ley and Madilu System and Sam Mangwana. I hated Nico Kasanda and Le Grande Kalle and Tshala Muana. It was inconceivable how anyone could do nothing but talk in the whole damn song. And how anyone could sit for 20 minutes, listening to one track in a language you didn’t even understand. But as you know, the line between love and hate is the width of a pubic hair. When I got to my late twenties and crossed into my early thirties, I started seeking this music, rummaging through my childhood, a time when everything was safe and assured, when my mother was alive, when my father wasn’t old, and trees reached up to the heavens.
Now I torture my kids with the music while driving and they ask, “But how can you listen to this music when you don’t know what they are saying?” I tell them, “I don’t have to know. You listen to Rhumba with your heart, not your ears.” They are sick of me and my music like I was sick of my dad and his music. Kim says Rhumba makes him sleepy. I tell him “One day when you are in your 20s you will wake up and you will never sleep again.”
When I fell sick, it was from malaria. It amazes me that there are Kenyans who have never contracted malaria. I think everybody should try it once in their lifetime. It’s a full service disease; the high fevers, the sweating, the anaemia, the dizziness, the cold, the shivering, the headaches, joint aches, and your mouth tasting like hooves. You couldn’t eat because you had no appetite, but when you did you threw up everything. You threw up until your eyes turned red and you were only throwing up yellow. It killed children and adults. Some people ran mad before they died. My dad would take me to a local hospital that smelled of surgical spirit and drugs. Nobody liked hospitals because back then they didn’t ask you to rate their services. Hospitals were secure in being hospitals, they didn’t want to be a hotel. There was always a Patel as a doctor, a wizened man with a long nose. My dad would spread me across his knees, hold both of my hands tight with one strong hand, then my legs with the other and I’d be squirming and screaming as the needle pierced my poor arse. Then it would all be over. He’d then hold damp cotton wool against my bum shooing me as I bawled, quinine coursing through my body. The doctor chuckled and said, “He’s a brave boy.” I wasn’t! Didn’t care to be. Doctors think it’s funny when they inject a child. I never saw one doctor who made me think I wanted to be a doctor when I grew up.
Anyway, those days when I was sick from malaria I’d wake up to find myself alone in the house in the evening. It would be very quiet and cold inside the house. The sound of neighbours’ children drifted through the window. I would hear the distant sound of the aforementioned football being kicked about on the school’s football pitch. The house seemed even bigger in its silence, the walls higher, the ceiling unreachable. The light filtered through the large window, falling on the bed in a shape I couldn’t describe. I’d wake up and drag myself to look for my mother, who would be in the backyard seated on a stool, sorting traditional vegetables from a woven tray. She’d feel my forehead with the back of her hand and then I’d climb on her lap where she’d cuddle me. It was the safest place on earth. Nothing could find me there, not the ghosts up in the chimneys, not adulthood.
My childhood was quiet. Even when my mom fussed noisily, it was quiet. My dad was quiet. He listened to his records, read his books, and grew his beard. I’m curious to know what they wanted for themselves as people (that didn’t involve raising children). What burdens they carried from their childhoods. My dad particularly, my mom grew up privileged, she was dropped off at school in a car in the ’60s. But then again you only want as much as you know, and what they knew was responsibility and sacrifice. And God. Oh, how could I forget God? He was the head of the home, the unseen guest at every meal, the silent listener to every conversation. Jesus: had His photo up with other framed photos on the wall. He was white.
Speaking of white.
There was a single mom who was a cateress for the school and had a half-white son. He was maybe two years older than me. It was scandalous. He had big curly hair and was more white than he was black. Because we were children and we were cruel we’d ask him if his dad was Jesus. I can’t imagine how it was for his mother; to dare to be single and a mother in the 80s. And with a white child. Wearing lipstick was enough to have you ostracised, high heels would probably get you stoned in the market. A white child? That was the very height of prostitution.
You might have figured out by now that we are SDAs.
Increasingly, because of the internet and people who attend Mavuno Church, we have gotten such bad PR. It wasn’t that bad if you could survive the whole day’s church sessions. Every Saturday, without fail, my mom dressed us up in freshly pressed clothes and we would all go to church. My dad drove a blue Volkswagen Beetle, KDF 134. Beats me how all of us could fit in that car.
Church was dreadful. Naturally. I hated church because I was forced to sit in one place for several hours. I hate having to sit in one place for over an hour. I feel like I’m growing roots. In church, we all sat between our parents in the pew with our sister, June, a toddler, in my mother’s lap. I napped often. When we got back home we had lunch and we were allowed to stay in our church clothes for the rest of the day. We rode our tires outside. We used a catapult to pelt birds on trees. We climbed Java Plum trees and we loved that our tongues turned purple from eating the fruit. Being a weekend, the high school boys would stroll past our gate. They looked so tall. We couldn’t wait to grow up and have hair on our legs.
Dusk would never find us outside. By 6 pm we would have been scrubbed clean and dressed warmly, our foreheads shining from petroleum jelly. There was the obligatory hot drink and it was always drinking chocolate, Cadbury’s. As SDAs who were not allowed coffee or anything that would stimulate us too much and set us on the path of sin, all we drank was drinking chocolate with lots of milk. It was our comfort drink. When I shop for my grandmother, there has to be a can of Cadbury’s drinking chocolate.
When I revisit the memories of my early childhood, I’m holding a steaming cup of drinking chocolate in both hands and Rhumba is playing somewhere in the background. I still order drinking chocolate once in a while and some people scoff at that, not knowing what memories that cup holds.
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If you were to go back to a childhood memory, a period in time. What would it be? Cadbury’s, who are celebrating 200 years of personal memories and family traditions want to know. Check it out and share your memories here, and who knows? You could win one of their amazing prizes.