No Hurry in Africa

by Brendan Clerkin

  We had all started off very reserved that evening, but the real informality of the professed nun and the rest of the convent surfaced once we had finished eating.

  The nuns suggested a game of musical chairs—a giant game with over forty people playing. Big Archbishop Lele of Mombasa, Fr. Paul, Ilsa, and Yvonne all joined in too, and I messed with the Dutch girls. Three nuns banged an African rhythm on the drums. Every time the music stopped, half the chairs went crashing as people dived for them or hurtled over the top of them. Archbishop Lele, who for a laugh had decorated himself in a shawl wrapped around his waist, was wriggling his behind just as the Akamba ladies did when they danced. He would invariably end up being the one without a chair, so he always excitedly grabbed a nun off a chair and jumped on the seat.

  ‘Could you imagine an archbishop in Ireland at that carry-on!’ I shouted over to Fr. Paul.

  ‘Par for the course out here, Brendan,’ Fr. Paul laughed back, ‘he loves a good time!’

  The nuns were just as bad themselves; I have never seen so many ways of cheating at musical chairs. It was hilarious at times. I got knocked out of the game when I slipped onto the floor off the side of my chair; Archbishop Lele snapped it up. The festivities continued with dancing—the Akamba version of the conga, and other eccentric African dances in a circle formation. I joined in. I was showing off for the benefit of Ilsa and Yvonne, of course. I was having great craic, and was in my element right up until Fr. Paul signalled it was time to head on home. I never guessed I would enjoy a party with nuns and an archbishop so much. As I was heading out the door, Ilsa, who at this stage was tired out before the nuns were, whispered to me,

  ‘My friends in the Netherlands won’t ever believe this if I ever tell them.’

  I knew what she meant.

  Many times afterwards, I would again find myself in the company of priests and nuns. It was like living in a Father Ted series at times, I could not help laughing at some of their stories and antics. One missionary used to tell me before siesta, ‘I am off now for some horizontal exercise.’

  I could never bring myself to say that ‘horizontal rest’ would be less ambiguous.

  The missionaries are so scattered throughout the District, I might be lucky to bump into one or two of them in Kitui village from time to time. There was only one decent cafe and one decent shop that we all frequented. I could usually spot that one of them was in town; their small jeep would often be the only vehicle on the street.

  One late afternoon, a few days after the party, many of us met up again to celebrate the milestone of Sr. MM being forty years in the Ursulines. We occasionally got together at a weekend or evening if there were a special occasion such as this. Fr. Paul, Fr. Frank, Fr. Liam, myself, and a few other missionaries from as far as a few hours away assembled for a proper meal and a party. Sr. MM was the hostess again.

  Sr. MM’s convent house had a red corrugated roof and was built with mud walls, but it was the same inside as a middle class house in Ireland that was furnished around the time the convent was constructed, in 1957. For instance, she had a piano, probably the only piano in an area of Kenya half the size of Ireland. An odd key was out of tune from the heat and the complete absence of piano tuners, there not being much demand for their services.

  Nonetheless, as always, we loved singing along to it. That was the evening I treated them to my own long rendition of Phil Coulter’s The Town I Love So Well. The rest of them could all strike up a good tune and sing along to the likes of Percy French’s Phil the Fluter’s Ball. Fr. Frank was a master of the harmonica and Fr. Paul was nifty on the guitar. Two of Sr. MM’s Akamba friends told me bluntly the following morning, ‘Your music sounds boring.’ They never took to the sound of the piano or to our Irish songs at all. Maybe, I thought, I should restrict myself to the short version of Coulter’s iconic song in future!

  Surveying the scene that evening—the African cook dressed in a khaki bush-jacket, us drinking on the verandah as the sun set, the sight of white faces enjoying ourselves—it felt to me like we were briefly living as the settlers had done during the colonial days. The early settlers of Kenya were often equally scattered; they would only have seen each other occasionally just as we did.

  As a small lizard—known as a gecko—scampered up the wall preying silently on mosquitoes, the conversation at this dinner flowed seamlessly over a variety of topics: from us laughing along to Fr. Liam’s hilarious account of a misadventure that happened to an African we all knew, to Sr. MM relating the seriousness of the plight of a family nearby, to Fr. Frank revealing a secretive part of Akamba culture, to Fr. Paul recounting a lucky escape from a dangerous situation earlier, and back again to laughing at some more of the antics of the Kenyans or my own interactions with them.

  The following afternoon, I found myself sitting on a wicker chair on the sunny verandah with a whiskey in my hand (call me Bwana!), reading old news from a three week-old Irish Times that was doing the rounds. I was really lapping up the grand old-style colonial feel, and remained for ages under the shade of the verandah, admiring the choir of birds performing in glorious harmony until the fiery setting sun turned the red soil of Akambaland a deeper shade of vermillion.

  But most of the time, and of necessity, we all lived frugal lives in Kitui District. The missionaries were always immersed in— and sometimes nearly swamped by—the troubles of the Akamba

  people. That is how it has always been.

  ‘There were many missionaries whose daily routine was morning prayers, followed by a full day’s toil helping the poor, and then bed—day after day, year after year, decade after decade,’ Fr. Paul had explained at that party.

  It was far from glamorous, and it had not changed that much. Which is why Sr. MM’s home was occasionally and temporarily transformed into an oasis of escapism.

  CHAPTER 8

  A DATE AT NANCY’S

  BY EARLY DECEMBER IN KENYA, the bizarre seemed mundane and the mundane still seemed bizarre. Surreal things happened to me all the time, such as when a man in a wheelchair passed me out as I cycled downhill, or when I saw a man walking around Kitui village, selling socks that were perched in a two-foot-high pile on his head. Passing a man cycling with a bed tied onto the end of his bicycle had the same effect. Then there were all the times a goat, a hen or a deer was unhygienically slaughtered in front of me and I ate it for dinner an hour later—because the only way to keep it fresh was to keep it alive. That I spent my time dodging poisonous snakes when walking in the dark did not seem out of the ordinary. Eating with my hands in a restaurant seemed normal, and I no longer saw anything strange when a troop of angry baboons walked in front of me as I rode an ox and cart. But it still took a bit of getting used to the children running away scared from me, simply because I was white. And I never ceased to marvel when I spotted ostriches, giraffes and antelopes by the roadside on the way to Nairobi.

  One day in the first week of December, a crowd of barefoot children mobbed Kimanze and me as we went to fetch water from a well near Nyumbani. Kimanze asked them, in the Kikamba

  language, to tell us their names. They all politely identified themselves, and I feigned enthusiasm until one boy replied,

  ‘Bush.’

  ‘That’s a bit of an odd name for him, Kimanze.’ I spoke in English, surprised.

  A minute later, after a few more called out their names, another boy replied,

  ‘Osama.’

  Kimanze exploded in a fit of laughter. It transpired they were twins born on 9/11. In an extraordinary twist to the ancient Akamba practice of naming children after a significant happening around the day of their birth, there are now two twin brothers in a remote part of Kitui who have to live forever more with being called ‘Bush’ and ‘Osama.’ I recall riding a bus named ‘Al-Qaeda Troop’ from Kitui village that week, the name decorated prominently along its side. Some things I would never stop finding unusual.

  I also found it strange that women can marry each other in Kenya—but are
not lesbians. Fr. Paul, who is something of a social reformer, bemoaned the social and economic circumstances underlying this custom.

  ‘Some women who cannot bear a child will pay a bride price of cattle to the parents of another woman who then marries her,’ he explained. ‘This woman, who has effectively been bought, has children by any man other than the husband of the first wife. The first wife then “owns” the children of her wife.’

  ‘That sounds similar to slavery,’ I suggested.

  ‘Exactly, Brendan.’

  That week, Mwangangi enlightened me further.

  ‘Men will not let women ride bicycles,’ he told me, ‘because the men believe it damages their wife’s ovaries.’

  I had expressed surprise that I had never seen women on bicycles. Moreover, I had seen men spending ages trying to soup-up their bikes by fitting them with radios and extra mirrors and brightly painted slogans. It is the women in Kenya who seem to do not just the housework, but the farm work as well. They often eat separately, sometimes after their husbands have had their fill. I used to be amazed at the sight of women struggling with big drums of water and other heavy loads, while the men were playing draughts under a tree. It is very definitely a man’s world.

  If a man owns enough farm animals, he is able to afford dowries for several women’s parents—he may subsequently have two, three, or even four wives. Each wife has a separate compound with huts, where her own children and grandchildren live around her. A clochdn type settlement develops. The husband spends a couple of nights at a time in each compound, where a voluntary communal system exists.

  Women are not allowed to own land in Kenya. It is only now that Akamba women are speaking out against these practices. Even the Catholic Church in Kenya, which helped ignite this change of view among women, will bless polygamous relationships but not marry the people concerned in church. Viewed through Western eyes, women are very definitely treated as second-class. Yet there is a need to tread cautiously where such longstanding customs prevail, and the Church seems to accept that.

  Economic empowerment of women is perhaps a more pressing problem than any disease in Kenya, or indeed in Africa. Women will always be beholden to a man until they achieve an income of their own. Many women are only too eager to be educated and work productively in a job. So much is heard about the exploitation of Africa’s natural resources, yet the deep potential of Africa’s women is largely untapped. This was glaringly obvious at Nyumbani, where women were hired for every type of job, and entrusted with real leadership positions—thanks to Kiragu’s inspired leadership. They all became very successful in their respective roles. It became clear to me that Africa is held back because her women are held back.

  The more homes I was invited into around Nyumbani, the more conditions seemed almost neolithic at times. Around the beginning of December, Nancy asked me to spend a Sunday at her home. She had been eager for me to meet her family for some time now. It was a hard job finding the place though, because there were not even dirt tracks near her home, just barely discernable paths through the dry vegetation. Getting nowhere fast, eventually I gave up, and went looking for help. The ever-reliable, ever-obliging Mutinda escorted me there. As we made our way, I spotted a tortoise hidden amongst the dry undergrowth.

  ‘Ah, this will make a nice gift for Nancy’s family,’ Mutinda said as I lifted it up and handed it to him.

  ‘I suppose her children would enjoy it as a pet,’ I suggested.

  ‘Her husband will really love eating it later this week!’ Mutinda declared.

  Nancy lived with all her cousins in a compound of about a dozen round mud-huts, each with a cone-shaped thatched roof. The huts, with their wattle and daub walls, were clustered together and corralled in by a boundary of heaped, dead, thorny branches. This encircled the cows, goats, hens, and children inside the corral and stopped them wandering off; and it kept out any animal predators or (theoretically) human bandits.

  When we finally reached her home, Nancy rapturously welcomed Mutinda and me. She began by introducing me to her husband—proudly, as if showing me off.

  ‘This is Bradan, he is the mzungu who is teaching me so much,’ she beamed.

  Then she brought me round to greet her grandmother, who was sitting churning milk by hand at the time, as well as her own mother, her cousins, and her second cousins—all living in the compound. Nancy’s father was staying at the compound of his second wife and would not be returning to them until the next day.

  Nancy’s father has two wives, and spends a few nights in the compound of one wife, then a few nights in the compound where Nancy lives with her mother. Such arrangements are typical. In Akamba culture, the wider family is central to the life of the community. Indeed, it is reasonably common for the first-born grandchild to be brought up by their grandmother, the grandchild then caring for her into old age. I am told that similar arrangements were not unknown in Ireland in the past.

  ‘Where are your children you are always telling me about?’ I enquired.

  I could spot about a dozen children under ten years old hiding behind a neighbouring mud-hut, shyly peeping out every so often, then running back in behind again.

  ‘They are fearing you, Bradan,’ Nancy chuckled, ‘they have not seen a mzungu before.’

  She ambled over to them, and with that real motherly reassurance she effortlessly exuded, Nancy held their hands and led them over to me. A couple of them were braver than the others and radiated cheeky, toothy grins. One pinched the white skin of my arm while the rest cowered behind Nancy’s legs for protection for another while. She has five small children, but only showed me her four daughters. I knew she had a six-year-old boy too.

  ‘Where is your only son, Nancy, will I meet him?’ I was curious.

  ‘Ah Bradan, he is gone, gone away, I don’t know where he is, he left this morning. But he will come back, Bradan, no fearing, he is around, exploring, all the time he is exploring.’ She did not seem at all concerned.

  By now, we were all seated under a tree on the tiny one-foot high African-style stools that are carved out of a single block of wood. The meal consisted of ugali, with purposely-soured milk to sip. The goats, hens, dogs, and cats were fighting it out in competition for the scraps we threw onto the dusty red earth. Nancy’s kitchen was a round mud-hut with a conical thatched roof, filled with smoke inside, the only light originating from the open doorway. It contained an iron pot boiling over a fire of sticks burning between stones on the clay floor. I watched her grind the millet in the hut by continuously pressing a long stick into a tall wooden cylindrical box carved from a hollowed-out trunk. When I showed great interest in what she was doing—so run-of-the-mill to her—she and Mutinda were busy swapping jokes in Kikamba, amused by my fascination at old-time practices that had died out in Ireland long, long before. Just as I was often amused, I suppose, with the Africans being so utterly fascinated by things like my digital camera.

  Nancy showed me an ordinary looking stick resting against the wall of the kitchen hut. She lifted it up, and I could see it was hooked at the end, shaped like a thumb and index finger.

  ‘You know what this is for, Bradan?’

  ‘No.’ I was expecting something profound. ‘What is it used

  for?’

  She hooked my right leg with the stick and, hopping on one leg, I nearly lost my balance.

  ‘This is for a husband to trip his wife if she tries to walk away from him. Every home has one of these. But my husband, no, Bradan,’ she exclaimed with a confident expression, ‘he knows not to use it on me!’

  When we stepped back out into the sunlight, her husband was walking towards us with three cups of drink for Mutinda, himself and me. Homemade alcohol was normally plentiful when I was around any Akamba home, brewed from just about anything, which is why I usually politely declined, even though it was regarded as a bit of an insult to them. It would be produced for me at any hour of the day or night.

  I took a sip; it was very palatable. It
was one of the more popular concoctions, a form of beer made with honey. I had feared for a second he had brought chang’a, which is a poitín type drink that can be poisonous, even lethally so; it is made from fruits and millet and just about anything they can find. At first, I wondered if these potions were why Kenyans seem so happy despite their hardships, but I soon discovered cheerfulness is more in their nature than in their potions. Mutinda and Nancy’s husband spilt a drop of alcohol on the ground before drinking to quench the thirst of their ancestors—just as the ancient Romans poured libations of wine to their gods.

  Soon, hordes of children from nearby huts arrived to stare at me, and some adults came around to Nancy’s throughout the afternoon just to gawk, when word quickly spread that I was there. The children now took turns running their hands through my straight fair hair, pulling the hairs on my arms and giggling. I must have been like a one-man circus act coming to visit. It amazed me that I was the first white person many had seen in the flesh—and I am not just referring to the children. Ironically, their grandparents’ generation, who were young in the 1960s, would have been more used to white people; at that time, the numbers of Irish missionaries were at their height in Kitui, and the British were just leaving. In terms of multiculturalism, there has been a regression. There were never any British settlers in Ki-tui District as the land was far too poor for agriculture, but some civil servants and soldiers were stationed there.

  Men looking not much younger than a mature oak tree, and just as gnarled, who I wrongly presumed had never even made it as far as Kitui village, were in fact army veterans.

  ‘Many Akamba men were cajoled into the British Army to serve in World War II in Burma, Singapore, India, and Egypt,’ explained Mutinda. ‘These men brought back a sense of orderliness and cleanliness that was drilled into them in the army.’

  The Akamba tribe still has a reputation for such virtues in Kenya nowadays—as well as for being lazy, of course. The Akamba language, I was proudly informed by one veteran who was related to Nancy, was used as a secret code during World War II to pass messages among the British troops.