Chapter 1
It is a chilly daybreak in the valleys of Kisia in Mwiyenga. On the left of the southern valley; Norah is standing in the rift between Ivihiga and Cherobani with a traditional hoe in her hands. She is preparing land for the planting season is imminent. A brown leso that matches her clothes cuts around her waist. She is in a Thai traditional wrap-round and a buba on her head. A bucket of water dropped from the sky and fell on her left arm. It was so heavy that she fell on the ground. Darkness filled the scene such that her eyes could not see anything. A thunderous voice was heard instructing her to lift her head and face the sky. She wiped her face with the water from the bucket and noticed a star moving from the east towards the west directing her to the house where a golden ‘snake’ had been lifted on the cross. It dated back in nineties when she encountered these in a dream. Chilly gusts of wind with a taste of rain in them had well nigh depeopled the streets that morning and the lazy were still lazing in beds. Others hurdle around the hearth while children trekked the rare path as they went to the forest to tender animals.
Festo had informed her that a savior will be born of her womb or wombs of her womb. Towards the west of Elukho, a noise of a young child is heard from a distant; the hum looked proverbial to the one she had been exposed to in a vision. She moved as fast as her miniature legs could support her heavily built body, towards the direction of the bright star. She lost sight of the magic direction but the cry of the child remained clear, and convincing that indeed a savior had been born in her city.
The attractive musical noise led her to a cave in unfamiliar atmosphere of Emakuche. Here the star appeared again, this time brighter and stronger than usual. It’s light malformed her clothes into silvery garments and her face shined more radiantly than the sun. Murumba and Makalu, the great heroes of the clan, appeared floating on the sky and with a white smoke oozing from their heads. These people had rescued the society from hunger that left thousands dead. They changed stones into potatoes and fed their families.
That year there was also a dictator king who decreed that all people should use spoons that measured two meters each and anyone who disobeyed was to be assassinated. Several people lost lives and others fled to the neighboring country.
Murumba and Makhalu united countrymen and then marched to overthrow his kingdom and freed people from the misery. Later, they mobilized communities to find a permanent solution to keep off intruders in their land including the ousted king. Murumba and Makhanu called for a meeting to discuss on the steps to be employed in ensuring their people stayed in peace.
They agreed to build a wall around their boundaries to demarcate their land from the rest of the Kingdom. At that time, they faced a lot of resistance from their neighbors, people who still owed allegiance to the ousted king.. He had already betrayed his people. Their appearance was clear indication that indeed the gods had remembered the world; she broke into a hymn in praise of the mighty birth.
Yethominywe khatsotso khuvuhani bwokhuchenyia
Khubuyanzi nende obuheli
Khulwokhukovoshela abakhamila mushialo
Yethominywe, yethominywe khukhwibulwakhwo mwana
Glory forever for the ineffable providence,
Thy mercy and thy great condescension,
Wherewith thou didst save the lost
Glory, Glory for the mighty birth of the son
The star was still standing on the bluish sky, it stood firm as if it had been rooted to the ground. It had life, it could blink and deem in intervals of equal measure, its appearance always communicated unfamiliar messages and unfolded mysteries. The cold breeze it oozed reminded Norah of her Marriage ceremony that was conducted in a bush in the moonlight, after she had been kidnapped by chief Omwami on her way to the river. She managed to escape at night before the chief feasted on her. She trailed a path of the forest at night back to her home where the father had secretly organized for her marriage without notifying the mother. Dowry had already been paid and no one knew where the flock was taken. Shisoka had prophesied these long ago but no one believed him. all and sundry understood that there will come a time when people will claim to be true seers send by someone supreme to all creatures in heaven and on earth. Therefore, they took Shisoka for granted in every statement he could communicate to them. No matter how they ridiculed him, Shisoka Emielo insisted that words hinted in the Holy Scriptures about the birth of ‘a savior’ will come to pass. ’…he will be born of a virgin’, and bear a fountain of hope to those he leads; so was the cave that a tiny, handsome, baby boy wrapped in banana leaves, and laid in a basket popped out of? The cave had not been used before by any other creature, no one, not even a creeping insect found its way into the treasured cave. It had been guarded with a thick mist and its walls made of stones. This man who saw visions had prophesied of a magical savior that people would oppose in his reign. Here, the star descended; it cleared the mist and lit the dark cave. Inside, the floor had been covered with thorns and pepper to symbolize the bitter world and the dark desolate segregation he would face in his reign.
On the other hand, elders would come to him before dawn and anoint him as the king of the throne that was of his forefathers. It had remained void since the demise of his grandfather, people had lived in fear of invaders who had been foretold that they could come and displace people from their own land, land inherited from their forefathers. They’re coming would subject them to hart tax and make them slaves in their own land. There cry was to have a hero to set them free, someone to lead the clan while in battle fields. A man initiated in their traditions and one who knows to guard the secrets of the people; someone who could match in the chilly gusts of the weather with soldiers to protect their territory by night and times of attacks.
Perhaps this was the long awaited birth that the society was longing for. But why was he born here and not at Machimbo’s home? No one could believe this. Only Shisoka understood the way His master used to work. He changed histories of people that resembled mountains and converted reds to whites. For him, this was his time of death for he had been promised never to die until when the generation will be in safe hands. He believed this was the person he wanted to leave his people with. Norah knelt down in fear, lifted her hands and looked up the sky and offered a prayer to his gods, kissed him on the forehead, picked him up and named him, Mkombozi, to mean savior.
It was in the year nineteen ninety one, March in Emakuche, a little known village in Indangalasia, a village in Kakamega. By this time, his parents had divorced a night before his birth; they had conflicted over porridge that had been served late. Who knows? Perhaps it was a reason for the man born with streams of polygamy flowing in his veins to add another eye to his home. Here, marrying one wife was like a man who is partially blind. They referred to them as people with ‘one eye.’ A man married to one wife could not be allowed to speak before people; neither could you be allowed to lead anybody. Worse of all, if you are circumcised in a hospital then it portrayed how coward you’re. At this age, I could not relate marriage with vision, the language sounded Greek to me.
The annulment came so soon that I could hardly smell, touch or feel breathe of the place I claim belong. Mum went back to her roots, her place of birth. Life in Emusala was tormenting. A problem paved way for the other. At the age of one month, I already knew the setbacks that the family was going through, the house smell poverty; there was dismal dearth that even rats feared to pay a visit. They wondered what they could come and dine in such a horrible environment. Cockroaches had distanced themselves not to be associated with us. They even laughed at those who by accident came out of our house. If they met anyone complaining of hunger, they advised him not to come to our place; he will be digging his own grave, a grave of starvation.
One month later, Mami left for Karina in search of fine waters, the waters that tamed the greener warm and cool season grass pastures of Milonje. Karina is two hundred kilometres away from Cherobani, a village in Shinyalu next to Ingolomosio hills, on the border between the western and the Rift of the valley pinnacle, a Christian mission that houses prayerful saints of Ingolomosio. This place is renowned for its cool weather that has enabled it to be chief producer of tea leaves and so the town housed my mother as she struggled to make ends meet for her family. Here, a visitor was welcome with a wedding of soul and mind. After drinking from a guard of ’Mursik’, she was married to another man that she alone knows of her identity. They begot twins (daughters) as a welcome to an environment of hope, a place where she could find solace of mind and soul. After thirteen years of union, they drunk bitter herbs that poisoned there mind and deprived them love that they had shared. Second split was waiting at the door. Norah Buyachi, grandmother, though aged did everything in her means to bring up eighteen grandchildren her daughters had brought to her after their marriages had broken.
At the age of six, I joined Emusala primary, a government school, 2km away from home. Hungry for knowledge and with minds focused to become Machimbo. Machimbo was a distance cousin to me, the only person who owned an iron roofed house in our village. No one in the community knew the work this man was doing. Sometimes, grandee called him Mwalimu (teacher) because he knew more than everyone in the society. He was at the helm of every ceremony and presided over every pious and interment function. No one could miss a meeting or event that was headed by him. Politicians used to consult him of the strategies they could employ in winning the minds of the voters. He commanded respect of all kind from the young to the old. The only thing I remember that was common; anina linoni, he boards a flight. Machimbo had schooled in Germany and was then the principal of Maendeleo Institute of agriculture and technology in Isomo. He had five children, two girls and three boys, both schooling in private schools across the country and could only be seen when schools were on vacation. He feared that people could look at them with ‘bad eyes’ or would ‘throw bones to them’, so they always remained indoors during holidays. They had two friends; one a daughter to chief Omwami and the other was Bishops’ son- birds of the same feathers always flocked together. They hardly greeted people but on special occasions and immediately washed there hands with anti-germs. His daughters wore summarized clad that left passer bys groaning and with hands crisscrossing in between their legs while sons had some imported pointed classed shoes.
No matter what people said about him or the traits of his children, what mattered most was that this was the man I had to school and become or rather emulate. ‘Son study and become Machimbo’ the old lady said in a low ageing voice staring at me as if she had seen a vision. She was old but never lost focus of what she believed in. Her desire was to see a man she raised in her own hands live a mark to her expectations. Her staunch Christian background had taught her to persist in hardships. So, that’s the same comprehension she insisted we embrace. She had little knowledge garnered from tamutori, dormitory, as she used to refer to the mission centre in Ingotse where she had received basic skills in midwifery from the missionaries. She had developed her own philosophy that wheeled her passion in service to the less fortunate in the community; ’ongaro omurania omurania omutamba wa-nyangu ukhola akholela avalia’, those who work, work for those who eat. She always insisted that we give our best to those less fortunate than ourselves. But what was I to give? I was in despair and needed more than a magician to become the person he wanted me to. But here, she was also telling me to give my best out to the people, however giving was not a blame game here. I was to ensure the society feels my presence every time I appeared in their midst. I had become a centre of attraction to everyone and was erected as the corner stone of the house. Whatever the mind of a man can conceive and believe, it can achieve. That was a directive I had to deliver in my life.
