My Circle by Hussein Muchiri

MY CIRCLE

My Circle is Large.
It's that time again,
The sun rays hit strong,
Dim but determined to complete its duties,
It's evening once more,
The sun has now disappeared, yonder 
Quicker than it came,

Darkness calls in,
My heart races,
My eyes struggle,
My mouth is agape with awe,
My conscience is critically troubled,
I feel like darkness has gone,
To my world alone.

Slowly, I strut home,
I think of what is awaiting me,
Just a cold room,
Wordless clothes, and utensils,
A colder bed, for my warm skin,
I live in solace, my company is a promise.

My best  friend; the padlock,
For he alone, guards my all,
As cold as it is, am happy,
For if it had warmth, then,
I would rest assured, of having some!

Everyone who sees me alone,
Think  am a lonely soul in bone
But I know deeply, I ain't,
For this big  circle, though small to you,
Has taught me an elephant thing,
Best of the best being,
To appreciate all.

©️ Hussein Muchiri

Lamentations

LAMENTATIONS
My life was as attractive,
As the plateaus of Jordan,
But see my life,
Looking like a postponed burial!
All i had in my life, 
All that I called mine,
Has now flown away like a dove,
All people I held close,
Have turned out to be
Exactly what they said they will never be.

I even no longer get surprised 
when people let me down
Do not pity me, no please don’t,
I expected the pain,
But didn't prepare for it,
Now it's too much to bear,
And now that I have it,
I wish I knew how to make it go away,
How do I make my heart turn cold? 
I don't want to hurt anymore.

I get scared of becoming close to people,
because all they ever do is leave,
Forgiveness is such a simple word, 
but it’s so hard to do,
when you've been hurt.

And to make it even worse,
No one notices your tears
No one notices your sadness,
No one notices your pain,
but they all notice your mistakes!

I want to leave this cruel word,

My stabbed heart bleeds,
If death is the ultimate path out,
I want it right away.

But before I leave, here's a caveat
When i die don’t go to my grave,
And sit there telling me,
How much you loved me or miss me, 
For those are the things,
I needed to hear when I was alive

©Hussein Muchiri

THE INFLUENCER

THE INFLUENCER

There are people you meet for the first time and instantly know that they were created to be thugs and only the spirits of the ancestors keep them sane. These are the people my mother would call ‘’placenta’’ because the baby was buried in place of it. But all the same, these characters later become kids and grow though there are very few traits of chills running in their blood. He was a new boy in our school. I met him two hours after admission in the dining hall queuing for something that looked like food-Sukuma wiki which tasted like tobacco and overcooked ugali. It was Wednesday hence we were assured of one piece of meat and a jug of water in the name of soup which Khisa the cook splashed on top of the ‘‘tobacco.’’ I was behind him in the line. When it was his turn to be served, he did not move after one piece of meat was placed on top of his vegetables. He looked at the cook and told him to add him some more pieces.

‘’kijana songa, hakuna nyama,’’ Khisa said harshly as if the boy had asked for his spleen. Loosely translated, Khisa was asking the young man to move because there was no meat.

The young man looked at him for a moment then asked him, ‘’Unaongea aje mbaya ni kama wewe ndio ulichinjwa hii nyama ikapatikana?’’ a huge blast of laughter emanated from the students as Kossy (as we later came to know his name) walked to sit with his food. He had asked the cook if he was the one who had been slaughtered for the meat to be found. Those who know our cook those days will tell you that he was such a mean guy. If he gave you poison, you would not die because he would give you too little to cause any harm. He would taste the poison even to ensure it works!

He was tall. Very dark. The only way he could be noticed in darkness was if he smiled. He was the true definition of ‘’MADE OF BLACK’’. Guys used to joke that the water he used to bathe from turned to a gelatinous black precipitate. He would laugh it off. He became a legend because of his escapades. I was always a good boy. All the way from form one, I was getting accolade after accolade because of my academic and discipline prowess. This came to an end immediately the boy became my friend.

One night he came to my bed and told me to follow him outside. He had two white plastic tins of either Kimbo or Kasuku cooking oil- I don’t remember. He gave me one and pulled me towards the school cow shed. He taught me how to milk the cows without attracting the security’s attention. We took the milk to the assistant cook with a warning that if he reported us, we would boil him. We would do this every Tuesday and Thursday. One of those days we were almost caught. We ran away while putting the white tins on our heads. The security guards did not see us but in the morning they reported that two Wakorinos were milking the cows. There were actually two turbaned fellows in the school. One was a form one and the other one was our classmate. The beating the two innocent fools got from the deputy principal was enough for ten grown-ups! We survived but never got caught.

We got in the wrong books of almost all the teachers. One morning the prefect on duty called the students who were making noise during the previous night’s preps. We were there. He had another list of the students who had missed the morning preps. We were there. The school captain came with another list of the boys who had not spread their beds. I do not need to repeat that we were there. We moved from one list to another. What saved us was the fact that we were so good in class than almost everyone else-including the prefects calling our names! We formed a cartel that was so powerful and went scot free any time. There were other cartels too but ours was feared because it was double edged. Only the deputy principal could deal with it. There was a time sneaked out of the school and on coming back, we decided to use the gate because we knew that the gate-man was illiterate. He told us to write our names on a sheet of paper and we did. Kossy wrote his name as Dichloromethane Alcanoic Acid and I wrote mine as Drosophyla Domestica- whatever they meant. He took them to the deputy and up to date he is looking for the two musketeers though we were top suspects.

We were the best letter writers. Other boys usually came to us so that we would write letters for them to send to their lasses in different schools. This was done at a fee. Due to this, we rarely ‘’whistled’’, taking tea without the bread. Sometimes we would write the same letters but baggers would not understand. We only changed the names.

Shaving became a thing of the past. I cannot remember how many time the principal had bundled us in his car to take us to the barber. Sometimes he gave us money to go and shave and we would come back to school looking worse after spending the money on Chapati madondo at Shimenga eatery near the school. He became tired of caning us. Any time we were caught in a heinous crime, he would give us an assignment to do in Geography and submit it the same day. It is not like we loved school, we just wanted to be together. I could not stand school food and morning preps!

When we did our final exams, it was very difficult to let go but it wasn’t long before we received our university admission letters. We had been admitted in the same campus! He had been admitted to study Business while I went to do Literature. Our escapades in the university is a story for another day. Today the fool is a very senior police officer. I think he was given the job because of his skin colour. He can pretend to be a burnt log in the war front. The enemies will not notice him. I am not trying to tell my readers that they should not joke around with the son of a tiger. No. you can go ahead and do it but remember that he is just a call away. You do not want to sleep on cold cement, do you?

THE DEAD END.......

THE CUL-DE-SAC

As I stood there watching the waters of River Koitobos flowing, I was counting my loses. I had decided to end my life there. I remembered the sacrifices and the time I gave up to get the happiness of the heart but later became a mirage. I had built my life around Cheptoo. Now she was nowhere. My life had reached the cul-de-sac. I had stopped my bicycle next to the river. I had then walked a few meters away and stood hands akimbo, cogitating the next course of action. I watched the waters that were to take my life to the next world and wondered why this earth was so full of heartless people. I had nothing to live for. I was about to jump into the river when I heard a voice behind me. It was my friend Namunyu. He wanted us to go and take Busaa and had traced me all the way to the river.

Cheptoo was and still is the woman I met and fell in love with on the same day. I am not saying this to prejudice anyone against me or Cheptoo. It is the truth. It was one evening I was walking in our neighbouring village. I was with my friend Namunyu as usual. He had taken me to a new Busaa base. We had closed campus. He was in a different university from the one I had gone to. He was known to have the characteristics of a hyena hence his botanical name. The way he use to hunt for girls was top notch. He has slept in the same house with his ‘’father-in-law’’ without his knowledge- a milestone I have never reached in my hunting escapades. It was not easy to be his friend. I had to contend with stories of hyenas and ogres. The only thing that made us close was our love for the academy. The idiot had gotten a plain A in the form four exam. He was later to get a first class degree in law and a scholarship abroad.

That fateful evening on our way to the brewing den, we met a shabbily dressed girl going to the poshomill. On her head, there was a traditional basket made of dry reeds and smeared with cow dung full of maize. I watched her as she approached. From the way her chest was, she had no brassiere. Her blouse did not have one button hence exposed partly her cleavage. At this time I was not listening to Namunyu’s war stories. I looked at her eyes when she was nearer. They kissed mine. When we passed each other I had no choice but to turn. Her anterior sides were even more captivating than the posterior. I started salivating tears. This is when Namunyu realized that I had been hit by a thunderbolt. He went to drink Busaa alone.

I followed her. I asked her name. ‘’My name is Cheptoo.’’ I leant that she was home waiting to join campus in a few weeks’ time.  I went for the jugular. The hunting instincts inculcated in me by Namunyu were awoken to activity. I remembered that I was a jaguar. The son of a hunter. We talked for some time then promised to meet each other by River Koitobos to have another tete a tete the following Sunday. I ran back to the drinking dungeon and told Namunyu what had transpired. He was not shocked. He told me that he knew a time had come for me to have a real skirt wearer and not the cheap skunks he saw me with in the village-as if he was any different.

That evening as I walked back home, the liquor I had galloped was not talking. Love was talking. I was singing to some Kalenjin tunes mixed with Mugithi rhythm. I was on top of the world. I was in love. I dated Cheptoo for exactly nine months and eight days. One day she just refused to pick my calls. I could not eat. I could not attend the lessons. I went to check what was wrong with her. I travelled for over 300 kilometres to the village. She had not been seen at her home for almost a week. I went out to investigate. A friend at the shopping center told me that she had gotten married as a second wife to a certain soldier in her neighbourhood. That killed me.

I tried reaching her in vain to reach her. I used her friends. She never wanted anything to do with me. She crashed my destiny. I wanted to die in the name of love. My Cheptoo was gone. Later I heard she had left the traumatizing marriage and gone back to school. I kept pursuing her. She never let me meet her. It is now seven years since I saw Cheptoo. If you see my Destiny tell her I have never moved on. 

THE POACHING GAME

                                THE POACHING GAME

It was so difficult to get a girl those days. But we got still

Hunting girls in my village was supposed to be a discreet venture. Let me tell you why. I come from a village where most girls’ fathers are teachers, soldiers or former colonial slave drivers- like my father. These people are known for their meticulous attention given to protecting their lasses. They would employ different tactics to do so. Some had German Shepherds which would scare the would-be scavengers like yours truly and his brothers. Others like my father would counsel their daughters with enough threats of curses of leprosy and other scourges. You would not meet these girls anywhere beyond six o’clock in the evening. At this time they were all coiled at the hearth in their mothers’ kitchens either holding for them the famous tin lamp tandika nilale or just listening to their mothers stories of them days. Sometimes they would cook. Actually, most times they would cook for the families. Majority of these girls ended up in very good colleges after high school education and some are lawyers, teachers, police officers, doctors, nurses and others ended up in business. I actually know one daughter of a teacher who is an Aeronautic engineer. Her sister is an accountant. This accountant will take a whole chapter in my memoir one day.

Now, hunting these girls required one to be creative. You had to be as efficient as their fathers. You had to be hawk eyed like their brothers. You had to be an artist as well as a scientist. You needed courage my friend. You had to be the man. For your information, there were no phones those days. Despite all the challenges, ‘’hunters’’ got a way around it. A story is told of a soldier who got lost in a grassland where there were no trees. He neither had a gun nor bullets. He met a lion. He climbed the nearest tree! There had to be a nearest tree. My brother was living in the neighboring town and he would come to the village every weekend to ‘’see us’’. He would give me his sweater to carry for him and then tell me to go to my neighbor’s place to see if his friend Mburu was there. Little did I know that they had a deal with Mburu’s sister that if she sees me with his sweater she should know he was around. As I write this, it is death that separated them.

I remember when I was a little boy somewhere in class four and my friend Wanyama wanted me to graduate and become a man. He told me stories of ‘’giants’’ of anthill climbers. This ended with a piece of advice for me to go and ask for the ‘’it’’ from a certain big girl who was in class six. She had terribly failed to move to class seven now for the sixth time. I was scared. He encouraged me and I gathered courage. I went to her and used direct language. She looked at me as if I had demanded for her liver. she looked at me from bottom up then up bottom and concluded that I was taking her for a fool. She decided I needed a lesson from her hands. I just heard her tell her friend, ‘’Lola khana khano’’ loosely translated as ‘’ look at this child.’’ She held me by the scruff and lifted me up. My legs were dangling in the air. She gave me slaps which my mother used to call ‘’of come and see.’’ Wanyama the fool was rolling on the ground with laughter. The gods of my ancestors have never forgiven him.

All the same, graduation day came. I was older. Big boy. No struggle. It just came. I received the following letter;

P.O Box,

Love via Romance.

Whatsup my lover,

It is high time I take this opportunity to bombasticate this missive to you hoping and believing that you are well and kicking. I am also fine. The main aim of jotting this missive is to inform you that I have accepted to be your girlfriend. I love you. Next Sunday I will sneak from the church and see you near the banana plantation at Mama Nyokabi’s farm. See you my lover.

Yours in love,

Nanjala

The rest as  it is said is history………………………..