Village life, bless it, was very simple and uncorrupted. Take clothes for instance. Many of us wore sweaters but some of these youd wonder if they were meant to facilitate cold instead of stopping it. They were almost all knitted. All you needed was one thread to stretch out and the journey towards disintegration begun there and then. Straps and straps of thread came off slowly that within months you could easily be wearing a sweater with one arm and several holes spread across the rest of its constituent parts that suddenly it became wind and cold-friendly instead of being cold proof. Then came the trousers or pair of shorts. They were of two types- the school uniform and home wear. Sometimes the home wear was the retired uniform. The school uniform was pressed with such colonial precision it could easily cut you at the corners if you rubbed against it in a hurry. The home wear was almost always torn at the back. Sometimes with two gaping holes that looked like army observation points. We had sat on those plastic or banana trunks and rolled down the hills for fun and this couldnt leave the holes any smaller. Albeit, we kept our buzwina clean and tidy. We also had visiting trousers, only left for those special days. Underwear was a luxury in most cases . If you were cool and rich, you had two. That allowed you to have a full wash and dry day while wearing the other. If you only had one, that kept you busy because there was no room to be dirty! Not for a boy or girl that attracted all attention. The risk is if it didnt dry overnight which is when you washed it upon bathing, youd have to wear it half-dried. That had its implications. While other parts dried, the stretch around the waist and v-shapes that covered your buttocks almost always stored the most water and dried last. And as you wore your nice khaki trouser or pair of shorts, a sudden pie-r-squared shape oozed through the trouser courtesy of the un-dry bits of underwear. They came in all shapes and colours. Some were so multi-coloured we called then rainbows. Swimming in the river was always show-off time and youd worry the most if your underwear had any holes or the package it held had any deficiencies. PE time at school too was trauma time if your underwear was weakening at the seams esp for girls some of whom theirs were held by a single string that if nature wasnt kind it would roll down to the floor. Socks were another luxury if it wasnt part of school uniform. As uniform, they mainly came in grey with a nice blue-white, green-white or red-black stripes at the helm. They looked so nice pulled to near knees. Problems was what actually lay inside the shoes. The points with the most pressure give way sooner. Its the toes, the heel and just under the toes. This is how many holes will be on some socks that you wish not to see them scattered like oases in a desert. Having said that and through that routine, we still survived and now boast of walk-in wardrobes and drawers of underwear and socks. And lines of shirts, trousers, suits etc. The village innocence has since gone ....#thingsthatwetakeforgranted
Posted on: Sat, 10 May 2014 10:59:02 +0000
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