Why ‘clan experts’ will have a field day By WAHOME MUTAHI, September 1, 1996 When death harvests you in Kenya, you really get into trouble. Now that you have been translated from present tense to past tense, you become another matter all together. You don’t get into trouble of course if you are like Whispers the Son of the Soil. The Son of the Soil belongs to the class called loafless. This is the class that lives below diet all their lives and are likely to find themselves loafless in the next world. When you have been loafless all your life, they want to plant you in the grave very quickly. Perhaps they fear that even though you are past tense, you are likely to rise and start borrowing a pound here and a hundred bob there from the gathered mourners. They will plant you in the grave very fast if you are lucky enough to find a priest who does not have much respect for himself. These days when you become past tense and you have been loafless all your life, the local priest will suddenly become very busy and find no time to turn you into the condition called “from soil to soil”. Of course if you have been living above diet, that is if you have been having enough loaf, the local priest will suddenly be seen in your compound with all his paraphernalia ready to tell the world that he had a breakfast conversation with God who assured him that the late loafed person is already in heaven. You don’t have to give up though when you become past tense after a life of total loaflessness. Not when you come from the Slopes of Mount Kenya where I was born and brought up and where a man with a peeling nose called father Cammissasius used to battle the devil. In these days of small five bob coins which avoid your pocket when you need them, there are enough priests there. There are enough such priests whom I shall call mtumba priests. They are mtumba priests because they wake up one day and decide that they are material for the dog collar. This is to say that they declare themselves capable of doing what Father Cammissasius used to do after many years of being cooked into a real priest. Such mtumba priests are like police sniffer dogs and know when there is trouble, meaning when a real priest is not available. You see, they happen to live a life of loaflessness and hope that one day they will earn a real loaf by dispatching you and me to the grave when a real priest is not available. Lack of a real priest is the only real trouble you are likely to encounter after you have lived a loafless life. There are exceptions though like in the case of this man who came from Maragoli land near a place called Nyang’ori or something like that. Past tense That is of course where even when a man is becoming completely past tense, he still demands his right to have his share of ekelenge and zimondo. Ekelenge are the firestones or legs of a chicken while zimondo are those tiny but juicy parts of a chicken called gizzards which are only eaten by total human beings called men. Anyway, this man from Nyang’ori where I hear my friend Cricodilus Niloticus comes from had lived a life of being loafless and that is what made him visit Nairobi to see his brother-in-law. This brother-in-law was a man of loaf so he generally put the man from Nyang’ori in a state called feelanga free and freelanga good. This is to say that the man from Nyang’ori who had all his life bathed from a karai now saw a real shower. The same man who had in his life believed that the only vegetable God in his wisdom created was mrenda now discovered spaghetti in Nairobi. It happened that death harvested the man from Nyang’ori a few weeks after he returned home and his brother-in-law from Nairobi went to Join the others who were going to plant him. Like a true Maragoli, he did not edit his mourning on the funeral day. He started his mourning a long way from the compound and he was heard screaming that his clan had lost the only man who in the history of the land had knocked down a bull with his fist. By the time he got to where the coffin was, he had called the man who had become past tense “the thigh of an elephant”, “the shoulder of a buffalo” and “the terror of leopards”. Then he finally came to the coffin to view the body of the late relative by which time, tears had blinded him. Suddenly his eyes dried up and let out a scream. Then he yelled, “Msuti endahi! My best suit! I have been looking for it for weeks. Now I know who took it!” He had finally discovered who had stolen his suit in Nairobi but that did not stop Pastor Nehemiah Castor Philip Abednego Walumbengo of Nyang’ori Pentecostal Most Reformed Church of East Africa from going on with the service and declaring that the man who had become past tense was now one of the angels performing in the heavenly orchestra musica. I am not like the man from Nyang’ori so when I become past tense, I won’t be found dressed in a stolen suit even though I generally live a loafless life. I am not quite sure though that more trouble than missing a real pastor to plant me in the soil will not follow me. I have now reason to believe that some people have had this idea that the Son of the Soil has some real money hidden somewhere and that when I become past tense, they might have some of it. I have those fears because in the past, there have been some members of a certain gender who have suddenly declared that they will commit suicide if they are not photographed with me. As a result, there are photographs of a balding fellow who also has a beer belly in the company of members of that gender, some of them accompanied by their juniors and investments. That balding fellow also called Whispers has been photographed with members of that gender with their offspring, knowing too well that the said human beings also carry the title Miss or Ms. My fears now are that once I become past tense because one day I will certainly be harvested by death, a member of such a gender will emerge and produce a photograph also called a graphic diagram showing a smiling Son of the Soil. The diagram will also show an equally smiling member of the opposite gender accompanied by a smiling investment belonging to her. Opposite gender The member of the opposite gender will then declare that once in my life, I was truly married to her and one thing led to another. One of those things is the investment pictured in the diagram. Overnight there will be experts on the matter and many members of the clan from where the member of the opposite gender comes from will become experts on genes. One will be heard to say: “Look at that nose and tell me if it is not a photocopy of that of the Son of the Soil. I can tell a familiar nose when I see one.” Another one will say: “Look at the hairline of the girl in the picture. It says that if she had been a boy, there would have been total loss of hair just like her father the Son of the Soil. The hairline says that Whispers is the father of this child.” There would be other experts on how to divide my so called wealth. There would an authority on matters of the soil who would say: “That piece of semi arid land in Ng’arua belongs to our daughter whom Whispers brought into this world. According to our traditions, the first wife, namely Thatcher can only inherit ancestral land in the Slopes.” They will say that because I will not be in a state to answer. I would have wished to tell them that in my loafless life, I had done many crazy things but I had not managed to produce a child by E-mail and Internet. Since I will not have a chance to defend myself, I have from now on declared it illegal for any member of the opposite gender who is not my Thatcher or the Investment to be photographed with me. I will not be photographed with any even if she is having a moustache, a beer belly or the severest of gout. Since I am Ioafless, I have never disowned my clan. I belong squarely to the Nyaituga clan which I hear might have migrated from Kisii. That might not stop another clan claiming that I belong to them when I become past tense. In this case they will claim that if they don’t bury me, they will be “eaten” by a curse that makes men grow tails. In the meantime, my real Thatcher will claim that in the course of my loafless life, I wrote something called a will. I will not be there to say that I wrote the will in a moment of weakness; that is to say one morning when my brain had been fractured by what I had drunk the previous night. I will not be there to say that I wrote the will with a trembling hand and declared that when I become past tense I should be roasted instead of being planted. That will of course not stop Thatcher from making sure that I am roasted and my ashes scattered in all bars where I used to drink according to my wishes. That will make the living and dead members of the Nyaituga clan declare that Thatcher has brought them a curse from which they will not recover in a century. Experts will emerge overnight and declare that the clan must be cleansed now because they cannot wait for the year 2000 and beyond. Swallowing places That is why they will decide to bury me although at that moment I will be in the form of ashes scattered in all swallowing places where I had murdered my payslip and in the process made myself loafless. I guess since I will not be there to be buried they will have to look for something else. Coming from the slopes, I suspect they will bury an arrowroot and call it the late Whispers Son of the Soil. I guess that will be all right since you can’t accuse an arrow root of having fathered a child by E-mail and Internet. You can’t accuse ashes of doing that either. But you can accuse a man lying very dead in a coffin with or without a stolen suit of using Email to father children who should take a piece of his Ng’arua estate now that he is past tense.
Posted on: Tue, 03 Sep 2013 05:43:27 +0000