The Hiatus

I return to this blog shamefaced, like a married man returning to his wife after having some fleeting fun. I return with a beseeching smile, pleading eyes and a lowered, cajoling voice. Wait, a blog is all about words. So perhaps, hopefully, I return with a profuse stream of words that will soothe the hurt of neglect off the blog. I am ready to swear to good behavior; to be faithful at all times and to keep it in my mind the way the smell of meat hangs on a butcher. Yeah right.

All the same, belated compliments of the new season, as South Africans like to put it. In retrospect, I wish you all a merry festive season and a happy new year all in one breath, notwithstanding how absurd it sounds. It’s as if I disappeared into space and returned just now, trying to catch up on everything all at once without offering a sufficient explanation as to what brought forth a lengthy and criminal disappearance. Moroseness and remorse should pronounce themselves rather loudly here, but I am not given too much to excessive displays of both. Nevertheless, I do have some sort of explanation to such neglect (and this is not tongue in cheek): the last couple of months was a transitional period for me.

My Tour of Duty in Pretoria came to an end and so I made the transition back to our beloved city Nairobi, which somehow doesn’t feel obliged to return too much of that love. We love it despite its traffic, smog, smoke, dust, noise, bustle, congestion and so on (lately metal detectors), but it goes ahead and increases the intensity of what we dislike about it, the way a DJ would pump up the track in anticipation of rapturous screams, only that we, the revelers of our city, scream more in agony. We gnash our teeth, curse the accursed city, swear at an unresponsive serikali, and wish we could live in the rural homes we come from (well, not really). In the end, we stare back at an unrepentant Nairobi with the same defiance it throws our way. We stand toe to toe with it, eye-to-eye, unblinking as the hurtling towards a final confrontation gains speed.

Luckily, I hadn’t been on leave for more than a year, a fact I whimpered pitifully at the bosses that be (wouldn’t it be nice to be such a boss one day) and managed to get 30 days leave. So I breezed through Nairobi, kept contact with it to a bare minimum. The main joy it brought me was seeing my two sisters, brother-in-law, and a nephew who are based there, more so the young nephew as he couldn’t possibly remember me from the last time he saw me a year and a half ago. The delight I felt as he called me “anko”, reaching out his hand to be held as he walked, is a precious memory I will cherish. Liberal amounts of meat consumed at the Carnivore and Congolese live music at Simmers Restaurant pale in comparison.

My hometown Kakamega changes at a snail’s pace. The moment I arrived I could swear I was there only the previous day. Motorbike and bicycle bodabodas are still the main modes of transport. I quickly picked up grumblings about the absurdity of taxes on chicken and cows, proposed, bizarrely I must agree, by the County Assembly. Beyond that the Government and what it does seemed like distant thoughts on everyone’s mind. I was truly in Luhya land, where matters chicken and cows can easily inspire a revolution.

Again, the delight of meeting family after a long period of absence is precious. My mother, sisters, brother, nephews, nieces, uncles, aunts, and cousins – there simply wasn’t enough time for all. It is all a balancing act. I visited my late dad’s resting place, and the emotion reminded me of how fickle but precious, in short contradictory, life is.

Beyond the usual frustrations, such us being a walking ATM machine for long lost “friends” and relatives who make clear their dire financial situations just two minutes into pleasantries, my hometown is beautiful. The luscious green and the deep blue cloudless January and February skies enthralled the stuttering and spontaneous poet in me:

Simple green and profound blue

As I laze in breeze and shade

Away from city's haste and fade

I say this for it be true:

I am at peace, in rustic serenity;

I am home, in everyday simplicity.

This is the town where I learned to read and write; this is where everything about me was born. This is where I was defined, the reason why my relationships with cities will always be casual, fleeting and unemotional. The sighs I heave here are deep in appreciation of astounding, rustic and unaffected beauty; I smile back, unpretentious, from the heart, uninhibited.

And it is from here that I return to this blog shamefaced, like a married man returning to his wife after having some fleeting fun.