Kenya, Will You Marry Me?

7. Tracing little graves

59 7 Tracing little graves A ll of you have sung a chorus begging that the stories do not stop. You say that at another time you will tell your own stories. You must do this. You say that in my story, you hear your stories. I agree. You beseech me to carry on in sweetness and in pain, till hope makes us live. I will take your challenge. Heeh, Kenyalin! You know what tickles the ear might not tickle the eye. You know that the modern ear can be stuffed with sound in an ear telephone! And you know the eye now reads living things with colors on a computer. Tell stories, tell good ones, tell stories of joy and of sorrow. The nation’s heart and soul are in your breath. If they go to the computer or to the ear machines, they will carry your breath there too. Do not stop telling stories I beg, it is like breathing. Without air we die. If you tell them and others tell theirs, in the end we have one great story that will bring us so much joy. Our story of love for Kenya is personal and in our soils. I remember my elder sisters and brothers tracing Ghatt’s grave near Riaa Mission. Mami did not know Mut, Cherita and Pita had taken me to show me where Ghatt’s little bones lay. Perhaps this is why my cob doll, remember that story, was never found. I had wanted to us to find the boy-angel and bring him back. My sisters and brothers said it could never happen, but inside my heart, I was sure for a surprise. We did not find him. I would feel the loss of not having met Ghatt where all could see me meeting him. Inside me, was another world in which I felt rich inside as I was with him. It was like he was me and I was him. I have a brother, I would feel, so little and so adorable; so like all of us and yet, so different. But I could not touch him. I love the earth in which he rested. I love my country. We do not like graves, but our beloved lie in them and like everyone else we protect them. We look at, stare and look after them even if all we get is pain. We wonder what holds their words 60 Kenya, will you marry me? now that they cannot tell us where the problems in life are. Do the dead tell their stories in silence? What other words does Elekeingati speak over there? Is it possible he is just silent? I would I had a world of little mummies to keep children such as Elekeingati and smaller ones who die earlier. I would like to see them sleeping comfortably as if like in an Egyptian mummy as I ask the deepest question I will always have. The deepest question still unanswered. Where are the people we love who became silent? All I know for now is that their bodies are in the earth. I love my land for holding them. How did humanity learn to cope with this strange transit before we took our turn to come and walk on this earth? How are we supposed to walk here? Carefully and without disdain? Without any force or priding on our strength to send many to their graves? I choose the simple and peaceful way. Earth, accept my footsteps. The earth, but more than the earth, our people. Those are our roots. For Mami, Elekeingati was her nation. She became Kenya in a different way from the day she buried Elekeingati without Baba. It was as if her own umbilical cord had been cut and buried again, the way the umbilical cord of this nation was cut when we killed the Mother of Naivasha, leaving her little child alone. It is as if I came after Elekeingati to be loved, and to live by stories. They did not recognize him in me because I was born a girl and they named me -as tradition had it - after my aunt. They waited for boy child to be born long after me to re-name Elekeingati. They called him Elekeingati, but he told them he was Tei as a baby choosing the soft sounds in his name. They thought he was just stuttering or that it was just his name that was too long for...