mgemah
09-18-2011, 08:48 AM
Most are sunny, some are warm and sometimes breezy, others are a fine orchestra of all these nature nymphs that blend to the days he attends the Barazas held outside the coffee shop next to our house. His intentions, like the other dozen or so ailing time-worn men of the village, to share a contraband cigarette or two and chat the day away, meditating, contemplating every grain of sand as it falls down to the second half of the Hourglass bringing to culmination a moment in his, what most would call, a mildly well lived life. He knows his age and now failing lungs do not accord him such pleasures, but still like a mischievous boy, the old man sneaks out here whenever the weather is right. On such days, one might spot them under the vast shady mango tree dressed in their usual old fraying Vikoi ragged stripped vests grubby plain short sleeved shirts and aged multicolored Fez hats or Kufias. Some would be sipping cautiously from steaming miniature ceramic cups and smoking cigarettes or Kikos discussing the ever changing world around them trying to figure out where they fit in, if indeed they do at all.
There was a time, not long ago, when they would have played a few casual games of Drafu and Bao, but these days the old men often find it hard to concentrate and their minds at times might get the pieces confused and would always result in long tasking quarrels over whose memory still retains most of its youthful sharpness, so now they don't bother anymore. Of course, most days are not so bad, there are those that seem to have some positive and meaningful pattern to them, but on others like today, they do nothing more than sit on the firmly sunk in old tyres and mutely wait.
I usually watch them through my window as I peruse a book, waiting, today it's an unreadable one named 'Finnegan's Wake' which I regret passing Hilton's 'Goodbye, Mr. Chips' instead. Eventually ,the men, having grown weary of the day, depart in groups. Some returning back to their homes where they'll spend the remaining part of the day asleep or reciting Quranic verses while the rest go out in search of alternative venues of olace. As soon as the air begins to clear - of tobacco fumes and the husky slurred rumbles of the musty veterans - I slither towards the tyres with two sticks of Rooster cigarettes suffocating under the tight grip of my left hand. Leaves might fall as a mighty wind blows through the ancient branches. Sometimes it's a mango, but not very often. Mwinyi, the old man, is always there, unlike his friends never leaves, he wind doesn't scare him and he has no place to go. I greet then hand him the cigarettes and watch as his slightly senile cataract invaded eyes and lips curve to a smile that covers the entire of his face. He then says some words of gratitude which I always turn down in pretentious modesty as I settle on an opposite tyre. He calls me 'Mzee' and I him 'Kijana'. We have a running gag where he usually points at a solitary fruit on the topmost branch and asks if I mind getting it for him; a sly joke about my height. Today the mango fell, so he skips it. Kijana is a good man, a joyful being who time has not had a shred of tenderness towards. Mwinyi has lived.
He is nearly sixty five now and his face, like the rugged paths of Mtomondoni, has been heavily creased by years of low altitude sun and wind, especially around his eyes and mouth while his dark skin has acquired a sheen of soft polished leather. All these have been the slowly accumulated effects of working from the age of sixteen to forty-six as a porter along the routes of Mombasa and Kilindini. During those seemingly endless thirty years of intense labor, the old man has carried just about everything in an old patched up cotton basket held on his back by a tumpline across his forehead, from the ancient trading - Kilindini - harbor to the crowded streets of Kongowea, Marikiti and even dodgy ones of Mwembe Koko market. Kijana has toiled.
Mwinyi cherishes those days long gone, ones that have faded to silky soul gray memories like a plume of smoke that intrudes the air as he blissfully puffs a cigarette whose once bright red embers die to dull black ash and fall down to the ground, the source, the mother of all. Whence they came now they return, moving on to pave way for the younger and more energetic. His fate, our fate. I guess he grew tired of the long distances or perhaps it was age which caught up and made him quit his porting business to venture into palm wine tapping. Maybe his old basket finally gave in to the wear and tear from its life of ferrying; mangoes, coconuts and the once in a while tourist’s luggage. He refuses to tell me. I don’t pester or judge him because after all, there are secrets about me which I wouldn’t tell even if I was threatened with a evere thrashing in the crotch using a dead female porcupine. “That basket”, he might say as we sit under the mango tree, both secretly trying to reflect on and bridge the menacing forty-seven years that separate our existences, “…was older than you by many years, Mzee”. Then there are hose random moments, at least to the old man, when I chuckle loudly, ometimes it comes as a hearty laugh as I try to picture an eighteen year old Mwinyi plying along the routes of Tudor and Kisauni with a basket on his back while hitting on girls with lines like 'Hey babe'. his is almost always triggered by a nostalgic narration of the good old ays when he was as young, vibrant, handsome, intelligent and brilliant s I am (actually, he only says the young part) after which follows a short lecture on the dangers of drugs as he hypocritically twirls the smouldering cancer stick in-between his fore finger and humb. He is convinced I smoke weed.
I reminice how in the times past, before he had gotten so on in years (and ill of course) Mwinyi used chase us out of his Shamba when we sneaked in to steal the super bitter oranges and unripe mangoes. Once in a while we'd simply go there to taunt his emaciated and (most likely) rabid 'patrol' dogs into chasing us. At times, he reminds me of an incident when he caught and forced three of my friends and I to eat almost forty unripe mangoes which we had shaken from his trees; I recall him standing on guard with a whip as his muts stared at us with their tongues stuck out in what seemed like mockery for all the pain we had caused them. I am sure he was aware of the toll the acid would have on our teeth and maybe that's why he didn't offer us any salt to go with the sour mangoes although he denies it by saying that it's because he doesn't believe in wasting food. From the grin he wears as he preaches about Gods dislike of food wastage, I can tell he's lying.
I don't mind kijana's taunting and blunt humor, I've learnt to live with and even enjoy it! t's his stories that I like. He tells me tales, some sad, others of his friends and people he once knew, some about him, happy ones, long ones, but never about his family. The old man tells me of his days of porting and wine tapping. How he once traveled to Shimba-hills on foot from Mombasa. Once in a while, he gets the 'thousand mile stare' and he drifts into deep philosophical monologues that would leave both Socrates and Locke scratching their heads bald. I listen attentively and pick up what is to be learnt. I gather and store this knowledge and wisdom in the deepest vaults of my mind where it won't ever be lost. I do this so that one day as I sit, maybe under this same mighty tree on a humid afternoon forty-seven years from now, together with an annoyingly inquisitive stripling, I too would get to impact a life in such a profound manner and sound flawlessly awesome while at it.
There was a time, not long ago, when they would have played a few casual games of Drafu and Bao, but these days the old men often find it hard to concentrate and their minds at times might get the pieces confused and would always result in long tasking quarrels over whose memory still retains most of its youthful sharpness, so now they don't bother anymore. Of course, most days are not so bad, there are those that seem to have some positive and meaningful pattern to them, but on others like today, they do nothing more than sit on the firmly sunk in old tyres and mutely wait.
I usually watch them through my window as I peruse a book, waiting, today it's an unreadable one named 'Finnegan's Wake' which I regret passing Hilton's 'Goodbye, Mr. Chips' instead. Eventually ,the men, having grown weary of the day, depart in groups. Some returning back to their homes where they'll spend the remaining part of the day asleep or reciting Quranic verses while the rest go out in search of alternative venues of olace. As soon as the air begins to clear - of tobacco fumes and the husky slurred rumbles of the musty veterans - I slither towards the tyres with two sticks of Rooster cigarettes suffocating under the tight grip of my left hand. Leaves might fall as a mighty wind blows through the ancient branches. Sometimes it's a mango, but not very often. Mwinyi, the old man, is always there, unlike his friends never leaves, he wind doesn't scare him and he has no place to go. I greet then hand him the cigarettes and watch as his slightly senile cataract invaded eyes and lips curve to a smile that covers the entire of his face. He then says some words of gratitude which I always turn down in pretentious modesty as I settle on an opposite tyre. He calls me 'Mzee' and I him 'Kijana'. We have a running gag where he usually points at a solitary fruit on the topmost branch and asks if I mind getting it for him; a sly joke about my height. Today the mango fell, so he skips it. Kijana is a good man, a joyful being who time has not had a shred of tenderness towards. Mwinyi has lived.
He is nearly sixty five now and his face, like the rugged paths of Mtomondoni, has been heavily creased by years of low altitude sun and wind, especially around his eyes and mouth while his dark skin has acquired a sheen of soft polished leather. All these have been the slowly accumulated effects of working from the age of sixteen to forty-six as a porter along the routes of Mombasa and Kilindini. During those seemingly endless thirty years of intense labor, the old man has carried just about everything in an old patched up cotton basket held on his back by a tumpline across his forehead, from the ancient trading - Kilindini - harbor to the crowded streets of Kongowea, Marikiti and even dodgy ones of Mwembe Koko market. Kijana has toiled.
Mwinyi cherishes those days long gone, ones that have faded to silky soul gray memories like a plume of smoke that intrudes the air as he blissfully puffs a cigarette whose once bright red embers die to dull black ash and fall down to the ground, the source, the mother of all. Whence they came now they return, moving on to pave way for the younger and more energetic. His fate, our fate. I guess he grew tired of the long distances or perhaps it was age which caught up and made him quit his porting business to venture into palm wine tapping. Maybe his old basket finally gave in to the wear and tear from its life of ferrying; mangoes, coconuts and the once in a while tourist’s luggage. He refuses to tell me. I don’t pester or judge him because after all, there are secrets about me which I wouldn’t tell even if I was threatened with a evere thrashing in the crotch using a dead female porcupine. “That basket”, he might say as we sit under the mango tree, both secretly trying to reflect on and bridge the menacing forty-seven years that separate our existences, “…was older than you by many years, Mzee”. Then there are hose random moments, at least to the old man, when I chuckle loudly, ometimes it comes as a hearty laugh as I try to picture an eighteen year old Mwinyi plying along the routes of Tudor and Kisauni with a basket on his back while hitting on girls with lines like 'Hey babe'. his is almost always triggered by a nostalgic narration of the good old ays when he was as young, vibrant, handsome, intelligent and brilliant s I am (actually, he only says the young part) after which follows a short lecture on the dangers of drugs as he hypocritically twirls the smouldering cancer stick in-between his fore finger and humb. He is convinced I smoke weed.
I reminice how in the times past, before he had gotten so on in years (and ill of course) Mwinyi used chase us out of his Shamba when we sneaked in to steal the super bitter oranges and unripe mangoes. Once in a while we'd simply go there to taunt his emaciated and (most likely) rabid 'patrol' dogs into chasing us. At times, he reminds me of an incident when he caught and forced three of my friends and I to eat almost forty unripe mangoes which we had shaken from his trees; I recall him standing on guard with a whip as his muts stared at us with their tongues stuck out in what seemed like mockery for all the pain we had caused them. I am sure he was aware of the toll the acid would have on our teeth and maybe that's why he didn't offer us any salt to go with the sour mangoes although he denies it by saying that it's because he doesn't believe in wasting food. From the grin he wears as he preaches about Gods dislike of food wastage, I can tell he's lying.
I don't mind kijana's taunting and blunt humor, I've learnt to live with and even enjoy it! t's his stories that I like. He tells me tales, some sad, others of his friends and people he once knew, some about him, happy ones, long ones, but never about his family. The old man tells me of his days of porting and wine tapping. How he once traveled to Shimba-hills on foot from Mombasa. Once in a while, he gets the 'thousand mile stare' and he drifts into deep philosophical monologues that would leave both Socrates and Locke scratching their heads bald. I listen attentively and pick up what is to be learnt. I gather and store this knowledge and wisdom in the deepest vaults of my mind where it won't ever be lost. I do this so that one day as I sit, maybe under this same mighty tree on a humid afternoon forty-seven years from now, together with an annoyingly inquisitive stripling, I too would get to impact a life in such a profound manner and sound flawlessly awesome while at it.