SAINT GRACE OF SULWA

ONE

The January sun was beating hard. It was dusty everywhere. A whirlwind would start gathering from nowhere and put whatever it found on its way in a dangerous spin. It was as if the gods of whirlwinds cared less whatever the disasters they caused. 

Mambo was strolling aimlessly at his home when one of those spinning scenes struck. He had just filled a water trough for his cows at their shade and was not sure what he wanted to do next.

He checked his wrist clock. 

“12:45 p.m, Shamba will be here in a while with the herd,” he thought. “That boy can forget any other thing but meal time. “ 

It was then that he found himself engulfed in a thicket of spiraling objects. He chocked with a squint. An empty insecticide cane hit him on his bald. He screeched a little. When the dust finally settled he had blood stains in one of his hands. 

He heard the sound of a bell since the animals were approaching home.

Katune, the leader of the pack, always had a bell to help monitor her movements lest she becomes another disaster. Shamba was whistling his usual directions. 

“Katune, I will kill you if you go to the farm…hey everyone…there’s enough water…I don’t want a stamped…”

Mambo stole a glance of him, a quick but analytical one.  He heaved a sigh of conviction.

“He is still as hard working as the last time I saw him. And the animals seem to know his language.” 

Perhaps Shamba sensed he was being watched. A weird feeling just told him to turn and there his eyes met with those of his boss. 

“Thanx for assisting with the water,” he made as if bowing with honor. He just wanted to cut Mambo short incase he was to pronounce something terrible to him. 

Mambo nodded in affirmation of the receipt of the short presentation of the gratitude calling to mind how he had thought of employing Shamba. But first he thought of how Shamba had been obsessed with becoming a tender of livestock during his primary school days. “He seemed to be destined there anyway for after all where would he end up when all he was good at was carrying food to school?” 

The fellow would carry all sorts of dishes. Roast cassava, roast or boiled maize or any remains from his family’s meal the previous night. During classes he seemed carried away in the eating as he would get bits and pieces and waste his time away. In many occasions he suffered from indigestion and would fart all through troubling the whole class. Thank God their classes ended up at midday. 

But he was old and may have been excused for the poor performance. It was a known fact his leading from behind every term. One day he beat Nakita his main rivaling trailer and his joy was uncontrollable. Even the head teacher that term got to know Shamba had remarkably improved. No one knows how he had managed to write an impressive composition that term but again it was one of his milestones. Throughout the last days of that term he would read the said composition to his friends and foes alike to prove his creative wits.

“See, this time I showed, Madam Grace I can be a writer.” 

He would stretch it, a piece of paper that was now tearing apart with sweat and dirt, and carefully compose himself. 

“My name is Shamba Boy. I aspire to be a shamba boy. If that is not possible I will be a herder.”

His class had been asked to write a composition under the title ‘My Dream’. Those around him would burst into gales of laughter as they tried to comprehend how he would just dream of becoming a gardener. Even Nakita ridiculed him.

Anyway that’s how ‘Shamba’ became his name and that’s how when at the age of seventeen he left school while in class three Mambo did not mind giving him this job. Perhaps it was justifiable even before the ministry of labour and those who fight for the rights of children. 

For your information even by the time he was quitting school he could not spell his real name correctly. To him John was Joon, so he wrote his name as Joon Ziro. For your information again Mambo was his last teacher.

And that was seven years ago.

On this specific day however Mambo called to mind the last eight years. He remembered how as the teacher on duty at Sulwa primary school a not-so-ordinary case was brought to his attention. A class teacher had been sexually abused by her own student. That teacher was one madam Grace and the student was one John Ziro. Incidentally madam Grace was heavy and believe you me hell had never seen such furry. She had been busying herself explaining a concept to Ziro while leaning on his desk thus unintentionally exposing her breasts…in a way. Ziro is said to have been overtaken by the sight that he became confused. Some reliable sources said he even attempted touching them. Well, he later denied all those accusations until Mambo pushed him to the wall at which he lazily retorted, “It wasn’t me.” 

Mambo remembered that day and stared at Shamba once more. Then he remembered his wife Grace. At the moment the only remembrance about her, physical that is as all the rest was engraved in his heart, was a small mausoleum at his door step that they fondly called ‘Nyumba Ndogo – Small House.’ 

The mausoleum, a four by six feet brick structure stood right next to the door leading to the main house. There was a big mango tree where it stood. Its shade came in handy to the Mambo’s and small house especially at such times when the sun was as scorching as at the present moment.

Mambo was now standing as if at crossroads, partly headed to the main house, partly headed to the other house. Then he heard a groan. He stood firm, ready for anything!

“The Lords trumpet has not been talked about. She can’t be rising from the dead!” 

He got closer, his heart beating even harder as if he expected her to come back to life that very moment. What did he see? Matata, one of his sons, his sixth born and the last among the boys was lying comfortably on the slab on which a cross is engraved from one of the sides. The lad now in his early twenties had even made himself comfortable with a mini mattress. He scratched his head.

“A case of oedipus complex even in death. What the hell!”

He brushed aside this idea getting attracted to a framed piece eulogizing her wife. It had been done by one of the students Grace had taught at Sulwa Primary on the day he learnt of Grace’s demise. The student was at that time a Literature student in a local university. Mambo was not a blank slate though on matters poetry and picked one or two. He took down the frame from the wall it hang and had a closer look. The very first verse said:

When I die my children

Don’t you cry

When I raise my flimsy palm

To bid you farewell

Raise yours in response.

Now getting more involved, he sat on the slab to read if only the second and the third verse.

King’ee the well built he-goat with a beard that children loved to twist was at the top of his voice wooing a grooming nanny. Hitting the ground with the right of his fore legs he made his best in making his intentions known.

“Phe…Phe…Pheeeeeeeee…Pthu…Pthu…”

“It’s the reason I bought him. To bread. Let him do his work,” Mambo thought grinning, perhaps with awkward satisfaction, then lifted the framed eulogy as if it was a piece of paper that needed to be straightened up. He went on:

When my body is stuffed in a coffin

So tightly like in a tin

Hold candles

To melt around it.

Sing a carol

My soul to cajole.

When down the tomb

It is lowered

And thereafter

With clay covered

With wreaths roofed

Hastily

Walk to the bedroom

And bring our best blanket

It’s my eternal rest.

He shook his head, taking a deep breathe.

“Poetry…‘t seems to touch on the inner core of a man’s soul with infinite tenderness…with some…somewhat painful discovery of a concealed reality…” 

Matata turned just in time to destruct what would otherwise have been his stream of consciousness. A closer look told him the ‘boy’ had completely been overtaken in his dream.

“Matata are you okay?” He forced a smile.

“Yes.”

“Well, I can see.” He nodded, as if to show some conviction. “You must have been in the ninth cloud when I foolishly interrupted you. I am sorry.” He forced a sarcastic smile.  

Matata cleared his left cheek. It had a strand of saliva that streamed out of his mouth while asleep. 

“Am okay Papa.” 

He was getting scared already. Like Shamba he knew Mambo to go nuts while on tantrums irrespective of the cause.

“I didn’t say you are not okay. If you were not, you would not have wet your clothes.”

Matata shyly checked his pair of shorts. It was embarrassing to have had such dreams while sleeping in his mother’s small house. Wasn’t it?

The two men, yes two men, now stared at each other with suspicion; the father realizing how his boy had grown up whilst the boy harboring feelings of hatred. 

They were both destructed, in their imagined rivalry world if you like, by light showers. Such strange showers fall lightly as they did at the time during intervals of a full sun when a beast is giving birth in the wilderness. Such were the beliefs of the people of Sulwa.  

“You can’t understand God,” Mambo broke the eerie silence among the two. “Our rector talked of a philosopher who wanted to understand God,” Matata picked from his father. “He went to the sea shore and there met a boy who had made a depression and would run to the shallow end of the sea and fetch water with his cupped palms…” 

“You mean he still talks of that story,” Mambo was encouraging his son to tell it. 

He knew the priest in question for he had attended the same junior seminary he later sent his two sons in the hope that one of them would finally become a priest so as to accomplish the dream he had earlier as a young boy until he met Grace. 

“Yes, he likes it so much. I think it’s the only way he hopes to attract people to the alter in the name of love for Philosophy…anyway so the boy, he says after being asked by the Philosopher what he aimed to achieve said he wanted to fill the depression with the water. You know what the Philosopher said, right?” 

“That it was impossible,” Mambo picked, “and so is understanding God.” He concluded just as Matata was opening his mouth to give that one last bit of that puzzling anecdote.

The two had not been through with philosophising when they heard of Musali. Although his real name was Musalia no one knew for sure why he never wanted the last vowel in his name. Musali was known to drink the local brews till he could not even remember his name. 

One day while in a deadly stupor after a day long drinking spree he said his name was Colleta, Colleta Musali, at least he remembered the last, but how for heavens sake would he pick a feminine name for himself? He was also known for all the nasty things in the village. Like – like daring an elephant to a fight about a week ago. 

The beasts had descended on his crops from the Sulwa Hills National Reserve that they bordered and for the whole night he was engaged in a tussle with them. Of course he was known for his gallantry in the whole of Sulwa so when he burnt palm leaves whisking them away he was assured it’s the way to go. And it worked as the beasts are known to fear flames. But in the morning as he was inspecting the track they had left as they fled he discovered a lone ranger that had not gone back. Her calf had been trampled upon in the milieu falling dead and for the love of a mother she would not leave it. 

“This one will today know I was to join the A.U. troops.” He started rolling up his sleeves, and believe you me he was approaching the wailing animal for whatever it was he thought he could achieve when one of his neighbours who happened to be a game warden, on leave, appeared and professionally sent it away.

“I hope he won’t do something stupid in my compound,” Mambo saw him stagger. “Who ever wrote his firing letter from the fourth estate is to blame for this mess.” And oops, it’s like he read from Mambo’s inner voice.

“I know I am a mess…but I don’t care…” He was closer now. “They said I am a gun for hire when they fired me. They never bothered to investigate my case, thy just sent me away. And because of that and for all I care they can go to hell and come back with its fire.” He let out a shout, “Mamboooooo!”

Two

Sulwa, a small village bordering the Sulwa National Reserve was home to a cosmopolitan community that did not know the boundaries of tribe. Its area was estimated to be several thousands of square kilometers and it all stretched with the forest of the reserve. Some people loved calling it Sulwa Hills or the region of the Sulwa Hills. And this is how it came to be known so.

Long time ago when no man had inhabited the region, wild animals ruled the whole of Sulwa. They strolled carelessly enjoying the bounty of nature. Then man came and this freedom was brought to a gradual if not hasty end. The animals started migrating deeper into the hills and forest. Or let’s say they learnt of the new land owner cum grabber of their land who would not let them stroll with ease as before. But there are two lions that would not be held back in the bushes easily. To them there was new found prey in the homesteads of the new neighbours. These two lions would come every night for the livestock of the new neighbours. They would in fact extend their stay and destruction sometime even in the day. 

The new neighbours were so angered by the destruction of these two lions that when the whites finally came to Sulwa, during those days of pre-colonial Africa, the only thing they would remember when asked about the name of the place was, “Sulwa Airi.” They were simply complaining of there being two deadly lions, as Sulwa is lion in their mother tongue, and airi is two. The whites thus wrote Sulwa Hills and moved on; to them airi sounded like Hills. That’s how Sulwa was born and no one for sure knows if there was any other name for the place before the coming of the white explorers as it is alleged.

There was a church in the middle of the village. It was a Catholic Church and it bore the name of St. Francis as its patron saint. So it was called St. Francis Catholic Church, Sulwa. 

St. Francis Catholic Church, or simply the Church, was built on a ridge. There was a nice view of the Sulwa National Reserve from where it stood. One could actually see elephants at that vantage position even without magnifying lenses. From the church one could also easily navigate the whole of the village and even tell whose homestead was located where; apart from that of one Kuti.

Kuti was an aged man who possessed infinite powers of making productive whatever land he cultivated. You see he had this strength that would not allow him to till lands that aren’t virgin; and you needed not go to far to prove it. It was all written on his body, partly on the veins that were bursting all over his body, even on his forehead and partly on his palms that felt like sand paper with every handshake.

Musali was once heard saying of him, “he exerts all his force on the farm for he has no serious A.O.B after sunset,” by which he meant he had no woman to go to. Sure, though Kuti was actually an old man, about sixty five or seventy, it was rumored he had never known the warmth of a woman. He had no children to show in Sulwa, even one like those people get with the wives of their neighbours who have been to the city to look for money.

Well, one may say Kuti had no seed to give to a woman, but he had seeds to give to the whole village for it was he, who supplied the Sulwa with seeds in the planting season for he just had a way of getting the best varieties of whatever he planted. 

It was so unfortunate however that when he died, it was in a style summed up Thini, one of the naughty boys of Sulwa as “dying like a cashew nut plant.” When it is finally cut to burn charcoal, Thini said, it is forgotten immediately the earthen mound of its kiln is opened to get the charcoal. His story though, is still told in Sulwa as the story of the great hermit farmer who lived in a cave with a python and had powers to sire with the soils of Sulwa.

A grassy stretch connected the Church to the main road. It was about half a kilometer or so. Its grasses would grow to the height of a toddler until there Mambo who was also the Chairman of the Church Council announced of the coming of the Parish Priest to celebrate mass in a weeks or two weeks time. 

The Parish Priest’s car, you need not be told, was the only car that went up this stretch as no one else owned or came with a car to the Church. Immediately the announcement was made it would be upon the youth to plan how to clear the way for the man of God. That had been the tradition since the Church was constructed not very long after Yanke celebrated its independence from colonial rule in early 60’s. Mambo and the entire Church council had made sure that history is well preserved.

“St. Francis Catholic Church was built with funds raised by friends and family of Fr. Ko’oky of Ireland,” read a book in the Church’s archives. 

“Its magnificent windows and golden tabernacle were imported into the country through help of the independence regime. Its mimbar was carved by the best of Irish sculptors…” the history went on and on…”

But of this history was this particularity with why Fr. Ko’oky chose to set it up on the ridge. 

“He wanted the cross he would finally mount on its apex to be seen from all the corners of Sulwa,” Filipo, one of the early converts at the church who Fr. Ko’oky baptized in his first batch would always narrate the whole epic to everyone who had the time to listen.

Filipo was also a teacher and had taught at the same school with Mambo and his wife Grace sometime back. During his hay days as the Head at Sulwa Primary School, he had the idiosyncrasy of sending pupils back home to bring their parents’ contributions to the schools project in a style that made him earn the nickname “The Dragon,” of course for reasons that were best known to the pupils. He had eyes that would meet at an angle while looking at you and every little thing on his body that one would call hair was white, by the time I met him for this story.

“Fr. Ko’oky had not known that on one side of the bushes that surrounded the Church was a shrine of the Igod, the community we found here when we came to settle down here. It was a place they preserved and often they travelled from far and wide to come and offer sacrifices to their gods.”

He was seated on a three legged stool strapped in a kanga outside his brick house. That was one beautiful sunny Monday on one of those Christmas holidays when I decide to travel to the country side to feast during the birth of Jesus.

“For close to five years when we setting up the Church we felt the powers at the shrine were not ready to let go the land.”

I stared at him blankly. He spat some yellowish thing then made as if to crash it with his left foot.

“At times the cross on the Church would burn at night…burn…and we would see its flame from all corners of Sulwa…”

“You mean everyone…?”

“Of course not everyone. You required to have the eyes of faith to see the miracle.”

“How long would it take?”

“Long too long but it would be the symbol of a ciborium in which the body of Christ is enclosed…and a priest caring it high for everyone to adore on benediction. You have seen where the junction departs from the main road to the Church?”

“Yes…”

“You have seen a gum tree there…?”

“The one whose fruits these green doves like so much?”

He covered his mouth and whispered; as if afraid the spirits would follow him even now.

“We witnessed all kinds of things there. One day I myself...’ he stumped his chest…” while on an early morning trip to go and fetch exams from the D.E.O, then Nyati Maziwa found a child wrapped in a black shawl under that tree. It smiled at me but vanished when I tried to pick it thinking it was an abandoned bundle of joy.”

“So how did all this come to an end?” I ask.   

He paused and this time cleared his nose. He did not spit and I felt relieved. I was not sure I wanted to imagine his sickly chest anymore.

“It took the prayers of Grace. That woman was a saint walking in our midst.”

But maybe he did not tell me all. At the same tree it was rumored wayward men and women would meet under the thickness of darkness to partake in illicit intimacy on the earthen softness of the decaying leaves. One of those girls who were rumored to have been laid there was nicknamed by Thini the naughty one, Blue Gum. As it is neither the severity of the act nor the role of the man in tango was not as important as the face of the Blue Gum, if you only allow me to quote Thini. These things have been so since the days of Jesus of the line of David.