Author: Macharia Mwangi

It has been five years since Tati, my daughter, came to this world. Every morning, we walk together, as I take her to school before continuing off to work. I love this part of my day. Tati has the long hair that her mother has and rounded eyes that resemble my brother’s. The way she is growing she is going to be as tall as him. She is also so playful and she calls me Papee. Today, however, she said something that got me thinking. We were almost reaching her school when she stopped and faced me. “Papee, you are…

I am in the latrine now. Baba says that my ancestors need my urine so that they can cure me and I can finally get Jenny back. This latrine is not mine, it’s not even ours. It belongs to Baba. This Baba is not my father. He is our Baba, maybe, depending on how you look at it. My own father should have looked for ways to get me out of this predicament. But he didn’t. This Baba’s latrine is small and the walls are made of mud and it does not have a roof; not even a grass thatch.…

It’s around mid-day and I am at home. I am alone because the sorghum plants in our farm are the size of small child crawling and so mother is at the shamba weeding. Reki, my brother, is not here either because he went to a place called Dubai. Dubai, my mother tells me, is far far away. Further than Nairobi and one climbs into an airplane so that they can reach there. I have never been to Nairobi, but I have seen an airplane on the pictures that Reki sends mother, and I think mother doesn’t like airplanes because mother…

I want to be mad. I want to lose my head in her style of madness. I want to always be going for a job interview on high heel shoes that do not match. One green the other one red, one blue and the other the color of my madness. I wish to have a beautiful mass of dark, uncombed hair that will fall on my shoulder like hers so that sometimes I can weave three irregular plaits here and there and over there where my sacred beads will rest. I will wear green trousers and match that with a…

Chwele Woman. Whether tall or short or fat or not, a woman from Chwele is a beauty to behold. She comes to the market balancing on her head a basket full of bananas or sweet potatoes or groundnuts that she will sell to get money to buy nyanya or kitunguu or pilipili or salt for the evening soup. She walks with the grace of a woman with broad hips and thick lips and dreamy eyes, saying hallo to this and that stranger who might buy her farm produce. “Engo Valamu? Is it well at home?” She will ask and the…