Leading the Night

Philo Ikonya

Description

Deprived of being heard, people still have a voice. They make it heard in ways that disturb the status quo. This book is an engagement with such voices. Can Deni, Wairi, Yaadi, matatu people, militia people and taxi drivers in Kenya also ask "Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?" as Nelson Mandela did. Why do two men wearing bling bling turn into two snakes dancing in Rika's imagination? The web of corruption is intricate. No-one can lead this night alone. It takes many constellations, each one twinkling in its own radius. Many rays of light dispel darkness. The peoples' good leadership alone can check politicians' terrible ways. Philo Ikonya is the author of two poetry anthologies, This Bread of Peace and Out if Prison.

Sujets

• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Twaweza Communications
• Date de parution: 01 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789966028174
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Leading the Night LEADING THE NIGHT

PhiloIkonya

Leading the Night

Philo Ikonya

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

©Philo Ikonya, 2010

Published in 2010 by: Twaweza Communications Ltd. P.O. Box 66872 - 00800 Westlands Twaweza House, Parklands Road Mpesi Lane, Nairobi Kenya website: www.twawezacommunications.org Tel: +(254) 020 375 2009

Design and Layout by Catherine Bosire Cover design by Kolbe Press

ISBN:978-9966-1510-0-1

Printed by Kolbe Press, P.O. Box 468 - 00217 Limuru, Kenya

Dancing snakes

Leafing through The Sabat News, Rika steals a glance at Jazeera TV on the wall in front of her. Her head is well supported by the back of her hard seat. She can feel the wooden rail touching her neck. She pulls the paper up above her eyebrows. From there she still peeps at the screen from time to time. Is something calling her to keep track of the TV news? Her eyes fall quickly to the pages but before she finds her line, she hears the words ‘Eeeh State Guests calledLukiimam’. She shoots up. Rika looks straight into the screen. It is as if the wordLukiimam perforates her ribs like a spear. She sits down again, leans back on her seat and takes a deep breath. She lifts up the pages of the newspaper and covers her entire face now. She drops The Sabat News and some pages first cover her lap and then fall down to the brown carpet. She puts her elbows on her desk and digs them in as she throws the palms of her hands open in a questioning gesture. Her open fingers freeze mid -air. She is hardly breathing. She stares hard at the TV screen and then sucks a deep breath in. It is as if her large eyes are about to pop out of their sockets. Our Biology teacher would have said they had already fallen out of her cranium. Her round dark chocolate face narrows down to frowns on her forehead. Her thin black eyebrows are puckered. The bridge of her nose stands clear and straight. It shines like a torch. If you were very close to her, you would see her round nostrils gently rise and fall as she breathes in and out. You would hear that her breathing says she is fed up but her nose tells she will not stop. Her eyelashes are lost in her eyes. Her face is a picture of fury, pain and daring. Yet, Rika fears. She fears compassionately. On the wall, two long ebony African masks with thin eyes and long noses seem to begin weeping.She picks the pages up from the carpet and stands up straight. She opens her eyes wide. They are clear and focused. She lays The Sabat News back carefully on the desk before her. She stays on her feet.

 Leading the Night 1

Now, the TV screen is filled with the broad faces of two men with round strong necks well decked with goldenbling- blingson their shining skins. They smile. They look like twins. They both have jet black hair; and well pronounced thick eyebrows. Naughty smiles play on their lips. Their rosy cheeks flush as if dabbed with a little golden brown blush. They are talking to tree young girls. Their nameLukiimamis prominently running in the TV transcript below. The moving strip looks like a black snake belt that moves all the time, tying the TV around its waist. Their pictures remain on the screen for minutes. Rika sees that the two men sometimes look like one man, and then suddenly they look like two men. It is as if she is dizzy looking at them. It is as if light waves leave their faces and blind her eyes. Suddenly, it is as if they leave the screen, get tele -transported in the instant into the newsroom where she is standing and hit her. They are still on the screen. A frail woman is seen for few seconds shouting at these men with a shrill voice. She is a villager in poor clothes. The crowds on the street laugh at her. The people are pleased to see theLukiimamwho now flex their huge arm muscles facing the woman. They both hit the woman. She falls down. The crowd cheers. The little woman stands up again. She dusts her skirt and shouts at the shining men again sticking out her neck harder and preparing to run should they charge at her. Nobody consoles or joins her. Rika stares till one cold tear in her right eye gathers and falls, rolling down her cheek. She can feel the edges of her own upper eye lids move higher and higher. A soft movement as if of a tiny gentle breeze covers her eyeballs. Something has travelled from one little capillary to the next inside her eye. The soft sensation over her eyes disappears. More tears fill her eyes, roll down her cheeks and hit her breasts. The right side of her upper lip twitches with pain. This has never happened to her before; and certainly, not in the newsroom. Her eyes hurt deeply. In Rika’s eyes now, each one of the men still on the screen, is a glittering snake charming the other as venom swells on both their necks.

2 Leading the Night

She stares at them. She can see that they are coated with tantlum -acid resistant and long lasting- and they are ready to bite, poison and kill for those on whose behalf they work; but not before some dancing to charm the world.

The dance

When the two snakes start dancing, she can see their dance takes over all other dances. They swallow traditional, church and even all modern dances. All these dances disappear without a sneer and it is not clear how this happens. But Rika knows. Their dance is like no other. It is choreographed by those who stole all African beads behind our backs and gave them to the two snakes to decorate themselves. They were also given all dances to dance without song. How wonderful that not all our songs were swallowed! At least we have the songs that touch us and make us! It was impossible to tell how the underworld would tango with the upper world. It was the dance of two big snakes to whom all were beholden. Do not blame anyone who knows or wants to know about this dance – Rika does both- if they seem to think too much. If sometimes you hear such people talk to themselves as they keep long vigil hours, try to understand. If you see them take long and endless journeys, you will know why. These snakes hiss. She watches them closely. They teach young girls to kiss and hiss fast. She listens hard to their words. She keenly watches their rhythm. These snakes move their forked tongues. They begin to tell lies. The young girls copy them. Men in the country, not even those who say they have formed a gang to fight for liberation and have made a return to traditional religion- a group which the government has proscribed- do not fight the snakes.

 Leading the Night 3

TheLukiimamtwins lie even more. They say that in the beginning, there were no beads in Africa. They refuse to nameKaffi,Krobo,Mateyi orAkosoall of them marvelous African beads. The African girls who flock around them say they want lighter skins. They say they want to be called Jaccquieen, Amaryllizard, Pixie, Ivy and Merculeeine, Jaynie or ‘civilized’ names like Arleenix, Ileenha, Queen Mavel, Queen Tiger and Princess Patbell. Maybe when the dance of the snake ends, we can ask thesebling- blingmen questions. But not now. Would the silver, gold and diamonds they eat and drink allow them to hear us speaking with baked beads in our burnt mouths and hands? Maybe when the dance ends we can check out the names of our boys and girls, our own names. Aha, Maxwell c Mackenzie M kaaww had finished reporting the most important TV news item of the evening. If this were a folk story, we would not understand Rika’s fallen jaw, her tears and her dismay. But now we understand her shock, for this is real life in Nairobi that she is looking at. It is not a story. She was looking at the streets she walked on and breathed from, there reflected on the screen of TV Jazeera. She was looking at men who came to Nairobi, saw, ‘conquered’ and were never seen again. They were people who would never know of her hundreds of painful footsteps in dark nights searching for the truth of how a country got so robbed and swindled. The truth of how a nation was throttled and deprived of fresh air until it was suffocating like a big blind fish on a sea shore.The next day, another simple woman from rural Kenya was seen as she screamed at these men on the street until some of theirbling-blingsfell off. She was not interviewed on her views. She became a comical figure for all to laugh at. A week after, it was said that the shining men disappeared but returned decked in diamonds and gold from a longer journey inland. They had crossed borders to the west of Kenya towards the DR Congo and returned. They said they owned Africa.

4 Leading the Night

Rika was still in the newsroom. Now someone in the newsroom holding a remote control, changed from TV Jazeera to The Kenya Cooperative Channel, (KCC) with an unseen hand. KCC was in the middle of broadcasting theLukiimamtoo. Then a series on needy cases started. There were medical appeals for: tongues, hearts, left eyes, fingers, lower and upper lips, vaginas, toes, teeth, breasts, heads, fingernails, stomachs, noses, right eyes, kidneys, ears, legs and hands on the Kenya Cooperative Corporation TV announcement program. The hand with the remote control begun to move to different TV channels for a few seconds, as if copying and pasting news clips. All the other channels were broadcasting those men grinning from ear to ear. There they were, beaming from all the respected TV stations, occupying all the screens in the country, their reflections filling the only mirrors Kenya had in common. Rika continued watching. The weather next. Warm weather is about to phase out a cold July, the coldest month in Kenya. But global weather patterns are shifting and with a smiling voice, the announcer seems to say that it is up to you if you get caught in a sudden storm. Everyone knows seasons are unpredictable now. For now however, Rika’s mind is taken up with her next scoop. She has calmed down. She was through with checking her previous stories carried in The Sabat News. Good, she thought. More time to write and get published if she was lucky. She was always searching for the hottest potato but not everyone was interested in all hot potatoes. The TV was switched off by a remote hand and the newsroom returned to silence. Rika stared at the ceiling.

Rika you have no proof

Rika had been working all night. Sometimes the stories she wrote did not get published. They often disappeared when they were rich in detail. The editor would say to her that she had made her stories too long. She

 Leading the Night 5

was told every sentence needed proof. She received a warning MEMO headed, ‘No proof ’ often. She knew this was a hurdle mounted before her and not a gate to go through. Teams to work on difficult items were never formed in Sabat News. Was it a warning MEMO she needed or support? Was The Sabat News management unable to trust her nose? Rika vowed to watch the night and to dive as deeply as she could into darkness if that is where the best light was. If again we were to think about the details of how hard Rika worked, we would be tempted to think that she is a fairy God mother and that this is a strange tale. As for Rika, when she felt like taking things easy, she remembered the millions of voiceless women in Afrika. Women died silently working on the land and in other jobs. This could be said of many countries. We know Rika works with the energy of a woman who is- in - charge of seven gates. It is she who wo/mans all these gates, especially her own seventh gate within her and this she does gracefully too. She works just like most of our mothers. She works for many hours, almost forgetting herself, just like most of our mothers in Afrika have always done. The scene she had just seen on TV would never leave her mind, yet the two men who looked alike, theLukiimam, had no hard questions thrown at them on TV. She was still then taken aback. Rika knew she was not living in a fairy world. She was not virtual but actual in the way in which one might move their hand, lift a glass and take their first sip ever of a new drink that delights. A sip for example, from a clean glass full of a fresh and cool Senegalese thick baobab juice on a damp and hot afternoon. Rika works with her fingers as truly as how an initial sip of such a precious juice flows down the throat and is followed with more gulps filling the drinker with satisfaction and health. What others may read as virtual is first actual in her. The taste of her work always begun at the tip of her tongue and into its middle where it gathered before it went right down, still delighting her buds with joy to the end. Rika can smell, touch, see and

6 Leading the Night

hear her work in almost everything. She dreams of it vividly even at night. Most people would be afraid of dreams like hers, they are so real. How could work filled with passion and dreams like this not explode with power? Energy moves energy. “Don’t call me a workaholic!” Rika sharply objects to her colleague Kikeshe. Kikeshe was trying to get Nguvu the evening driver to take him to a ‘watering hole’ as they called drinking places, to meet the Minister for Social Services after work. He made up the excuse that Rika was working all the time. Nguvu explained to Kikeshe that he was assigned to drive Rika for the next two months, three times a week, and he could not take up an extra task. “You are a workaholic! And a feminist too!” Said Kikeshe. “A workaholic feminist!” He emphasised. “No Kikeshe. You must not try to organise me through definitions that you get wrong anyway. If all you need is transport, talk to the administration and get somebody to help you. No, Kikeshe am not living on feminism or any ‘ism’ as the world likes to brand any women, especially Afrikan ones, who can express themselves. I do not believe in brands whichyou thinkfeminism is. I am not the West, as you will soon say. You know am creative!” Kikeshe smiled at a colleague whose time many people did not attempt to waste. He knew he was in the wrong and trying the wrong person. He left. He knew nobody would listen to his case against Rika. Rika’s well earned respect was unquestionable; however, she was still a mystery, like most people are. Many who would never understand her. Rika is in charge of everything that comes from her heart. She keeps her goal posts free of scores of humiliation. If one thinks of some games, one might say she is a Centre Forward. She shoots goals straight into the goal posts. She is in charge of herself, her home and her children; naturally then, she is a defender. You will wince that she has too much to care about, but her story is her life. She cannot separate it and put it aside to watch it, wince or frown. Rika has not time for that.

 Leading the Night 7