The Bullfight

He met me all grown up, a man by virtue of having undergone a minor surgical procedure on a very influential organ, rekindling my childhood. David. That was his name. He worked as our shamba boy. The details are all blurry now but I think it broke my poor little heart when he left, albeit unceremoniously. Without reason. Without good byes. It is hard to think highly of such a man.  

At the time, adults seemed like creatures sent from another planet to rescue us from our happiness. As children, we never asked too much: we wanted to play, eat, and sleep. And then we longed for Christmas, never birthdays, for our births were remarkable enough not to warrant unnecessary annual celebrations. There were chores, here and there. When there weren’t, mothers would invent them. ‘Watch that sufuria,’ she would say. That sufuria would be on the fireplace, containing a sacred liquid namely: water.  

I would escape to the farm to be with David. We would dig, him telling me stories or me telling him, none of which I can remember now. David might as well been the only adult who was not keen on reprimanding a child. Given the chance, I would accompany him wherever he went especially when he was on duty. My favourite days were weekends where we’d take cows to a cattle dip approximately 247 km away. We crossed two rivers to get there. Nevertheless I enjoyed them.

The morning would begin early, with a ritual David had cultivated over time. He would go and fetch the finest cypress branches, cleaned to a baby-ass smoothness. He would fetch two of them: his and mine, although mine was a little smaller. Those days, mother would milk the cows a little early, and we’d set of at six thirty latest. We would drive the cows, and cows being cows were always ready for mischief. They would stray into people’s compounds as if they sensed that some of their relatives lived there. The fine cypress branch came in handy at that moment, where David would whip the cow into submission. Not only would the errant cow submit, it also did download the map to the cattle dip, where it proceeded to guide the rest.

When he left, that responsibility became mine. But then mother wouldn’t allow me to handle a panga, I made do with twigs or if we were lucky, picked branches from pruned trees along the way. The cows would always be a mess, so much that I dreaded taking them to the cattle dip. Calves would always want to explore farms with densely covered indigenous trees. I was with a cousin, who was older but belonging to the other gender, who, for lack of a better term, I will call female.

Because cows and rowdy cowboys didn’t respect us that much, we had to stick to a plan: maintain a schedule (every other Saturday), and get there neither too early nor too late. Like any other plan, it is bound to fail one time or another. That’s when we learned the importance of sticking to a schedule. One time, just before we got to the cattle dip, a huge herd of cattle emerged from what seemed like a forest cover. It wasn’t huge at first but then, slowly by slowly, the cows trickled one by one until the filled the road. Ahead of the heard were finely built bulls, billowing with unspeakable horniness. They heard to be restrained by the herdsmen.

Speaking of bulls, they always got charged in presence of too many cows. It is either because they are overwhelmed by the fact that they can’t get the chance to sniff all the private parts of cows at their disposal. I imagine them having bull thoughts such as: All these cows, man there has to be one on heat. I gotta get laid. When their frustration gets to a certain threshold, they decide to go with whatever cow that’s near them. Sometimes other bulls. As a tradition, experts on bull psychology recommended that the bulls have bull rings in order to restrain them. Some risk their noses for a chance to get laid. As a result a lot of unwanted pregnancies would result, leading to many cases of abortion among cows.

As a policy, we never let our cows mingle with the rest. They would be infected with strange venereal diseases. No, that’s was not the reason. They would get lost especially calves. So we waited for this large cloud of doom to pass. We waited. We had to wait also when it got to the cattle dip.

Another time, we encountered a hard of indigenous cows just after ours had swum in that filthy insecticide ridden pool. The best part of this exercise was that cows would have these mournful faces, as if wondering what crime they had done to be forced into a pool of filthy water. For that matter, they always knew their way home. This is the time grow boys and girls took to flirt with each other. We had a ferocious bull at the time: small and stocky. If it would have been a human being it would have been a Mexican drug lord.  And this is how I knew it.

As we approached the indigenous herd, which also had an indigenous bull, the bulls began getting charged.  A small boy, I stayed close to barbed wire fence ready to escape to avoid being trampled upon. The adults taking the indigenous cows had brain capacities the same as used condoms. They spectated rather than drive away their bull, which was seven and a half times bigger than our bull. The odds staked against our bull would be similar to the odds given to Gor Mahia when they face a Barcelona: 2000 against one. The bulls charged at each other, the other fellows cheering and I cowed on the other side of the fence since I had long decided that the match was going to be completely unfair.

If that bull had been listening to me, it would have also cowed. It charged the zebu breed with all its might, making maximum use of is centre of gravity, which the other bull lacked. Fearlessly, (our bull didn’t have horns so I can’t use the term locked horns) the two bulls locked heads. As I waited for our tiny bull to be pinned to death against the fence, thereby being converted into meat albeit prematurely, a strange thing happened. It pushed the other bull almost effortlessly, and pinned it against the fence. The zebu bull whimpered away with barbed wire marks and its ferocious billowing whimpered away too. If the herd boys hadn’t stepped in, it would have been turned into mince meat. And we have demanded a share.

At that moment, I may longed David had been in charge instead of me.

Christmas and Guests

As a kid, there were only two occasions that I looked forward: Christmas and the days that guests came. Christmas happened once a year, and spaced too far between, leaving a vast and expansive field of days in which to expect visitors. They didn’t come often, but when they did, mother would prepare them tea and put an unusually high amount of sugar in it. Maybe she always wanted to prove that we were ballers, sugar-wise.  Also, mother exercised an extraordinary amount of restraint by not even pinching us. But when the last guest left….

There were no phones those days, at least a small part of my childhood. Phones at time competed with an eighth of an acre of a plot in prime areas. And so visitors came impromptu. As if to compensate for their unexpected arrival, they came bearing gifts. It was mainly a kilogram or two of sugar, a packet of tea leaves, and, if they were richer, a loaf of bread-family bread. The bread especially ensured that we kids never forgot their coming, made even richer by our fights of who would eat the upper and the lower slices.

Sometimes we’d predict that visitors would come when chicken fought. You could wonder how we knew about this really important prediction mechanism. We overheard mother once saying so when two hens, I presume in the teenage-hood and craving the attention of the hunk cock, fought. That’s when it triggered a huge sense of responsibility in us, trying to spot fighting hens. They fought two or three times. Each of these times, to our childish glee, no visitor came.

Those were those days. I believe they were good days. Even the music sung in those days, especially rhumba, has a way of sticking in the mind. The simple fact that you don’t understand a single word makes them even better. There were standards that were never breached. Standards to everything. I will devote time to talk about visiting standards. One of those was that you never showed up at a person’s place empty handed. Maybe the punishment was that you could be struck by lightning on your way back, or something disastrous could happen.

Not these days. The people of this generation don’t understand how protocols enhanced our childhood. They’d rather buy bundles and check how people are living better lives than theirs, make them even more famous especially if they have had their butts chemically enhanced. Perhaps the god of vanity overthrew the god that reminded visitors to take goodies wherever they went, and would be termed as visitors. Or the god that controlled visitor’s minds got choked by the tremendous amount of a cocktail consisting of industrial waste and illicit brew. 

I could be wrong by laying blame to these people who intend to be visitors, and have a positive impact on young kids. I mean all you have to do now is have a swanky game that kids like, and simply hand them your phone when you visit. But then what about us adults, with bills to pay, girls to impress, and basically the ever increasing vanity to look good on these numerous virtual spaces. You have to bring foodstuffs that will last you through your stay. Some people have perfected the art of going for days without eating. That would be troublesome especially if you have a medical condition that makes you eat after every thirty seconds.

It is quite unfortunate to receive a guest who has ulcers. My dimwitted interpretation of the condition, that it is caused by stress, would have made me write a bad word for these visitors, like they are somehow disabled. You know, we are used to a certain unchangeable diet which may not be conducive for your stomachial specifications. We could go a great length such as ensuring you starve so that you can quickly go away, and we resume our routine.

However, you could enhance your stay by bearing gifts. If not just come and create a wife hotspot so that we can bet and search for pictures of naked women on the internet. That way, we won’t forget to, and perhaps wish that you visit often.

What it Takes

The sun is high,

Theirs is a motivation to fly past it

For a dream is a dream

Unless it extends beyond

And past the confines of the dark hours

As the clock ticks

Efforts they put drive them closer

And closer

To their most sacred of ambitions

To grow, to mold and to inspire

Generations after them

For them tomorrow is an inspiration

To a tell a tale

Of hard work and self-motivation

That they can sit and spell

What it takes to be them

Dear Lord

Dear Lord liberate me from my prison

Illuminate my life with righteous thoughts

Thoughts that have elongated my nights

Straighten my paths, take away the meanders

Light them or at least make the journey bearable

Give me courage to believe in the impossible

Give me courage to shut my ears to naysayers 

Dear Karma

I am pretty sure that you are okay wherever you are, probably screwing up someone’s life. I don’t object that, because it’s your job to do so.

The reason for my writing is to formally ask you out on a date, does Friday sound good. I’m suggesting taking you to Vila Rosa Kempinsky, is that cool? My assumption is that bitches like you love life on the fast lane, like expensive wine against an expensive back drop, served with smiles that is part of the job description of the waiters there and most importantly expensive food.

I want you to eat to your fill, then slowly tell me when you’ll check into my life and fuck me really good. I’ve since long held the belief that everyone is your agent, unknowingly executing your mandate. With this notion I think I overstepped it and almost took over from you. I’ve failed two people greatly. If we ever meet think their eyes will pop out bullets or something more fatal. But I know you know what might happen in advance. I want you to tell me that it’s okay. That you were kinda indisposed on the day I made those decisions that have either irrevocably changed their lives or impacted negatively on it.

I want us to strike a deal. If I’ve done you any good please consider my footsteps henceforth. If I haven’t, please be lenient. Dish out my pain in doses, like medicine. 

Looking forward to meeting you.

Yours sincerely

Kipchirchir Rop

I am Beside You

When the nights seem like temporary forevers,

The world unforgiving, weary, and lonesome,

Know that this is water under a steady bridge,

Even raging floods will not shake,

Because I will always be beside you

Perhaps the distance, and time between us

May make your world seem full of dark clouds, hovering

And the rain, always imminent, an impending doom,

But always know I will be your umbrella,

Your shelter, a rock of refuge

Perhaps our lives seem like a stage

Without actors, without the lights, or the audience

And the two of us far away, practicing our lines

I, have mastered a few of the lines:

I love you, and always will no matter the circumstances

I am always beside you, cheering you on

Wayward Nights

Wayward nights stretch their gory limbs

To touch a face, worn with deep thoughts

Alone, in a lonesome dynasty

Whereupon nights stretch to a thousand infinities

Unfazed by sleeping pills, and perhaps opium

Searching, seeking a familiar face

In every stranger that smiles better than the setting sun

Drowning the world with certainties, and dreams