My boys are resisting the village with all their might

You can take a girl from the village, but you can’t take the village out of the girl. I may have travelled all over the world, but I still have some village in my bones.

Whether life takes me to Kikuyu or Kitty Hawk, Kihuyo Village still shapes a huge chunk of how I respond to issues. Right now, my innate village side is trying to influence how I am bringing up my children.

There are some old school things I intend to teach my children, but I am not so sure how I will go about it, but I must do it, one way or the other.

VISITING HOURS

In my village, when a bee strayed in the house, you were not to swat or chase it away. We were told that when a bee strayed into your house, it was coming to announce that a visitor was on the way.

“If you chase away the bee,” we were told, “you’re chasing the visitor away, and that is unacceptable.”

Believe it or not, any time a bee came through the door and left, a visitor would come knocking. I don’t know if it was coincidence, accident or collusion. It just happened. Due to this, I grew up believing that bees were harbingers. My son Joshua can’t stand bees. If he sees one, he reaches for a can of insecticide. He believes bees do only one thing: sting. I don’t know what Joshua will say if I tell him that bees announce an imminent visit. Being the voluble boy that he is, he will probably say that a bee announces a visit to the hospital. 

In the village, there were other communications from nature one needed to be aware of. If a hyena howled, it meant that someone was going to die. Ditto when an owl hooted. It’s hard to explain this, but it happened.

The talk of the village would be, “Yes, we heard the owl last night”. To date, I have foreboding thoughts when I think of owls and hyenas. I don’t take their cries lightly. You can imagine the issues I will have with anyone calling an owl an ordinary bird or keeping it as a pet. I’m sure my children would not link animal sounds and death. They will ask me to present research papers and scientific evidence, which I also don’t have. But seeing is believing. I was told, I saw these things happening, and I believed. 

MUKA WA KWERU

Growing up, we were told if we opened our eyes wide enough in darkness, we would see a ghostly woman called Muka wa Kweru. We were also forbidden from talking about her.

“If you do, she will surely visit you when you’re sleeping,” we were warned.

Your guess is as good as mine: no one wanted to tempt fate. No child in their right mind wanted a visit from this unsettling woman. When you were sent to the shop, kilometers away, and was required to come before dusk, you’d be warned, “You know if you don’t hurry home, and darkness finds you, then you’ll have Muka wa Kweru to deal with.”

This made you run, to and fro, just to ensure you did not bump into her. When I recently tried to use this Muka wa Kweru line on Joshua, he did not swallow it. He wanted to know if I was referring to the two circles one sees in the darkness.

“And how do you know they’re from a woman called Muka wa Kweru?” Joshua asked, unperturbed.

That wasn’t all. Joshua wanted to know more. “Where does she go to when there’s light; if at all she’s there? “Does she have a house?”

“What does she come to do in other people’s houses only when it gets dark?” “How many children does she have?” “Do you also go to visit her?”

Here’s one thing I now know for sure: No matter how much I try, I can’t pass down most of my village tendencies to my urbanite children.