LOVE TALES: The sting of village love

I grew up in the lush green countryside of Vihiga, a land that is blessed with beautiful girls.

Among them was Grace, a stunning beauty who caught my eye with her big round eyes and flattering figure.

Unfortunately, someone ill-advised her on a hairstyle choice that did not help to accentuate her beauty and it became my fist lesson of accepting people as they are.

This damsel had a generous forehead too, and I soon came to learn that it was her reservoir for drama. But we will get to that in a bit.

Grace gave me a listening ear, time, promises and most important, hope. We would meet every evening at some junction near her home and bask in the embers of love.

To be honest, I cannot remember the things I told her. They must have been very serious lines because she drew so many maps on the ground with her big toes. I think by the time our love hit a month old she had curved out all the continents.

With every new piece of hope peddled, I bought more Bint El Sudans and wrote romantic poems. I was a smitten man. I knew good things were in the offing so I had no qualms waiting.

SEND–OFF RENDEZVOUS

The time came for me to leave the village and join university. I anticipated a perfect ‘send-off’ to mark my grand entrance into the green city in the sun. Grace was game.

The plan was simple; go to her house at around 8pm when the family was having supper, hide under the hedge that ran around the compound. She would then sneak out as the rest went to sleep to join me.

I arrived well before the scheduled time and stationed myself at a strategic spot under the hedge.

I could hear my Grace chatting with her cousins in the kitchen which was separate from the main house.

It started drizzling. You see, I had started sweating while still in my house so it did not occur to me to throw on something warm.

So here I was soaking in all the rain drops in the name of a send-off instead of catching some good sleep in my warm bed before catching an early bus to the city.

I saw Grace and her cousins scuttle into the main house carrying a lantern. If they had been keen enough, they would have noticed my burly figure trying to hang between a soaked ground below and wet eucalyptus leaves above.

The light from the lantern hit me hard because I had done poorly at disguising myself. Grace and company got into the house, I heard the sound of door locks shutting, and then the lights went off.

I was left in pitch darkness.

With no mobile phone to confirm the way forward from her, I kept getting rained on until it dawned that Grace had just pulled a successful scam on me. She was not coming.

You should have seen me walk home drenched to my boxers, trembling like a generator, annoyed and with no woman in tow.

My experience with Grace made me realise that sometimes, love truly stings.