Dreams from the heartland, perfected in a riot of beads

They found God in the easiest and most correct of ways — in everything. He came to them each morning and He was there when they retired to bed in their mud-walled huts in the manyatta. He took care of their calves sheltered out back, and He ordered the sometimes grudging cows to part with some of their milk, and He came to them each time a visitor walked through the main entrance to the kraal village.

Thanksgiving ran aplenty

It had to be God’s unknown ways — His handiwork, when one February morning news broke that Immaculate Seita, who was of course the daughter of her parents and of the clan, and anyone within screaming distance, had done them proud.

The girl had received her Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) exam results and the paper was colourful. She had made it, and she would be going to university, and the family (everyone, we’d learn, was family) wanted to celebrate the girl, celebrate the soldier in her eyes; celebrate her hour, and her future.

So they sent word for us; there would be a thanksgiving ceremony. They said, just come, travel out here. We thus packed our equipment — the entirety of which was a camera, and some gifts — and boarded a van for our journey to Seita’s village, which was past Isinya, deep in Kajiado County.

The welcoming troupe, nearly all of them women, was a riot of beadwork and colourful shuka. They sang and danced as they ushered us in. In the middle was Seita, the person of the moment. She too was in the dance, her smile brighter than all the beads that bejewelled her. She was a jewel. They whisked her into a chair of human hands and carried her into the compound, into the waiting tent.

Smiles of triumph

A party is what it was. The information about the day and its contents had been scanty. We knew the function was about giving thanks, a small celebration and we’d hop back into the van and travel back to Nairobi. It was an ambush.

It’s entirely possible that one might have considered this celebration to be over the top; students perform well in exams everywhere, don’t they? Yes, they do, but the finer details, the canvas, the background, the overcoming is hardly universal. There is grass over there, too; there are flowers everywhere, and in the grass, no matter how dry and prickly, are stories.

Seita was a story

In 2011, Seita was 14 years old. Later, when a village elder narrated the story that had led to this day, there were gales of laughter, but not in 2011. At 14, Seita was worth half a dozen goats, the elder said, probably even more. She was ripe for marriage, for that was the way of life, and of the land here. There were suitors lurking everywhere, ready with their goats.

The girl had just completed her primary school education but her plans and those of her community were at war. Half-jokingly, half dead-serious, the storyteller said that they almost carted Seita off into the night to a waiting herder, an elderly man who spat through a gap in his teeth. But her former primary school teacher, a man of foresight, had observed the young girl, seeing in her eyes a fierce will to take on the world, to go to college, to help her community. She had told him this during counselling sessions when the teacher sought to know Seita’s plans for the future.

When she walked to school each morning, she followed a beaten path shielded by the thorny acacia, a path also filled with dreams. She dreamt of flying, of sitting in an office full of shelves and other important things, and she dreamt of people coming to her for help.

Her heart, caught in these dreams, beat fast. There was no fear of danger or harm, she’d later say; only school and the horizon. Engrossed in these dreams, the world was a beautiful place. It was her teacher who explained to everyone that Seita was worth way more than the paltry bridal price. The girl, he said, couldn’t be weighed in these kinds of scales, especially not six goats.

“Let her go to secondary school,” the teacher had said, firmly.

All over in the surrounding villages, Seita’s age-mates were readying themselves for the wheel of life; the spokes led to hearths and quick children and, if lucky, some engaged in beadwork for an income.

The teacher heard of a scholarship for girls like Immaculate Seita, and the following morning he fetched Seita at the break of dawn to Kajiado town to fill the paperwork. She passed the interview.

Food was ready. The hosts had corralled a bearded goat, strung him up among the thistly acacia and smoked him over a slow hearth. There was no salt, because the animals preferred wild leaves that chewed, somehow worked into the system with a sprinkling of sweet-sour flavour better agreeable than salt.

The hosts had conspired to overfeed us: every now and then a tray groaning under the weight of meat passed round. Later there would be sour milk poured from a gourd.

Eyes of ours

It was the work of the Unseen hand, Enkai, the speaker said, that had saved Seita. God had saved her from the fate that had befallen her peers, blighting their dreams.

“We almost gave her away when she was not ready,” he said. They had repented of such thoughts, he added to a hive of approval. “Look at her, she’s right here,” he added.

She was worth those half dozen goats, but how long would the herd last? How long do dreams last?

When Seita stood to talk, she still wore her searchlight of a smile. She spoke of her fears those four years ago when the earth shook and the wind blew in no particular direction, but not the direction of her dreams. She laughed, because all laughter had fled from her in early 2011.

At that moment, though, all she had was gratitude, and she called her mother and father to the front. She spoke in her Maa, but to her side was an interpreter concerned about those of us who spoke no Maa, other than the obligatory words ntauwo and sopa. It was all in order, though: gratitude and love and adoption speak to the heart.

She had kept her vigour, which was the community’s vigour too. She was going to university. When she would come back, they agreed, driving through these very gates, she would have fetched a good man, a strapping man full of teeth; he would be riding shotgun, and Seita would be at the wheel. They had thanked God already.

We were adopted

We were family, the whole van of us. After the meat had been stripped off the bones, chased down by bone soup cured with strange herbs and later sour milk poured out a gourd, the visitors were asked out in front. We were family, and to cement the ties, each one of us was gifted a piece of ornament.

An elderly woman leashed my neck with a male beaded collar. I didn’t quite understand the rank that deserved the jewellery but I secretly hoped it meant I was in the league of a moran. It was no accident, like forgetting to button the trouser, that I kept my neck circlet. I wore it on the bus ride home. I was aware of the stares, but my gaze was cast straight ahead.

See, none of the passengers had been there when the plate was passed around; and none of them had been present when we were adopted into the clan, into the fold, into the kindness of people whose language we did not understand. None were present when this traditional ‘bling’ circled my neck.