May We Laugh, Cry and Live in Togetherness….

Much younger me at Sarova Panafric Hotel in the early 80s

My early childhood memories are sprinkled with moments when I was left to my own devices. I was used, no scratch that,  I was resigned (is a more accurate description) to being left behind or on my own in the house for long stretches of time. It was not unusual to be the last to be picked up at school when each of my folks thought the other was doing the school run…the anxiety of being on the school grounds for hours on end lessened when I was older and able to walk home on my own. You see, the age gap between my siblings and I was more pronounced. We grew up in different eras. By the time I was knee-high, they were off to college and boarding school and so away from home for most of the time each year. 

My folks were each grappling with their own internal existential crises at the time of my growing up.  They both had vastly different ways to cope that seemed to drift them further apart. Mum, a born and raised Catholic almost overnight, became fanatically committed to a ‘new penticostal church’ in the mid-eighties.  Mum would go off for fellowships and revival meetings and occasional all-nighter keshas... and Baba, not to be left behind, took up more golf, trips, and out-of-town assignments. Even after retirement, he rented out an office just to be away from home as much as possible. If they could help it, they would be out early and back late.

After completing homework and dinner in the evening, I would lay flat on the carpet in the foyer and look out the glass door, watching the vehicles go by along the Nakuru-Nairobi highway at night. It was fascinating to watch moving headlights moving back and forth, trying to imagine and make up stories about where they were from and where they were headed. It helped pass the time as I threw a gaze each time a car rolled past our gate and wondered which of my parents would get home first.   When a car finally pulled up at our gate, my whole body would let out a sigh, a huge relief from tensions I did not notice were building up earlier. Everything after they got home would be better. That was all that mattered. Naturally, there were nights when it got too late to wait up, and I gave in and went to bed alone—those lonely nights profoundly affected me over the years. A lot of night terrors, scary thoughts and sounds came vividly alive to me. I was sure that the lights flickering outside my bedroom window curtain were really the peering eyes of ghouls and evil spirits. When the wind rustled outside, the trees sounded like creatures howling. I would lay in bed still and petrified, thinking if I covered my head with the pillow, maybe ‘they’ wouldn't catch me. Mercifully, sleep would take over the fright that gripped me. The next day, I would open my eyes and find everything reset back to normal and my folks home until we repeated the same cycle later that evening.  

I remember one late evening when the whole family was present, and we spent time at the local golf club. There was a tournament, and Baba won something or rather. He invited us all for a night out and a treat. Those late evenings were exciting, but I faded fast and got too sleepy to stay up. My mum would place two chairs together, tuck me to nap, and cover me with her shawl… once they were ready to leave, one of them would carry a sleepy me to the car and head home. That night, however, they forgot and left me still sleeping. Thankfully, one of my dad’s golf friends noticed quickly that they left without me, and he and his wife jumped into action. They roused me and bundled me into their Volkswagen Kombi, driving me home at what seemed like breakneck speed. We reached home around the same time they got home, and I still remember how perplexed the couple was that the whole gang were none the wiser that I was missing until we drove in right behind them. 

Possibly the most unforgettable of these snippets of the past was one weekend when my mum set off early to drive to masailand and oversee some tasks where we did some wheat and barley farming. She used the Gilgil route. She was a slow but steady driver, so I was hopeful she would be home by dusk to avoid being on the road late. Night driving on the highway was not her cup of tea. Being a Saturday, I expected Baba to be at the pub in the club till late. By evening, my mum was not home, and I got worried. I knew my dad's office line and the phone booth at the golf club by heart. I rang the club to let him know Mum wasn't home yet, only to learn he wasn't there. His office line remained unanswered, and that left me stumped. But I did not have time to process this because, after that, the phone started ringing every so often with a strange voice and the end of the line asking if my dad was home. I kept saying no, and he kept ignoring my question to say who he was and to leave a message for when my dad got back. For the rest of the night, the phone kept ringing every hour, asking for my dad and if he was home yet, and I kept saying no. None of them made it home that night, and the incessant phone calls from strangers were disconcerting. We had people who worked at home, so I was not wholly alone, but on a Sunday, everyone was off work. I entered my parents' room, disquieted by the unslept bed and drawn curtains. I remember drawing them open to let the sunshine in and opening the windows to let fresh air in. I drifted to the kitchen, made breakfast, laid out the dining table and set it up for all six of us in the family. While I knew it was slightly silly to set everyone’s favourite tea mug and plate, it made sitting down and eating alone less painful. After breakfast, I cleared the table and went about with my routine... I played with the dogs a little and returned to tidy my room, then settled in the living room to watch cartoons. In those days, we used dubbed over VHS tapes, and I would watch cartoons and films or listen to old vinyl records to fill the hours. I learnt at an early age to keep myself slightly recluse occupied and busy and make the most of my own company a trait I carry even today. 

My imagination thrived and offered me companionship…

Even with many solo late nights, I had not felt so utterly alone until that morning when I realised no one had returned. 

I am unsure what time it was, but Baba came home dishevelled, still in his clothes from yesterday, his eyes bloodshot and a day-old stubble on his face. He shaved every day, so his face was always smooth, and I was fascinated by how quickly his face transformed when he skipped a day off his daily ritual.  

I can't remember what I did or said when he came in, but he did not seem surprised when I told him the phone kept ringing with strangers who refused to leave their details. Keep in mind those were strange political times in Kenya when people who pissed off Moi’s regime could go missing or get picked up and disappear for days or go missing altogether. 

It was then that he sat me down and told me about Mum’s accident. It turns out that the evening before, my mum was involved in an accident on her way home with a stalled and stationary lorry on the highway. It was dark, and she did not realise it had stopped, and she rammed right into it. I am not sure about the details, but she was rushed to Nakuru War Memorial for treatment. The whole windscreen was down. A lot of her injuries were from shards of glass. As he was updating me on her, he asked me to get ready to visit her in the hospital since she was asking for me. I was too stunned to object. You see, I have a strange association with hospital visits and my mum, who has been sick all my life since she was pregnant with me. Deep down inside, I always feared each hospitalisation would be her last, and so I dreaded them a lot. But that is a story for another day. Baba took a bath, changed, looked like his usual self and drove me to the hospital to see Mum. She had a powder blue hospital gown and looked frail on the hospital bed.  She had a bandage between her ear and temple and some scrapes and bruises, but she mainly seemed upbeat.  Her eyes lit up when she saw me, and she wanted us to pray and thank God for her survival. She told me at the point of impact, she felt the presence of guardian angels. The police officers who assessed the scene said she was lucky because most of the shards of the windscreen fell on the passenger side. The car was severely damaged. It was hard to look at it after they got it towed from the police station. I sat with her as long as possible and drove home with my dad. 

We both slept early that night. 

The next morning was a school day, and I got up to my usual routine. My dad dropped me off at school, promising my mum would be home in a day or two and that he would be home early from now on. I nodded, almost believing him. I longed for congenial evenings that were not so lonely, but this was wishful thinking. As soon as she could, my mum would be back on track with her church busyness and baba back at the golf club pub.  They were too set in their ways to change, and I made peace with that. I proceeded to class as though nothing untoward had happened that weekend. 

I have been known to chuckle as I periodically share some of these anecdotes from my past. I whittle the whole experience down to a funny story... but when all is said and done, these experiences are anything but funny. 

“...My folks can make me split my sides,

I laughed so hard I nearly died,

The tales they tell, sound just like lying,

They grow the fruit,

But eat the rind,

I laugh until I start to crying,

When I think about my folks.”

• Excerpt of poem ‘When I Think About Myself’ by Maya Angelou

I resonate with this poem I once heard Ms. Maya perform. I knew precisely what she meant. Sometimes, we find ourselves storifying our life experiences, disassociating and making light of them so we do not break. And since we still love to hear and share stories I hope they can also help release us from the captivity of the past hurts and restores us with new narratives of healing, survival and thriving. 

   

May we be free to experience laughter and tears together…