and the rebuke was meant for the boy’s whole age-set – whose coming of age had dried the hundred-year-old tree.
‘Baba, I told Mother to give me your food but she told me that water must be fetched from the river first. She said everyone is saying the river will be too muddy any day now from the rains.’
‘Eh, she knows better than the Gasa when the War will come. Any day now there will be no food at all and my arm will drop from weakness because my food is always late,’ Hamisi said.
Komora Kijana could see all the men in the adjoining fields unpeeling the banana leaves that held their breakfast to start eating.
‘Father, may I go to school now?’
‘Can’t you see I am talking to Komora, who is old enough to be your uncle?’
The boy stood there waiting and when his father was not looking Komora smiled at the boy.
‘When I was your age I would now be working next to my father,’ Hamisi told his son. ‘You children are very lucky nowadays.’
A few minutes later a few of the men in the adjoining shambas looked up as they finished eating and a few wiped their mouths with relish. Some of them waved in Komora Kijana’s direction.
‘What are you still doing here?’ Hamisi said to the boy. ‘If your teacher comes to my hut to complain that you are always late I will teach you what my father taught me at your age.’
The boy rushed off and his father looked at him with pride. ‘He is a good strong boy.’ Komora Kijana and Hamisi watched the river for a while and Komora said, ‘I will tell my grandfather that the river is becoming a python.’
Remembering that he had started his morning drawing water from the river, Komora Kijana rushed there and filled up the container he had hidden away. He lifted the container with one arm with some ease and decided to take the long route back to his grandfather’s hut to see how the village was preparing for the War between Tsana and Indian Ocean. Ozi village was 300 huts in total, big, medium and small as well as thirty small stone houses and two large ones with wide verandahs that belonged to Chief Mpango and the late son of Mzee Chilati Dhabasha who, a year ago, had been arrested after being mistakenly accused of being the famous terrorist Faisal. He had died in government custody and his father had left the house empty in anger. Ozi was the last inhabitable space on the Tsana before the mangroves by the river and the wilderness leading up to the sea. Komora Kijana now reached Ozi Primary School, which stood at the northern edge of Ozi, a clear mark of colour and design that stood out from everything that surrounded it in age and appearance. He looked out to the far end of the village along the river to the small bay where the farms, rice and bananas ended. Beyond the bay, kilometres of mangroves stretched along the river where the men went to fish or to hunt. The small bay also held the new fish-smoking facility from where the fishing boats left early every morning. Behind Komora Kijana, inland beyond Ozi Primary, was the indigenous forest called Kilu after the great Mbakomo mganga. Half a day’s walk along the river on the edge of Kilu Forest was the larger Ungwana Bay, which for Ozi was the end of the world where the wild animals prowled. But in the other direction along a dirt track that became murram road all the way to the Malindi Highway, an hour away by Nissan or tuk tuk were the other Pokomo villages, and then the lands of the Ormah dotted the land. There was also a mosque along the dirt track navigable by car; there had been talk of a dispensary for two years but the floods and the wild animals thankfully kept Kenya at bay.
Komora Kijana reached the most densely inhabited huts in Ozi that formed a collective mass in the middle of the village. From that spot he stood in the middle of the rough triangle that was Ozi, with the Tsana as the base line. The pier boat launch with the fish-smoking house next to it was one angle of the triangle, the swamp-farms and the gate that led to the long road on the opposite corner the other. The chief’s camp near Ozi Primary formed the top of the triangle.
He made his way slowly back to his grandfather’s hut further from the river, beyond its flood level. His grandfather had moved there after the great El Niño of ’97. Only the ancient hut of Gasa next to the kizio was on higher ground and, because of its special magic, was said to be the only place in the village unaffected by the floods since the Malachini settled in these parts when they came from Shungwaya.
When Komora Kijana reached the homestead his grandfather was still asleep and so he started with the kayapa hedge, heaping twigs and small branches that he had collected from the forest the previous day. He fortified the fence all around the compound till he was sure that even a senge pursuing a she-goat in heat would be deterred from entering the enclosure. He started a small fire and found the two walking sticks that his grandfather had instructed him to make for their forthcoming journey to the Constitutional Conference. Both heavy and strong, the two sticks were just about the right weight and firmness. He laid them back to harden against the small flame that came up. From inside his hut he brought out a long, hollow calabash container. He popped it open, holding it away from his face and nostrils to let the fermented porridge release its tang. He held it against the wind for a few minutes and soon enough there were yells of dismay in the neighbouring yards. Mama Kutula, their neighbour, appeared and shouted, ‘You, Komora! Is that how you treat the friends of your dead mother? You will make me bring a smelly child into the world with your nonsense.’
Mama Kutula was heavily pregnant and complained loudly every day to the world about all the things that plagued her, including the increasing activity of butterflies, sparrows and swifts that were harbingers of the flood.
Komora Kijana noticed two eyes watching him keenly through the hedge. An arm appeared slowly over the hedge and placed a large wrapping that steamed away in the morning air. It was Ukonto’s wife, Kerekani. His grandfather’s food was almost three hours late. Kerekani was not allowed in the compounds of most homes because of her husband’s lung condition. Most of the villagers feared their children catching germs from her that she, in turn, had caught from her husband. Ukonto had been predisposed since birth to a heavy lung that shed sputum and mucus all day long, especially in the wet rainy seasons. It was said it would have even been better if he had been born a mkabira in a land where the air is dry and there is no land to be tilled or river to be ridden. Ukonto now worked as a watchman at the government offices near Shirikisho because he could not farm.
‘There are no children here to be sick,’ said Komora Kijana, picking up the food. ‘You can come into the compound.’
‘Wewe, what about you?’ Kerekani said, with habitual irritation, appearing from behind the bush. ‘You think you are now a man?’ Komora Kijana thanked her for the food and she left muttering. He winced when he tasted the first mouthful. The millet maize was too soft. Ukonto, it was also said, had weak teeth from his condition. Komora Kijana sniffed at the stew and it had too much pepper. He also saw that the vegetables were too dry.
Komora Mzee woke up with a few deep coughs. Komora Kijana waited for a few minutes and then went inside and they ate in silence. After the meal, the old man pulled the Book from the eaves above him and dusted off wasps’ eggs and handed it to Komora Kijana. Then the old man started talking in his quick breaths and Komora Kijana wrote it all down with the Youth pen he was so proud of, a prize that he had been given for being first in his fourth form class.
A month ago the government delegation from Constitution and Water, Katiba and Maji, had come to visit Ozi village and invited Chief Mpango to the Tana People’s Constitutional Conference. The Chief then asked Komora Mzee Wito instead to represent Ozi and the Malachini. With the coming Constitutional Conference the finishing of the Book became even more important. His grandfather said there was no better way to show the people of Katiba and Maji why and how the Malachini lived on the shores of the Tsana. At the conference he planned to give the Kenyan government the Book of his life to explain everything about the Tsana and the Mbakomo,
