Kenyan Ramblings

• Eti mama nifanye nini???

  Posted: September 5, 2008, 6:02 am by Tafsiri Hii

  My mother, God bless her.
  
  She is one of the most illustrious and determined people I know. In fact, I can confidently say that she is a superwoman in her own right. And I am not just saying that because she carried me in her womb for 9 months, went through hours of excruciating pain to get me out of that warm womb into this cold world and went through another form of pain while bringing me up for the past 20-some years. Perhaps if I told you how many children she has borne and raised single-handedly you would understand. When I was growing up, people would refer to my siblings and I as 'the football team' or 'the basketball team' much to my anger and consternation. If you are a sports fan you will appreciate that a football team is composed of more than five people. Anyone who can give birth to and bring up seven well-adjusted, almost-normal children as well as a number of relatives' children, and do so while juggling school and a career deserves an accolade. In fact, she deserves to have a statue erected and a street named after her a la Dedan Kimathi.
  
  This blog, however, is not dedicated to my mother's many virtues. Rather, it is dedicated to her sometimes quirky traits, one of which is her difficulty with the Kiswahili language. With my mother-tongue (which I refuse to disclose for the sake of national solidarity) and Kiswahili being Bantu languages, one would think that my mother would speak Kiswahili with ease. Alas! This is not the case. For as long as I can remember, my mother has been struggling with Swahili. However, she does not know this. She thinks, NO she believes, that she speaks Kiswahili as well as the next ordinary mwanainchi. But, she not only mispronounces words (lala, for instance, becomes rara), she also mixes up her native language with English to come up with incomprehensible words that she passes off as Swahili.
  
  But perhaps her most endearing trait is her habit of mixing up the meanings of Swahili words. In other words, she often mistakes the meanings of certain Swahili words. To my mother's knowledge, dara is one of those flexible words that can be used to mean almost anything.
  So, my mother would say to a naughty child who is asking for a beating: nitakudara!!
  When streetboys come too close to her shopping bags for her comfort, she threatens them
  by saying: ukidara hizi mifuko nitakuchapa!!
  
  Those of you who are familiar with the Kiswahili language know that the word kudara means "to feel", "to caress" or "to embrace". And as for its meaning in Sheng, well, this is a child-friendly blog!
  
  ****************************
  
  Enter Priscilla. Do you know those people who are in the wrong profession? Like that attractive accountant who was meant to be a model cum body builder? O.k., I realise that the phrase "attractive accountant" is a bit of an oxymoron so how about another example? Or that petty thief who is always running away from the cops when he really should be running in the Olympics 1500m race and doing Kenya proud? Well, Priscilla is one such person. She was not meant to be a maid, a domestic worker, a hauzi! She was born for bigger and greater things. And boy, does she know it! Her dream is to leave the country and start a new life abroad. She believes that money not only grows on trees in the land of the wazungu but also that the roads are paved with it. I try to tell her that life is hard abroad, that she can make a good life for her and her son in Kenya. But she believes that everyone she knows who has been outside the country, including her cousin and I, is conspiring to make sure that she does not have her share in the gold mine that the West supposedly is.
  
  Priscilla is one of a kind. She is big and loud, and can drink any man under the table. She is not afraid of any man, any woman or anything...except maybe a frothy beverage know as Whitecap that causes her to become slightly catatonic once she has partaken too much of it. She is also wont to have theories about life. Her favourite is a strange one about families like ours that have many girls. She often declares that in such families, by some strange hand of fate, one girl never moves out. Every time Priscilla says this, she stops whatever chore she is doing to look directly at me:
  Nakwambia Tafsiri, ni lazima msichana mmoja abaki nyumbani. (Am telling you, Tafsiri, one of the girls in this family will not leave home.)
  Pause. Long pointed look at me.
  Hivyo ndivyo mambo yalivyo. Hayo ndio maisha. Kwa kila familia kami hii, ni lazima
  kutakuwa na msichana ambaye hataolewa kamwe na yeye ndiye atakaye saidia wazazi.
  (That's the way life is. In every family like this one, one girl always stays at home to take care
  of her parents when they grow old.)
  Pause. Long pointed look.
  Hata huyo msichana akiwa na mtoto. Hataolewa! (The girl will never get married, even if
  she gets pregnant!)
  Pause. Another pointed look at me.
  
  (Well, Priscilla, just so you know, I am no longer living at home. I may not be married, but I
  am not living in my mother's house, damn it! So, there!!)
  
  ***********************************************
  
  My mother comes home after a long day of hustling in the City under the Sun. She puts down her handbag, briefcase and kiondo (any guess what her profession is?), removes the godforsaken pumps that have been biting at her tender ankles all day and then proceeds to sink thankfully into the couch. In a few minutes, she will make herself a plate of ikwacie - the sweet potatoes that my grandmother sent to Nairobi with my uncle, the truck-driver, specially for her. She will also boil a pot of tea and mix it with fresh ginger and garlic, so she can have something to wash down the ikwacie with. But just for two minutes or so - and especially before my noisy siblings come home from school - she plans to sit down in silence, gaze ahead and rid her mind of any thoughts. She has succeeded to do just that. That is, until her gaze shifts to the right and she notices that her precious curtains are exactly the way that she left them in the morning: unwashed.
  
  She stands up and goes to do a closer inspection. She touches the curtains and brings the material close to her eyes: dust is interfering with the silkiness of its texture. And is that a dried-up piece of ugali stuck to the embroidery?! My mother turns around to face the kitchen and in a loud formidable voice, calls out for the maid:
  Priscilla! Priscilla, kuja hapa! (Priscilla! Priscilla, come here!)
  
  I do not like her tone of voice. It brings back painful memories of my youth; those days when my mother would bring out an assortment of father's belts, ask my siblings and I to carefully choose our instruments of torture and then proceed to demand that we assume the position. I call it the I'll-beat-your-puny-butt-into-a-pulp intonation.
  
  Needless to say, I decide that it is safest to bury my head deeper into my book. Any movement on my part - however slight - might cause me, not Priscilla, to bear the wrath of this woman whose curtains have been treated with scorn. Priscilla takes a long time to come to the living room. Not that my mum's house is so gigantic that the kitchen is one kilometer from the living room. No. There must be some really urgent business that Priscilla is taking care of in the kitchen. Either that or she does not realise, or for that matter care, that she is at that moment my mother's least favourite person. I must say that I secretly admire her courage. She is the only person I know of who has the guts to keep my mother waiting. When she finally strolls in, mum is fuming. She is not only seeing red: she is seeing all the colours of the rainbow.
  
  Oh, mama umerudi? Habari ya kushinda? Eh, na leo kumenyesha! Sasa unajua hizi
  matatu zitaongeza bei kwa sababu ya mvua. Hawa makanga wamekuwa wabaya sana!
  Sanasana hawa wa Kangemi! Hata afadhali nitembee nyumbani leo, mama!...Sijui kama
  umeniita? (Oh, ma'm I see you are back. How was your day? What a rainy day! Do you know, the matatus will definitely hike up the fare today. Evil turnboys! Especially the ones on the Kangemi route! I would rather walk home today. Did you just call out to me?)
  
  Priscilla, the queen of small talk. Any other day, my mother would have indulged her. But on this day, she could only think of her curtains and of hard-headed house-helps who never listen to their employers. Hence, the only thing she could say was:
  Priscilla, si nilikuambia udare hizi curtains??!
  
  I am already on the floor laughing when Priscilla, hands akimbo, looks at my mum with puzzlement and queries:
  Eti mama umesema nifanye nini?!!
  
  ******************************
  
  Someone should really tell mum what the word "kudara" means. Someone like, say, my brother M. That's right, M! Man up!
  
  

Blah blah blah

Fish cakes

Alas a fish cake.

Yet more fish cakes

Guess what ... yeah ... fish cakes.

The end of the fish cakes