It is about getting together with your family and relatives. It's about a cultural renewal in the direction of home and family,about nyama choma, kuku choma, your family's traditional foods and meeting people you've known all along but had no idea were part of your family tree. Yes, that includes the cute girl who lives in the next building. The one you considered asking out to dinner. Yes, she is your cousin.

bend in the river

Some years back, maybe 50 or so, your parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, along with other close distant relatives would get together pretty much everyday. They lived close to each other. Close enough to walk over and ask for salt when they didn't have any in their mud-walled, grass-thatched home. Actually, not everyone cared to use salt.

Anyway, they went to the river together everyday, to fetch water, to bathe with their age mates, or just to talk very innocently with the boys or girls from the other village as they walked back home. They went to the shamba together everyday and they would sing cheerful, thankful songs as they helped each other to plant, weed or harvest.

 The kids played together and were as safe playing outside as they were in their homes. They played until their parents called them in to help with the chores. They might have worried about colonialism, perhaps they even knew people who fought the colonialists, or even relatives who fought on opposing sides but generally everyone was united within the family. They knew each other and about each other. They all knew that their place was to support their family and then their community.

So it was before Higher Education came and took the young people away to the towns and cities. Some migrated to other countries in search of quality higher education and jobs. Culture underwent a fast-track evolution. The oldest and the youngest remained in the village trying to farm while the critical generation worked in the cities trying to earn a bit of money. Soon enough, the older generation died off and the many people working in the city reached retirement age and returned back to the village to try and farm, while the middle generation took its turn and went off to the city. A huge chasm had grown between the generations.

village market

With development and improvement of economic circumstances in some families and communities, families started making the migration together, and confronted the company estate phenomenon. You know company estates, where all the fathers work together, mothers went to the market and gossiped together and the children attended the same company run school. This led to children growing up detached from their grandparents and relatives except for school holidays when they would all be shipped to ushago for a brief visit.

Technological advances and globalization means that today's dads and mums are not just confined to the company estate. People are interacting on a larger scale with those of other cultures; who are actually proud of their cultures. This in return reminds us that we had a culture. So in a serious panic we run off towards ushago in search of it. We join cultural societies that hold cultural events every once in a while. We join culture forums on the internet. Then one day you bump into that old man who used to live down near the river just after your cousin's shamba and you realize that accustomed to the habit of mixing languages you have forgotten a whole lot of your mother-tongue.

So you go home feeling rather weird. You can't tell what that feeling is but if you look deep inside, you know that you are afraid. You are afraid that you have lost that feeling of knowing just where you come from.

So next morning, you wake up and instead of rushing off to work you wait for your kids to come downstairs for breakfast. Your oldest daughter,14 or 15, is in a foul mood today. She yells at her younger brother, 10 or 11, and you watch your wife talk her into being more civil. Your wife talks to your kids in English and you are on the verge of telling her to start talking to them in the mother-tongue, but you pause because you remember that your wife's mother-tongue is not your own. And you stare across at your family in confusion.

Later that day you stop at the pub for a drink to help you sort yourself out before going home. You see that guy sitting at the other end of the bar and you think you recognize him. You start to wave and he looks up but you just can't place his face. His look seems to mirror yours but you hesitate to go over and say hello. Finally, he comes over and greets you, his gait and eyes bearing the hint of a few too many beers.

So where did you meet? Uh...Uh, maybe it was at that event in the village. Which village? You know...back home. So the two of you start talking and you realize that you are actually first cousins. Both of you agree that society has changed so much, people are too many to know each other. But you know that the supposed event where you two met was a very long time ago. Before you went to America to study. Before you came back and got married in a civil wedding to your wife who hails from a village a long, long way from yours. Before you got caught up in work and raising a family and there was just absolutely no time to go ‘home' and visit and get to know your relatives.

You go home and catch the kids before they go to sleep. Your daughter tells you that she will be ‘hanging out' with this boy from school at the Village Market. You start to protest and your daughter effectively shuts you up with, "Daddy, I already had that conversation with mum. She understands that I need a social life and I understand the boundaries. Besides, I'm 16, Dad."

You are left at the table with your mouth open as your daughter leaves the room, and you discover later that you agreed to buy your son the new computer game even though you don't remember doing so. Your wife smiles sympathetically. She knows what you are going through. In fact, she had a conversation about it with her friend from the book club. The gist of it is that we all need to do something to get in touch with the family. Your wife suggests that you both spend more time with the kids and help them to learn both your mother tongues. Maybe you can talk to your brother and arrange a get-together so that the kids can meet their relatives. And maybe she can arrange something similar with her siblings.

Thus the advent of the family reunion. Usually the men slaughter and roast a few goats or sheep, maybe even a cow. The women work at preparing traditional foods. It's a lot of work before and after. But the fun begins at around noon of the selected day. Everyone comes and you had no idea one family tree could have so many members!

If you find yourself stuck next to the old lady who used to be your mother's best friend, who knows everyone you don't know and everything about them, it might be a very ‘educative' experience for you. You will find out who married who, who left his wife and hooked up with a much younger woman, who fathered a child with his best friend's wife and then again which one of your cousins is sure to win the polls for member of parliament, whose daughter is one of the best doctors in Kenya, and so on and so on.

Then you get a shock. Someone is introducing you to one of your female cousins. Your eyes pop out and she won't dare look at you. Oh yes! That girl you played so smoothly when you were just starting with your career in Nairobi. My...was she beautiful! But she was a bit of a control freak and you weren't ready to settle down. And she was your first cousin.

Now, you want to know who in the whole world your little girl has been ‘hanging out' with! She is going to be hearing a whole lot of lectures about bringing all her friends home. Just to avoid a scenario where she grows up and decides to form a union with someone she hasn't brought home and he turns out to be your sister's son.