I sometimes use the white hair ruthlessly springing up all over my
head, as an excuse to be irrelevant. The younger men, who work with and
for me, usually pause hesitantly, uncertain whether to call me up on it
or respect my age.
I usually watch with amusement, adding more
irrelevant clichés waiting for the one person who always ends up being
my daughter to tell me to stop it.
The good old days.
When I was 19, I was arrogantly proud of the fact that my father was a
successful engineer and that we lived in a stone house with electricity. It
was the 70's, my guitar was a status symbol and I wore a stiff afro
with tight Lycra shirts and even tighter bell bottomed trousers. I went
to Sunday afternoon boogies at the Arcadia and was home before mother
and Dad came from gwata-niiro at the church.
All
that, before I started worrying because there were rumors that my father
had made it by betraying his people to the white colonialists. I
was so affected that I would delay for as long as possible the revelation of my last name. A while later, my father sat me down to a stern lecture about my guitar. So I put
it where I couldn't see it and went off to university. I forgot the
rumors and when I met people out there I was proud to say my African
name.
The older, the wiser. And
none-the-wiser. I was 24 and the pretty white girl at the campus
made me forget who I was and why I had crossed the ocean. There was beer, LSD and a lot of folks who thought Africa was a
jungle with naked people and lions on the streets. There was also the stately old man who was not African but who reminded me what I wanted to be for my people and my country.
Idealistic stuff. All that made me come home ‘kujenga taifa'.
No one told me that there would also be a bunch of vultures waiting on the
jackals to kill all the hard work and then feast on the carcass.
Perhaps the folks high on LSD were right. It is a jungle. So what about
the nation?
The other tribe. I
first heard about them when I was 15. My father listening to the other
man who described the other tribe as they sat under the muiri tree near my mother's granary. ‘Them'. Fearful types. They did things differently. Be careful with them.
I
was 15 years old a long time ago. After that I was sent to school with
‘them'. I studied with ‘us', too. I got older and went to work with
‘them'. I worked with ‘us', too. Differences. Just differences. A few
years ago, my daughter chose one of ‘them' as a life mate. There was a
bit of apprehension. He loves her and respects her father. Can I ask
for more?
It all changes, you see. Now the
next door neighbor's son wears his hair in corn rows. He wears an
earring, a stud, I am told. On Friday nights, he goes out wearing a
stiff baseball cap tilted to the side, a good looking sports jacket,
baggy jeans that make me want to pull them up for him, but which seem
to be securely attached to his ears by the ipod wire, and white
sneakers.
Did I ever look that ridiculous?
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oh and you write well... lovely article