The fly had been trying for an hour to find an escape route through the window of the speeding car. It seemed to have tired and traversed the length of the window like a prisoner in solitary confinement. Mbiganyi followed the efforts of the convict fly with keen interest and had done so from the moment the journey began in the city. He made no attempt to help the fly because it kept him occupied. The animated family discussion and laughter in the car did not affect him in the least. He left the fly alone for a moment, closed his eyes and sighed. How he wished he were home watching American music videos.
The Nkomo family were on their way to a traditional ceremony far in the countryside. Mbiganyi’s paternal grandmother, Kuku, was finally shedding her garments of grief as a sign that her year-long period of mourning was over. It was an event that the extended family had waited for with great anticipation. Mbiganyi could not understand the excitement. To him death should not be a mystery, one died and was buried, life moved on. His grandfather was a faded memory, blurred and fuzzy around the edges of his mind like a black and white film he once had the displeasure of viewing. The movies he watched at Cine 2000 every weekend made it clear that the dead were forgotten as soon as they hit the ground with a bullet to the head or a knife in the back. The wonders of Hollywood had sucked in Mbiganyi’s mind and he worshipped his action heroes with a raw passion. He was a ten-year-old boy who lived for American movies and he had a special love for white actors. They never seemed to die. The hero would take on many bad guys; most of them black and lay them to ground much to the delight of Mbiganyi. There were times he wished he were white. The colour represented bravery and courage but most of all it was a colour of immortality. Tate, Mbiganyi’s father saw the ceremony as a symbol of rebirth and renewal. Although he was still grieving for his father, he felt that this ceremony was a doorway, an opportunity for his mother to continue with her life.
As the car entered Kuku’s yard, Tate unconsciously gripped the wheel tighter. A few scrawny chickens voicing indignation scattered from the pathway where they had been scratching for anything edible. There was one other car in the yard, parked in the sun. There were no trees to provide shade. It was a yellow ford Bantam kept together by what seemed to be glue and pieces of string – a chicken coop for the future. Mbiganyi sat up straight in his father’s B.M.W, feeling important and smart. He could not wait to see the faces of his less fortunate cousins when he disembarked like one of his action heroes at the cinema. His cousins were very black and he knew that they would not stand a chance were they characters in his much loved action films. He, of course, would play the hero. The car came to a stop and the rest of the family jumped out of the car yelling and hugging the relatives that had gathered around. Tate was in his element, tickling one boy behind the ears, before playfully slapping another between the shoulders. As Mbiganyi’s mother fussed and crooned over the little children that were tripping over her feet, Tate popped open the boot of the car for the others to unload the groceries. Mbiganyi did not know who they were. They all looked the same to him and the faint odour from their clothes kept him some distance from them. He felt that the rags might disintegrate if he so much as breathed in their general direction. He yearned to escape to the cinema, the seats there were so orderly and nobody reached across and invaded your space. He continued to observe the greetings from the safety of the car until his mother’s disapproving stare made him open the door resignedly and step outside. He felt vulnerable. Mbiganyi did, to an extent, miss Thamani’s company. He was Uncle Ndibo’s son and often hung around Mbiganyi like a lapdog although he was taller than his city cousin and two years older. The first thing that assaulted his senses when he closed the car door was the smell of offal cooking by the hearth a few yards away. His stomach heaved and he turned up his nose in revulsion. Suddenly his relatives swamped him. An old woman pinched his cheeks, muttering something about his chubby face. Another man, it was not his uncle, grabbed his hand and pumped it energetically with calloused fingers. They reminded Mbiganyi of the talons of a bird of prey he had once seen on a school outing. He wondered why some people’s skin became so hard and tough and if it made it hard for people to walk. In fact, he believed that the old women in this place walked slowly not because of age but due to the weight of their tough skin.
Someone tugged at his corduroy jacket and he spun on his heels to assess the threat. It was his cousin, Thamani, and Mbiganyi thawed. He allowed himself to be led from the babbling relatives and the strong offal. They headed for the cattle kraal. All this time Thamani was buzzing. He talked excitedly about the wire car he was building and the races he would soon win. Thamani loved cars and he punctuated each detail with guttural sounds that imitated various engine noises that made Mbiganyi cringe. The boy’s hands glistened with animal fat and he clutched at an imaginary steering wheel positioned at chest level. Mbiganyi indulged him as he executed sudden jerks of the “wheel” and he swerved bodily past incoming vehicles, which in this instance were stumps and rocks on the pathway. “Criiiiiiiiiiiiiii! Beep! Beep! Watch careful! My car no brake for today,” Thamani whooped in his fragmented English as they walked, or rather, as Mbiganyi trotted behind his cousin. He was looking at the animated boy with a mixture of amusement and surprise. He owned three cars back in the city. They were powerfully built remote controlled monsters that flashed blue, red and green lights that roared around furniture and chased cats up trees. Whenever he drove his cars he felt alive. He felt white. Yet he could never experience the unbridled joy that the boy in front of him displayed. Furthermore, Tate continuously moaned at the noise, while his mother never ceased to lecture him on the furniture the toys were destroying. Thamani suddenly braked and collided into him. Thamani looked over his shoulder and said, “You smell funny. Did you know that?” Mbiganyi was too confused to speak.
They stopped some distance from the kraal because Mbiganyi could not get used to the smell – the ‘green stuff’ as he called it. He reached into his pocket for a chocolate bar he had stashed away that morning. It was soggy and some of the chocolate had seeped through the wrapping and stained his jacket. Thamani was changing gears in his vehicle, which had undergone several transformations, depending on the whim of the driver and was now a seven-ton truck. He stopped his vocalisations and his hands dropped to his sides. His tongue darted in and out of his mouth like a snake tasting the air for prey. The barely disguised hunger in the boy’s eyes made Mbiganyi give up the chocolate without a word. He held it out by the tips of his fingers so as to avoid contact with Thamani’s dark skin. Thamani wolfed down the bar and they turned around, returning to the homestead. Mbiganyi had thought he would spend some time looking at the cows, imagining himself to be a cowboy from Texas or Oklahoma. No doubt Thamani would have made an ideal Indian because, save for a pair of well-worn khaki shorts that exposed a buttock, he was practically naked. However, Tate would be asking for him by now and so, reluctantly, he let Thamani lead the way.
As they entered the yard through a side gate the women began to ululate and converge around a hut that Mbiganyi knew to be his grandmother’s. Two more songs were sung and the women surrendered themselves to the beat such that the ground under Mbiganyi’s feet seemed to writhe like a hibernating creature disturbed in its sleep. Somewhere in the crowd, a person was beating on a drum. Though the song was in his mother tongue, Mbiganyi could not follow what was being said, and for some reason, this annoyed him. He felt the rhythm of the beat pulse over him in waves of ecstasy and he swayed in response and felt powerful. It was as if he was growing the roots of a baobab. The moment was short lived and he collected himself, glancing guiltily around him. It was as if he had exposed a part of himself that he never thought existed. He wondered if the car was locked. He need not have worried for nobody paid any attention to him and Thamani had disappeared. The song and dance stopped abruptly and a strange charge hung in the air like the aftermath of an African thunderstorm. An old woman, looking regal and wise, stepped from the hut and rose to her full height which was still nowhere near Mbiganyi’s stature. It was Kuku. Tate, uncle Ndibo and two other elders vaguely familiar to Mbiganyi accompanied her. The men looked solemn while the old women exuded confidence and dignity in a floral dress that seemed funny given her wizened features. She stood for a moment outside her hut and held the small gathering with a powerful gaze that made Mbiganyi squirm and seek escape. His relatives, who had started another song, punctuating it with rhythmic clapping, penned him in. Her eyes, which were in sunken sockets and starting to get plagued by cataracts swept the crowd. Kuku’s gaze settled on him without warning like a searchlight exposing a fugitive. He thought of the convict fly. The eyes hovered over him for a moment before continuing their panoramic sweep. Mbiganyi’s heart beat fast and his throat went dry.
The next hour passed very slowly for Mbiganyi. He took little part in the proceedings and ate nothing of the food that had been prepared by all the men and women of the home. Instead, he sat in the shade of the locked car, leaning against the rear door brooding. Occasionally he looked at his hands and feet to see if they were still normal. For some reason, images of a dying chameleon kept crossing his mind. He tried to appear indifferent but the old woman’s eyes had rocked him deeply. He looked up and saw Kuku slowly making her way towards him. Again his throat went dry as Kuku sat down with difficulty beside him. She seemed not to care that her floral dress was getting soiled.
“Mbiganyi, many things have taken place today that you do not understand. Perhaps you have stayed away too long.” She did not look at him all this time and busied herself by untying the handkerchief at her waist. “In any case you are the person I look up to, to continue our traditions. Without your input, they will die. Your grandfather has departed. I feel my bones telling me that my time is fast approaching but I know that only you can ultimately keep me alive. The choice is yours.” With that Kuku got up and walked back to the others, hunched over, weighed down by time.
Mbiganyi choked back tears as the car pulled out of the yard to the chaotic accompaniment of farewells and last minute instructions. Thamani listened to the roar of the engine with awe, his body shivering deliriously as he ran behind it for the better part of half a kilometre. His black skin disappearing behind a cloud of dust until only his waving arm could be seen defiant and as black as ever. With a heavy sigh, Mbiganyi turned his gaze from the rear window. Tate asked Mbiganyi what was bothering him but the question threatened to open the floodgates. Turning to the window beside him he saw that the fly was still trapped. With a surge of emotion, Mbiganyi shouted,
“Papa Stop!”
He opened the door, shooed the fly out, closed it and instructed Tate to drive on. The parents exchanged puzzled looks but Mbiganyi shut his eyes and felt a strange calm descend upon him. For the first time that day, he smiled.
The Nkomo family were on their way to a traditional ceremony far in the countryside. Mbiganyi’s paternal grandmother, Kuku, was finally shedding her garments of grief as a sign that her year-long period of mourning was over. It was an event that the extended family had waited for with great anticipation. Mbiganyi could not understand the excitement. To him death should not be a mystery, one died and was buried, life moved on. His grandfather was a faded memory, blurred and fuzzy around the edges of his mind like a black and white film he once had the displeasure of viewing. The movies he watched at Cine 2000 every weekend made it clear that the dead were forgotten as soon as they hit the ground with a bullet to the head or a knife in the back. The wonders of Hollywood had sucked in Mbiganyi’s mind and he worshipped his action heroes with a raw passion. He was a ten-year-old boy who lived for American movies and he had a special love for white actors. They never seemed to die. The hero would take on many bad guys; most of them black and lay them to ground much to the delight of Mbiganyi. There were times he wished he were white. The colour represented bravery and courage but most of all it was a colour of immortality. Tate, Mbiganyi’s father saw the ceremony as a symbol of rebirth and renewal. Although he was still grieving for his father, he felt that this ceremony was a doorway, an opportunity for his mother to continue with her life.
As the car entered Kuku’s yard, Tate unconsciously gripped the wheel tighter. A few scrawny chickens voicing indignation scattered from the pathway where they had been scratching for anything edible. There was one other car in the yard, parked in the sun. There were no trees to provide shade. It was a yellow ford Bantam kept together by what seemed to be glue and pieces of string – a chicken coop for the future. Mbiganyi sat up straight in his father’s B.M.W, feeling important and smart. He could not wait to see the faces of his less fortunate cousins when he disembarked like one of his action heroes at the cinema. His cousins were very black and he knew that they would not stand a chance were they characters in his much loved action films. He, of course, would play the hero. The car came to a stop and the rest of the family jumped out of the car yelling and hugging the relatives that had gathered around. Tate was in his element, tickling one boy behind the ears, before playfully slapping another between the shoulders. As Mbiganyi’s mother fussed and crooned over the little children that were tripping over her feet, Tate popped open the boot of the car for the others to unload the groceries. Mbiganyi did not know who they were. They all looked the same to him and the faint odour from their clothes kept him some distance from them. He felt that the rags might disintegrate if he so much as breathed in their general direction. He yearned to escape to the cinema, the seats there were so orderly and nobody reached across and invaded your space. He continued to observe the greetings from the safety of the car until his mother’s disapproving stare made him open the door resignedly and step outside. He felt vulnerable. Mbiganyi did, to an extent, miss Thamani’s company. He was Uncle Ndibo’s son and often hung around Mbiganyi like a lapdog although he was taller than his city cousin and two years older. The first thing that assaulted his senses when he closed the car door was the smell of offal cooking by the hearth a few yards away. His stomach heaved and he turned up his nose in revulsion. Suddenly his relatives swamped him. An old woman pinched his cheeks, muttering something about his chubby face. Another man, it was not his uncle, grabbed his hand and pumped it energetically with calloused fingers. They reminded Mbiganyi of the talons of a bird of prey he had once seen on a school outing. He wondered why some people’s skin became so hard and tough and if it made it hard for people to walk. In fact, he believed that the old women in this place walked slowly not because of age but due to the weight of their tough skin.
Someone tugged at his corduroy jacket and he spun on his heels to assess the threat. It was his cousin, Thamani, and Mbiganyi thawed. He allowed himself to be led from the babbling relatives and the strong offal. They headed for the cattle kraal. All this time Thamani was buzzing. He talked excitedly about the wire car he was building and the races he would soon win. Thamani loved cars and he punctuated each detail with guttural sounds that imitated various engine noises that made Mbiganyi cringe. The boy’s hands glistened with animal fat and he clutched at an imaginary steering wheel positioned at chest level. Mbiganyi indulged him as he executed sudden jerks of the “wheel” and he swerved bodily past incoming vehicles, which in this instance were stumps and rocks on the pathway. “Criiiiiiiiiiiiiii! Beep! Beep! Watch careful! My car no brake for today,” Thamani whooped in his fragmented English as they walked, or rather, as Mbiganyi trotted behind his cousin. He was looking at the animated boy with a mixture of amusement and surprise. He owned three cars back in the city. They were powerfully built remote controlled monsters that flashed blue, red and green lights that roared around furniture and chased cats up trees. Whenever he drove his cars he felt alive. He felt white. Yet he could never experience the unbridled joy that the boy in front of him displayed. Furthermore, Tate continuously moaned at the noise, while his mother never ceased to lecture him on the furniture the toys were destroying. Thamani suddenly braked and collided into him. Thamani looked over his shoulder and said, “You smell funny. Did you know that?” Mbiganyi was too confused to speak.
They stopped some distance from the kraal because Mbiganyi could not get used to the smell – the ‘green stuff’ as he called it. He reached into his pocket for a chocolate bar he had stashed away that morning. It was soggy and some of the chocolate had seeped through the wrapping and stained his jacket. Thamani was changing gears in his vehicle, which had undergone several transformations, depending on the whim of the driver and was now a seven-ton truck. He stopped his vocalisations and his hands dropped to his sides. His tongue darted in and out of his mouth like a snake tasting the air for prey. The barely disguised hunger in the boy’s eyes made Mbiganyi give up the chocolate without a word. He held it out by the tips of his fingers so as to avoid contact with Thamani’s dark skin. Thamani wolfed down the bar and they turned around, returning to the homestead. Mbiganyi had thought he would spend some time looking at the cows, imagining himself to be a cowboy from Texas or Oklahoma. No doubt Thamani would have made an ideal Indian because, save for a pair of well-worn khaki shorts that exposed a buttock, he was practically naked. However, Tate would be asking for him by now and so, reluctantly, he let Thamani lead the way.
As they entered the yard through a side gate the women began to ululate and converge around a hut that Mbiganyi knew to be his grandmother’s. Two more songs were sung and the women surrendered themselves to the beat such that the ground under Mbiganyi’s feet seemed to writhe like a hibernating creature disturbed in its sleep. Somewhere in the crowd, a person was beating on a drum. Though the song was in his mother tongue, Mbiganyi could not follow what was being said, and for some reason, this annoyed him. He felt the rhythm of the beat pulse over him in waves of ecstasy and he swayed in response and felt powerful. It was as if he was growing the roots of a baobab. The moment was short lived and he collected himself, glancing guiltily around him. It was as if he had exposed a part of himself that he never thought existed. He wondered if the car was locked. He need not have worried for nobody paid any attention to him and Thamani had disappeared. The song and dance stopped abruptly and a strange charge hung in the air like the aftermath of an African thunderstorm. An old woman, looking regal and wise, stepped from the hut and rose to her full height which was still nowhere near Mbiganyi’s stature. It was Kuku. Tate, uncle Ndibo and two other elders vaguely familiar to Mbiganyi accompanied her. The men looked solemn while the old women exuded confidence and dignity in a floral dress that seemed funny given her wizened features. She stood for a moment outside her hut and held the small gathering with a powerful gaze that made Mbiganyi squirm and seek escape. His relatives, who had started another song, punctuating it with rhythmic clapping, penned him in. Her eyes, which were in sunken sockets and starting to get plagued by cataracts swept the crowd. Kuku’s gaze settled on him without warning like a searchlight exposing a fugitive. He thought of the convict fly. The eyes hovered over him for a moment before continuing their panoramic sweep. Mbiganyi’s heart beat fast and his throat went dry.
The next hour passed very slowly for Mbiganyi. He took little part in the proceedings and ate nothing of the food that had been prepared by all the men and women of the home. Instead, he sat in the shade of the locked car, leaning against the rear door brooding. Occasionally he looked at his hands and feet to see if they were still normal. For some reason, images of a dying chameleon kept crossing his mind. He tried to appear indifferent but the old woman’s eyes had rocked him deeply. He looked up and saw Kuku slowly making her way towards him. Again his throat went dry as Kuku sat down with difficulty beside him. She seemed not to care that her floral dress was getting soiled.
“Mbiganyi, many things have taken place today that you do not understand. Perhaps you have stayed away too long.” She did not look at him all this time and busied herself by untying the handkerchief at her waist. “In any case you are the person I look up to, to continue our traditions. Without your input, they will die. Your grandfather has departed. I feel my bones telling me that my time is fast approaching but I know that only you can ultimately keep me alive. The choice is yours.” With that Kuku got up and walked back to the others, hunched over, weighed down by time.
Mbiganyi choked back tears as the car pulled out of the yard to the chaotic accompaniment of farewells and last minute instructions. Thamani listened to the roar of the engine with awe, his body shivering deliriously as he ran behind it for the better part of half a kilometre. His black skin disappearing behind a cloud of dust until only his waving arm could be seen defiant and as black as ever. With a heavy sigh, Mbiganyi turned his gaze from the rear window. Tate asked Mbiganyi what was bothering him but the question threatened to open the floodgates. Turning to the window beside him he saw that the fly was still trapped. With a surge of emotion, Mbiganyi shouted,
“Papa Stop!”
He opened the door, shooed the fly out, closed it and instructed Tate to drive on. The parents exchanged puzzled looks but Mbiganyi shut his eyes and felt a strange calm descend upon him. For the first time that day, he smiled.
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