The only sounds that we were used to at night while growing up on the slopes of the mountain, were of frogs croaking in the nearest swamp (and by the way why is it that the frogs in America croak ‘ribid’ while those in Africa be like kro, kro, kro, ni bahati hiyo, kuwa hai tena, vyura furahini sana.) Then there was the nightingale announcing the all so obvious cold in the imagined words, ‘kwī heho, kwī mbarara,’ as the honey badgers announced their arrival at the mzinga in a manner close to asking the farmer, ‘utado what.’ We came in pairs and after all ‘thegere igīrī itiremagwo ni mwatū. But certainly there would be daily drinking officers (ddo’s) who I think we should be calling nightly drinking officers, who’d pass by the homesteads while you were trying to lull the babies to sleep and shout, ‘wanaruona anarūmenya’ and the almost asleep baby would start screaming and you’d have to start the, ‘rock a by baby’ all over again.
Now in our village we had this treevangelist, yeah, you heard that right, you know like a televangelist who does his evangelism from the TV. This one of ours would survey the trees in the village like a botanical student funded by National Geographic, only he was not studying the species, but looking for the one’s with supportive branches. Now in the wee hours of the morning, he’d wake up with the roosters and climb a tree and start his sermon.
One day the nearby Roman Catholic church announced a mass wedding which was to take place in the coming weeks. The very Saturday morning before the ceremony took place on Sunday he climbed on a Sycamore tree like the wee lil man Zaccheus, though not to see Jesus, and he loudly acclaimed, ‘ūhiki wa jubilee nī ūrimū mwerū.’ Karibu watu wakose kufanya harusi. 🤣
Enjoy your afternoon, I hope the night will be a quiet one. Wacha hata mimi nijaribu kuwa treesomething. What can I say, our village has always been a vibrant one 😉
#StillTheChronicler.
Vibrant
