With everybody’s feet clean and dry and the fire slowly dying down, it was time for the family to relocate to the Main House to sleep. Majority of families had many children, you wonder how a two bedroom house accommodated everybody. My father had some sayings, more like threats to us kids: “nyumba ni cia kuraarwo ti cia gutindwo. “houses are meant for sleeping in at night not for spending the day in”. Another of his favorite: “nyumba ti woodi ciaguikarwo muthenya na utuku” “Houses are not hospital wards where patients spend both days and nights indoors”. I believe that was a shared feeling in majority of homes because you rarely found anybody inside the house, unless it was raining outside.
With that in mind, parents did not invest much in bedroom furniture and accessories. Each bedroom had a minimum of two single beds. I think the widest bed was three and a half feet. They were locally made, you could tell from their rugged finish. One bed was enough to accommodate four kids. Two slept with their heads facing the headboard while the other two had their heads facing the foot of the bed. It was up to them to figure out where to position their legs.
I often heard my brothers complaining of one brother who was a restless sleeper, they usually woke up to find his feet right in their faces. Their bedtime conversations were always warnings or threats to such culprits “make sure you stick to your side tonight otherwise I will push you off the bed” or “if I find your foot in my face when I wake up in the morning, I will bite off your big toe”.
Another common warning was about passing gas (guthuria) under the covers nearly suffocating everybody. Then there were the dreaded bed wetters. Their first task in the morning was to take all the beddings outside including the mattress and hanging them on a fence at the back of the house. This was a common sight in most homesteads. Such was the life, but we grew up somehow.
