Slowly but surely, I realized my sister had moved on. She was not one of us anymore, and I was perfectly OK with that as long as she did not ask me to live in her strange world I did not understand.
I also needed to get back to OlKalou to restore the balance of power there. Considering I had five brothers, I was the equalizer, making me a very important person in their lives. They never said it, but I just knew it. How could any game be played with two against three?
With that in mind, all the embarrassment and shock I had experienced in that one month washed away. I wish those people who saw my sausage fly in the restaurant, or the House Help who showed me how to use the toilet knew how “important” I was where I came from. Well, nobody really cared how important I thought I was, but you know what, that is the bravado you shield yourself with to cope with tough situations like the ones I just faced.
That one month was an eye opener for an 11 year old from OlKalou. I learnt all I could learn and was amazed at everything I experienced. I kept looking at my sister and wondering if she was related to me. She was fancy in every way, speaking with her friends and colleagues in perfect English you would think she was a “mzungu”.
Then I remembered one small fact I had kept hearing about. A year before her wedding, there was such hoopla about my sister getting a digirii (degree). Everybody including our teachers at Munyeki knew about this digirii thing that we, her younger siblings did not understand. Maybe it had something to do with some pictures hanging in our living room in OlKalou, with our sister dressed in some funny black robes, she looked like the Clergy, with the exception of the square hat she wore on her head (Motar Board) with a tassel hanging on one side. We did not understand that occasion exactly, but we knew it must have been important enough to warrant the taking of pictures in a photo studio, a very rare occurrence back then. Of course the pictures were all black and white, there were no color pictures back in the day. In one picture we could see our parents standing on either side of our sister and there were two group photos, one with our Gikuyu relatives and another with all the valued friends of our family. Wherever that took place and whenever it happened, it had to be important, who knows. You could never read the mood of an occasion by looking at the faces of people in the pictures, because nobody ever cracked a smile in pictures back then. Everybody looked straight into the camera, sharp eyed and stone faced, you would think they were passing kidney stones. But I digress.
At that juncture, I did not know if the degree thing is what elevated my sister’s life or not, but I started to think it had something to do with the charmed life she was now living, completely removed from the life we had in OlKalou. Whatever she did to get where she was, I sure wished I could get there too some day. Her life intimidated me to my core, but it also stirred up something inside of me. I realized my sister had set the bar extremely high for us, her younger siblings, we needed to put double the effort in our young lives if we were to reach that bar by the time we got to her age. That scared the daylights out of me but also motivated me to aim higher.
Lasting Impression: As I write about my visit to my sister’s house those many decades ago, I am flooded with vivid memories of everything I experienced in such great detail like it happened just yesterday. The crisp clear music they played on the turntable that sat at the corner of their living room. I had never seen a record player before or the vinyl records that played on it, but here I was now listening to music I had never heard before. I had heard Kikuyu music played on the Central Station by Gaithuma wa Kimumu and Wanjiku wa Muchemi, music by great artists of our day like Kamaru, D.K. Wahome Maingi, CDM Kiratu, Julia Lucy and others, with my favorite being a popular wedding song by Joseph Kamaru “Ninyuo ni ya Mwana”. It went like this: “Ninyuo, ninyuo, ninyuo ninyuo ni ya mwana, ninyuo ninyuo. Mahurwo nacio maciare ihii maciare airitu gwitu Kibura ninyuo, ninyuo ………” Don’t ask me why an 11 year old would have such an iconic grown up song as her favorite, but for some reason it stuck to my brain like glue. My antennas still go up every time I hear it. Anyhow, I was now hearing music by strange artists like Jim Reeves, Dolly Parton, Porter Wagoner and others. I had never heard such smooth crisp music in my life. From Jim Reeves I heard “Welcome to my world”, “Distant Drums, Don’t Let me Cross Over and others. Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner sang “Daddy was an old time preacher man”, and “If teardrops were pennies” and others.
I am mentioning this because episodes like these have brought me to the realization of how powerful the mind is. I heard this music when I was a tender 11 year old who could barely understand the English language they were singing in, but the tune and the few words I caught, stayed with me to my adulthood. When I was grown and could afford to purchase Audio Cassettes of my own, the first music I bought was: you guessed it: Jim Reeves, Dolly Parton, Porter Wagoner and any other artists who sounded like them. My music preference had been set. I ended up with added favorites like Don Williams, Charley Pride, Kenny Rogers, John Denver all of whom I realized were Country artists.
This brings me to my point of the power of the mind, especially for young impressionable children, whose future can be shaped forever by episodes from their formative years. Every time I listen to the music I first heard at my sister’s house decades ago, my mind takes me back to that exact moment, I can smell the scents at my sister’s house and the aroma that wafted from her kitchen on that particular day.
As adults, we have a huge responsibility on what we model to the younger people in our lives, even if it’s just for a brief interaction. What will a young person carry into their future, after a visit to your home or office? What memories will they take away from your encounter, however brief? Let us chose to make lasting memories that stirs up joy and hope in the hearts of those around us, especially the younger people. They are the future, literally, and they will carry a part of you with them into their adulthood, either inspirational or horrific; you have zero chance for a do-over. What do you wish them to carry into their future?
