Christmas in Kakamega was about stolen chapatis, chicks and childhood crimes

Then we would run roughshod in the house, waiting at the periphery like prisoners plotting their escape, for Mother to look away so a chapo or two could disappear from the cabinet. But as it turns out, mothers have supersonic hearing and could tell, with scientific exactitude, when someone was tiptoeing in the kitchen, and depending on how heavy the footsteps were, who that someone was.

It was Christmas season and while Christ may be the reason for the season, in Kakamega chapati was in vogue. Soft layered chapatis, served scalding hot. Not that we loved Jesus less, but we loved chapati more.

I cared about my mother’s approval but chapati tested that resolve, a temptation I gave in to numerous times. It was—to appropriate a phrase most people in government would be familiar with—our turn to eat.

My mother had a gaze that could fall on you, heavy as an axe. Her motherhood dogma and philosophy towards life was always ‘the whisper is louder than the shout,’—she didn’t need to say much.

She did her job so effectively 30 years ago that now she only needs to raise an eyebrow and I fill in the blanks on autocomplete. To assert dominance, she would begin a conversation, edge you to the climax, and then say, “Ama wacha tu.” That statement would burrow deep into you, burying itself in your bones to become corpses we carried into the future.

The chickens would stroll around, not knowing they had a few hours to live, and we would be the sentry, tasked with the noble calling of standing guard to these feathered prisoners of war who were not to escape at any cost.

At all costs. Someone would be sharpening the guilty knife against a stone, as we studied the chickens’ necks. This was back in the day. Jeff Koinanage had just left CNN then I think, and we would make fun of his curl kit when he came on TV, that perhaps alirambwa na paka jini.

Children would be blowing barutis the whole night and no one would dink and jink for cover thinking it is a stray bullet. We can’t try that nonsense today, not with this trigger-happy gava in situ.

The men would have their caucus outside, to talk “important things” while drinking busaa and roasting goat or chicken intestines. This is what I imagined it must have been like at the court of Mansa Musa or Sundiata Keita: pure royal excess and largesse.

And there was that uncle who would call us over for some (mutura not beer), not that uncle who promises everyone jobs in the city then changes his number no, the uncle who acted like a medium in the family, the one who anyone could talk to—and who could talk to everyone—and he seemed so cool and collected and funny and in charge and infallible and that he could tell a mountain to move and it would. I wanted to be him.

We no longer do it but extended families would bring all their children—and I do mean all—for this family gathering. That’s how the men announced their ‘other’ children. We didn’t care. There were chapatis for every child, and every child had a chapati. That’s how I met my cousins, and please do not judge, one whom I actually had a crush on. To be fair everyone had a crush on this cousin and I will not say much more on this because you are all pretending to be more pious than you really are.

Who here is without sin let him be the first to throw the stone, and be careful not to hit my cousin with it. Anyway, the law says sex between cousins in Kenya is not illegal but I wouldn’t encourage it—the sex, not the law.

This is how I remember it: soda madiaba and my grandmother used to make wicked drop scones, a feat that no living mortal has been able to replicate. I looked forward to wearing my new clothes, just like the people around the Prezzo who are gifting him, their emperor, new clothes.

I was a naughty boy then, and I dreamed of changing the world, like those guys in NGOs with their “sustainability” and “carbon neutral” and “building the plane while flying it.” Alas! It was not a sustainable dream and so I “pivoted” to other things, destroying my carbon footprint while at it—if you are reading this from a physical paper—and offering no apologies. It was clear in my mind then that adults seemed so grownup, so sure, so assured. I wanted that. I am a well-behaved (or less naughty) manboy now and Christmas has not been the same ever since.

Everyone and their grandmother knows Christmas was the time to get new clothes and I took pride in my FUBU 05 Jeans and orange and white muscle shirt that made me look like a knockoff/bootleg/Gikomba version of Jean Claude Van Damme. Loved by few, hated by many, feared by all, disrespected by none. I didn’t care.

The jeans, pressed to within razor sharp edges, that if a housefly landed on them, they would be cut in half, as if the jeans were in rigour mortis, gave me confidence, the same bravado I have used to get through many interviews and dates, and traffic stops, and when people would ask me, I would say, I don’t know man, it’s just in the jeans.

Then, I looked like a guy who could poke you on Facebook. Remember Facebook? Okay, I left something out. My brothers would get the same clothes too because my parents were either unimaginative or believed in equality (kisses teeth). What they didn’t know is that equality of opportunity does not guarantee equality of outcome. Could my brothers pull off jeans and white muscle tees as good as me? No way Jose they couldn’t. I swear.

My father then was a smoker of Embassy cigarettes. Women didn’t smoke then. Or at least they didn’t smoke publicly. Women, beautiful and pliant and young loved being in dresses. I’ve always had a thing for a woman in a dress—which in these post-Beijing 1995 times, is no longer a terribly fashionable thing to be or to be into.

Do you have time for a very short embarrassing story during some Christmas season? You know teenage hormones were throbbing one time and, on account of primal base instincts, I challenged some village boys to a fight kimzaha tu over some girl we both liked called Rehema.

Rehema had a twin called—you guessed it—Neema but Rehema wore glasses which catapulted her from a solid 9 to a 9.4. Margins. That aside, let me tell you something about boys from the village. Those are not boys. Those are men. Boys born in the village have been adults their whole lives. That guy’s face was a lesson in concrete or a concrete lesson.

You’d touch his face and like a blind man with a braille, the signs and scars would tell you their story. When my leg missed his face and came around, he did a Walker Texas Ranger-Jean Claudee Van Damme mashup dropkick roundhouse connecting firmly with my tibia. All I could scream was woooooooooooooohhh like Ric Flair.

I was taken to the doctor but not before some pinching and extra slaps from my African mother, fighting you because you were fighting, and lost. Doctor said, I needed a plaster. Six weeks out. Six mother-(expletives removed) weeks. I am happy to report I overcame my shame and girls still loved me, they were still there. When you are a teenager, everything you do is for girls.

Let’s touch some grass. I think I have said too much. Now we don’t do Christmas like that anymore, not as much as we used to anyway. With the breakdown of traditional communities and the rise of individualism and consumer capitalism, it’s every man for himself, and every cousin to their devices. Perhaps I am wrong. I hope to be wrong. Tell me, what do you remember most about Christmas growing up?

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