Mr Survivor: Nostalgic memories of pyrethrum Saturday in the countryside

Back in the day, the weekend tuition had not been invented and Saturday was pyrethrum picking day. Equally, such lofty sounding vocabularies such as children’s rights and child labour were non-existent. A man’s children were his ready source of cheap labour. Saturday was the day of the week that boys and girls hated from the very core of their heart of hearts. To me, this is one day that has earned a reserved shelf in the preserve section of the encyclopaedia of my mind.

My old man, like all other men of the day, woke up earlier than usual on Saturdays, armed with short poles that he kept in his bedroom. He went to the farm and divided the rows of the pyrethrum field among us, his children. Each got a number of rows depending on their age. The older one was, the more rows they got. Yours truly is a firstborn, and got two rows more than my younger brother; and to top it off, I was also given the role of overall supervisor to my siblings. 

As we solemnly took our morning uji— my mother said it would hold our stomachs for a longer time— my old man, as a matter of ritual, stood at the door of the kitchen. “When you get through with your rows, you come home for lunch. Then after lunch, you deliver your harvest to the dryer before they close down in the evening”. That was his stern and brief signature sermon at the door. And with that he left for his weekend exploits at the Happy Valley town centre, expecting my mother to see to it that the instructions were followed to the letter.

The panoramic view of the countryside on Saturdays would show boys and girls with their backs bent, slaving in the pyrethrum fields, looking like sheep in grazing fields. During the rainy season, my mother made jackets from polythene papers which we wore on top of our tattered clothes to prevent the rain from battering us. But somehow we ended up wet and sick by the end of the slaving day. To this day, four decades down the line, I can still smell and taste pyrethrum when I take the journey down memory lane.

Surprisingly, that did not dissuade me from sneaking away from the field every now and then under the pretence of going to the toilet, to dig my pyrethrin-fumigated hands in the cooking pot for githeri (a mixture of maize and beans). By the time my mother went home to prepare mukimo for us, she would find a half empty cooking pot. And that promptly spelt punishment by starvation to all of us. My innocent brother, poor soul, would suffer silently for my sins. My sisters escaped the punishment for the simple reason that only the boy child was capable of suffering from such foodie-ism inclinations.

With punishment by starvation thus pronounced, the second part of the day started. This was delivering the day’s harvest to the dryer, miles across valleys. Carrying fresh and wet pyrethrum in a gunny bag, on your back, in the rain, bare footed, and on an empty stomach, was equivalent to a military drill. Then came the queuing at the dryer, which was a nightmare. On most of the days, one arrived home at the fall of darkness, drenched, starving and sick. It was therefore not uncommon to find boys who always ‘fell sick’ on Saturdays. And because the health services were free, they ended up in the countryside dispensary for treatment of one kind of ailment or the other. It was better to face the doctor’s injection than to break your back in the pyrethrum field.

One day, in a feat of fury, I tore up the receipt that was evidence of the kilogrammes I had delivered. I did not understand why the damned piece of paper was all I had to show for a whole day of slavery. On arrival at home, I went straight to the kitchen with my mouth wide open in great anticipation for food – any food.

“Where is the receipt?” roared my old man from the ‘big house’. The drums of tears in me gave in but that did not stop my old man from ruthlessly working on my already aching back.

Unlike my mother, my father did not approve the punishment by starvation. After the ordeal, he stood there to witness me struggle with a hefty helping of mukimo. The biting hunger had been replaced by a seething rage that made it difficult to swallow food. I was having a splitting headache and having been given two tablets of Caffenol, a wonder painkiller back in the day, I retired to bed on an empty stomach. In frustration, my old man went straight to bed, as I came to learn later, not eating his supper himself. That was the last time my old man spanked me but also the last of the tribulations of pyrethrum Saturdays. The pyrethrum board had started sinking with famers’ money. When we came from school the following Monday, holes for planting Napier grass gaped where the previous Saturday stood a pyrethrum field.

But, pyrethrum Saturday still rings bells in my mind to this day. Ah, the memories keep making painful visitations in my mind as I lubricate my gullet at the Happy Valley, my choice of shrine of peace. And this was one of my most hilarious evening stories with my choir at the Happy Valley, earning me more than enough lubricants for the road, in celebration of the death of pyrethrum Saturday.

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