Grandmother's Shack

                                                     

 

Grandmother’s Shack

I heard someone shouting loudly, which was bizarre in the morning. I got out of our house and tried to listen to where the noise was coming from. That is when I saw Rita, my younger cousin, running down the hill towards our compound. She had a twig that she was waving profusely from east to west. I knew she was in distress, but could not make out what she was trying to say. By this time, everyone had come out of their houses, including grandmother Teresia. Rita never made it to our compound, as we saw her fall down abruptly as she came down the hill. Samson, my older cousin, ran out of the compound, followed by my uncles, to check what had happened to her.

To understand our past I will have to go back to the beginning. There were five houses with two shacks in our compound, the houses belonged to my father and his four siblings. The two shacks were owned by grandmother and grandfather, with each one having their own. I had never been to my grandfather’s shack; it was only the men and boys who went in. It was so ironic since the boys and men came into grandmother’s shack at will. Grandmother’s shack had two rooms; one was iconic for preparing meals, and in the second one, that's where she slept. We all loved grandmother’s shack as children, my cousins and I. It was our little haven where we were molded in an immense way.

It is here that we learnt how to stand up for what we believed in. Grandmother had a way with words. She would be talking calmly, telling us stories, and her hand would move swiftly to Nina, and she would pitch her. Nina would let out a loud scream. We would learn after the story that Nina needed to learn how to sit properly. We would all be alert as girls in the storytelling sessions lest we get the famous pinch at the thighs. Grandmother Teresia always insisted that we had to sit like proper ladies with legs crossed, and it was a lesson we learnt early on. During her many lessons, grandmother always insisted that if we were too shy to ask anything, we would never learn, and that is how we queried everything. My male cousins always asked her questions that had no head or tail. But she would calmly come up with an answer.

Grandmother Teresia loved roasting maize beside the fire while she cooked the evening meal. So while she concentrated on the fire, she would shout at one of us to turn the roasted maize. Once in a while, one of her sons would stand at the door, and grandmother would summon one of us to pass all the maize to him. We would then be asked to get fresh ones and begin the process all over again. Luckily, on some of the evenings, my uncles never came to her door, and we feasted on the roasted maize as if our lives depended on it.

 It is in grandmother’s shack that we also learnt how to cook. But first, we needed to know how to fetch and light firewood. Living in the countryside included going out to fetch firewood that would be used to cook. It was a task that my cousin Nina and I detested, but we got allocated for each day. Every afternoon, we would be asked to go fetch firewood. My male cousins had a different task as they took the cows, goats and sheep to graze.   During this errand, Nina was mischievous and would ask that I wait for her at the river while she ran off to meet her boyfriend Mwamba. She always asked that I keep it a secret. But since I had no idea what they did, there was nothing really to tell.

However, all this changed when I got summoned to grandmothers’ house one evening. I was scared as I walked in alone. On that day, we had no storytelling since we had just come back from a village harvest festival. I got in and found Nina, her mother, and grandmother sitted on the wooden kitchen stools. Nina looked troubled and only raised her head to look up shortly when I came in. “Stand in that corner,” my grandmother shouted. I had never heard her this angry. Well, except the day a neighbor came holding Samson, who had a sack full of mangoes. Apparently, he had picked the mangoes from the neighbor’s mango trees without his permission, intending to go sell them. Grandmother was so angry that day; I thought she was going to collapse.

As I stood in my little corner, shaking like a leaf, I wondered what had really happened to Nina. I glanced at her and saw her fidgeting with her fingers, she always did this when she was scared. I knew then that we were in trouble. Just then, grandmother opened her mouth and shouted a name I had heard many times—always during our afternoon firewood errands with Nina. “Who has Nina been seeing secretly?”. She asked. I knew the time had come for that secret to be revealed. His name was Mwamba, a boy different from our tribe but whom Nina, five years older than me, loved immensely.

“His name is Mwamba, her boyfriend,” I whispered, and did not know I had said those betraying words until I saw Nina stare at me angrily. Her mother looked at me and shook her head and muttered an African proverb with anger, “Ears that do not listen to advice get chopped off together with the head”. My grandmother stood up and moved closer to Nina. I thought she was going to slap her, but saw her bend and touch Nina’s stomach. She slowly turned and looked at Nina’s mother with disappointment. “What could be going on? I wondered.  I heard my grandmother mention the word 3 followed by months. Just then, I was told to go home and was left perplexed, trying to make out the meaning of the words “3 months”. The name Mwamba is very relevant to this narrative, and he is the reason as to why Rita lay on the floor. Well not directly but his tribemates.

 My cousin Samson came back to the compound and found the women huddling together waiting for news. According to our tradition, women let the men face danger and wait to be instructed on how to act. Samson came straight to grandmother and said that Rita had been struck with an arrow. Grandmother ran to the house and came back with her herbal kit. This woman had many skills, and she was about to practice her healing skills on Nina. I followed my grandmother out of the compound, only to find Rita in a pool of blood. Apparently, Mwamba’s tribesmen had begun an ambush for anyone who was not its tribes mate. Rita had been visiting a friend and had snuck through the window when the family was attacked, managing to escape. However, unknown to her, one of them had run after her, piercing her with an arrow.

Danger was looming, as we belonged to a different tribe from Mwamba’s. We knew we would not be spared. and so begun our escape from our compound. Rita had gotten to us on time, but she did not make it. Grandmother told us that the injury was so severe that her herbs could not cure her. We were forced to carry her inside the compound as we saw smoke go up in the air as houses got burnt up the hill, and heard screams of anguish as people got attacked. We lived down in the valley, so it was easy to see them coming down the hill from all directions. There was so much action on our compound that it was hard to know what to do as a child. Apparently, my uncles had been asked to dig a big hole inside my grandmother’s bedroom and bury all the valuables. They were to cover the ground with her sleeping mat that consisted of a cow's skin. Luckily, we managed to get out before they got to our compound. We went hiding in the forest with only blankets as our only possession. We would walk during the day, moving through fields while on the lookout. Maize and sugarcane plantations provided safe hiding spots. With time, our number grew as more people fled their land, afraid of being killed.

I never understood what was really happening and went on blindly watching everything unfold like a movie. We were gone for like two weeks and only returned when normalcy returned. I heard that the government had intervened, and some of the men who had begun the chaos were arrested. I heard my grandmother warn us from interacting with that tribe, stating that they never wished us well. I wish I had stayed to see what transpired after that incident, but upon coming back. My father announced to his brothers that he had decided to relocate with his family to a far land. He said that he was not comfortable

hating another tribe for no reason. Actions speak louder than words became a reality when my father shifted us to the city. And that is how my grandmother’s shack became a memory. It became something that I could look back on and relish with nostalgia.

It was years later that I learnt that I had experienced tribal clashes and lived to tell the tale. Close to 500 people had their houses torched and property seized. It was such a traumatizing experience for most families that the majority of those affected shifted to other areas. My stubborn grandmother refused to give up her land. She told my grandfather bluntly that she would not shift elsewhere when the ancestral land stood firm. The bandits, as they were now referred to, had torched every house in the compound and only spared grandmother’s shack. Twisted fate, right? I thought so too. Thus, the shack stood as a reminder that something awful had happened, but it was time to embrace it and move forward.

I have very fond memories of grandmother’s shack, for it made my childhood interesting. It is here that I learnt how to become a better daughter, cousin, and granddaughter. Grandmother insisted on the family keeping its pride. Always indicating that a tree cannot stand on its own roots. She was always protecting us. It was later on, for instance, that I learnt that Nina had gotten pregnant.  The evening of the interrogation was the last time I ever saw Nina. Initially, when everyone asked where Nina was, especially the children, we were told she had gone to visit her aunty from her mother’s side. To keep the family name, grandmother had decided for Nina to go carry her pregnancy, give birth, and then come back later on to continue with her education. Perhaps it was also to keep Nina safe from embarrassment as she was only 15 years old, after all to err is human. What I know is that Nina became for us an example of what we should not be. Grandmother always insisted that the time to get our own families and move from her compound would come, but for the time being, we were to act responsibly and maintain our dignity.

Grandmother’s shack became a reminder of the happy moments shared and of belongings buried. Even the best dancer retires, and so it was with my grandmother. Snatched from this earth by old age, our matriarch had rested. Now, when we visit her grave and see the shack, tears flow down our eyes. Here beside it lies a strong iron lady who guided her generation so religiously. She stood strong in dark times, and it’s the reason that her shack remains dear in my heart. Truly, absence makes the heart grow fonder; grandmother Teresia is missed and always cherished.