Dear Kelly,
For it has been long without your news after these so silent days that I passed inside my head hoping to see you showing up with the affection and protection, my heart yawns to hear from you again. Last evening, I went to bed earlier than ever since I was feeling a burning sensation in my mesenteries but I failed to catch a sleep. The cold feeling drew a big flux of thoughts that I could not sleep at all. I knew that the whole night I was awake because my eyes were wide open; blinking of the sleeplessness, my ears catching every single sound of night dwellers, the songs of entertained mosquitoes, the clicks of hunting bats, the hooting of cursing owls, the cries of dogs in their concert and the coqs announcing the time of dark night.
Churning several times to look for the comfortable position; I still failed to sleep. Feeling the mild shake of earthquake at dawn, listening to the call of roosters for the new day, the dawn chorus becoming louder as the birds wake up praising the creator for the new life. The cattle made their lowing, mooing loud enough to tell the keeper that they are ready to start afresh, so that he gives away his warm and repairing sleep to feed and milk them. The first rays of the rising sun passed lazily through the space between my two olive green curtains. I pushed my warm blanket and pulled a ‘pluma’ to spread the ink on a paper on a cold Sunday early morning to write this to you my beloved brother.
It had been long without having your news, though even when I think of you, the image of a courageous boy we grew together faded, the way you left marked a separation that I had always failed to encounter. I imagine your life in this seven years and I do not get a clear image. Now I got a nice job and I am operating a cloth boutique simultaneously but I have a serious problem; Carine, the woman I consider as a friend and sister had showed me the photo of the father of Ivan. I was stunned to find that it was you Kelly the son of RUJUKUNDI. With all we lived together, I am hundred percent disturbed by her fate caused by my own brother. I took this time to write to you this letter with a broken heart and dim hope as I sit in my room and continuing it as I sit in my shop at Kisimenti, waiting for customers. With a dim hope to see you appearing and healing the past.
Understand my weakness, I keep asking myself why things should be like that, I wish to embrace the change. I‘m no longer able to stand keeping you away from my life and I strongly want you to forgive me because of the way we got separated. It has been long without the news exchange. My heart does not stop to wonder how you are doing after this long while. After all we had promised to do our best to gain a better life, I sometimes feel like I should not disturb you telling you my awful news. However, remember, even if I am a sign of failure as you have been saying, we share the same blood, if you do not mind, I would like to know what is new on your side and tell you what is going on from my end.
I have travelled in search for a better life. After staying unemployed up to the point of forgetting what I learnt in school, even if I was trailing from behind in performance ranks. I started feeling depressed; I could remember how we had to sell those two fields to get the requirements. Nevertheless, I have not even yet forgiven you for the cows you sold with an excuse of going to school, while you were sleeping in the ghetto smoking drugs. I have been wishing that you could have been taken to prison with our father who killed our mother and all our welfare.
Though it seems it is I who got imprisoned in the darkness of that night when they were fighting inside their locked room, which we hardly broke and found mum dead, and lying in a pool of blood while dad was drinking his left kanyanga; that high alcohol spirit that he could not miss each day. He was cursing her to be wicked and regretting their union. On the other hand, I think it is the un-rested spirit of our mother that keeps haunting me.
I have grown, I am now tall around one seventy centimeters, and my narrow pinched nose has become elongated while my dark-white eyes highlights my dark smooth dimpled cheeks. I had Kigingi saying that I was curvy but I am sure that by now I got more curves and stretch marks behind my knees. I have tied my golden braids in a pony which puts in evidence my angles and covered my rose night dress with a green black flower decorated wrapper as I sketch this letter.
Those three years after finishing high school, I kept a hope that I could get a job. I visited everywhere from where I received of a call. I went there expectant, but it is as if bad luck had been following me every time. Sometimes I failed even in written exams, and the time I could sit for an oral interview and go home convinced to get a job, they never called.
The last time we met, I told you that I had a hope as I was doing accounting for a small farmer’s cooperative. Unfortunately; they decided to withdraw themselves hence I lost my small job. The job was tiresome but I was thankful for it at least, because from it every month I could pay for my pads, foods and soap.
It was good to be able to sustain my small needs even if the salary was so small that I hardly finished the month without it getting exhausted. I took advantage of living in our family house and being able to get foodstuff from the farm, which I made sure to take care during weekends. I was used to supplement the food economies from the field by only few commodities including salt, oil, sugar, rice and flour. I was able to use my salary in the self-care.
With the wages I gained in around two years, I managed to save only a tenth and I used the other portion to beautify myself so that I could still remain attractive in our village; I had my hair braided for the first time, I bought cream and lotion which smelled like flowers, my Talcum Powder enhanced my lotion smell of wild Jasmines.
My small sized waist and big back allowed me to get high waist trousers and colorful tops to tack-in. As an accountant I felt like I should dress as a professional but my make-up was always kept simple; a cream on the lips and a black pencil in my well organized eyebrows to match with my brown skin. Since I was sufficiently tall, I used to put on ballerinas (flat shoes) in same colors as the handbags that I used to buy from the second hand market. I wanted to look neither broke nor rich.
But the terror continued to overtake my life. Despite my courage to lock our parents’ room, the noise of that night continued to deafen me. Some nights, I was immersed in nightmares; mum begging father to forgive her while father was roaring like a terrible beast or sometimes, mum cool as she used to be when she was trying to calm down her ever hurting stomach which was full of fear and anger. The anger of uncaring husband who asked her to apologize for the faults she did not recognize.
Those tears she used to pour when we did not have food or school fees while dad was buying a beer to everyone who complimented him. Kelly, my life was a nightmare itself that sometimes I could not stand the heavy silence in the house during dark nights that sometimes I asked one of the women who cultivated with me to send a kid to pass a night with me. I have even tried to move papa’s radio in my room that I could play it the whole night to break the heavy silence but it would not work.
I wanted to try my best to recover when I got the job; I kept myself occupied with papers which were inevitable since the cooperative did not have a computer to easen my every day’s records. With the tiredness, I could go home and go to bed immediately even when I felt no sleep hence waking up early so that I could water the cabbage garden or take manure to the fields before going to work where I was allowed to arrive by 8:00 sharp in the morning.
I was coming from the life of being orphaned by my own father while my brother flew to nowhere I could tell. The life that I passed through sitting with my head between my knees, cold that the sun refused to warm me and shaky like a dried banana leaf. At work I used to make my mind turn to recordings despite the distorting thoughts inside my mind. I wanted to defeat my demons inside me who continuously showed me that I was a complete failure.
But it was a dream, very far to be a real one. Even if in the village none talked about the past events in my presence, I constantly felt that everyone looked at me with pity, that pity which made me feel uncomfortable, that I was a miserable daughter of a fallen family, a family that left horrible story behind it, the devastating hatred. But everything was well until I lost my job, the one which gave me hope to see a bright future.
Chapter 2
Venturing out to the city