Marina's Voice

By K. W. Wamitila

Marina, a young university graduate, is urged on by an irresistible force to go back to her native village. This is a village riddled with all sorts of prejudices. With the help of a few pragmatic individuals, she interacts with, she initiates projects that pull people together, including some that had been regarded as pariahs and ostracised. In the process, the village finds its voice. This is not just a story about Marina's voice but many more voices that deserve to be listened to.

• Language: English
• Publisher: K. W. Wamitila
• Release date: Jun 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201459604

Book preview

1

A voice

It was an inner voice that came from deep inside of her, one that would not let go. She had first heard it several days ago. She had just finalised her undergraduate course at the university, and had excelled in Food Science and Nutrition. Her lecturers had impressed upon her to pursue further studies, a suggestion that appealed to her. Another degree, why not? It wasn’t a bad idea at all. The echoes of their words were reverberating in her mind now. Her future would be much more secure if she furthered her studies. The world had started becoming more competitive something that was not likely to change. Luckily, hers was a field whose future prospects were exceedingly bright. Would she let go such an opportunity? Would she let her First Class bachelor’s degree go to waste?

She recalled the words of Prof. Nadine Hesse, the petite, bespectacled, brown, German lady researcher who had a penchant for trouser suits. It was one of Hesse’s many qualities that she had simply fallen in love with. She had met Hesse at Gemeinde, or GM in short, an organisation where she had done her internship as a pre-requisite for her first degree course during her third year at the university. The baritone-voiced lady with clear eyes had left such an indelible impression on her; especially with her grip on Community Nutrition; the ease with which she discussed scientific facts without looking at any written material even, once in a while, quoting statistical figures with an astounding accuracy. It was as if she was simply unrolling a factual reel in her mind.

Marina, please let me know if there is any way we can help you in the future, she had said in a self-assured manner.

Maybe she would contact her if she opted to further her education. She still had the Prof’s contact address.

She didn’t dismiss what they told her. It was wise counsel worth taking note of.

However, another voice, a much more powerful one, prodded her. The inner voice beckoned like a person gesturing with an open palm to another person from a distance. Its message was simple and clear. The voice of her home.

Marina wanted to go back home to see her people. To see her siblings, some of who were still in primary school. She especially wanted to see her immediate younger sister, Jastorina, her darling. She wanted to visit her old school. The school that did not have any wooden or glass windows in her days. It just had large gaping holes here and there that let in gushes of cold breeze during the cold season that ravaged them as if it was on a revenge mission. She remembered how they all cuddled together like a flock of sheep, next to the only wall that had the least holes, to escape the pricking pins of the unforgiving icy air, gnashing their young teeth. Their young hands replete with myriad, tiny goose pimples.

She could even recall the words of their head teacher then. The one who had a tendency to offer advice couched in a string of cryptic sayings and proverbs. One who wants to climb a thorn tree must be ready to be pricked. He who works under the scorching sun, eats under the comfort of a shade. Things don’t just happen, they are made to happen. And, his favourite: A tractor’s driver is never afraid of dust. A motley of other sayings must have escaped her memory and receded into the thick forest of forgetfulness.

She wanted to especially meet the pupils.

She wanted to experience their bubbling, unbridled joy and happiness as they circled her in delirious excitement. Others attempting to reach her like eager youngsters who wanted to climb a guava tree. She wanted to encourage them. To steel their desires. She wanted to advise them. That behind the bitter taste of the vinegar of life, lay a sweet taste of hope. That behind the fermented odour of education lay hidden the tasty honey of success. She wanted to remind them that the seething cold could give rise to the warmth of joy and that the gaping holes in mud walls of their classes would allow the rays of hope to enter into their lives.

She was, after all, a student of her old head teacher.

The voice pushed her on. Like a powerful, irresistible force, it pulled her towards her native village. She wanted to see her fellow villagers. The villagers who helped her mother when she ran out of salt. Those who stepped in to rescue them when the gnashing teeth of their penurious life threatened to sink its fangs into their skins. Those who often passed by their home and offered a bit of what they had bought from the market, especially on market days. She wanted to see her former classmates. Those who had not been as lucky as she. The ones she had left behind in her journey of education. Those who had tripped on the rocky path of education.

She wanted to see her village: Loondokwe village.

The village that was the subject of vile comments and sneers as she would find out later. The village that was the butt of jokes by others, yet it was the village that held a very special place in her heart. Her darling village.

Another long repressed voice shot up like a shark in her sea of memories. A voice that had been thrown up like a ball of mud and got stuck on her mental walls. One that had remained glued there refusing to fade off or slide away. It was as if it waited for someone to peel off the top skin just like one does with an onion and exposes the soft skin underneath.

People despise our village, she heard yet another voice.

As a young child, Marina was unable to understand the meaning of that voice. A voice she had heard with boring monotony. What was it in her village that people so despised? There was nothing strange with the village. It was their village. Their home and home is home. One can never despise or ridicule one’s home. Didn’t people say that one can never get enough sleep on another person’s goatskin? No. She wouldn’t do that. It would be like denying her very existence.

The jeering voice simply froze in her brain. She did not bother herself with it. It was just a voice. A voice that did not have a body. A bodyless voice. Maybe if she ignored it, it would simply fade away. Maybe it would be like the sound of a falling tree in a forest. Did such a sound exist independent of someone to behold it? Was a voice or sound deemed as such when there was nobody to hear it? Maybe it would simply die. It would be a dead voice.

Several years later, the voice that she had assumed was dead sprang up like a ghost. It was shortly after joining secondary school. On the second day in her new school, this girl, a form two student, came up to her. She would never forget her words.

Where do you come from?

She did not hesitate to answer. It was just like a small child who had been asked to say their name. Loondokwe.

The girl who had asked the question, one who had a heavy stature, flabby cheeks and riveting stare, stood transfixed for a few seconds before she suddenly burst out laughing. Her two colleagues joined in the guffaws that followed. What were they laughing at? Just a name? Her mother had once told her that a name was not destiny. A child could grow up by any name. Later, as a student at the university, she had learnt from a friend who was studying Linguistics that a name was just a sign. Simply a sign. That a sign had no relationship with that which it represented.

After a long spate of guffawing, the stout form two girl intoned;

The Land of Fools?

What?

Loondokwe, the Land of Fools!

Fools?

You mean you do not know that?

I don’t!

Of course you don’t! It is because you come from Loondokwe!

The girl with flabby cheeks burst into another bout of uncontrolled laughter. Her colleagues, like choir members taking cue from the conductor, joined in the laughter too. Marina was still at a loss. What was it that triggered such contagious laughter? Who was it that had said Loondokwe, her dear Loondokwe, was the Land of Fools?

Even today, several years after that incident in school, she did not see anything funny in the name. It was just a name. A sign. What else would a sign portend?

She recalled what happened after that.

She simply smiled, bit her lower lip and stared blankly at the jeering girl. Her words, her voice, Marina thought today, that she had thrown like sharp arrows intending to slice open her tender skin of feelings, must have missed their intended target. She did not even change her facial expression.

Marina recalled a comment by her grandmother several years ago. A voice is answered by another. If, as they say, ‘dawa ya moto ni moto’ [the remedy of fire is fire], then that of a voice must surely be another voice. Words against words. Loondokwe is not the land of fools, she opined. It has never, and will never be. So it is, she was told. That is just her village’s name. She wouldn’t know since she hailed from the same village.

She stood her ground. The girls, possibly disappointed that she did not take their view, later walked away still laughing. Marina would never forget one of them, the naughtiest of them all, Jedida Panga, who would later end up being the editor of the school magazine: The Blazer. 

Had it been today, she would have taken the dialogue further. She would have asked them whether the word ‘fool’ itself was replete with the sense of foolishness. Is foolishness an aspect of the word ‘fool’ which was just a sign? What was it in a person designated as foolish? Or was it just in the consensus of the very users of the word?

Yes. Marina wanted to head back to her Loondokwe. The Loondokwe of her mother. The Loondokwe of her young siblings. The Loondokwe of all the villagers. Their Loondokwe of the days gone by. The Loondokwe that gave birth to her. The Loondokwe of Upusi wa Musungu, a moniker used by villagers in reference to a neighbour who had this knack of dismissing everything foreign as Upusi wa Musungu, meaning ‘white man’s nonsense’. The youngsters chose to baptise him as such: Upusi wa Musungu.

The old voice was still firmly etched in her mind. Maybe they were several voices. A motley of voices. A mixture of voices. A polyphony. Voices that were  engaged in an incessant dialogue. But she still felt that there was one dominant voice. Maybe this was the voice that exercised an invisible pull on her. The voice that prodded her on. The voice that pulled her back to Loondokwe. A mega voice.

She wondered how many times people’s actions and deeds were provoked by a mere voice. An inner voice. A voice emanating from the environment. The voice of fellow human beings. A voice that had immense authority. A mighty voice that could not be answered back to, one that would be averse to the persuasion of the discourse of patience.  A tyrannical voice whose fiat knew only one thing: That which can be done today should not wait for tomorrow.

The force of the inner voice pushed her on.

2

The Fear

The day Marina arrived home, she felt like someone born anew; like sloughing off some old, unwanted garment. It was like stepping on the ground for the very first time in her life. It was the first time she had felt like this. Maybe this was what one felt when one had completed her studies. She recalled one of her colleagues at the university. A boisterous and sometimes rowdy, unkempt man who had had several altercations with the university administration and  also the police (he had organised demonstrations severally). He kept yapping that the day he would graduate, he would sleep fully clad in his black graduation gown.

It sounded strange. Sleeping in a wrinkled, unwashed and smelly, black gown. It sounded like the most uninspiring venture one could think of. Marina recalled a scene she had seen in a film called Sister Act. Someone was served an almost raw German sausage. He stared at it before commenting curtly, ‘This one needs a prayer’. Maybe sleeping in such a gown also needed a prayer. She wondered whether her colleague had actually realised his long cherished desire after their graduation. She, maybe like many of her other colleagues, did not have the curiosity to attempt her colleague’s deed. He had said it would be his way of partaking of the joy of graduation. The joy of achieving a rare feat. He had said no one had ever graduated with a degree from his village.

Maybe the colleague felt the way Marina felt when she got home. The way she felt when the hot, dusty air she had long been accustomed to hit her nostrils hard. The humidity felt somewhat elevated. Here was her home. Her sweet home. 

As she took the dusty road from the bus stage, where she had alighted, her childhood memories bubbled up in her mind. This was the path that people those days used on their way to the market. It would be flooded with people every Friday, the market day. The memory of the market day came up with all the happenings of those days. She recalled what happened on most market days during the holidays. Most parents issued stern instructions to their children, who would be left at home, to be very alert. The children were not to leave their homes under any circumstances whatsoever.

Whatever happens, make sure you know where the chicken are, they would be instructed.

Initially, Marina found the edict strange, even confusing. But soon it dawned on her why they were given such strict instructions not to let chicken out of their sight. Her family had only about three grown-up hens and a cock that had a featherless neck, which made her and her siblings joke that it had a naked neck. Their neighbours, who were relatively better off (at least by the village standards), had more. Chicken is precious, very precious. This is why they would always be expected to keep a keen eye on the chicken. It would be a big blow to the family if they lost any of them.

The threat to the chicken of Loondokwe was not the many eagles and kites that hovered in the clear skies sending the chicken scampering and cackling all over the place. It was also not from the sly mongoose that every now and then would be seen darting from the nearby government forest, playing hide and seek with the villagers. Neither was it from the skinny, famished, marauding dogs that traversed the villages in search of food. The biggest threat had human faces — Yala and his wife.

Yala was an old man, with a huge stature, protruding cheeks that had clear scratch marks, inordinately large eyes, who had formed the habit of stealing chicken. His wife, Nzakwa, a short, stout woman who walked with short, crisp steps and always carried an oversized traditional basket, was his comrade-in-chief. Yala would take a grain of maize, pierce it in the middle with a needle or a piece of wire and attach a hook and a long strong unbreakable string. When he got near peoples’ homesteads, he would survey well and identify a cock, or (usually after missing the cock) a hen. He would then tiptoe towards his target before throwing his bait with the dexterity of an expert fisher. Once the selected cock had swallowed the bait, Yala would simply pull his string. The victim would be unable to utter any sound. As soon as he had snatched it up, he would hand it over to his wife who would stack it in the big basket she always carried. Both of them would thereafter head for the market to sell their catch.

Villagers had nicknamed Yala ‘The Chicken Fisherman’. He literally fished on dry land.

As Marina walked home, she wondered what had happened to Yala. During her early years at the university, she had heard that one of Yala’s children had taken up his parents’ evil habit. But he, unlike his parents, did not steal