One of the most colourful characters that I have encountered in this life is my late mom’s eldest sister, Wamaweru, who departed from our midst this week. She was in her 90s. A diminutive woman of slight built, Wamaweru lived and died on her terms, unencumbered by social mores that defined her generation.
She more than enjoyed her tipple; in fact, she was a sucker for one. Her meals, which never lacked a pound of meat, had extra spices—long pili pili kwa umbali before became a social fad. None of us children could swallow a scoop of her food without gulps of water to douse the stinging effect.
The roots of her unusual palate, it appears, stemmed from her preference for bitter stuff; she stole my granny’s snuff when girls her age were stealing sweets. And she’d disappear into the forest where mugithi concerts, or Kia Muthaiti, as such outings were known in those days, sneaking out the window while her younger siblings slept.
The tell-tale signs of her misadventures would come to light in the morning, traceable through the muddy imprints her footsteps left in their wake, if it had been raining outside. She’s been on the run ever since.
Our paths intersected more closely during my gap year, when she and I were dispatched to a remote hamlet, for rehabilitation—she, from alcoholism, and I from what Peter Tosh called reggae-mylitis. Well, I wasn’t getting stoned; I was just listening to too much reggae.
Wamaweru did not take long to discover the underground network where illicit brews could be found in this remote remove. Soon, she was disappearing for days on end to hang out with her great new friends. And here I was, barely out of teenage, and having to account for whereabouts of my elder.
On one occasion, I was tasked to go find her. I knew the name of the woman who ran the illicit operation. Her name was wa Ng’eri, so I sought directions to her homestead. When I got there, it was lunch time but her modest dwelling was already teeming with caroused men and women, perhaps recovering from effects of the indulgence from yester-night, or in the grip of the day’s fever of merriment.
There was a momentary silence when I announced my presence, fearing I was a policeman. So their relief was palpable when Wamaweru rushed towards me joyfully. The caroused ensemble burst into a drunken though joyful singing of a hymn.
This dwelling would become my aunt’s abode for the next decade. Yes, her entire life could fit in mid-sized bundle and just keep moving. In recent months, after she fled from the custody of her daughter, she returned to this hamlet, which points to the lasting friendships that she had built from that era. Such was her quest for freedom.
This façade of carefree carousing, however, masked Wamaweru’s hard life as a labourer. She did not go to school because girls of her generation were not encouraged to, and her attempts at the English language produced crooked phraseology that spawned multiple nicknames, the most enduring being “Rumours.” Have you heard the ru-ma-si that…” was a favourite leitmotif.
Her age was a rumour. No one could quite tell her precise year of birth. And since her demeanour remained unchanged, from her poise and voice, and an ever-green equanimity, she was a constant source of mirth at family gatherings.
There was a small price to pay, by way of modest amounts that she deftly extracted from those near and dear to her, which almost always ended in a tipple.
I always suspected that that was a mask for the inner turmoil that remained unsaid, not because it was unsayable, but because she knew she had paid the price for taking a different path from what women of her generation did.
May she dwell where it rains, and where Kia Muthaite plays on!
