When I look back, the day that stood still for me was when, at around 12.00pm, VOK started playing martial music and then announced the death of President Mzee Jomo Kenyatta. It was August 22, 1978.
My mother and I, as well as my five-year old younger sister, were in the shamba at the foothills of the Aberdares. My mother, in a white/blue leso, was weeding potatoes planted in neat rows which had started flowering with pink and white flowers when the announcement was made.
I remember the exact spot where we were - on a slightly elevated piece of ground where the potatoes were not doing very well. Metres away was a a small crater, now full of maturity potatoes, made a British bomb 25 years early during the Mau Mau war (if you grew up in the Aberdares you saw a lot of these)
When the announcement was made, mama just stood there, dazed. She didn’t speak for what seemed hours and just stared at our National radio, neatly covered with a small, hand-made table-cloth. It scared the hell out of me and I guess my sister too. We had never seen my mother so shaken.
“Mamie, sasa Kenya kutakuwa vita kama Uganda?” I asked.
To her everlasting credit, mama’s first instinct was to comfort us.
“No, no,” she said, her voice unsure. “The government will choose another president and Kenya will go on”.
Then quickly she collected everything and we left the shamba. We ate some lunch of rice and a vegetable stew (potatoes, carrots and peas, all from our shamba) and listened to the radio for the rest of the day.
The other day I drove to the Aberdares to see our old house (see picture), and pay homage to the cradle that nurtured me.
The house is crumbling now (ferk KFS, which owns the property),[ATTACH=full]62037[/ATTACH] but the grass is still green. The chimney still stands, and the memories of those glorious care-free days still roam my mind. Especially that day, 38 years ago, when time stood still.
[I][B]GUKA
PS: It is a testament to the professionalism of the first government of this republic that these buildings, which were built in the 1960s, still stand today. The iron tin roofs are not even rusted, and the masonry is as good as new. The back of this house, where our kitchen was, has however crumbled.[/B][/I]