William’s Grandmother
The bizarre view.
After Saturday’s debates, I spent Sunday exploring the region outside Kisimu with William, Charles and Dennis. William’s grandmother lives in Bondo, a town about 40 km away from Kenya’s third biggest city. The drive was breathtaking: anything outside the grime and cold of Nairobi is a miracle. The grey mountains in the distance, the gentle hills, the marshmallow rocks formed thousands of years ago by a volcanic eruption, the endless fields and small villages.
William’s grandmother gave us a wonderful reception. We sat down for chai with fresh sim-sim balls (sesame), buttered bread, and hot groundnuts. William then invited us to walk to the water dam, expecting to see wild animals. He tells us they used to scare him when he would fetch water for the goats just under a decade ago. The animals are gone now, we realize, and we come across a hunter with three skinny dogs. The food crisis is looming – as reported by the Daily Nation this morning – and people have started hunting gazelle. When we get to the water dam, we see it is almost empty. The dogs lie down in the mud to cool down – a sign that the water source is not being adequately protected from animals.
Hunting dogs cooling off in the almost dry rainwater dam.
Famine is coming to Kenya. Here’s the rainwater dam for Bondo.
We look at the maize crop, and it is also drying up. William is dismayed, commenting on how fast the world is changing. We head back to the house and drive to Raila Odinga’s birthplace. As we near the area, in a sign of how this government works, the road gets better. We enter down a long driveway flanked by leafy trees and well kept grounds. In a rather twisted celebration of self, his father, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, has kept a large estate to celebrate his own being. He is buried in one of the rooms, a somber grave covered in white marble. Charles is disgusted by the under-use of this land and the resources left to waste. This is not the only instance: near the Obunga slums, there are hectares of land that were bought from the locals by the government in a strange scheme of “safe keeping.” The rooms in the museum are filled with pictures of the man himself. Another is packed with stuffed game. Two ivory tusks hang from the walls; possessing these tusks is illegal in Kenya. The tour guide describes how Odinga found his four wives: from what I understand, one was a sister of one wife, and another was a daughter.
We head back to William’s grandmothers, rather uncomfortable with the process. She serves us lunch: chicken stew, sweet sticky rice, roasted potatoes, ugali and bean stew.