Tracing My Roots

I was born on the last day of 1987 but as it is with every person, I first began awakening to life a few years later in 1992 when I vaguely recall hearing political campaign messages from loudspeakers as I feasted on a meal in our then small sooty kitchen.

And back in the '90s when I was growing up, I had good company in school as well as in church because my home area of Kiserian was then bustling with life. Most of my friends were boys since I was girl-shy. As I write this story now, I don't think I can list more than twenty girls that I got to befriend back in the '90s.

Of the few girls that I can now list, there was Irene - the daughter of my Standard One to Standard Three teacher, an attractive lady called Miss Alice. Earlier in this decade when I toured Naru-Moru Primary School where Miss Alice taught me, I was surprised to find that she was still in the school. And when I asked her what became of Irene, she told me that her daughter now works for the Kenya Police Service.

The other girl that I remember most from my boyhood days in the '90s is Veronicah Kitimet who joined us at Naru-Moru Primary School in 1998 when I was in Standard Five. Now, Veronicah Kitimet was a beautiful girl who was special to me given the way I adored her. I used to fantasize taking her out for dates. But as I have said, I was girl-shy, so I never revealed to her how deeply I adored her. I never even winked at her.

As for the boys I befriended in my home area of Kiserian, they were too many to list here. There was, for instance, Robert Kahando, a handsome boy who later on in 2006 shared with me a few true stories that made me understand life better.

Then there was Thomas Waweru who was a classmate and a great friend of my eldest brother Joe Kagigite. Thomas Waweru used to keep keys for our classrooms at Naru-Moru Primary School back in 1995 and he was charged with the duty of opening them early every morning.

The Ngong Hills, the streams, the small valleys, the sloping paths that we trod on our way to school - these were the landmarks in our lives.

Virtually all the streams that criss-cross our home area are seasonal but back in the '90s, they used to turn into mighty rivers during the rainy seasons. So mighty did the streams become that I heard stories of some people who got swept away by them. Fortunately, that never happened to me or to any of my friends despite the fact that we used to cross those streams on our way to school.

Those streams criss-cross our home area on different stretches of the land but they all have their source in the world-famous Ngong Hills that form the western horizon of Kiserian. I was fortunate to hike through those hills on a clear Saturday in 1999 during an expedition organized by Mr. Sakuda, a geography, history & civics (GHC) teacher then at Naru-Moru.

A few years ago, I asked my kid brother Symo whether he had ever seen the other side of Ngong Hills. He regretted that he hadn't, and then added in Kikuyu, "By the way, I read somewhere that Ngong Hills form one of the best sceneries in the world."

As for the sloping paths on which we trod on our way to school, they too were landmarks in our lives. The paths meandered through small valleys and dainty hills which must have helped to keep us as fit as fiddles. I guess it is on those paths that I developed a love of walking which came in handy last year when I tried to lose weight safely and naturally. I did lose weight.

Back in 1995 during our walks from school on those paths, I together with my classmates James Koigi and Timothy Ndiki composed a lovely and lively ditty which I think would be ideal for use in an advert promoting a tick-killing spray or a birth control pill.

The ditty was all about taking turns in singing our full names and the year of that time. We would, for example, sing, "John Thuita Maina, 1995." Of course it is difficult to convey in cold print the loveliness and liveliness of that ditty but trust me, it was lovely and lively.

Later on in this decade when I reconnected with Timothy Ndiki, he reminded me of that ditty as we reminisced on those halcyon days of our childhood years. We truly did have a blessed childhood. Adieu!