The Cape Cod Bicycle War. Billy Kahora
body-size on their heads.
Komora Kijana sighed, picked up a couple of water containers and followed the line of girls to the river, hoping to fetch water before his grandfather woke up. The girls giggled when they saw him and taunted and sang at him: The young man who is the wife of his grandfather.
It was cold by the river. The more reckless girls rushed to the water, cupped the cold water in their hands and splashed at their friends. Containers were flung aside as the smaller girls took to their heels. The ones who could not get away fast enough received an unwelcome gush of water down their backs and shrieked. Some pretended to cry and even produced tears. They were immediately mocked and threatened with ‘death by crocodile’. Others did mini-impressions of their mothers and bickered and argued, with arms akimbo. Soon the disagreements turned into girlish laughter and containers were placed next to the pump and then the line of girls could be seen streaming back into the village.
When Komora Kijana noticed how swollen the river was he realised that the War between the Tsana and Indian Ocean was not too far off and he dropped the container he was carrying and hid it in the nearby bushes. Walking along the river he could see the farms, the men bent over digging up the burnt grass because they had to plant in a few weeks. Komora Kijana looked over across the river as the morning disappeared under the sun and he could see young boys carrying packets of food wrapped in banana leaves. The best farms had always been at the shores of the Tsana till the War started.
Komora Kijana found Mzee Jorabashora’s son Hamisi working in the shamba. Hamisi had been his late father’s best friend and was like an uncle to him. The man straightened and smiled at him and they both looked at the river.
‘Has your grandfather told you when the War will happen?’ the son of Jorabashora asked.
‘He says a week at most.’
‘Has he seen the river lately?’
‘He sees its changes in his dreams …’
Hamisi said: ‘Look at the water. The War will come any day now.’
It was the third week of March and they discussed who had tilled the first bush and who had not. Thinking back to the past season Hamisi talked of men like Kase Morowa who waited till the last moment to put seed in the ground and did not take to the fields with the early sun. He then pointed at the shambas, which were all ready for the coming season. Komora Kijana nodded when Hamisi repeated what the old men of the village never tired of pointing out, that it was the footsteps of the woman who had become pregnant that required placing on the ground with care. Crops needed a brave hand. Even now there were still men who were asleep, who only took the path to the shambas when the dew had long evaporated.
A boy emerged from the trees on the other side of the shamba and came towards them. It was Jorabashora Kijana, the son of Hamisi. He waited to be greeted but his father ignored him. Komora Kijana could see boys on all the adjoining shambas bringing breakfast for their working fathers. Many of the men ignored the boys and continued working for long periods before they stopped what they were doing to eat.
Hamisi turned to his son. ‘And now what is wrong with your mother?’
‘Father, it is the government boat,’ the boy said, rising on the balls of his feet with excitement. ‘It passed this morning measuring the level of the Tsana. Everyone went to see it. The whole village is talking about it.’
‘Is that what they teach you in school? To give answers to questions that you have not been asked? Did you pass by the mapera tree? Is that why my breakfast has to be late?’
The village mapera tree had not produced any fruit in the Nyuki and Moto generations, and the rebuke was meant for the boy’s whole age-set – whose coming of age had dried the hundred-year-old tree.
‘Baba, I told Mother to give me your food but she told me that water must be fetched from the river first. She said everyone is saying the river will be too muddy any day now from the rains.’
‘Eh, she knows better than the Gasa when the War will come. Any day now there will be no food at all and my arm will drop from weakness because my food is always late,’ Hamisi said.
Komora Kijana could see all the men in the adjoining fields unpeeling the banana leaves that held their breakfast to start eating.
‘Father, may I go to school now?’
‘Can’t you see I am talking to Komora, who is old enough to be your uncle?’
The boy stood there waiting and when his father was not looking Komora smiled at the boy.
‘When I was your age I would now be working next to my father,’ Hamisi told his son. ‘You children are very lucky nowadays.’
A few minutes later a few of the men in the adjoining shambas looked up as they finished eating and a few wiped their mouths with relish. Some of them waved in Komora Kijana’s direction.
‘What are you still doing here?’ Hamisi said to the boy. ‘If your teacher comes to my hut to complain that you are always late I will teach you what my father taught me at your age.’
The boy rushed off and his father looked at him with pride. ‘He is a good strong boy.’ Komora Kijana and Hamisi watched the river for a while and Komora said, ‘I will tell my grandfather that the river is becoming a python.’
Remembering that he had started his morning drawing water from the river, Komora Kijana rushed there and filled up the container he had hidden away. He lifted the container with one arm with some ease and decided to take the long route back to his grandfather’s hut to see how the village was preparing for the War between Tsana and Indian Ocean. Ozi village was 300 huts in total, big, medium and small as well as thirty small stone houses and two large ones with wide verandahs that belonged to Chief Mpango and the late son of Mzee Chilati Dhabasha who, a year ago, had been arrested after being mistakenly accused of being the famous terrorist Faisal. He had died in government custody and his father had left the house empty in anger. Ozi was the last inhabitable space on the Tsana before the mangroves by the river and the wilderness leading up to the sea. Komora Kijana now reached Ozi Primary School, which stood at the northern edge of Ozi, a clear mark of colour and design that stood out from everything that surrounded it in age and appearance. He looked out to the far end of the village along the river to the small bay where the farms, rice and bananas ended. Beyond the bay, kilometres of mangroves stretched along the river where the men went to fish or to hunt. The small bay also held the new fish-smoking facility from where the fishing boats left early every morning. Behind Komora Kijana, inland beyond Ozi Primary, was the indigenous forest called Kilu after the great Mbakomo mganga. Half a day’s walk along the river on the edge of Kilu Forest was the larger Ungwana Bay, which for Ozi was the end of the world where the wild animals prowled. But in the other direction along a dirt track that became murram road all the way to the Malindi Highway, an hour away by Nissan or tuk tuk were the other Pokomo villages, and then the lands of the Ormah dotted the land. There was also a mosque along the dirt track navigable by car; there had been talk of a dispensary for two years but the floods and the wild animals thankfully kept Kenya at bay.
Komora Kijana reached the most densely inhabited huts in Ozi that formed a collective mass in the middle of the village. From that spot he stood in the middle of the rough triangle that was Ozi, with the Tsana as the base line. The pier boat launch with the fish-smoking house next to it was one angle of the triangle, the swamp-farms and the gate that led to the long road on the opposite corner the other. The chief’s camp near Ozi Primary formed the top of the triangle.
He made his way slowly back to his grandfather’s hut further from the river, beyond its flood level. His grandfather had moved there after the great El Niño of ’97. Only the ancient hut of Gasa next to the kizio was on higher ground and, because of its special magic, was said to be the only place in the village unaffected by the floods since the Malachini settled in these parts when they came from Shungwaya.
When Komora Kijana reached the homestead his grandfather was still asleep and so he started with the kayapa hedge, heaping twigs and small branches that he had collected from the forest the previous