sunset saga

By Eugene Kabasa Where I come from, love is hidden in little priceless gestures. It's in how Mama gets mad when you are not home yet at it's half past seven because she misses you. She won't say it. She'd rather go rounds lamenting of how annoying it is that you don't see the worrying you put people through when you are home late.  Love is in how they send that little girl Fiona to come get you because food is ready and they can't start without you. It doesn't look like love until you are old and busy and worried about traffic and recession and you grow homesick.  Love is feeling the feet of your little nephews jump over the puddles of last night's downpour like steeplechase hurdles. It's morning and you haven't woken up yet. You can feel the sun through your window. Their feet remind you of the days you were young and fragile, schoolbag pulling you down in the morning dew as you rush to school. And of course you remember love, love is Mama runni

Hats off to my elder siblings they were luminaries. Having elder siblings is fun, but more fun if you're the elder sibling.  When you're young and naive your elder siblings will brain wash you. They will literally make you believe anything they want. After listening to a Rose muhando song that has this line '... mpaka kwenye internet. Eeeeh mwanadamu wewe endelea kutenda dhambi.'  I remember my brother making me believe that 'internet' is a place where you can actually get into physically and walk out... Eeeih! I pictured internet to be a room that has a lot of computers and lots of scattered cables. Jesus Christ on a donkey!! We used to call ghosts Ere suka a name that was founded in our family- by my elder siblings. Ere suka translates to 'where is the sheet' probably because ghosts always appear covered in sheets with popped eyes and a crack line for a mouth.  After being told the stories of Ere suka by our elder siblings we couldn't walk in the d

  Three times I have been to the casualty lobby of a hospital. Three times I have seen people being wheeled into the hospital with their limbs suspended on their frail bodies by a thread of skin. Their bones crashed into smithereens. Clenched teeth, biting against each other to numb the pain. Shrieks of agony. And blank expressions that betray despair. Sometimes family members, or some good Samaritans, flanked these people who had both their feet on the two sides of the thin red line that separated life from death. Staring timidly into the deep dark abyss that bore their graves. Then there were those who were wheeled in solely. No one to pat their backs and whisper bitter-sweet words of affirmation. No one to heckle at the indifferent nurses to attend to them. Just them, and their God.  Two times I have been to the casualty lobby because of a knee ligament injury. I acquired both injuries while in a pursuit of a football. I have been carried to a jalopy dubbed ambulance. The contraptio

 The art of food is like lovemaking. The better it is, the more guilty you feel once you are finished. I don’t know much about food—which should not imply that I am the Rosetta stone of knowledge on lovemaking—but there’s no need to tell the devil to go to hell. Of course in the old literary traditions, the devil always gets the best part; and like wasps around treacle, I have discovered that chapo ndengu is God’s cheat meal. It is what God eats when He wants to reward himself for being God. There are two kinds of people—chapo ndengu and chapo ndondo. My father loved chapo ndondo but my mother hated cooking it—the mandondo not the chapo—and you could taste it, a meal not even worthy for the Philistines. Like most teenagers—stoned and rapacious—I grew up making the connection between food and love, and nothing wrapped me in love more than chapo ndengu. You might forgive me a touch of deja vu, but with every bite, the memories keep flooding back; of watching Robin Hood on Sundays after c