Enkere ye Baninga. He would stand. He would stand for hours in the early night. The people of here call this time in vernacular: the blue hours. He could stand like that – a watcher. His was a routine that fascinated and confused even the crickets.
Before these edible insects assembled their vocals for their nocturnal orchestra, they watched him stand. Stand, he did sometimes with his hands akimbo. He stood long for years even and odd.
The spot where he stood had over the decades sunk several inches in. Nothing grew on that spot except his frame when he stood there. Many ignored him yet when on the rare days he was absent, all missed him.
On such rare days, those who passed this way to/or from the market wondered with each other where he was. The villagers of here and neighbouring locality had come to associate this spot at the edge of the market line of kiosks with him. They thought of it as a landmark.
The spot where he stood faced the rising sun. It enabled the setting sun to be on his kisogo kidogo as he faced ever in the direction of the sun. It was also the direction of the central mountain many miles away.
The local mountain that cultivated rain here was always behind him as he stood at the spot. The women who sold charcoal and the ones who peddled sex enhancing amulets or powders did so across the road from where he stood.
They always had tiny conversations that took the form of informal debates. They spent their times without customers debating his pros and cons. They would eye him as he stood on his hallowed spot and pick a part of him as a gossip topic or theme.
Take the day before the accident, for example. Two women vendors of mugombera wrestled live to the open ditch near the police post. One had tried to argue that the man had a nose that was normal. The other had sworn upon her enormous left tit that the stander's nose was not local.
The first one who wore a pink nylon dress that sparked as she fought in the dying sun had strangled the plump whose husband repaired motorcycles strictly for sugar as payment. The two had offered the lazy public of here huge insights into their private parts.
The man stood stoically and watched this hullabaloo without batting an eyelid. His routine stand was unaffected by the cheers and jeers of the wananchi.
Kids who were returning from school paused to pick parts of this drama to entertain their bored elderly parents in the outlying hovels that night. They capitalised on that which they were seeing now but had only heard about in science classes in school.
One lad felt his body get stiff. He remembered for no reason at all that tomorrow was his sixteenth birthday.
Come drama, come no drama, the man stood at his site of choice and the world appreciated his stand. On the day of the accident it had rained like the days of Jonah.
Some who visit mighty River Nzoia for a bath claimed to have seen a giant fish vomit a man like the stander in looks but who disappeared into the vast sugarcane fields.
This market of Naitiri in Bungoma North is ensconced between miles of thick new sugarcane farms owned by some of the poorest people in Kenya. Their plots or tiny farms united in all four points of the compass to crown the life of here.
The rhythm of life was monotonous and revolved around the preparation, harvest and processing of sugar canes ad infinitum. Sugar cane jokes, sugar cane songs, sugar cane dances existed nowadays side by side with village sugar dandies. The man was one such.
The day of the accident was a Friday. It was a Good Friday. Let me just say that the day before it had been a bad Thursday. The man had not stood at his stand spot even. No one in particular knew why. No one generally knew where he was. Yet when present, most ignored him.
His absence had made many worry. Some coming to the market had even been swindled as they absentmindedly shopped while wondering where he was.
The local chief had dished out services without bribes for once. Why? He cited the need to clear his queues quickly so as to allocate ample time to think about this heavy thought: why is the man absent?
He even ignored the incident of bumping in the latrine behind his office into his salacious gun-carrying cop making it out solo with eyes in a hole.
Chief later saw the leper of the market emerge from a thicket where she had been long calling nature. The lust-struck cop emerged from the latrine facing the thicket with slime oozing on his zip. His eyes were dim with amour and guilt mixed with ganja.
Some say that the absence of icons can cause consternation in a community where ignorance and ignoring others is a pandemic. Some say that in a nation built on strong foundations of eye-witnesses and tale-tellers, the absence of icons that unite a community can lead to despair.
***
As the third father of the Kenyan nation departs from us to join the ancestors, let us think about the man.
“WATCH: The latest videos from the Star”
