A BETTER HOPE

Mama  Agneta sits outside on the threshold of her house, the train of her old fading Dera flaps against the ground between her feet. It was a gift from her sister who is married to a man from the far Coast of Kenya, she misses her and is sad, although her sister doesn’t have a much better life, it wouldn’t hurt to have an experience of life in another town. She rests her head on her palm, the folds on her forehead form significantly and little beads of shiny sweat gather under the furrows. The short rusty iron sheets do not cast any shadows beyond the upper front of the house yet she doesn’t want to go sit under the tree at the centre of the compound; the sun casts heat on her crown, it itches and she moves her hand to scratch it; it is dry and painful, she gives it several taps. She cannot remember the last time she oiled it, it was dry and stiff. The husband could not bother himself about such things; all he did was leave her twenty shillings for tomatoes, the ones in her farm were tiny and yellow. The soil refused to nurture them. 

‘What are you doing outside here?’ the husband asks. 

Mama Agneta turns around to face him, he is leaning against the door frame, his eyes cold and the corners of his lips curved downwards. She looks at him keenly and doesn’t know how to respond; she lowers her eyes and notices the line of dirt on the hem of his trousers. 

‘I need to wash your clothes…’

‘I didn’t ask about that…I have just arrived from work and I need something to eat,’ he clicks then mumbles some words under his breath, turns around and leaves her presence. He doesn’t seem like he has the energy to lash out today.

A little flame of spite licks up all the calmness that is left, if any, in her heart. He doesn’t work anywhere. She doesn’t know anything about any job her husband could possibly have. She often hears him make long phone calls to the children of his brother who live in the city; ‘send your uncle something.’ He always asks and any money he receives, he secretly goes to the food kiosk near the local bar and uses it for Chapati Madondo, when he returns after dark he is too full to accept the plain Ugali and collard greens which she is left to eat with her daughter and son.

She wishes deeply that she could go back in time and reject the marriage, maybe convince her parents to allow her have Secondary school education. That could have helped her. She would be somewhere in the city working, maybe at a hotel, it wouldn’t matter as long as she had a pay slip at the end of every month. But it wasn’t possible; most parents do not educate the girl because she will get married and she was not wise enough anyway. If only she knew.

She knows she is only fanning herself with fantasies of what could’ve been. The cool of it exists outside of reality. It happened to her mother, and her mother before that. It is as if that path is placed firmly under any womb that lets out a female child. One has to be lucky enough to branch off to another; and have the will; a strong will to keep going until a different destiny is achieved. 

She met him at the market place; her mother had sent her to purchase a few items. As she was leaving, he ran up to her and tapped her shoulder.

‘You should thank your ancestors that we are not allowed to carry you away to our homes anymore,’ he had said. They laughed about it and she thought it would be romantic if he had done that. She was young and blinded by fantasies of young married life. Almost every girl had those; being taken away was like a sign back then that you were beautiful enough for someone to think of kidnapping you as a wife. If only they all knew that the body has a language of its own that speaks only about its own wants. 

Now here she is, she cannot leave because she doesn’t have anything of her own, it is also some sort of taboo for a woman who has children to abandon her matrimonial home and go live with her parents, people will frown at her, she is supposed to carry her position with honor, be an example to her daughter of what a wife should be and to her son of what to expect from his future wife. 

Her heart is bitter but she cannot cry, she had cried enough tears since the second year of her marriage, now it is just pain; it is as if her tears drop on the inside and their saltiness burn up her chest. She wants to distract herself but she doesn’t know what to do. She cannot start to grate the coconut yet; she likes it when she puts it in directly to the pot of boiling sardines without it drying. She has been sitting there for quite a while staring at the gate.

Her husband stands up from his chair and walks slowly to the next room. He enters it and lets out a long heavy breath. A splinter of impatience embeds on his heart. He reaches a hand to his waist to unbuckle the belt, something in him wants to swing it against the door and scream out, but he has no reason to. It is not her fault lunch is not arrived yet. 

At school is Agneta; a small bag of sardines in her hand, gathered around the school’s notice board are her other classmates who are also in the final year of their Primary school. An A4 paper stapled on the board has a list of four students who have made it into the sponsorship program for a high school education overseas. Everybody is stepping on each other; she is trying to stand on her toes to see too. She moves back and waits for the other students to leave when someone shouts from within the group;

‘Aggie! Your name is here! Your name is here!’ 

Her heart skips a beat; she places her hand on her chest and moves further back. She knows she is a bright student but she didn’t expect to make it. She wants to see it herself in order to offload her disbelief. If it is really true, this will be her ticket to a better life, a better future; a light for her mother’s eyes.