Vignettes of A Superstitious Life

“The miracle of nature, its secret, is the promise of abundance, the real physical emphasis that we are not alone. We are never empty.”- TJ Benson

1.

I first knew that corpses could cry fifteen years ago when my father died. His body, having been at the Kenyatta National Hospital Mortuary for two weeks, should have had all its emotions wringed out of it, I thought, yet this was not the case. At night, during the wake, the lowering of his body scheduled for the following morning, he cried. He shed tears would be the precise phrase for what happened. But this is not what mourners said. “Saphan is crying,” these words melded with their dirges that ladened our compound.

I remember the frantic movements around our home. My mother: weepy, defeated and frail, wiped father’s tears with her handkerchief, the same one she used earlier to wipe the gum of mucus lining the space between her nose and her upper lip when she was wailing. Mwalimu, my father’s elder brother, unable to rush about because of his clubbed-right foot, was left to adjust the pillow under Dad’s neck. Relatives present scuffled all over, looking for Dad’s surviving aunt. Their reason was that she needed to come talk to Father.

I fiddled restlessly as flutters of anxiety made my insides snarl.  Never in my odd years of living had I heard that a dead person could cry. I never knew that a dead person could be spoken to. No one had ever told me that the dead could hear. I stood by my mother, enfolding her into my adolescent arms. Mum heaved, hiccupping, struggling to draw full breaths. I bated the throbs in my chest. Words of an uncle rang in my mind.  You have to be a man, do not show any weakness, stand strong for your mum, this uncle had said, his alcohol fizzed breath spiking my nose. With a breaking voice, I whispered rehearsed consolations to mum: Everything is going to be okay, all words, perhaps feigned, that I had heard again and again in movies with bereaving characters.

Mum mumbled back: it can’t be okay with your father crying. In the days since Dad’s death her voice had faded into a quaver. Her sentences acquired a new cadence, staccato, like she was choking on every word.

Her response gave me a pause. There had to be a reason as to why everyone was making a big deal out of my father’s cry.

Through the dim light I saw Dad’s aunt, knobbed by age, shamble towards where we were standing, to the coffin. Ayub, another of my Dad’s brothers, was the one guiding her. How lucky we were that Ayub was not drunk on this night. Grand-aunt’s steps were brittle, so measured you could count five, maybe seven seconds before she took the next.  In between, she chanted. Her limp voice was commanding Dad to behave.

”Wuod owadwa, itmiri nade?”

“Son to my brother, why are you behaving like this?”

The movements of the mourners stilled. Every wind quieted. The air became silent. A glum silence.

When my dad’s aunt finally laid her eyes on him, dad stopped crying. What remained was the salt in his tear tracts, the only evidence of the tears on his pallid face. Things in my head folded like petals in surprise. It was magic. It was a miracle. It was all that I had never seen or heard.

Days later after the funeral, and after the mourners who had travelled to come bury dad left, Mum eventually, after constant nagging, sat me down to explain what it means when a dead person cries. “A dead person cries when they are either angry from being murdered, or if they are mourning their bereaved.”

“But how can the dead mourn their bereaved?”

“In case the dead person was the sole provider of his or her family, his death would imply that those he has left behind are going to suffer. The dead cries for the coming suffering of those he has left behind.”

Mum’s explanation left me startled.

2.

One time in a book club discussion, a lady cut short an argument between two members who were debating a scene in a book we were discussing. This lady, having studied Literature and Philosophy for her undergraduate degree, had a phenomenal understanding of literature that the rest of us in the book club respected, or at the very least, deferred to. “The point is not on whether it is true or not. Our focus should be on whether it is a superstition this community in the book believes in. Superstitions are always as real as we make them.” What she said startled me into reflecting on the credulous beliefs that continue to sustain my life.

Superstitions were the motifs to a lot of the African Sciences. They gave reasons and narratives that led to the inventions of these sciences. In these superstitions we found stories to explain our calamities, victories, triumphs and tragedies. An example that comes to mind is how my family explains away the cause of my stepbrother’s schizophrenia and epilepsy. His mother says that this brother of mine was healthy until the night he walked over a puddle of water that had been used to bath someone with a ‘falling’ and ‘losing mind’ condition. She tells this story with such conviction that you would think it is nothing but the (absolute) truth. I believe her. I do so despite knowing that there are alternative explanations for the cause of these conditions.

My stepmother is telling the truth; I insist to anyone who listens to her.  I insist because I was there when a man in a red robe with a priestly collar, carrying a long staff like that of Moses in the Bible, walked in and harvested soil from the spot where the supposed puddle of water crossed by my step brother had been poured. Jalemo, meaning a praying man, as he was christened, had been invited by my stepmother to come pray for her son whose episodes were getting frequent. More frequent. Jalemo, on a mission, came drumming a Dondo. His voice was a rich baritone; its loud pitch arrogantly bothered the village’s silence. He summoned the gods to come heal my stepbrother. Candles were lit. My stepbrother was asked to wear a red robe similar to Jalemo’s. All present were asked to stand around in a circle as he prayed.

“Yeso.” “Yeso.” “Yeso.” “Yeso.” We chorused in interludes as he interceded.  In the compound he unearthed a hen’s head, legs, and wings. He smirked then sneered, exposing his black gums, as he prophesied about plans by some village people who were ill-fully devoted to cast a spell on our family. He left with the thing he had unearthed, promising that my stepbrother’s condition would end.

The condition is yet to end. We have, however, noted the reduced frequency of my stepbrother’s episodes. And if your dismissal is that the ‘prayers’ did not work then my rebuttal would be that even with modern medicine, treating schizophrenia and epilepsy would take time.

3.

The stories of the superstitions around me are endless. They keep decorating my life, animating moments. In times when I am agnostic, a gentle prod of these superstitions reminds me the beliefs are as real as we make them.