Tale of the last nomad

By TED MALANDA

KENYA: On a good evening, when my grandfather Ibrahim, son of the king’s bodyguard, nephew of the legendary Wanga fighting army general Kongoti, scion of skinny warriors, had fortified his belly with fermented brew, he would take to singing the fiery war songs of his ancestors.

With a battered bow and blunt spear for special effects, he would prance left and right, recalling distant battles and victories that probably never were, rheumy eyes aflame with naked tribal pride.

 And his wives, perhaps suspecting that their man was embellishing the battlefront exploits of his forefathers, would chuckle and giggle derisively from their smoky kitchens, an act of disrespect so vile that it elicited the wild cry, “Ngai Narok!”

Warrior

Now, when Ibrahim, a man among men, a warrior of warriors, yelled “Ngai Narok!”, it was a chilling battle cry, a call to arms, a signal of the most vicious omundu khumundu hand to hand combat. And if you knew what was good for you, you fled with your tail up the nearest hill.

But why, pray, would a proud son of Wanga invoke the god of the Maasai and not the mystical Luhya deity Nyasaye before waging battle?

Chroniclers of ancient History will tell you that Nabongo Mumia, sly like the proverbial squirrel, realised that this people were long on the jaw, and short on the spear. So he engaged mercenaries, a battalion of fierce war-hardened Maasai troops, to help in his incessant territorial battles with the Bukusu and the Luo.

It is this men of war and varlour that my grandfather befriended, forming a lifelong bond that saw them visit the family kraal to feast on a fatted bull numerous times.

So strong was this bond that the old warrior was even offered a piece of land in Narok, a place he died cursing for not having visited.

 To be fair, he tried to make the pilgrimage once when, after a nasty family spat, he roused up his youngest and most beloved son Lumberto, named after a long-nosed Italian Catholic missionary, tossed a blanket across his wiry shoulders and, spear and club in hand, prized cattle herd spread majestically before him, set forth mumbling “Ngai Narok”.

Vanish

Fortunately, his age mates reasoned with him, explaining that it would be an act of subjugation for him to vanish since he was the clan leader.

They equally reminded him that it would be ridiculous to leave his three wives behind, pretty master brewers who would be quickly snapped up by greedy wolves in brother-in-law skin.

They also pointed out that he had no clue where Ngai Narok was.

That in the 1960s, days of migrating from place to place with cattle were long gone. And that in any case, the family feud was best sorted by the clownish government appointment of a chief who had replaced the revered Nabongo.

I write this with pain, stung that my people have taken to migrating to plots at the nearest market centres, blind to the opportunities far afield, so unlike the illiterate son of Omurahi, scion of skinny warriors, who dared to set forth to Narok, a distant place he had never seen, and whose exact location he had not the faintest clue.