Set in Time

Today, we step foot in Marĩira, Mũrang’a.

It’s been more than ten years since I was last here, and everything feels smaller.

The air is brisk, smelling faintly of rain, dust, and the green tea leaves growing all around. It holds that laid-back feeling that eludes the fast-paced Nairobi, each step carrying nothing but patience for the next.

The trees sway lazily in the bright 11 am sun, and I instantly spot two trees that were the highlight of my shagz experience.

An avocado tree in the neighbour’s compound, tall and majestic, full of fruit, not ready to let go of them yet. The neighbour would catch us surveying for avocados and invite us in for tea, which my cousins and I would drink in guilty sips.

The other is a luquot tree. This one was a go-to on the nights Cũcũ’s (Shosho’s) depression got the best of her, and she’d end up chasing us away in the middle of the night. Its leaves are bright and oily, but the fruits are nowhere to be seen.

The tiny path from the road down to the house is overgrown and almost unrecognizable. The grass fights with my feet as I try to pass, and the mud beneath the grass makes me slip. I’m wearing sneakers meant for the pavements in CBD, a reminder of how out of touch I am, and it stings a little.

To the right is a patch of bare land, where Cũcũ’s mud house used to stand. It doesn’t look like much now, but a couple of years back, lives were lived in that space.

When my mother stops to look at it, I can almost see what she sees through her eyes. The laughter shared, the arguments thrown, the grief after losing her father, growing and moving out, all in seconds.

She tells me how the neighbour's wife scraped and ate almost half the house during her pregnancies. It sounds unbelievable, but then again, I’ve seen girls in high school peel poor termite homes from trees in the name of a snack, so I don’t completely dismiss it.

A few more steps, and we come to the stone house I’ve always known. The metal door bears some patches of rust, and the iron sheets have lost their shine. The pavement has chipped away, and the corners on the steps to the house have given in to time.

Inside, more memories flood in, and I drift through the house.

The seats still look the same. My mother watches in awe as I bend down to smell them, and they really do smell the same. I see Cũcũ’s photo from years ago on the cabinet, and next to it is a calendar from the year 1986. Those and the table are the only things that made it from the mud house.

I walk to the first bedroom and I see myself playing hide and seek with my cousins under the beds. The next room is where I used to sleep. It has been turned into a small store, but the Ronaldinho poster still hangs on the wall. It’s musty and dusty, and my eyes sting remembering how full of life the room used to be. The last bedroom is the smallest one, the one with the back door we sneaked through after being chased out, usually sick from all the luquots we had eaten earlier.

I step out of the house and head into the mabati kitchen, and I am immediately hit with the smell of smoke. It is dark and sooty, and the firewood rack above me looks like it’s about to collapse at any time. I can reach it now. It used to look so far up.

I spot a plastic pipe on the ground, and my eyes fill with tears. not from nostalgia but from remembering how I used it to blow into the fire, but really my face

I see the soot-lined pots on the floor triggering the memory and taste of the smoky pilau njeri and the sound of the metal plates as we raced each other to finish food first.

We’d then race to bed and giggle for hours before passing out from exhaustion, the good kind. Then we’d wake up to hot, overly sweet tea — Cũcũ’s sweet tooth was everyone’s problem — and slices of bread slathered with blueband.

I step out of the kitchen and look at the patch of grass where I had planted a tree. It’s bare, of course, but I’m not sad. The grass grows tall, and it probably looks better this way, with the sun shining bright over the compound.

I walk back to the living room and find my mother has settled into one of the seats. I walk to a chair across from her and slowly take a seat, the room heavy with memory.

I can’t help but wonder what memories are shaking loose for her.

---

Cũcũ doesn’t live here anymore. Her health pulled her to Nairobi, and she stays with us. She needs someone to give her meds and remind her of her never-ending strength.

She’s smaller now and walks more slowly. A recent fall shook her trust in her own step, and it’s hard to watch the woman full of deep wisdom and stern words, the woman who always got me out of the harshest beatings, slow down and walk with a cane.

It’s also hard watching your mother scowl at her own mother, who refuses to be taken care of, her independence so deeply ingrained in her blood that it becomes a threat.

It’s a different kind of grief, the kind that creeps in when people are still here but not the same.

Still, I think I’m fortunate.

There’s something magical about standing at the crossroads, watching the little habits she has, the ones I later catch in my mother, and sometimes, annoyingly, in myself.

As much as everything feels different, I’m still someone who knows these stories and these people.

I’m still part of this place in a way time can’t take.