The Stories that must be told-The visitor from Nairobi

The visitor from Nairobi

One day a visitor came to visit Okech Ndia. This visitor was his friend that they were working with in Nairobi. When the visitor arrived, Okech Ndira met him with joy and happiness and after greeting him and finding out about his health, he called out to his wife to quickly come and greet the visitor. As if bad luck would have it, the wife came wearing a dirty tattered dress and she was smoking a pipe with a long stem. When Okech saw this, he was upset and started quarreling with the wife in front of the visitor “you woman, yesterday you were told not to wear this dirty tattered dress. Why did you wear it again? Now, you are not to greet the visitor with a dirty dress”. He fumed. He further commanded her to go and make food immediately and he continued to quarrel telling her, “do not dither here and there (rundore) as is your habit”. I am fed up of you. This woman left the place with a long face, thoroughly and completely embarrassed.

After a while, the husband called and shouted to her to start cooking by making some tea. She shouted back that there was no sugar. That the little that was left was knocked over by the chicken.

She went and took an ugali pot and put it on the fire using firewood that was not dry and soon after the whole place filled with smoke. She put millet on the mortar, stood in the direction of the smoke, and started pounding the millet and tears rolled out of her eyes and streamed on to her face. One of her co-wife came and found her pounding the millet, crying with tears flowing down her face. She enquired into the reason as to why she was crying. The answer was “let it go, it is the smoke that is disturbing me”.

The husband was in the meantime very busy conversing with the visitor. After a while, he went outside to check out what was going on. He found a big pot with a lot of smoke. He asked her, “Asande why are you not using the sufuria”. Asande was quick to answer “the sufuria has a hole”. As for the fire, she was overwhelmed by a cold!  and she had a headache!  and she could not keep the fire well lit. The visitor had arrived in the morning at around the time when cows are freed to go for grazing. Food was served in the evening at around 3pm.

He brings out the worst in his wife

• He quarrels the wife in front of the visitor.
• Refusing her to greet the visitor because of the way she looked.
• He embarrasses her by ordering her and telling her what to do in the kitchen which is her domain.
• She proceeds to sabotage the cooking process – wet firewood, uses pot instead of sufuria, answers the husband back negatively to embarrass him by telling him there is no sugar and the sufuria has a hole.
• He kills the wife’s spirit.