Writing KIMBO

By Kiprop Kimutai

First shared in The Wonders of Sergoit Hills Facebook group on 30 August 2021.

The first word my mother learnt to write was KIMBO, a word inscribed on the many tins in their granary. Her elder sister, Lina, would take one along when they went to herd cattle, then teach her the sound behind each letter.

This was in the early 1950s, and Lina was a phenomenon, one of only two girls in Sergoit to join school. They were nicknamed chepsugul, girl who goes to school.

Barmao, my mother’s elder brother, was the only other sibling who had attended school, but he dropped out in class two in order to train horses for a colonial settler. In his hut he had a huge black tin box filled with letters. My mother would sometimes see him lift a letter out and read it, and she was struck by the emotions that crossed his face. She concluded that if she learnt to read, she would have access to his emotions and his thoughts, and to the worlds suggested by the letters.

These were the days when girls gathered at night to learn songs which they would sing loudly whenever there was a full moon. Hyenas still lived close to people and stole from them. My mother’s dress was made from goatskin and held at the neck with a thread. She was five years old.

She would not let Lina be. Lina would come home and repeat each lesson. The alphabet was easy: Aa, Ba, Cha, Da, and soon enough she was stringing words together, beginning with KIMBO but moving on to animals, utensils, plants and insects: teta, artet, sotet, kibichek, chepsitaki.

Finally confident in her skills, she asked Barmao if she could read his letters, and Barmao said she could, if she could write down his three names. This she did easily, using her forefinger to draw in the soft mud that formed outside his hut when rain fell: Bamao Aap Chesegon. R was the only letter she failed to include.

Barmao looked at his name, shook his head this way and that, then told my mother that he would leave his hut open the next day and she could come in and read all day long, and even carry some of the letters with her as she herded cattle.

The next day his hut was locked and he had disappeared, and he would stay away for many years. His instruction was that my mother was to join school immediately, for he had paid the 17 shillings fee.

The next time they met was when he came to visit her in high school, to tell her that he had just married. He was still paying her fees. When he died, my mother wove the wreaths on his grave, using flowers from our garden and stephania vines.

This story came to mind because Lina and Mum called. His death anniversary is approaching, and they want me to put his memorial in the papers, with a few nice words.

First shared in The Wonders of Sergoit Hills Facebook group on 30 August 2021. See also The Story of KIMBO.