Christmas isn’t just about food, gifts: It’s more
There is a tendency for every Kenyan born in the ‘60s and ‘70s to gloat about Christmas of their time. They make it look as if Christmas died and what we are having now is something lacklustre and useless. They are usually the rural-born people who are very loud on this matter and they have the temerity to act as if all were living as they did.
Ask anyone of those times and they will gloatingly and proudly tell you how that was the only season when they had sumptuous meals; that is the only time of the year when Chapati and rice and meat were cooked for them.
It can make you feel pity for them if only they knew many of us in towns used to eat those meals anytime we wanted to; those were not new things or things to be looked forward to for the whole year.
To us, Christmas was the time of new gifts; toys and other trinkets that can make a child glow with pride. Food was nothing at all to talk about.
What they usually talk about sounds like the song by Baba Otonglo. It was done in the early ‘80s. The father of the large family was reading his family budget by mentioning things to be cut out of it: Unnecessary things like meat, fish, onions, tomatoes, rice etc. Those were things that would only be seen in his house at Christmas.
Well, every person had his or her own experiences and as such we shall allow the ‘rurals’ to talk about theirs. Christmas of 1983 found me at the age of nine going to 10.
We had new toys and clothes presumably brought by Father Christmas. The only dark spot was that a neighbour’s child was admitted in hospital for the past two months. Some doctor suggested that they bring his little friends to cheer him up during the festive season. Six of us went to visit him in hospital and what we saw has stuck with us to date.
Fickleness of the human condition
He was suffering from some rare muscle condition and all the muscles of his body were drying up. He was in pain and couldn’t walk. There was a physiotherapist trying to make him exercise even though he seemed to be in so much pain.
We brought him his gifts that Santa, not knowing he was sick, had left in their house. He couldn’t even unwrap them; he was thin, painfully thin and scary.
He tried to show us that he was getting better by attempting to walk.
He fell down and the doctor took him back to his bed; he made as if to cry and immediately stopped himself; he ended up laughing instead. A short bust of laughter that was worse than if he had wept.
The laughter was haunting us: Why did he laugh? What was he laughing at? Was he laughing at himself? His worrying condition? Had he seen the fickleness of the human condition? Was he giving up hope? Was it a despair of longevity?
Well, he closed his eyes and never opened them again. He died the same day and was buried by the New Year.
We had learned a new lesson: Christmas isn’t just about food and gifts, it is much more than that. What we still wish to know is why did our little friend laugh? How many more are laughing in pain this Christmas? BY DAILY NATION
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