Leaving Kerugoya Kutus

How does it feel to leave your home town to live in another country? Does it mean that you say good bye to your friends or family? I remember that when I left Kerugoya-Kutus, it was really without the thought of who I was leaving behind. It was careless, selfish and perhaps even with disregard to my own well being.

I did not even think about my grandmothers words. You know, she used to kiss me and beg me to hug her because it would probably be our last; everytime I saw her for about 10 years of my visiting her in Kerugoya-Kutus.

I am tempted to start describing the Kerugoya-Kutus I lived in, but I will not. Where would I start? I definately would start with the cheap mandazis in the town center and the wonderful people that smiled and said hello to me as if they knew me, and I knew them.

Leaving Kerugoya-Kutus was saying "No"to sharing life with others, others who had cared for me and others so close, my parents. Since I left, there have been so many funerals, births, and weddings: None of which I ever attended. I hear of them in the same way I hear of an election when listening to the radio.

There was the mountain with snow and trees. When I returned 5 years later, the mountain was bald -as my head had become - and the snow, gone. Then there were the neighbors whose childrens noses I would wipe; and everytime I returned, the children were progressively growing. One day, I went to visit and I could hardly tell who the young woman with a child was. It was the little baby I once held, now grown and a with a child. She looked so much like her mother, now that I was reminded who she was.

The roads had become dustier, trees gone, rivers had gone dry. Everyone blamed the President Moi for all this. How could one President who had never lived here do this? The people were in great denial and somehow seemed to blame everything that had gone wrong on someone or on God. Yes, the churches were bigger, much bigger! That must be where the money was going.

Then one day, I returned to Kerugoya-Kutus; my grandmother had died and I was serious about coming to live in Kerugoya-Kutus. I did not want to leave after the funeral. But I must have been the only one thinking this way. Everyone else came to put the body in the grave or to wonder what was going to happen to the things and the people she left behind. So, I left, again and this time I did not have the appetite to return.

Leaving with a purpose and a hope that life in the future will be better than it would be if I had stayed. It was like gambling on a stock that everyone else was buying. But wait! There is more....later.