THE SPEAKING ART...WHAT IS YOUR THOUGHT?

This is an attractive site to any visitor.

You may have seen these two statue sculptures on your way to Embu at Mwea -Digital Nice place. There are presently two inns and a gas station lightening up the rather silent country-side rice fields. Have you ever thought of them in this way?

One cow, a female is modeled to have its right hind leg in the air in a kicking manner. The other cow, a male is modeled to be behind the first and in a manner to suggest that the cow has been kicked, straining backwards in support of the hind legs if not dodging. A tone of sarcasm would imply them to be buffaloes by their huge bodies and strong horns. But they can't be!

Enock Osire will tell you that when you go to an artifact shop with Lung’afa, he will take time marveling at the pieces on the walls and sculptures on display. I find artists so intriguing and people of another telepathetic-kind sense different from authors. What do pictures really say? Why do people model? What inspires art? Who discovered it and where does it belong in aiding man to see the future from the past?

I am not good in drawing. I happened to have gone into an art class when the syllabus in Kenya still required art knowledge in primary school. It is offered majorly in private schools at present. There I learnt a few things like the mosaic patterns, overlapping and colouring and the three primary colours. The fact that every colour is just but black and white in its intense magnification is a lately knowing. Knowing this less, I keep an eye on statues, carvings, sculptures, stones, rivers, roads, people, writings, pictures, sounds, colour and any physical form that comes along just to see the art in it. If you ask me, a leaf resembles the road network in a particular unit area.

These cows, like Gado’s pieces of art seem to be speaking in their state. For Gado, the cartoons must have a speaking circle with an arrow pointing to either Wanjiku the sufferer or the vulture politician. When I looked at the cows at first when the matatu halted to refill and wipe the front view mirror, I did not utter a laugh. The mind was in the state of….ping! Taraa…. Daily Nation has been my newspaper due to Gado till lately. I have had my ribs contracting and relaxing once I see the message in his satirical drawings. He said that he is taking for a sabbatical holiday in a Facebook post. Good luck man though we do not know how a man can take leave from what he loves doing. We are missing the man in a cap, whose only nose we see in the cartoon. The political and social hypocrisy was well described in his pieces, a talent that few can have.

Which cow should we look at first? Male or the female? Does it matter anyway? I think it does. Ladies first. If this is too small a reason, let us look at the subject in the sentence… the ‘female cow is kicking in the air’… or ‘The male cow is drifting backward’. What is causing the drift? The kick!

Between male and female who came first? I know the Bible says that a woman was created from the rib of a man. Does the answer satisfy you? And some men got all their ribs contact! Between the hen and the egg, which came first? There is no cock in this phenomenon. The egg can hatch to a cock… and you know cocks go on fertilizing their mothers innocently. Scientists- I do not know if all agree- say that the hen may have come before the egg because of the fundamental protein building essentials found in the hen and lacking in the egg. In short, I prefer to put the female first because I came from her.

The female cow kick.

The old man whom I was told to have taken a number of weeks knitting hay stacks using thin wires and latter finish with a cement-mix paste had in mind something better and bigger to tell the world. Or can it be a coincidence? It may be. One person can leave a mark later to be interpreted otherwise by another person. And if there is nothing like coincidence, then there is just an add up of thoughts and different perceptions that all merge at the subject. Why did he showcase the female cow in the kick state? He could have modeled them mowing peacefully and I’d not be attracted!

I may have overlooked an important piece up there. Why a cow? It may go to blalalalala…because we know that since time immemorial man has depended on the services of this sacred creation. Cows give more than what they take...but of recent man has turned the land hostile and they are taking more than what they give. As it can be attributed to the Hindus as a religious symbol, to the nomad Maasai of Kenya and other livestock rears the cow is a day-to-day provider. Were it not for the cow at home, the economic welfare of my mother would be wanting. It goes that traditional bridal price was the cows and goats if needed. In my tradition, a woman can be called ‘cows’. She is as equal in value as some few cows.

The kick. Why is the female cow kicking? Why has it kicked the male cow? Why the heavy kick? Kicks show independence and provide self-security in the female cow. It is yesterday that the pastor suggested that with the failed responsible men, the Lord’s Prayer should start like… ‘Our Mother who art in heaven….’ He may have said it to stress his point but I grasped it to inform my thoughts. One thing leads to another and all things work for good to those who believe in God, Romans 8:28. The paternal manly society is a Biblical Christian creation as Dan Brown would say. He has reasons as to why so. The pagan world was a woman’s world! When the goddess was angered by the doings of men, she released vengeance. And there was at least order I guess.

The reason for the kick depends on your imaginations and experiences. As a young boy, my mother was everything when my father was something. In her pain, I cried. She could tell me her inner thoughts and I could experience her deeper emotions. Father, a figure of authority, that Kazija does not know where his authority came from or who gave it to him in the book Utengano, is nothing but a liability to mother Earth. The Swahili novel encompasses the stupid man in the world of women wisdom. In the end, the man loses heavily as the woman settles in a corrupt land of regrets. The old man, an inhabitant of Kikuyu land where the recent news have been increased male battering by wives as a signal of failed manhood may have been inspired by a cultural change that things are going back to the woman’s hands.

The Gender-Class arguments of who is who between a man and a woman seem to me as an extension of the violent world created by the up come of man to authority. The female gender is a gentle gender and that is why we heap all manner of weaknesses to feminity. Chinua Achebe describes Okonkwo as the masculine male chauvinist who sees nothing good in women but to think of his daughter to have been a boy. The end was fatal. Though women have their faults, the man’s world is more violent in wide and narrow as other blogs I have written entail. Men are in power and occupy more than 78% of world’s resources with Africa forever against woman’s leadership. We are going down the drain if all the violent heads are not dead and gentle minds born.

The throwing of the tail up in air does not only show extreme reverse excitement but also exposes the genitalia of the female cow. This is a curse to the land. Good that the bright sun prevented the camera from the promiscuity. We used to follow a cow down the road when its rope got loose. In the excitement, more often during its peak craving for a bull to sire, the cow would run for long distance. Following it was to prevent its going into one’s farm and devouring crops. I did it wrong when I punished it there after with strokes. When my cousin killed one by hitting the muzzle with firewood, it was felt that he had done the earth wrong and if grandmother did not forgive him he would have a bad hand in his life.  As for this case, the cow is not exited to keep the tail in the air for reproduction but to expose the nakedness in its kick. And the bull won’t even put its muzzle near the vulva; forget about looking at it with a pumping penis.

The gazing into space of the two in their ‘internal’ fight as an indication that help will come from the blues is also thought provoking. There is no calf around to witness this conflict though it may be a representative of the conflicts in the Animalia kingdom where man takes the same position as cows in class Mammalia. The strike though still in the air like in a slow motion activity of football show, the cows look relaxed and a good background for photo lovers. The look is as serious and angry like any cow would give to a new milk person.

Obviously the bull is lacking in any words that may try to explain a situation. It is a victim in this case. It should not happen that we tend to feel sorry for it in this situation like any ignorant person takes to conclusion without underlying considerations. What made it receive the strike? Of course you cannot be punished for no reason in the ideal animal world. The reasons, like for the ones above arise from the misdoings of the man. The man is presently on the receiving end due to his greed. He cannot control his appetites and when the lusts are taken care of, he tends to take a low passive profile of ignorance. Bure kabisa.

The poor bull struggling not to fall.

The irony of the masculine bull is exhibited in the body structure of the fat  scrotum whose parting point can be discerned and the twisting muscular urethra heading towards the free penal point. The   hump, a rather masculine aspect of this creature has been crooked by its falling nature and the need to stay away from the cow as a result of need-you-not-more kick. It is instead forced to use its hind muscles to support it from the kick-fall that could otherwise be supporting the mass body as it pushed in and out the penis in the vulva to devour the body of the sacred cow.

Back to the gaze, as if the animals were looking at me after requesting the local guard for a snap of the statues, I was keen to look in their eyes. The two were not looking at the same place in particular but gazing in the open before them brings in the dynamic common cause- search for harmony, Truth and long lost glory of an ideal world. Where does help come from? Don’t say from heaven. Help comes from within. There is no trying and once the water is split not even the gods can amend. In fact they order for atonement. The bull, now that is still alive should focus to mend mistakes and behave as one. The left horn though hurt and the muzzle 'bleeding', got square in between by the kick, not even the silvery clouds could prevent the feminine soul’s vengeance. Tit for Tat.

And the mother cow will be peaceful and in no forceful authority, her horns curving upwards, keeping an eye at the greedy bull whose horns continue to curve downwards and sideways in confusion.