ENYONI IKWIMBI

The saying comes from two maragoli words; enyoni for bird and ikwimbi to mean ‘it has sung you.’ I first heard of it yesterday, late in the evening when I visited my recovering father in his home at Dandora. He is diagnosed with high blood pressure. I wish him quick recovery and long life to continue learning from him.

How the saying comes into this context is what I do not know. But as I said earlier in another blogspot that I study people- an inspiration from Dan Brown- I took to the pen in the middle of our talk to write the saying, enyoni ikwimbi. I guess I will continue studying people’s lips, facial expressions and understanding their words without necessarily replying. A writer will tell me that that's good.

When grandpa was removed from Kaimosi Quaker Mission Hospital and taken to Kapsabet District Hospital earlier in 1992, just at the gate, they bumped into a mourning group. A relative and friend had died in Kaimosi. As if the death was significance of what awaited the Lung’afa family, grandma descended into her sit and mourned enyoni ikwimbi. They had no immediate knowledge of who the mourners were for if they asked they would know- then the world was small in a way.

The good in keeping a diary is that with time one is able to have all his life in writing. The past can sound hazy and blurry but there are people who will give the past skeletons some flesh. You only need to be slightly keen and thinking to satisfy such a yearning.

Enyoni ikwimbi. If you ever heard that, my brother, get thinking and preparing. Misfortunes do come and go but no fleshy heart won’t be moved by an unfortunate happening. In a different perspective, the world is concentrating on things as economic collapse, social violence and population growth to determine people’s reactions. When days were good, though Ecclesiastes 7:10 terms it unwise, people understood their present world by observing nature.  The saying was not for the young but the old, people whose instincts could advise them to say so wisely.

Whether enemy owl is the bird or kizienzie, I am not sure. Kizienzie is not a bad bird anyway. It wakes people early in the morning by its tutor chirrup, eat insects and build its nest at the apex of a thatched roof. It does not poke into corns when they are still young nor does it participate in devouring wheat. It pecks not into loquat fruits on the trees as it does not suck from young banana fruits. It operates in two- husband and wife. No groups. The bird is however not hunted among the Luhya community even with such noble characteristics. A child would want to eat its brain and be like it. If you kill it, they say, your hut will burn. How did you kill an innocent bird? Why did you not take your killer muscles to zisetwe that devours green guavas and they are sweet when you fry, the viyundi which have a habit of living on the hedges when millet is in the farm and the hawks that wait for mother hen to hatch?

So the grandfather happened to die and the bird was proven right. Not that the bird had sung at the time of grandmother’s talk. Instincts we say and they are best expressed in words that may look contradicting to a foreigner. The owls, such a mystery in communities, is always scared off from one tree to another by a burning wood till it lands on a nearby tall tree and for a long period prophesy to the community of the upcoming misfortune. ‘The bird has communicated,’ one would think even though scaring it away.

In that year, grandmother recalls that she had a bumper harvest. It was the fruit of the dead man. Others die and cause misfortune. A thunder blast, flooding occurs, crops are destroyed by the ice rain and the fields lie bare. A good person dies and the community experiences a light mourning shower- the dead is sad to leave- and follows a bumper harvest. I was young then.

All that is before another bird sings…for what is life than to hear the sounds of nature?

Picture Source: app.emaze.com