The hill still stands. The ancient hill from where the King foraged the expanse of his loyal community. Ibwami was a resident like no other. It was the royal capital. And surround it, in a cyclical entourage were the other hills. Conical in structure, domical where the weathering had taken its toll and sometimes pyramidal pointing...don't know. The people perhaps awestruck by the architectural simplicity of physical nature, they had decided that they were part of it too. Grass for their heads in the night, daub for their walls, miniature serenity of the domical beehive for the pygmies in the girth of the Kongo forest and the pyramid and monolithic in far East. A rumbling architectural power was in place. Fractal scaling.
Mud rules; its sleek reprimanding nature means you look earthy. From earth. Made of Earth, whether it is the finest, it still is earth. Ask the Great Mosque of Djenne its all clay. How glorious it is standing so firm yet by some structural conceptions perishable and inglorious. If you want permanent, ask the South Africans. In East Africa you might find a ruin of a road- permanent by your modern standards but its ownership raked.
The hill still stands. This time in its thick savanna grass and the whistling umbrella acacias, just beneath its old granites, is a hole. A bottomless pit the glowing orange of the sunset never penetrates its darkness. If you looked through, you would notice the spiral, the staircase winding like a snake, only you see its tail. It is not the Mau Mau caves at Karura forest, no. Not even those at Mathira's Rui Ruiru (Black River). This is different.
Some time aback, before this pit that is definitely with all virtuosity a solitary hiding place, he was here. Somehow he had seen (probably in a vision at night) that the only place left virgin; green virgin, was only around the hill. Now, he had his sons, the strongest from all the seven wives, they were to pack the dried meat. Get guards from their mothers. Get itahas, mukimo to push through the first few days of the journey. It was a week's journey to the hill.
Cattle heads, goats were wealth. With the drought at Murang'a, there was a risk of losing everything that kept life; thereby losing life. That is why the migration was important. In the land beyond the Nyandarua ranges, just where the rising sun settles its healing rays every morning when it emerges from the peak of the Kirinyaga (Mt. Kenya), lies a sacred field. All animals, both wild and domestic pay homage to this shrine mostly when all hope is lost. The old man knew this place. He knew it and he called it Mwituria (sole survivor), and the hill Kamwituria (the hill of the sole survivor).
Kamwituria. People settled. The people, the offspring, and posterity whatever you call them; just people. The school was built. It was important, its presence. Education, we want education mama, not arrows, not spears, not... we want pen and paper papa. It's alright. It's okay... the hill is scratched, it is baldheaded, it's okay... It has an electric fence all around its perimeter. No more of huts and royal paths. Well, that is alright. We get to see buffaloes in there. The Big Five. The Giraffe is the best, you should see its craft in a souvenir. And that is all good.
The hill stood. No earthquake quivered it. No tornado uprooted its umbrellas. Just cobras' heads popped up. Pythons snored... snakes. Snakes, elephants and the birds; birds chirping with a divine rhythmical tone, flying from one umbrella to another, seeking coherence and singling out the most habitable ecology in the jungle. Zebras, impalas...the grazers, gathuni, hares, gazelles, thwariga, don't forget the reindeer- well, not typical of Africa but its horns. I remember its horns were amazing. It was almost camouflaged with the twisting of the acacias around it. Lions before hyenas. Hyenas before vultures. And man before the lions.
Competition? You could call it that, but see this. In the school, two boys are fighting. One of them has this pointed head. He is tall. Both are tall. The other the head is flat. Noses. Noses are different. One seems to lose out on his nose's mischief. It's now white. He should know, how elongated the nose is. And subsequently how nosy he has become; he only came the other day. Like the rest of us, he was in uniform. Khaki shorts and blue sweater; we were all uniform! All of us are eager to get informed.
