A walk down memory lane

Paulina Mutinda Lau with some of her great-great grandchildren. Photos/JENNIFER MUIRURI

On being told of our arrival at her granddaughter’s home in Nairobi’s Jericho estate, Paulina Mutinda Lau, who has been eagerly waiting to meet us, breaks into song.

“It is an old song that we used to sing when we were little girls to welcome visitors to our home,” she explains in Kikamba. “‘Welokamu’ (welcome),” she keeps repeating to put us at ease.

And although she has lost her sight completely, that does not prevent her from requesting to shake our hands and know our names. She gives me a firm and lengthy handshake as she asks me a host of personal details before doing the same to my colleague.

Then, her curiosity about us satisfied, Lau, who is believed to be well over 100 years old, takes us on a trip into her past, including the first time she saw a European.

She vividly recalls an incident when, as a child, she saw a big white man with a big nose ring arrive on horseback at their Kithasyo home in Tala. On seeing the white man, all the women and children fled and hid in the bushes nearby.

“We were terrified and did not know what to do. But he made several more trips to the forest where we used to take the cattle to graze and one day took with him a small boy called Mangu wa Kulya, who was herding his father’s cattle,” Lau narrates.

The next time she heard of the hapless Mangu, he had been taken to study in America by the white man.

White man with long hair

“Years later, a white man with long hair came to the village on a horse with a now much older Mangu. He would speak to Mangu, who would then interpret what he had said to us. One of the things he said was that we needed education so that we could use the resources we had to improve our lives. But we would hear none of it. We suspected that he wanted to grab our land. For several years he tried to sell the idea but the community would not accept it,” Lau recalls.

When Christianity came to Ukambani, Lau, now a mother of 10, was already married with two children. The first lot to arrive were the Syemwesi (a corruption of the initials CMS, which stand for the Church Missionary Society).

They were later followed by Roman Catholic missionaries, she explains. According to the history of the CMS, missionary expeditions to Ukambani began in 1891, led by Dr James Stewart. And given that Lau was already married, she would have been in her late teens or early twenties since women married young then.

Later, Lau says, Asians came to Machakos, where they first lived in tents.

“In the mornings, it was common to hear an Asian woman saying to the local women, “Mama, nataka mbaazi (I would like some cowpeas),” but we did not understand what they were saying. After a while, however, we figured out that they were asking for cowpeas and whenever we took them some, they would give us two coins – a one-shilling and a 50-cent coin – both of which had a hole in the middle. The one-shilling coin later came to be popularly known as walove, but we did not know what to use the money for, so we would hide the coins under one of the three stones that made up the traditional cooking fireplace in the kitchen.”

The Asians eventually established a business empire in Machakos and gradually forced out the local people.

Wearing clothes

Paulina recalls that it was the local leaders who first wore Western-style clothes. One day when Mangu and the white man made a trip to the village, the people accepted the former’s idea of setting up a local school.

A teacher, who she says was called Maw’ia, and a chief, Nyaa, were appointed.

“Nyaa was given a drum for summoning the people, as well as a pair of trousers with a drawstring at the waist, which became known as mutang’ala, and a coat that was nicknamed musambakot because it had several buttons that made funny noises.

“The rest of us wore hides,” Lau says, adding that when they attended meetings called by the white man, whom they now referred to as “Bwana”, they would take him one of their fattened animals and eggs.

The few children who attended school were given a pair of shorts, a shirt and a coat. But when they returned home from school, their parents would not allow them to enter the homestead in their uniforms, which they believed to be 

“unclean”.

“They would have to hang the clothes on a tree very far from the entrance to the homestead for fear that wearing them in the home would make them be attacked by evil spirits. We were used to wearing hides or even walking around naked, and no one saw anything wrong with it. When we were growing up, my siblings and I would accompany our father to the farm and when it got hot, he would remove his hides and hang them on a tree and we would follow suit. So we would all be working on the farm naked, but we were blind to each other’s nakedness,” she explains.

During the chief’s barazas, the newly appointed local administrators would give kangas and blankets to those who attended. Gradually, the people gave up their hides and skins and replaced them with these.

Lau also recalls a prediction by a local prophetess, Syonguu Mwiitu wa Ilovya, that a “long snake” (the railway line) would soon be coming to Ukambani.

“I was grown up by that time because my breasts were fully developed. I would also be sent with other girls to the ranches where we kept livestock carrying a big basket that could hold a debe (50 kilogrammes) of flour or grains on my back to take to the herders who lived there. It was quite a distance and we went on foot. I was big,” Lau says, breaking into laughter at the memories.

The men were later taken away and forced by the colonial administration to work on the railway line. Going by the history of the construction of the railway line, this must have been in the late 1890s.

Lau then turns to traditional life, beginning with naming ceremonies, and how she acquired the name Mutinda.

“As was the cultural practice in those days, there was a big feast several days after I was born. The women came together and made ugali from millet flour in a huge container. It required at least eight women to make the ugali, which was served with gourds of sour milk and five bottles of ghee. It was during this feast that a baby was given a name by his or her father, and that is when my father chose the name Mutinda for me.”

She recalls that in those days, a woman who gave birth could go for up to two months without taking a bath. And all she had for bedding while recuperating were goatskins lined with leaves, which would be replaced with fresh ones as and when the need arose. During this period, the midwife would be with her to help her look after her newborn.

“You could smell such a woman from far, but that was the normal practice at the time,” she says.

Indeed, in those days childbirth was a high-risk affair. There were midwives, but they did not have the necessary skills to help when a pregnant woman developed complications.

Lau recalls losing her first baby due to this lack of medical expertise. “I was in labour for two days, during which the baby was stuck in the birth canal. Fortunately, my mother happened to come visiting on the third day and saw the baby’s head protruding so she called in the midwives. They delivered the baby but he did not cry and his head was badly misshapen because he had been in a constricted environment for so long.”

Lau says that if a baby girl was born in a breech position (feet first), the matter would be kept a secret between her mother and the midwife, or else the girl would never find a man to marry her.

And when it came to marriage, it was the father who determined who his daughter married. “We were not allowed to get close to men. So thoroughly was this drummed into us that when we saw a man on a path, we would run and hide in the bush,” she explains.

And it was difficult for a girl to even tell who her suitor might be because most marriages were arranged. Sometimes a suitor would be picked for her when she was a child. But the most important factor her parents considered were the suitor’s family history and whether or not they were wealthy enough to pay a handsome bride price. Girls were allowed to attend dances, which were mainly a forum to display their beauty, “but we never got close to boys”.

In those days virginity was highly prized, she says, and a man’s parents did everything they could to ensure that they got him a “pure” wife. At this point she requests the men present to leave the room so that she can tell us a secret: “On their wedding night, a newly married couple would spend the night in separate rooms. They would only consummate their marriage on the second night, and if the bride was a virgin, she would cry out, a sound that brought much joy to her parents-in-law, who would clap with joy for having got their son a ‘proper’ wife.”

Respect for parents

In those days children respected their parents. “There were rules to be followed, and we had to toe the line. Yet we never felt we were being oppressed.”

Wives also treated their husbands with respect. “Men were men and it was not unusual for a man to beat his wife if she did something wrong. But we would just cry and beg for forgiveness. You could say we were like little children. We lived a kisenzi (backward) life, but no woman would dare go against her husband’s word. It was unheard of for a married woman to go back to her parents’ home. No father would allow a mwinzyoka (divorced woman) back to his home. It was considered shameful and a bad omen for the family. But these days divorce has become a way of life,” she says, barely hiding her disgust.

Asked the secret to her long life, Lau says that she prays every day and eats well. Although she has lost most of her teeth, she can eat meat that is cooked until it is tender, as well as other soft foods and porridge.

The charming Lau says she has 39 grandchildren, the first of whom is 53 years old, 14 great-grandchildren and 22 great-great grandchildren. And although she can no longer see them, her love for them all is unmistakable.

Source: Daily Nation

mmwololo@nation.co.ke