Daniel Inspires

SET BACK           Auntie Nekesa was cool. Mom was at ease now that she had help. But life was not any different, they still depended on the mean in-laws for food. Grandpa was a carpenter. The little he earned from this was quite little that almost none was left after food was bought. He was an Evangelist too in one of the local churches.           At one particular Sunday, merely a month after our birth, Grandpa had to attend to a particular party organized by three white Evangelists. Grandpa was to be given a title deed for some piece of land as an appreciation for his warm attitude towards the American visitors. What he never knew was that his colleagues were not happy. To them , Grandpa had enough land for his family and for farming and that the offer should have been given to the "poor".           The party ended at about four,Granny had not yet been given the deed. Grandpa was a man of few words, mama explains. He came back home immediately the feasting was over.

GOING OVER           Mom had to be taken home of course. My aunts came over, i came to know, later the following day. None liked my mother. To them, my dad didn't deserve a woman of her kind for a wife. She was a witch who had cast a love spell to Harun Wanyonyi Wafula, my dad. My late grandma wasn't any different, she too wasn't enthusiastic about her son having such a young woman for a wife, mom was about 19 years old.           The journey from Kitale District Hospital was a silent one, my mom narrates. she further explains it as a silent one. How could they talk to a person they disliked that much? She never minded though.           This was on a Friday. My dad was to leave for job in Eldoret. He was a mechanic at Raiply woods company. This meant mum was to be left ll alone with me and little Moses. Grandpa was the only one mom thought she was to be left with. On Saturday morning dad left early for the bus stop, the struggle began. As it was approaching the end

THE RUDIMENT.                      On the Wednesday of 11 November 1998, at Kitale District Hospital, I lay, wrapped in a lesso, beside me, Moses, my twin lay too. Quite but terrified were we of the new, acrid and cold world we'd just been born into. The light, of course, was so piercing that my eyes remained close. I had just been born! Mrs Gladys Naliaka, my mother whose name I came to know four years later lay too. Just like me and little Moses, she too lay tired for having me and Moses living inside her womb for close to 274 days. The labor she had just experienced 20 minutes earlier draw her into deep sleep. Later on we were to have our first taste of her love and care, both of which we required at that  moment of our beginning life.