I BROKE WESISI'S LEG

Now that I am more than 500 kilometers from Nasianda village (The village where my mom rests) I can fearlessly confess that I was the one who broke Wesisi’s leg.

I got only one reason for administering that fracture: Wesisi is one annoying man.

Where does one begin to describe this creation of God? Lets start from the basics, Wesisi is a serial funeral attender. He has attended practically all the funerals in my village. The only time he will miss a funeral is if and only if it coincides with another funeral. Trust me, attending all funerals in my village is a Herculean task, the people from my village die a lot!

Perhaps it would help if Wesisi brought a little laughter and good cheer to these sad businesses. But no, the good seventy five year old boy comes to funerals and mourns louder than the griefing. It doesn't help that he composes songs for the departed…. It is an annoying habit that would drive even the most meek of beings (i.e. me) to that bone-breaking point. He simply cannot be tolerated.

Take my mother's funeral for instance; Wesisi, or rather, his voice arrived at our homestead at 6.30 am only for him to arrive thirty minutes later. He was singing the names of people who died since 1989 in a very high pitched voice. What annoyed me more was that he had taken the eulogy, translated it into four different dialects of luhya, exaggerated it and finally made it into a song.

Upon setting foot in the homestead, Wesisi demanded to be shown the kitchen. He claimed that someone might have sensed he was coming and was trying to poison him. so to save his life and those of others, he should supervise the brewing of breakfast! I wanted to poison him right there and then! No one needed to show him the kitchen, the good old boy sniffed his way to it.

After harassing the women in the Kitchen, Wesisi finally came out with a whole debe of steaming hot tea. He was loudly sipping the brew while complaining that the milk used to make the tea was from an old cow. He even went ahead to accuse some of my good aunts for hiding sugar in their bags instead of putting it in the tea!

Immediately after downing the last drop of tea, Wesisi resumed his "mourning". He danced around the compound and seeing he wasn't attracting his desired attention, he threatened to throw himself into the grave. This did not stir anyone. Deciding to make his threats real, he took off and actually did it! too bad for him the grave diggers were only a foot into their work...

Tired of his morning drama and having exhausted all the energy his breakfast had given him, Wesisi sat behind the bathroom going over and over a monotonous chorus... I know you are wondering why I hadn't broken his leg yet... wait for it.

When lunch-time was approaching, Wesisi suddenly became sadder and grief struck him like nobody's business! He shot up and cried his way to the kitchen cursing the spirit of death! Were it not for one brave woman (a distant relative) to hit Wesisi straight on the face with a hot ugali-coated cooking stick, the man would have once again taken over the kitchen. I am sure Wesisi cried for real for the first time since he woke up that day, for I know the pain that a hot ugali-coated cooking stick brings (read the story http://nalyanyak.blogspot.com/2013/09/my-cousin-is-heartless.html?spref=tw )

That silenced the man for a while...

Now this is where I break Wesisi's leg... It is that moment when the coffin is being lowered, everyone is crying (and others pretending to), Wesisi the drama king of my village decides to grab me and take me away from the grave because he had apparently read my body language and deduced that I was going to jump in because that's what he would have done... I remembered a martial art maneuver that i have mastered and kicked the old boy right on his left knee...

I left him there yelling and went to watch the most painful scene in my life...