It could be worse

Police officers battle with businessmen found operating after 7pm in Eldoret town. The officers accused them of defying the state-ordered curfew meant to prevent the spread of coronavirus. [Peter Ochieng]

'Stay at home'. Not used to being idle, they wonder why they have been ordered to not go to work

Two elderly men who can't sit still at home

This week, having spent the last few weeks with my wife, children, my mother and stepfather, we decided to give my stepfather an assignment to keep him busy. The poor old man has been accustomed to working and has never been idle, even after retiring in the past decade or so. He is known to always tinker with wood, nails and assorted tools fixing this or that, and now, he had to simply sit still for most of the day, thanks to the strict Covid-19 measures.

Several kilometres away, in Kiambu County (but within the Nairobi metropolitan area), my octogenarian grandfather was driving my grandmother crazy because he had decided he had had enough rest and was going back to work.

Considerably weaker than he used to be, the old fellow has lived the motto that if you are alive you must “do something” and in recent years that “something” has involved tending a small shop where he sells paraffin at the corner of a busy road.

We agreed, as a family, that it was good for him to have the shop, not so much because he makes much money from it - in fact, we all doubt that he turns a profit at all, but because it allowed him a sense of purpose. By having the shop, Mzee is able to “go to work” and meet with other people and perhaps ruminate over the good old days with his pals sitting on stools outside his shop.

Now suddenly, these two old men have found themselves forced to stay in the confines of home - one dozing in a peaceful farm cottage surrounded by trees, flowers and deafening silence most of the day, and the other in his step-son’s house, forlornly watching documentaries on a computer screen, with only his grandchildren to distract him sometimes.

They are both in the higher risk category of the population and as a result, we have encouraged them strongly to stay indoors.

Such is the impact of this virus and the resultant radical measures that Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe and his team have to put in place. As many people focus on following the stringent regulations that have been placed upon all of us, the mental health of many people is thoroughly tested.

Even younger people are not spared the strain as we have started to see on social media young people saying, “kama mbaya, mbaya” as they leave their homes to go visit others or worse, as they congregated in a car park in Langata to libate and “hang out” with their contemporaries.

We, therefore, started a project for the old men - to work together to build a wooden shed in the backyard - one that I would vainly like to call a gazebo to shield us from the sun as we sit outside the house. Happily, they set about the task with great enthusiasm, only stopping when they ran out of supplies or to eat and replenish their strength.

“It could be worse, you know,” said my grandfather during one of his rest stops. “During the emergency days in the fifties, we saw much worse.” He went on to tell me that back in 1953, when he was about 19, Africans were not allowed to leave their homesteads (a generous term to describe a haphazard collection of mud huts in a corner of a white settler’s farm) without permission or direction from either the white man or his home guards.

Home guards were African loyalists who were charged with keeping the natives in check and to gather intelligence about possible Mau Mau sympathisers. Their perks were dependent on how they plied the “mubeberu” a steady stream of actionable intelligence on the comings and goings of their fellow people as well as their enthusiasm for “maintaining order” - usually by brutally beating Africans within inches of their lives.

“Those beatings that I saw on TV when the police were beating people for being out after curfew- that was nothing,” mzee told me wistfully. “You see, that was just a normal beating that you would get from a home guard because you passed him and he didn’t hear you say hello to him.”

In those days, there were three people to watch and be afraid of. First were the home guards who would deliver broken bones and permanent injuries at the slightest provocation. Then there were the Christian converts, who would tell on you to the settlers as a means of ingratiating themselves. Finally, you needed to watch out for the Mau Mau - especially the low key members who lived in the reserves with everyone else, but who could report you to the Mau Mau for being a traitor.

While these stay at home regulations are hard on the mind, my grandfather said that it was important that we thank God that it is not worse and that we should always try to see the brighter side of things.

“I think I would tell you to start to observe just how important it is that you live in a place where ordinarily you can go where you want and do what you want without fear,” Mzee told me.

“There was a time when you would not have been considered more valuable than a goat or a donkey that ploughs the field - and at that time you would be treated like you are one.”