A retired athlete had bought the land they had been staying in and promptly evicted them.
The mud-walled structure they had called home was demolished, living a family of close to ten in limbo. They were Turkanas who had come to the proverbial Kenya to chase their dreams.
One of the families that crammed in that house came to our home to seek refuge. We had an idle structure that would have been our shamba boy’s had we had one. My mother, being the ever generous woman, allowed them to stay as they looked for a place to stay.
And so it came to be that a mother and her two young sons lived in our homestead. They were quite prayerful, and never missed their Maranatha church (it was later demolished). A week passed, turned into months, and even years – the family was in no hurry to leave.
I was young then but I remember the hatred I had for them would have boiled a sack full of maize. We would share food in a manner that I did not like at all. What the mother would do was leave the kids by themselves and go on errands that lasted late in the night. My mother would feed them out of pity. I hated sharing food. Not especially with the two boys.
Although the two boys sometimes relieved us of the duty of looking after sheep, I would occasionally bully them when no adult was around. One time, the youngest son was fast asleep outside ‘their’ house. I tiptoed and whacked him with a cane, then disappeared behind the house. It was all too quick and the toddler never knew what hit him. Of course, he yelled louder than a supersonic jet.
Now that the introductions are over, I would like to tell you one incident that I intended to. After they had made a home where they weren’t supposed to, the family brought a chicken one evening. They had a tiny structure that they had come with. The chicken was black, a blameless black that would definitely have been used in a ritual. Because we had chicken too, it was easy for this hen to find a mate.
When the time came for it to brood, the lady gave it ten eggs. All of them hatched. Here’s where the miracle comes into place. While we had surrendered our chicken to form part of the food chain, specifically an eagle’s delicacy, these were not. It is alleged that they prayed for the chicken.
Our chicken would forage in the open, while this mother hen took its chicks into the maize plantation. None of them ever fell on an eagle’s plate. Ten of them. Within a few months, the family had eleven chickens which were all black. The chicken later laid eggs and the same process repeated itself.
We couldn’t help but wonder, for, in a year, they had more chicken than us. The only limitation was space, and that they weren’t really at home if you get what I mean. Prayers are wonderful, we thought.
#hivisasaoriginal