October

Not everything I've done in life has been mischievous (well almost not everything) and quite a number of them were done with my small big sister Angela (including the mischievous ones). When we were young and presumably innocent we had mainly each other for company. Dad was working, our mothers were working and our grandmother was rather too quick with the cane for us to keep around her. However she still had the knack of finding us and giving us the most odd of chores. One particular chore still leaves me smiling in nostalgia.

Angela and I loved chicken, however we never quite got round to trying out our hands at killing any. One day after we had bugged our grandmother (well out of reach of the cane) for chicken, she decided to teach us a lesson. We were informed that if we really wanted to eat chicken then we had to slaughter as well as de-feather it before we could eat. Naturally in our youthful enthusiasm we thought this would be a ball game in the park. We had watched others doing the job and we were pretty sure we knew how to do this.

We got a sufuria of hot water, and went chasing chicken. One thing I've noticed about chicken (live ones that is) is that they never seem to want to get caught. Unfortunately we didn't know that. My sister and I ran helter skelter all over the field trying to catch the chicken grandmother had shown us to no avail. After some time it dawned on us that running all over the field may not exactly have been a grand idea. I suspect my uncle's laughter may have helped us in getting to that conclusion. We decided to chase the chicken into a room and after a rather long struggle got it cornered and caught.

Now came the grand ceremony of killing the bird. I'd seen my uncle kill birds before, so I strategically put one of each foot on a wing, pulled up the neck, removed neck feathers and with a grand swipe off came the head. With a smile I hold it up to show my sister and make a small skip. Next thing we notice is a streak as the headless chicken goes off on a tangent into the shamba, knocking banana trees and each time veering in another direction. My sister and I are again off in pursuit. At this time my uncle is weak with laughter and has to sit down wiping tears. My grandmother has seen the action and is in pursuit of the two of us with her makeshift whip shouting all kinds of threats as to what will happen to our backsides if we do not catch that chicken. We certainly believed her and that added quite an impetus to our speed. To date I'm still not quite sure whether we were running after the chicken or away from grandmother.

The chicken did eventually did get caught and cooked. But by then we were too tired to take more than a token bite.

You might wonder why I called this note October and there doesn't seem to be any reference to that month? Well, sometime ago my sister succumbed to breast cancer and October is the breast cancer month here in Kenya. I miss her. We all do. But I certainly hope wherever she is she can remember the times we had, the laughter, fights, fun and life we had with her. Rest in peace Angela. I love you.