I watched his wife as she followed behind, confused, her hands on her head.  Half running, she cried and begged the villagers to let him go.  She tripped on her loose khanga, then got up and followed the crowd, parting the throng with her hands, trying to reach her husband who was being shoved and pushed angrily...

Quickly, I drape across my left shoulder a leopard skin, then finish off with a pat of some white powder on my face and some amulets around my ankles, wrists and waist.  I pull the old drum between my stretched legs and start hitting it angrily, chanting incoherently...

She doesn’t say anything, at least not in front of the visitor.  She knows very well not to raise her mouth in front of the visitor lest he tells the whole neighbourhood that she is a bad, disobedient wife – and these leeches are so good at defamation of character...

Her mother.  Vibrant, vivacious, out-going, socialite.  Older women shunned her, older men loved her; younger women envied her, younger men salivated over her.  Three times married and now at fifty-eight dating a thirty-one year old young man.  The first Tanzanian woman to have botox, maybe the last...

I had been warned that city people were conniving. She absolutely couldn’t be one of them. Conniving people were rude and unkind. She had woken me up and offered to help me - that is a sure sign of kindness, right? Lamely I tagged behind…

I curse the day I received the letter that made me leave behind all my belongings – like Jaffari and Alex did; left my home and my family for greener pastures. That letter that had promises of honey and gold.

She could never get used to the beatings that took away her ability to have children, left her left eye partially blind, third degree burns on her right shoulder all the way to her waist and half a moon scar on her forehead.  No, she could no longer be tolerant…

The voices are louder.  I shake my head willing the voices away, but my head is aching.  I listen intently.  Words - a sea of words.  Words start ringing in my ears.  Flooding angrily like waterfalls.  Screaming!  Pleading!

Sadly she looked at their house, what was once her home – the garden of flowers she had grown fondly, the farm that had started as a small garden of vegetables now a small but flourishing business, they even took that from her; the dairy cows; the pigs; the chickens; the tractor; the small shop; the pick-up truck – they took them all, saying they all belonged to their son, that she never came there with anything…

Ugali would make your man strong, my mama used to say.  Strong enough to take care of you and our family, she would add.  What she didn’t add was that ugali would make him strong enough to beat me black and blue…