‘Ouma? Where is he?’ he called again. A pencil fell. Long pipes of sunlight from holes on the wall drew sad patches on the moist floor. A quiet wind blew in.
He ticked a box on the broad book. ‘Seven days? Have they not buried?’
‘No, Sir,’ Ouma’s neighbour offered and a cough-sob escaped the small mouth that the boy’s lip muscles battled to gag. Tears wetted the back of his palms.
The nature of the settlement scheme was such that technocrats in Nairobi won whole estates for themselves, thousands of acres that the government acquired from English farmers who feared African independence. The technocrats retained their black workers…
After another seven days the estate owner had not sent coffin money. The whole school sang its way east on a windy midday:
Soloist: Wan mana welo (We are mere visitors)
Chorus: E piny ma mwalo ka, wanadhi e i polo (Down here, we will retire to heaven)
They passed a dead dog behind the thorn tree. The midday wind blew its stench towards them and staggered the chorus as saliva fell on grass.
A quiet eulogy was on in the dais but no coffin when they arrived, and the teacher thought right. Yet a tearful Ouma was at the entrance to receive the school. The teacher snapped when the small, warm palm of his pupil cried for help inside his, so he followed the boy behind the hut, towards the jacaranda trees, where the cobbled-up coffin rested in the grave, the whole school behind them while the wind still blew east away from them.
And then the wind blew west towards them and all the children scattered back to the dais, the teacher pulling his pupil behind him.
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Image: ChatGPT remixed