“Hello, Mother!” a tired voice greets the astounded parents.
Tears are already freely flowing from the mother’s eyes. The father is old now, his spine is bent with years, he is barely hanging on to his walking stick. Such news could make his old heart give in from shock. The man escorting Zuri holds the baby as the newly reconciled mother and daughter embrace, clinging to each other like survivors. Moments later the man introduces himself as the brother to Zuri’s husband.
Husband? The word ripples through the crowd that has now gathered closer, hungry for the gist. The man continues in a guttural voice, explaining that Zuri’s husband—his brother—is dead, and that he has returned Zuri home because she was left stranded in the big city. Then, almost without further ado, he brings the engine of his car to life and speeds off, leaving the crowd choking in a cloud of dust and exhaust smoke. His face, just before he drove away, looked relieved—relieved to finally be rid of Zuri. He wanted no part of her, her child, or her family anymore.
Strange.
The villagers linger, waiting to confirm what they have always whispered among themselves: that the wretched stories about the daughter of scorn were true after all. Zuri is left with a mountain of explanations to give. The village elders gather in the compound, holding long discussions over calabashes of locally brewed kong’o (beer), debating whether Zuri should be accepted back into the community or not. Word quickly reaches Darian and his new family, and he races to the compound despite his wife’s adamant protests. Darian is as shocked as Zuri when they both realize they are parents now. But what surprises him most—perhaps more than anything else—is that the big bunda was gone! That must have been what shocked him the most, surely.
Zuri’s explanations stretch into literal days. People from all corners of the village come in turns to hear her parents recount what had happened to her. No one wants to confront Zuri directly; there is fear that she might be carrying a curse from the outside world, one that could cling to them if they got too close.
They are told of skyscrapers she had seen, of buildings made of stone and iron sheets that touched the sky. Of cars, and men and women dressed in suits. Of alcohol that tasted better than their local beer. They hear of crops and foods they had never known existed, and they are shown pictures Zuri took beside tall buildings in Nairobi. They stare in awe at her photo next to the Jomo Kenyatta statue at KICC and whisper among themselves, wondering where she had found the Mzee.
Some are amazed and begin to respect her. Others feel their hatred grow sharper; they resent her even more for having survived the outside world.
But the greatest question, the one everyone keeps asking—and the one probably in your mind too—is where had the bunda gone?
She is so thin now that her clothes hang loosely on her body. And what business does she have with a baby born outside the village? A light-skinned baby, to be precise. Everyone in the village has been sunburnt long enough to accept their melanin as beautiful. The man who brought her in the car was light-skinned too, probably like his brother, the father of this already orphaned child.
For days, Zuri answers every question her parents and the villagers throw at her, except that one. If the outside world was so good, why was she now so thin and frail? She deliberately avoids it.
Her dressing has changed too. Her ears, once adorned with traditional jewelry, now hold foreign chains. Her skin bears tattoo markings the villagers cannot understand. They interpret them as symbols of evil, proof that she has joined something dark in loka. She wears shorter skirts now, shirts made of unfamiliar cotton and silk. Her breasts and shoulders are barely covered, even when she addresses the village elders, who sit heavy with suspicion and unanswered questions.
After the first meeting on the day Zuri returns, Darian is in the compound often, despite his wife’s repeated warnings. But you cannot defeat teenage love. First love. Darian, more than anyone else, wants to know what happened to Zuri. Over the next days and moons they spend hours sitting under a tree a few feet from the main house, talking, laughing, catching up on lost years.
“You just… went, Zuri. Without an explanation. Without even leaving a message.”
“I had to, Darian. I was getting sick and tired of this godforsaken village with no signs of growth whatsoever. I wanted to see the world beyond Nam Lolwe.”
“But you could have said something before leaving.”
“I did. I tried to convince you to come with me, but you were too obsessed with your parents’ amusement.. and their cows.”
“I love those cows.”
“Clearly.”
They both laugh.
For a moment, it feels like nothing ever changed. But the sound of her laughter cuts deeper than Darian expects. It reminds him that when Zuri left, she took something with her—something he never quite recovered. The years that followed were hollow ones. He stayed, married as custom demanded, but his heart wandered restlessly through the village. He shared his bed with girls whose names he pretended not to remember in the morning, chasing fragments of a love that had left him behind. Some of the swollen bellies whispered about in the village bore his doing, though no one dared speak it aloud. In this place, it was safer for a girl to carry shame in silence than to point a finger at a man like Darian.
But beneath the laughter, regret settles quietly on Darian’s shoulders. He accepts what Zuri did. He admires her boldness and is stunned by what she has become. Her determination seems boundless.
“We could have explored loka together,” she says, like a line lifted from a poorly told romantic folklore tale. Darian reassures her, then decides to address the elephant in the room.
“How come you got so thin?” he asks, his eyes drifting instinctively toward her derrière.
“Stooop!” she says, pushing his gaze away with her hand. “I don’t know. It just happened. Life out there isn’t as easy as I imagined.”
Lies.
She knows. She knows all too well. She has contracted the all-too-famous HIV, a disease well known in the outside world, but unheard of in the village. Her husband died from it in the city, and she knows she is next. It is only a matter of time. No cure is known in the villages and towns surrounding Nam Lolwe. Her husband died knowing there was no cure. After months of searching for help in town, she had no choice but to return home. Her husband’s family wanted nothing to do with an HIV-positive woman. She could not sustain herself or her baby alone. The elders may not have known much of life outside the village, but they were right about one thing—life in loka is hard! The communal life of the village was a game changer, even if few realized it.
So she comes back to die with her people. As much as the hatred between her and the village is mutual, she does not want to die in the streets of Nairobi, stepped on and eaten by stray dogs. She wants to be buried like a human being. A human being who, unlike everyone else, dared to look beyond the waters of Nam. A human who tried, failed, but was proud to have seen what lay beyond folklore.
But she promises herself she will not die before spreading the malady first. Oh no no no, the villagers will not be spared that easily.
Unsurprisingly, in the midst of her daily talks with Darian, she convinces him to sleep with her again. You know, to reminisce about their teenage days, when they used to sneak into the bushes to do adult things. Her husband is dead anyway. Darian, forced into his current marriage by customary obligation, does not think twice. Zuri is his first love. His attraction to her runs deeper than the bunda.
They do their thing. They keep it secret. Of course.
Soon, however, speculations rise again.
Ever since Zuri’s return, drought creeps into the village. There is no rain for months. Crops die. Cattle grow thin. Outsiders stop coming to the market with their cars and posh gifts. Worse still, teenage girls begin getting pregnant, with no clear fathers in sight. The girls reason that if Zuri could return with a child, why shouldn’t they?
The pattern is too strange to ignore. Fingers begin pointing at Zuri’s family. Rumour mongers spread tales of a curse brought back from the outside world. Folklore supports it: anyone who crosses the shores brings back misfortune. The elders warned them. The lack of fish in the lake confirms it.
Things worsen when Zuri’s father dies suddenly of a heart attack. The blame falls squarely on her. The hatred she once knew returns fiercer, sharper, and more violent.
Then Zuri herself grows weaker. Bedridden for days. No one visits her except Darian and her mother. Her siblings, afraid of her since childhood, are now terrified of her sickness. Village quacks pronounce her dead long before she actually is and make no real effort to understand what ails her. She too refuses their herbs, believing they would only hasten her death. Besides, she came back with medicine from the outside.
Zuri dies—alone, in a dark, unlit room in her father’s hut. In the scorching March heat, when dogs walk with their tongues hanging low and the waters of Nam Lolwe seem to retreat even further, she dies hated. Accused of carrying a curse. An embarrassment to her family.
Her burial is quick and unceremonious. Nobody mourns the wicked, they say.
But the worst part of her death is that she dies without telling the villagers that Darian—the good child, the pride of the village—is now carrying the virus too. It will take years before the villagers stop blaming Zuri for the deaths that will follow in their land. Because Darian, the good child, will not keep his phallus to himself. That’s for sure.
✍🏽Reagan.