No Longer at ease

No Longer at Ease

“O ancient of days.” I tease myself whenever I am cruising back to Riruta Satellite, the place where I was born, and home, not only to me but to hundreds of my relatives, my paternal grandmother was born in Riruta, father was born in Kawangware, but now we live in Riruta, my grandfather was born in Waithaka. So whenever I see these areas changing, knowing that generations of my bloodline have lived, died and are buried in these areas, an eerie feeling fills my heart because all I am left with is memories of the life that I have always known. Now it’s all part of the great song ‘once upon a time…’ when the grass at Kinyajui Technical was green, when Bp petrol station was Bp and not Shell, when the road connecting Riruta and Kawangware was not tarmaced( for the record, I prefer it with tarmac), when there were no boda bodas and we had to walk to the market, when the only supermarkets around were found in Kawangware, ‘Jack and Jill’ and Acacia Supermarkets, when the fare during peak time from Town or to town was thirty shillings.

90% of the houses and 99% of the flats must refer to me as ‘ancient’ because I am like 20 times older. Most of these buildings did not usher the new millennium with me, the materials used I am sure were in the depths of the earth. And for that reason there are very few houses that I respect because they have stood the test of time. Back then it was easier to give directions, l had to do was point out to the area of interest, now buildings block my view, streets have new names and some other shopping centers have popped up.

To add insult to injury, a woman, that a considered to be an aunt, died just that other week, and that Friday all I could think of was that I wouldn’t get to see her walking along my street again, or see her in our plot coming to pick my mother so that the can go for their chama meeting together. Making her the third woman who was significant in my life to have died over the last couple of years after my aunt and grandmother, women that have lived in my street longer than me, whose death meant that my street as I knew it, would never be the same again. Nobody to greet me, and nobody to call me the way they used to. It’s all gone. Some of the people who made Satellite to be Satellite are no longer here.

It feels weird that in a couple of years I might walk through my street and no one will recognize me. I stand on that street and some of the people that have made that place to be what it is are no longer there, we can only remember the good old days with swell hearts. I am no longer at ease because my street is changing and growing, a few nights ago I saw a woman being robbed as the sun set over my street, that is not the Satellite I know, the one I knew crime used to happen in the dead of the night, and was way safer than most places in Dagoretti. At least the water shortage is still a part of my every day experience as it was in the past.

My greatest fear is that one day I will go back home and will not be able to recognize it at all. I will be a total stranger in the place where I was born and because of that, I am no longer at ease.