Dan Okwiri
Penning 🖊️ my journal. Steam does something to people, it opens am pores and lets dudes loose, many steamy conversations jive in saunas when strangers are nude in hive. The most perky saunas are of mixed gender. There’s a story I forked yesterday in rare and great one for share, it’s about a couple in an inter tribal marriage.
Let’s roll it… There’s lady from the little known Kuria community stemming from Mabera, let’s call her Robi. She was a pretty lassie of light silky complexion, curvaceously voluptuous enriched by sweet potatoes & beef that thrives in Kuria land. Her dad, known as Marwa was a cattle farmer, with a herd of 250+, and a cattle trader at Mabera cattle market that supplies Nairobi’s abattoirs with at 4000 cattle a week.
Like many wealthy Kurias he had 4 wives, all of them engaged in tilling his vast 100 acres swathe of land. They planted maize, sweet potatoes, beans, veggies, paw paw and supplied the neighboring Luo community in Migori with food.
Marwa sent Robi to Luo land to Ulanda school in Migori for quality education. He desired her to be a doctor. For Robi, schooling at Ulanda was a total different world to her own. The Luo were more liberal, boisterous, rambunctious and outspoken. Unlike the Kuria who conversed in pristine Swahili due to rubbing shoulders with neighboring Tanzania, the Luo loved gassing in their mother or English. Robi rubbed with Luo in Vaseline, and became fluent in Luo lingo.
She did reasonable well in school, and was called to nursing school in KMTc Nairobi. In her final year on a night out with her friends she met a Luo dude and got stewed by his charm, besotted together they were glued.
Otieno a civil servant, was everything she was not, an urbanite, foppish dresser and love outings wriggling to Luo benga. She loved to church and countryside life, her real passion was farming just like dad.
Robi bagged a job on graduation as a nurse in Kenyatta Hospital, and within a year of cohabiting he seeded her with twins. Her dad furious that she hadn’t formalized her knot, demanded that Otieno does the right thing if he is man enough.
Pushed to shove, he obliged, the dowry negotiations for Kuria’s ain’t a walk in the park. Marwa wasn’t taking less than 20 cows as per Kuria tradition, in the mix some had to be bulls which are pricey. The whole do, would claw him Kes 1.2 million, his extended family had cheap, Luo dowry isn’t that steep. The things people do for love!
Robi had great marriage, but she didn’t cotton onto Nairobi’s hyperbolic life. Being a country hayseed, she found Nairobi grungy, monotonous and fake with many colleagues at her workplace who preyed on their workmates in snake, bootlicking to climb ladder. Woozy, she was outdoorsy & longed to live in a countryside dig and resign from gig but her husband rocked to a different jig.
During Christmas Otieno would take her to his rural home adjacent to the lake Victoria in Olare. She was shocked that there was a rice irrigation scheme done by national government & water streamed everywhere and few people bothered to farm.
The Luo bought everything from outsiders, Kisii county supplied them with veggies, beans and everything edible. Most of the Luo relied on sustenance by relatives in Nairobi City & the diaspora. Her mother in law was wilting and diabetic, and all her 3 children were in Nairobi.
In eureka Robi scented opportunity, she thought of resigning from crappy job, and becoming a farmer. Her husband was the only obstacle, got livid every time she sparked the proposal of relocating.
As fate would have it, Otieno’s mother got really sick. Otieno was dusted in distraught, he loved his mum. Puppy out of the gate, Robi scented opportunity. She offered to take leave from work for 2 months and tend to her.
Frazzled ambivalent he no choice, he rode on her idea, few spouses loved the bucolic of countryside life, he obliged. Robi in drum, knew it was a one way journey. After months told her hubby, Nairobi for her was a land of no return, she had sent her employer resignation after 5 years service.
Otieno was forced to move the kids back home to Olare. With her savings and benefits, she had 200 k, which was enough seed capital to buy 4 bulls. It would be humble beginning. Unabashedly with her prized bulls she begun by clearing the family 5 acre land on the scheme. The area had volcanic black soil, rich in nutrients. She planted veggies. The irrigation canals that splayed her farm provided free water by gravity throughout the years. The villagers were enthralled by pretty Nyar Kuria struggling with bulls ploughing ancestral land.
They mocked Otieno, how can their business graduate son with plush government job do this to his wife. No Luo lady worth her salt would do this. For them Nyar Kuria was a novelty. Undeterred she charged on, she got along well with the villagers. There’s reason to everything in life’s season, the Luo she got to learn in Ulanda School came in handy in spade. Her mother-in-law was great spirits to have someone in her hive. Being a medic, she administered her on right diet and lifestyle to counter her condition. She bloomed back in spry.
Slowly but surely everyone got to know that there were veggies, tomatoes throughout year at Nyar Kuria’s farm. Market ladies from Homa Bay & Kendu flocked to her farm and bought everything daily in sight at farm door. She was hit.
Money oiled in, she added to her hoof and increased herd. Hauled in 10 dairy cows from Rift Valley, Robi exploited advantage of the rice grown in the scheme. In addition to dairy meal, fed her cows the rice stubble and rice bran freely available. In a year’s time she was juicing 10k daily from milk proceeds. Her land was not enough for her needs. If the juice is worth it, squeeze it. She hired neighbors land & expanded, many of them absentee in Nairobi. She planted beans, maize, watermelons. She became the person to go for foodie.
Robi observed that Luo community had big funerals that consumed hundred chickens at a go. There was insatiable demand for local kienyeji chicken. She had the veggies, grains, rice brans etc to feed them. She dived in swim and reared hundreds of improved chicken. Her income net income was 700 k a month all from farming and she growing.
Robi further diversified into rentals in Olare and opened a wholesale shop where she stocks her produce.
Her hubby now jets to Homa Bay Kabunde airport every weekend to be with her family. Through Robi, he has built a house in Embakasi, & upgraded from Premio to a Prado. Marrying Nyar Kuria has certainly proved rewarding.
Today Nyar Kuria has scaled the social ladder, appointed in many school boards for counsel. A darling, she’s now a prominent figure in the Luo community, pushed to stand for MCA but she has refused as this would gobble into her precious time.
This is a story told to me in a sauna, I don’t know if it’s fiction but even if it is, gives inspiration that opportunity is everywhere like air. Robi chose her passion, got her hands dirty, assimilated into a people not her own and made them her very own. One day I will journey searching for this fabled Nyar Kuria.
Wuod Baba gathered from the story that today she flosses a brand new hilux double cab pick up. The soap of it, Robi has built a swanky mansion in for rural digs, and her mother-in-law is thriving in great health, she has never returned to Nairobi. She saw opportunity which others scoffed. My hat off to Otieno, you got more value than your 20 cows, by setting your wife loose to do her thing in full swing.
If you want to sprite lovely stories about life, steam off in sauna. Nakedness warms up human soul to rattle its banter.
#okwiri🖊️ my journal, my thoughts, my walk…
My book “I cleansed the tears” is available at Nuria Bookstore
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