Black Ant Venom in my Varicose Vein

Glorious sunny Thursday afternoon with clear blue cloudless sky in this late part of August finds me at home. I look around for companionship but De is not here. He should have arrived by now, I casually question in my mind. As a freshman joining college in days to come I of course give an allowance to be with friends. “He could just be around the corner discussing aspects of engineering they will probably only learn in the second semester.” I muse myself in the couch. “That’s what we did didn’t we-back then?” I look back and wag my head, then I perish the thought.

The sun is sinking beyond the hills. The day is dying a slow death. I pick a book, Akpan’s book and read the headline again the way bargain hunters do before a purchase decision. “Say you are one them,” I read it aloud and a sense of anxiety grip my heart.

We have been bonding more closely lately with De. Often, we find ourselves on nature trails together. I teach De “Luo kitgi kimbegi” and we have to read it together. De has secured a short work contract close home so I make effort for us to eat together. For a long time our lives have been crossed but for now we are one with my son.  Routinely, he welcomes me home in the language I love.  In his baritone booming voice he says,”Aaah Dad isedugo.”- “Dad you are back. Welcome.”

Then De travelled just last week and now his absence has made this house hollow.

It is getting late to read from the verandah with dimming light. My body gets itchy with mosquito bites. A chilly air has descended from Ngong Hills to dampen my spirit further ebbing low with De’s absence.  Inside the house I notice the clock on the wall above the fireplace strike nine and De is still not here. In that same instance my phone rings.

“Has De arrived?” the mother ask. “No” I reply with urgency expecting an explanation to follow.  “There was accident around Molo. I have just learnt on Radio. It is a Toyota Wish PSV. But he does not board such.” The voice trail then the call drop.

At slightly past midnight the next call comes and finds me in the living room waiting for De. It is a short brutal call, from the mother. “The child is dead. Did you hear me? The child is dead”. The line has cut again, I try to call back but it is permanently busy. In confusion I stand and sit alternatingly as a class pupil obeying a teachers command.

In the spur of the moment I run upstairs to De’s room to confirm that the call I have just received is a hoax. “De must be sleeping in his room.” I hear a voice in my head. The college letter in bold “School of engineering” meet my blank stare. The receipts for the hostel I paid last week lie neatly on the stool like it has just been placed there a few minutes ago. “No. Did I miss something? What was that?” I say to myself then I take the stairs down in twos back to the living room.

I look at the phone with popping watery eyes bidding it to ring to undo the news it has just brought.  Then I see it beeping about to ring. I grab it hurriedly, it is my elder son calling.  “Which child is dead? But it can’t be De. We spoke when he left. What?” I say loudly alone.

“Yes. Which child is dead? I repeat again. De is not one of them is he?” I blart and sigh at the same time trying my best to control the rush of words spilling from my mouth. My breath quicken, mouth dry, my heart race. I am chocking at my Adams apple.

“De was involved in a road accident around Molo. He did not make it. The body is at Molo Mortuary”. He explains in short sentences but still am not understanding, my brain has blocked. I hear the caller break down in bits and crumble like a poorly baked cake in the sun, his words reduce to shrieks of pain. Slowly I sit down, placing my limp arms over my head. It is as if my arms have become too heavy to hang by themselves besides my body.

The clock is ticking breaking the dead silence in the house. A rush of chill travel through my body and I begin to shake like a leaf in the wind, my lips are trembling hard and I have to close my mouth tightly to stop my teeth from chattering.

Darkness has consumed the room and am not sure if someone switched off the lights. I hear some people speaking but it as if their voices are coming from a far. I cannot recall how this happened but am in a deep sleep with fleeting bad dreams.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Am sitting in the front row in this tent we have made into a church for De’s farewell. The church choir is singing somber songs and the liturgical dancers are putting their best feet forward to give De the last respect that everyone will remember and which everyone knows he deserves. The friends of De are dressed in black T-shirts embossed with his picture. He is laughing and looking directly ahead his head held high as he always did in his time. My mind dwell deep in his laughter that always lightened my heart in the “pre-body” period.

“We need to move the “body” closer to the dais before we start the mass” a church elder says but I hear something else- paradise. I shiver at the word “body” that is how everyone now call my son. The uniformed friends and his former classmates carry the casket to the alter area for the service to start. In this post De period when people now refer to him just as the “body” a sudden numbness has taken over my soul and is controlling it. The defensive mechanism my body has built to survive the storm the word “Body” has brought in my family is queer. I still talk of De in the human form like I did in the “pre-body” era.

“Let’s make for De a special home”, I said yesterday as a paid the grave diggers to do their work around the spot with the ripe yellow Sodom apple fruits. “Let’s get special tent to house De with special deco” I said to the event’s organizers as we discussed the arrangement. “Yaa, De liked flowers. Let’s bring special flowers to delight De.” The sister said in cracked inaudible voice that was too faint for others to hear.

This interlude period before burial is full darkness. Fatherhood does not get any lighter sitting next to my son’s body in the dais. The Father is delivering the homily but I can neither remember the first reading nor the second. To my surprise even the “fwanjili” upon which he is delivery this sermon in the post De period is lost in my mind.

In a bolt my mind is back in Molo. It has escaped from the village where the ceremony is in progress. Inwardly I wonder how I will survive these few hours with De before he varnishes forever.  In Molo inside the morgue my rioting spirit have this difficult conversation with the mortician.

“My son arrived here alive so why didn’t the doctors save his life why”

“Yes he did. He came in very serious condition. He was unable to talk. The pulse was faint. The nurses tried their best”.

“You mean there was no doctor or what? Do you have any oxygen here? Did you try CPR?”

“I am the only doctor here. I had just finished my rounds. The nurses called. I responded immediately. “

“The injuries on his body don’t look serious. Surely with better facility he could have been saved”

“That’s true, perhaps he could have. But this is a sub-county level hospital. Many life savers are not here. We have no ICU facilities. It is something the government is working on”.

“Yaa there we go again. The government this, the government that. Scapegoating. What exactly caused the death of my son?”

“His thoracic cavity was completely crashed. The rib cage squashed. This could have punctured the lungs and chocked it with blood. That’s is why he was oozing blood in his mouth and ears. The impact of that crash must have been heavy. “

“Tell me, is it true, what was reported in the press. That the vehicle was escaping NTSA drag-net. That they were chasing this public vehicle to pay more bribes. That my son died because of bribe thirsty public servants”

“I have no comment on that. I don’t know”

The doctor is demonstrating now as the autopsy process gets underway. He is pressing De’s chest and blood is oozing through the mouth, ears eyes to prove the point about impact. The Father is speaking loudly now to climax on his homily about service to others. In this mix I see the Father in a sketch his chasubles and stalls dancing in the wind. His hands flailing and pocking in the air as if he is pointing at invincible crevices where the Satan that killed my son is hiding. I want to be back permanently on the burial site but my spirit has refused to come back. It is stuck at Molo.

My body, this empty shell is beginning to behave badly again minus the spirit. The breathing has upped the pace and I feel a loose liquid traversing my gut with rushing sound like flush floods in a gorge. “I need to sit through this,” I command my spirit sternly but it is not interested in my voice.

I scan around to see if anyone has noticed my breathing difficulty or the tears that now fill my eye socket and spill over into this dabbing wet handkerchief. No one is looking. The crowd is mammoth, people sit in an expanse of a lawn under the ten tents surrounding the graveyard.

Earlier I felt peace when colleagues put their arms around me and held me tightly in a hugged. Many of them, close friends and family. This far I have stood on the pillar of their love that has no price. I had wanted to tell them how indebted I am but I couldn’t get the words. Hoarsely I croaked, “Thanks for coming.”

That time passed quickly. Now things are happening fast way faster than I can process and am feeling completely alone like fisherman balanced on a log floating dangerously in deep-sea following a boat wreck.

Am back in Molo in spirit that is and the cutting of autopsy drain me of all energy. My look is unfocussed starring blackly past the crowd. It is as though I am walking alone in the dark in the bush at night and I have stopped at a standstill to allow this wild animal passage without raising any attention to self.

In a split second I see a black ant walking about menacingly. It has no wings but the mandibles are well developed. With audacity it is going round perhaps trying to locate the entrance to its blocked hole. This poisonous insect is within reach. A weird idea of injecting this ant’s poison in my system comes to my mind. I pick it and place it in my left wrist where a varicose vein has bulged. It sinks the stinger into the vein and spreads the venom. A warmth rush through me and I feel the mane at the back of my head stand. The pain is different from the one sitting in my Adams apple for over two weeks now. My spirit still oscillates between Molo and the graveside.

“This world is not our home. It is fleeting like the days of youth. Before you realize, we are gone.  Do your best for others while you are still alive. Like De did in his short life. The laughter was a gift to many a hearts.” The priest says, but I am with him very briefly before I leave again in spirit to Molo.

In Molo I have covered ground. At the Molo police station the view of this mangled wreck of a car that brought this cup upon me holds my gaze, hypnotized with grief. Inside this twisted metal with sharp shrapnel like remnants of a bomb blast I seek to find closure. At the back seat or what remained of it, there is an abandoned cap and I recognize De’s shoe, just one side the left one. Under the cap, the power-bank that De had picked from the house the day he traveled is untouched. I pick it up and study it as a lab technician confirming the Lisa test result of a patient. De is so close to me I feel I can touch him now. The conversation of last Thursday replays in my head.

“Dad, can I borrow your power-bank.  My phone charging system is bonkers. Can I borrow,” he ask again then he laughs in his usual thunderous boyish laughter.

“My son I can see you have it already. That is not how you ask. First you request and wait for the answer. Anyhow ensure you bring it back” I reply amid chuckles. De knows he gets his way almost all the times with me.

This power-bank ties my last memory of my son tightly, it is worth more than a mere charger. I blame myself as to why I had insisted he brings it back. I blame the blood suckers, the ambulance chasers for not carting away everything the way they did with his watch and phone and money and clothes.

I want to say something to someone next to me to disrupt my daydreams. Something almost mythical and illogical. “See he brought this back. This phone charger,” but I only manage to say it in my heart. My lips work up and down but words fail save for short whispers that are meaningless. The venom in my vein is doing a fine job, my blood pressure has stabilized and my heartbeat is near normal.

“May the lord give him permanent rest? May the soul of Dairus that you have taken among us find peace” The father said.

“Amen” the friends responded

“Yweyo mak rum migie ruoth. Ler mochere mondo ilerne.”

“May the family now pick the soil in their hands?”

The casket slowly descend into the ground. A large red sun hang over the hills dying to set as the day began to retire into the night. The choir sang slowly, faintly it is a diminuendo chorus. The father said, “You are dust and dust shall you return. “  We repeated in dull weary voices, “Dust to dust”. I picked on the chorus and began to sing louder than the soloist. The sharp pain in my heart began to dull and my voice began to clear. I know it is the hand of God that has lifted this darkness in the session of tears. The sun will rise and the grass will grow.