Chapter 6

I had been preparing myself for months for the coming weekend. Saving up on liquid cash. Brushing up and keeping up on topics that I thought would be relevant. And exercising. Lots of exercise. Endurance was key here. It wouldn’t do to run out of energy before the weekend was over. It was a big weekend coming up, the most important weekend of the whole year. It was the family gathering weekend. Yes, the whole family. All those who called themselves the progenies of Mũtinda would gather up together, in one place, for a whole weekend. And chaos would ensure.

It had been happening for five years now. This would be the sixth year that we gathered. It all began six years ago, when Katũnge gave birth to her daughter Ivy. She felt that we, as a family, didn’t see each other often enough. It might have been okay for us grownups, but the young ones needed to meet and interact with their big brothers and sisters more often. To form proper and deep familial bonds, she argued. The death of Mũtiso had shaken the family a lot. Some of us had never met him before he passed away. Me been one of them. The arrival of Ivy signaled a new chapter for the Mũtindas. A new generation was coming, and it was up to us to make sure they grew up knowing who the Mũtindas were.

So Katũnge pestered all the family members for months. She was relentless, not giving up no matter how many different reasons were presented as to why it would be difficult to achieve what she was asking for. And there were lots of reasons presented. Until we started agreeing to the family gathering. The month was set for August when all schools were on break, and the day set for weekend when those employed in eight to five jobs would be free. And so it had begun.

The first year, we had been ill prepared. The first batch of sodas didn’t even last half the first day. Neither the meat nor the wheat flour. Actually, just about everything we had budgeted for the weekend turned out to be too little. So, by midday of the first day, we all went shopping again.

This time, we came loaded. But still forgot to account for the cooking bowls and pans. The family was huge, the number of mouths to feed huge too. The sizes we had at hand proved to be inadequate for the task. A few members of the family had to go back to town and get the proper sizes for a family our size. After that, everything sailed along smoothly. At the end of the weekend, it was agreed upon that we would make a family tradition. To meet at least once every year as the whole family together. So, year after year we met. And the family grew still.

Father was a prolific man. For starters, he had two wives. My mother, Kamene and my step-mother Nzisa. Mother had ten children to call her own. Stepmother had seven and counting. She was still of child bearing age, unlike mother. It was also possible that father could decide to take on another younger wife. You never know with father.

We owned a compound by the beach; it had been purchased three years ago when a change in venue had been asked for. The beach adjacent was private property but was open to the public most of the year. But during the family get together, it was completely closed. If anyone felt the need to interact with other people, they were free to venture out to the public beach. The family one stayed private for our whole stay. After all, there were a lot of recluses in the family.

For the first time since the get together started, I was the last one to arrive. Apparently, some of them had spent weeks here. Especially those in school. It was something of a treat for them. The others could come to the beach house whenever they wanted, but the students only had time during the holidays.

The compound was located at least two kilometers from the nearest compound; and less than five hundred meters from the beach. It allowed enough privacy for the family to let lose for the weekend. The compound was fully surrounded by security personnel the whole time we stayed there.

There was a hedge fence, three meters tall surrounding the house and its environs. The gate was steel bar thing designed to stop even a speeding truck dead on its tracks. The tarmac road continued past the gate to the front of the house; where it formed a small roundabout with a fountain at the center. Every other part of the compound was covered in grass, always trimmed and watered to keep it green and short.

The residence itself was a three story house, with the outside walls made mostly of glass tinted to appear as a mirror from the outside. The doors opened on their own as I made my way inside. Father was by the fireplace, reading a gazette. And he barely acknowledged my greeting as he directed me to the study.

There, I found my step mother helping the rowdy duo, Mũmbe and Mũema, finish their homework. They must have slacked off before she came here from her school. She never allowed any of them to start the weekend before getting through half of their holiday assignments. I was forced to leave quickly not to be a disturbance to them.

I found the rest of the family at the beach. Mother was leisurely lounging on a beach chair, with a book on hand and a pack of fruit juice on a stool next to her. The book was most definitely the bible. There were some family members loitering on the beach, others in the ocean waters and others running around the beach. I couldn’t figure out what game they were playing.

Mũeni was the first to notice my arrival, and she proudly announced to the rest of the family. “Mativo is here.”

There was a chorus of finally and cheers. This caused mother to look back and lift her reading glasses to her forehead. “You took your sweet time coming this time, didn’t you?” she said as I approached her.

“The simulations ended yesterday…” That didn’t feel right. How long had I been asleep? “The day before yesterday? I’m not sure. The point is, I overslept. But when I woke up, I came here fastest as I could.”

“If only you had invented teleportation.” That was Kĩoko, having arrived as I gave mother a sitting hug.

“I would never put myself through that. There are things not worth researching.”

“Are you saying instantaneous travel isn’t worth researching?” Kĩoko sounded surprised.

“For me, not for the rest of humankind. If you want to do it, knock yourself out.”

“How was it?” I knew what Mũeni was asking and I thought of playing dumb to mess with her a little. But then I discarded that idea. It wouldn’t help anyone, anyway.

“Like hell on earth.”

“You say that every time I ask you.” She complained.

“And it is so each time. The simulations are meant to put us through the worst possible scenarios we could find ourselves in out there.” I decided to change the topic. There would be enough time to talk about each-others work and studies. “Are you faster than me yet?”

“What?” She was surprised at first before what I had said registered.

“To the water and back.”

“You’re on old man.” She said, her excitement clear for all to see. Maybe I had bitten off more than I could chew. She was a competitive sprinter after all.

“I’m not that old!”

“You’re twice my age. That’s plenty old.”

“The context is all wrong.”

“Quit whining old man, and let’s get on with the race.” We got ready as Kĩoko called for set.

“You called me old man again.” Any further conversation was cut short as the race was called. And she was off like a bullet. I never caught her, no matter how hard I tried.

…

The first thing we always did to mark the start of the weekend was prepare food. A lot of it. Usually we started with cakes, which were deligated to Kanyele, Mũeni and Mũtethwa. Mũtethwa had become something of an expert in preparing the cakes. The young ones usually joined them for a taste of the raw dough. And lick the preparing materials when preparations were done.

While that was happening, Katũnge, Kĩoko and I prepared the dough for baking chapatis. I wasn’t involved with the baking though. That became the job for Kalekye, Katũnge, Mũtave and Musyoki. I was involved in the butchering of the goats, or bull. The weekend proved to be a bull weekend. Mũlwa helped there. After the butchering, the meat was divided for refrigeration, stew, roasting and frying. The rest of the family took the part that looked under staffed then.

After the preparation and consumption of all that, some family members would be tired and go for a nap. The rest though, we went for the games. There was the motorcycle racing in the countryside, car racing too if one felt the fancy. Football was played too. But the main game was hockey. Field hockey to be exact.

Five of us, including me, had played hockey in high school and some even at college level, not including me. It was the go to game to finally get that extra food off the body in preparation for supper. We tried to be as safe as it was possible while wielding sticks and propelling a ball as hard as stone at speeds in excess of sixty kilometers an hour. But mistakes did happen, and a few young ones had lost their milk teeth during the games.

We never really had a set criteria for creating the teams. Random selection was always followed, and it had led in to some pretty interesting match ups. The worst match up had been when the families had somehow been pitched against each other. Due to the age difference between the families, it had been a pretty one sided match for half an hour before we had to pick teams again.

Supper usually followed that, with those not tired enough staying a while longer as the rest retired for the night. The house had enough bedrooms to house a family more than twice our size. That was saying something, considering we were twenty individuals in total.

We had a meter telescope on the roof, with several smaller ones, for the avid stargazers in the family. And that was where I found myself in the first night of the weekend.

“Couldn’t sleep?” I turned to find Mũeni standing at the observation door. The half-moon light slightly illuminating her frame.

“Already slept.” I said as I returned to my observations. If she had wanted to use a telescope, she could have easily gone to one of the other observatories.

“What? But its not even ten o’clock.”

“Yeah. I think I slept for around two hours.”

“That couldn’t have been enough.”

“Night owl, remember?” I told her. Either she had forgotten about me staying awake during the night, or she was worried that I wasn’t actually sleeping enough. “As long as it is night, my body will always try to stay awake. What about you?”

“Came to say goodnight.”

That had me curious. There was no way she came directly to the roof from her bedroom. Or wherever she had been before she decided to go to sleep. “How long ago did you start looking for me?”

“An hour.” She answered, before quickly changing the topic. “Can you see everywhere you will be going with that thing?”

I wasn’t at the one meter one, I could kind of understand her curiosity. “Not really. Some of them will be just slightly larger specks of light than you would see with the other telescopes here. Would you be interested in going?”

“No!”

“Wow! Ever?”

“I want to go to space, but not on the first ship. Once you have established a space branch dedicated to taking tourists, then I might go.”

“Okay. I will try not to keep you waiting for long. Too bad though, it would have been fun to have you around.”

“Yeah. Too bad.” She sounded defeated, like it was something she couldn’t help with. Without knowing what was going on in her head, there was nothing I could say. After a while, she added, “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

I watched her disappear below the stairs leading down to the top floor, going back to my observation of the moon. Why couldn’t it give me what I wanted?