Why Grandpa Iliaja hates Christmas

Iliaja shudders at the mention of the word Christmas. It looks like someone who has unknowingly touched ice.

Grandfather Iliaja has never enjoyed or liked Christmas day since he was invited to his son-in-law’s house many years ago. He had gone there in his usual outfit: dirt-stained overalls, old shorts that made him look like a short old crane, and a half-ripped hat that had a greenish canvas top layer.

When he got there, the whole family was busy eating a variety of what Iliaja thought was a mixture of baby mushrooms, ground millet, and meat. Everyone was elegantly dressed. This reminded Iliaja of the white men and his sons lining up for what they called a welcome to the governor.

He was still a few meters from the busy family. He leaned on his long staff like a shepherd watching over his flock. The children laughed at him and one said with a mouth full of rice: “Look at grandfather, he has no ma…” However, he was interrupted by his mother who quickly put her hand over the boy’s mouth in a stern sign. to “shut up” as he used to order his children.

“You can’t talk with food in your mouth, Lily,” her father said after calling Iliaja to sit on a bench a few feet from the large communal table. Iliaja sat down, crossed his legs and putting his hands in his pocket as usual said: “Eiye leiye leiye leiye”, which was a symptom of fatigue mixed with deep thoughts.

He inhaled his snuff and sneezed. This reflex action caused brownish mucus to gush from her nostrils like groundwater gushing out of a double culvert in the rainy season.

However, it took her several minutes to find a dirty handkerchief whose color was somewhere between black and brown. Somehow it was inside her big pocket.

He kept moving his pocket hand from his right hand to his left, scanning the ceiling in the process as if he was trying to estimate the value of the dining room. All this time her mucus was getting longer.

The revelry family across the way looked at him with the deepest contempt. He intuitively felt that something in him was the cause of such sadness in the family because no one spoke.

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Rotich/Christmas/2

He hadn’t greeted them because he thought it wasn’t chivalrous to talk to the people who were eating. She had to wait until they finished eating. He kept himself busy “inspecting” the large and well furnished dining room while he tapped his knee with the finger of his left hand and wiped his nose with his right hand.

“Give the old man something to eat,” the head of the family, a tall, dark-haired man with a large bald head, ordered a servant. He was the principal of a primary school. The servant brought a small round table to Iliaja. On that table was a plate full of rice and stew. Salt in a bottle resembling Iliaja’s snuff bottle, a spoon, forks, and knife were also immaculately placed in their proper places.

Iliaja’s eyes kept darting around the servant from one side of the room to the other while his mind was absent years and years before, when they could roast meat and antelope in the open field. Then they had really been men.

“You can now go on. We’ve already prayed,” said her daughter, who was there for the incredible Iliaja dressed in a body-hugging blue jean long pantsuit. This easily gave Iliaja an accurate estimate of how much weight her daughter had gained. She was a wasp-snow-fire woman who had drowned in city life. She was the last of Iliaja and since she was married she had never visited her father in the interior of the country.

Iliaja looked at the food in front of him and said, “What are these called?” “That’s a grandpa knife,” replied John, a mischievous young man, after chewing on a chicken thigh. He thought his grandfather was pointing at the knife. Iliaja was silent for a while and then took three small particles of rice and placed them just inches from his nose and sniffed with great eagerness.

The whole family stopped eating to look at him. Her daughter, who couldn’t help but laugh out loud, came out of the house to cough up something that she had gotten into her windpipe. “Whoa! Hey! Hey! Grandpa, that’s not tobacco, ”said a boy who quickly fell silent when her father looked at her with menacing eyes. “I’m sorry, my son-in-law,” Iliaja said after sniffing all the food that had been put out for him. “I’m not going to eat this,” she added as she pushed the food away from him with all his might.

The entire stew spilled out in the process, and the knife, fork, and spoon fell to the carpeted floor. Iliaja unsuccessfully tried to salvage the situation. Even a glass broke and fell to the ground and together with the others they formed a big heap on the ground.

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Rotich/Christmas/3

“If there’s ugali, I’ll eat it, but if it’s not, it’s fine with me. I’ve kept my promise,” Iliaja said desperately as the still-laughing servant continued to sweep up the mess.

However, there was no ugali, mushroom, nightshade or millet porridge to

they were Iliaja’s favorite foods. She spent that Christmas fasting for nothing. Every time Christmas is mentioned, Iliaja desperately remembers his great embarrassment at his son-in-law’s house.

It was in a somewhat sunny morning hour of the best Christmas season on earth called Kapsuser in Kenya. Iliaja, the puny but amusing old man, had come out of his little round hut surrounded by acacia bushes.

It had been sitting there on an old black wattle log slightly raised for hours on end. One could easily guess that he was remembering the good old days of him when he was still a stable youth.

Sitting thus, he passed his shaky, unsteady hand from one overburdened pocket of his coat to another, the same but with different contents. His searching hand continued to navigate deeper and deeper into the bowels of the bulging pocket whose contents included; rusty razors, tiny empty bottles of almost every color of the rainbow, little sticks, crumpled and faded pieces of paper, and a whole collection of what you might call trash.

His wrinkled and slightly bent face gave him the hideous appearance of a centuries-old rock. He was busy looking for snuff which, with pride and nonchalance, he could say had once been given to him by a famous apothecary of that region as a healing and pain-relieving medicine. Since then, the exact date of which no one knows, he had been sniffing it out.

When he fell into a melancholic mood, and he often was, he simply inhaled the snuff to loosen the tension and calm his mind. The snuff, he could tell you with a bright hanging smile, worked ceremoniously.

Iliaja, kept scowling in disgust while picking up an unwanted piece of paper or bottle. He looked like a dejected grad who had just read a letter of regret from the CEO of his favorite company.

He had been a robust man, always poised and stern. He was credited as one of the best warriors of his time. He was bald, wrestler-like with pronounced bow legs. The pupil color of his always inquisitive and intelligent brown eyes reminded one of the first European settlers in that land.

Round pieces of ornamental copper dangled from his pierced ears, which, when he nodded, dangled gaily as if to hug their owner’s temples. And they sure did.

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Rotich/Christmas/4

“Hey! Chebet, look at my mushroom,” said a boy’s voice from the other side of the thorn fence that bordered Iliaja’s compound with the neighbors.

“Let’s take it to Grandma and Grandpa,” another child’s voice suggested. This time she clearly sounded like a girl.

Iliaja and his wife have been waiting for their grandchildren since dawn. These children attended a missionary boarding school and often visited their grandparents during vacations.

His wife was out earning millet when Kiprop and Chebet arrived like those shepherds you read about in the Bible. Between the children was a large brown basket whose straps were held tightly in their hands. The contents of the baskets were covered with a well-patterned white scarf, though a pumpkin head protruded from one side.

Their grandmother relieved them of their burden, and before saying anything, she carried the basket into the cabin and placed it safely next to the pot of water. As she left the house, she folded her hands as usual and greeted the two children, nodding in the process.

Kiprop handed him the broad-headed mushroom. Grabbing it, his grandmother said possessively, “This is a good omen, my grandchildren: a big, white, fresh mushroom. Where was it?” she inspected the mushroom and removed the soil from it. “I found it at granny’s on the side of the road,” Kiprop said, who laughed when he saw his grandma nod happily.

“Let’s go in my little ones, it’s cold outside,” said the old lady, waving them inside. “Why didn’t you bring Kiptesot with you? She must have grown a lot these days,” she added. Kiptesot was the younger brother of Kiprop whose bow legs made him resemble Iliaja when he was young.

“He is still short… oh that one. Mommy was hit with a stone yesterday and they didn’t let her accompany her,” said Chebet, a seven-year-old girl with curly black hair, cheerful eyes and a well-formed body. She was wearing a short blue skirt that revealed most of her fleshy and succulent thighs.

Entering the little cabin, Chebet ventured, “You will tell us a story, Grandma. Our other Grandma used to tell us sweets at night.” Chebet had shown a keen interest in stories ever since he had been able to speak.

She and her brothers and sisters often went to her paternal grandmother’s house. She was a widow and a good storyteller. However, lately she had become tired and quiet. when the

children went to her hut, she threatened to beat them. She often complained that the children made a lot of noise. The children had avoided going to her shack lately.

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Rotich/Christmas/5

There were no children in the Iliaja compound. All day it was as quiet as a pool of water. His wife had given birth to seven children, four daughters and three sons, but unfortunately all the sons

had died. Two of them died during a war and one from an unknown food. The only children who came to Iliaja’s house were those of his daughters and brothers.

“Sit down, my grandchildren,” said Iliaja, who was sitting comfortably by the fire. “How is everyone at home?” he asked. Kiprop, who was twelve years old, was the first to speak after sitting down on round three-legged stools.

“Home is fine, Grandpa. Mom made us swear to come home on Sunday.” When no one spoke, he added, “Our father is coming from town on Monday. He will bring us shoes and clothes for Christmas.” Iliaja winced when he heard the word Christmas mentioned.

Chebet grinned broadly as she imagined herself wearing shiny shoes like the ones on the white man’s girl she’d seen in town the week before. However, he immediately shut his mouth as cold air filled the space where two front teeth had been cut earlier that day.