Today, lets talk Lubukusu, the language of Mubukusu. Lubukusu is rich: lustrous when spoken, immensely expressive in song and damn descriptive in capturing the quintessence of our ways such as when naming our children or when tying the knot as in khuboa chinyinja.
Look, I am Bukusu who was majorly schooled in Maragoli land. I am one person who has a light head when it comes to mastering languages. This has not been the case with Lulogoli. I always feel like a lame duck every time I get a chance to speak the dialect of my second home. Lulogoli and Lubukusu are miles apart. Even with my talents in language, at any particular instance, I can barely understand 35% of a conversation in Lulogoli.
I was brought up deep in the village. It was a normal village childhood for me. Such things like helping around the homestead by taking care of animals and looking for firewood. My school holidays were about navigating how to balance a twenty liter jerrycan of water atop my head without spilling much on my way home from the eluchi. When I learnt how to milk Namarome -the cow, well, that was an achievement. It was nothing like trips to Dubai that some of our kids enjoy. Or learning how to code or playing the violin that count as holiday achievements today.
But still devoid of all these pleasures, to be back home in Bukusu land during the school holidays, made my soul sing. Merely not just from the joys of devouring mayi’s seveve ne` Engokho; but from the massage to the marrow that rolling Lubukusu off my tongue would bring. Hearing and speaking Lubukusu without attracting blank stares at it would be the case in school; that was a piece of heaven.
All Things Bright and Beautiful Lubukusu is
I’ve heard people describe their journey back home after a long sojourn in foreign lands as eliciting a feeling such as this one. Like that moment when you overhear a stranger at an airport in a far land speak to someone over the phone in Kenyan Swahili. That’s how it’d feel during the school holidays when my friend Marita would be trying to pull my leg with her long tales of village happenings while I was away. She’d be telling on how we won’t be seeing Chendrix as she was married off to Matiangi given that she couldn’t help herself coming home after the chickens. Imagine, such an unbelievable story yet she had the gall to remark:
Nakhubea wikisa mumaito
A Bukusu saying that translates as;
“If you think I am lying, you will hide yourself in a groundnut plantation.”
More often than not I find myself yelling at my children in Lubukusu and just like back in primary school, at times, I do find a set of blank stares from little faces wondering : What the hell did this one just say? Most of the time though, Lubukusu comes through. This is because the language of my people not only has the the words, but the tone to set things back in line.
Threats incommunicado
Consider the trials I face with my eight year old son who can be stubborn only as a boy can be. So I ask him to not to do something like climb trees. Not just any tree but a super slippery tree like the guava fruit tree after the rain. He chooses to ignore my counsel, mumbling something along the lines that he knows what he is doing.
It is at such moments that Lubukusu comes to the rescue:
Mwanawe ndakhunyisia bisike….
I threaten to make his eye lashes wet and everything is back on track. By the time am done, nobody is acting like their lives depended on a guava.
Lubukusu: Language of the Gods
It took my schooling in Maragoli to understand some aspects of christian worship. History talks of the first bible in Luhya being written in Maragoli. Am old enough to have suffered the magnanimity of learning about a God, that even my grandparents didn’t know too well of, by way of a strange tongue: Lulogoli.
Nonetheless, today as a christian, I hold the firm belief that my God hears my prayers best when I supplicate in Lubukusu. I also recite the rosary in Lubukusu. Read the bible too in Lubukusu like Genesis 2:20
Omundu atiuukha chisaang’i choosi, ne chinyuni ne chisolo choosi, ne chinyuni ne chisolo che mundaa. Ne kakhali se anyoolekha omuyeeti okhoyela niye tawe
Our Bukusu forefathers, Selah and Mwambu, faced a task similar to Adam’s: naming all animals, insects and birds. The millipede they called it “Likongolio”. The centipede “enyanja”. Enyanja is also the name they gave to the lake.
Embwa ya wele
Then, there is this insect whose abdomen bears a clawed ovipositor believed to be harmful to humans. Mwambu named this one “embwa ya wele” a Bukusu idiom translated as “dog of God.” It is black abdomen and brown head. It reminds me of a woman wearing a black skirt and brown jacket.
Among the Bukusu, embwa ya wele, the insects, are especially feared. It is said that if embwa ya wele crawls into your ear, it can puncture your eardrum with its clawed ovipositor. They are commonly found in shelled maize. While this dog of God can bite, there is another whose way of keeping watch for the creator is by way of instilling morbid fear.
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Chimbwa cha wele of the class of chipoda
Then there is chimbwa cha wele plural of embwa ya wele . These ones must belong to the family of centipedes . They are elongated creatures with one pair of legs per body segment. Unlike some centipedes, they are harmless to humans. Nonetheless anyone who’s naive to their existence would feel a hair raise on their backs at first contact.
Chimbwa cha Wele move fast and en mass appearing like an army of caterpillars heading ones way. The movement of thousands of legs moving at the same time produces a sound close to hissing to great dramatic effect. Unlike their namesakes, the insects, they are mostly found in maize fields during harvest time.
You have to ask yourself, if these are indeed dogs; dogs like any other dog serving its master, what could Chimbwa cha Wele be on the lookout for on behalf of Sela and Mwambu ?
