Month of May

Month of May gets me so uneasy

You see, as a child you are woken up

Even before Jesus

To go till the farm

Weed finger-sized maize

Loam soil gets stuck on hoe

You keep removing it

Millet porridge for some reason

Is not there by 11 a.m

As you dig, dad keeps saying

“You see that thorn tree T-H-E-R-E?”

“we must weed till there”

Thorn tree is VERY far

 (trust my judgment )

You dig, you dig, you dig

Then sometimes in Mid May

Rain plays silly games

And all weeding becomes sun fodder!

Come next May

The same weeding

Dad says, “This is our year

Let us cultivate more”

You weed, weed, weed

Rain plays silly games—again

Dad says, “This was very close

Next year we try to plant early”

Well, dad gets right sometimes

Rain doesn’t disappoint

But you stay at the farm

Screaming and banging metals

All day to chase birds

Then one Sunday,

ON THAT DAY,

Monkeys

Get ideas and invade the farm

We get  one sack

Dad says, “ Very very close this year

We need to do something with the

Monkeys”

So we invade the small Shabaha hill

With Kenya Wildlife Service wardens

And scare the hell out of those monkeys

Come next May

We weed, we weed, we weed

We harvest well

Dad says, “ See son, we got it right

This year”

But when dad takes it to sell

The Government says, “Look, there’s a surplus,

A market glut”

Surplus in Turkana as they eat wild berries

Dad is annoyed, frustrated

I remember the weeding

Dad asks them, “ How kind of you, you remind me

Of those monkeys”

Well-intentioned, no doubt, sarcasm

If you may say,

But Government says he insults them

So they grab dad, throw him in jail

For abusing them

Dad gets out

Come next may

Dad is still farming

He says, “That was very very close

If not for the surplus”

That is if the rain, birds

And monkeys don’t play silly games—

Again.

C) Lorot Salem 2011