My sweet baby, my wife

I was eleven perhaps ten when I met her
When I was introduced to her
She whose voice was rhythmic
In the mountains of Gusiiland
When she spoke, she drew people from far and wide
They came running and walking
Standing and sitting down, listening
To her soothing rhythmic voice
Her words were music
Her words were stories, they were songs
They danced to her cry
They danced in her happiness
They watched her,
Everybody loved her, everybody wanted to court her
She made them kneel down,
They were united in their collective epiphanies
That defined their destinies
She consoled, she taught
She narrated and she preserved

I loved her too
I was smitten and I wanted her
I wanted her to be my companion
She, who I could cherish all my life
I wanted her to be with me
Even in the turbulent of times
To be me and me to be her
I wanted to sing my story
The story of my life
I wanted her to console me and protect me
Tender to me as a mother does to the baby
I fall in love with her
She reminded me of times immemorial
And made me dream of great times to come
I was young, yes
But this was as real as the blue sky
Clear of clouds

Then one day, before all the people
Before every eye that was present
As my witnesses
As the trees were swaying to her rhythms
That evening I went to her as she sang
And I begged for her hand of affection
Because she had stolen my heart
And I wanted to steal hers
I wooed her with my gentle pleas
She didn’t accept and she didn’t refuse either
We began seeing each other
It was difficult for two years
Trying and trying
She was older than me
But smitten by my juvenile love

For ten years I never saw her again
I was forced into exile for reasons, unknown
But my heart was hers
The rhythms of her voice never left me
They stayed caged in my heart
I guess it was same story, even with her
Then one day, I met her again
I was twenty, and we married there and then
I went home with her, happy and healed
Of the fatigue of my long loneliness
We connected and her rhythmic chords
Fused evenly with my vocal chords
We became an ensemble of melodies
A sound so musical, a sound so poetical
That is how I married my wife-OBOKANO
She who I met at ten and married at twenty
We were then declared a musical couple
Grand Masese and Obokano
We are blessed with many children.

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* Dennis Dancan Mosiere aka Grand Masese is a performance poet/writer/actor and musician based in Nairobi. He is also a Fahamu Pan African Fellow for Social Justice.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at Pambazuka News.