Who cries for the boy...?

"Who cries for the boy?", the old woman would whisper to herself. Its not the words that caught ones attention, neither is it the huskiness in her voice,but the deep pain that was evident in her voice and her wrinkled face every time she said it.  The pain in her voice bordered that of concern or was it despair, but it couldn't conceal the passion it carried. All these emotions were only noticeable to those close to her and more so, those she called upon when she needed assistance. Gatiba, her grandson was one of those people. On many occasions, she had uttered these words as she watched her last born son disappear in the horizon, after his regular monthly homage, he paid to her without fail. But on this day as his frail and ragged son walked away, Gatiba, couldn't fail to notice the intensity of the pain in her face, as she uttered those words. Though her eyes were ready to shed tears, they
couldn't, since her tear ducts had long since failed due to old age. This made Gatiba ask, for the first and the last time, why she always asks, "who cries for boy" each time his uncle left. 

Kamande loved to sing as he headed home to see his mother, and under his arms a shopping bag containing half a kilo of meat and loaf was always held tight. So tight that during the rains or after around ten beers or on both occasions, he could fall and roll down a whole valley, but when he woke up, the parcel was still there. That, and his bottle of beer, if he had carried one. Its not all this that brought sadness to the mother, but his unique problems, which he genuinely narrated to her, all the time. Unique that, they  involved different cases, but same and similar actors; himself and his beer being the constants, but different women all the time.


Kamande had a stable job as a clerk with the home registration ministry. He was incharge of releasing Identity cards. For one to obtain these documents, one had to oil the system and as this happened Kamande's pockets got oiled as well. He also had stable girlfriend, whom he had even introduced to his mother. The mother disliked this girl, mainly because in her opinion, she was not responsible. She had refused to take care of her grandson, Gatiba, who was one of Kamande's sons from one of his girlfriends. No one knew the actual number of the kids Kamande had sired out there, but Gatiba's mother had dumped him outside his grand mother's kitchen, in the wee hours of the morning, when he was eight weeks old. Alongside, she had left a note to Kamande, saying he can keep his garbage. It was the first time Gatiba's grandmother uttered the words "who cries for the boy?" to him but he was to tiny to hear. It also marked the beginning of the downfall of Kamande. A week earlier the grandmother had intervened in another case, where another mother of kamandes kids, had gone to the chief to ask for an enforced upkeep, for a daughter kamande had bore with her. That was her fifth case and now with Gatiba's arrival it was going to be her sixth. If it there was a person who knew and understood Kamande, it was his mother. She had seen all his strengths, good traits, bad traits but what worried her most was his weakness, which happened to be an equation of all these. 


Owing to his good flow of money and his generosity, Kamande had a good flow of friends and women in his good days and hence also the flow of kids. Not a weekend would pass and he wouldn't pass by the village pub to meet his congregation, which mostly consisted of women and proceed to entertain them until the wee hours. A lot used to happen between when those hours and he couldn't mostly remember, but one thing he never forgot on his way home was his mothers half kilo of meat and loaf. He would then proceed to sing, as he staggered through the peace brought by the wee hours towards his mothers house.


He would sing with vigour, a sound of a content man but on this day as Gatiba's grandmother , began to answer his question, Kamande had come singing with a very frail voice. Under his arms...


to be continued