The sounds of a house on the verge of collapse forever etched in my mind. I can tell you of the clinking of bolts and screws as they fall to their demise, leaving caverns in their wake. I can tell you that fridges made in the glory days of manufacturing will persist longer than some houses. They will last longer than some fathers. I can tell you about the anxiety that ransacks the mind when that first drop of rain assaults your sieve-like iron roof. In my house, a collapse was always one modern catastrophe away. Like a township fire or a government bulldozer.

When a house is on the last of its legs, resentment colonizes the air we breathe. It possesses you like a spirit sent to you by your nemesis family’s Mchawi. Your faucet of anger will be loose both ways. Chores will be unbearable even when they are in your best interest. There is a scramble and partition for every last bite. Sometimes you will eat a push for lunch and a shove for dinner. These frequencies of strife bounce in and out of the confines of my consciousness. The walls of my mind are levelled in the aftermath. The panes of my sanity shattered into infinite splinters of what once was.

Yet still, one sound in my house remains rather tame. You must crouch and turn your head to listen with only one ear. Maybe wrinkle your eyebrows and nose in unison. And if you listen close enough, you will hear the ambitions of a young heart gnawing unrelentingly at the shackles of this old house.

 

 

Glossary
Mchawi – Swahili word for witch doctor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Naoki Suzuki on Unsplash