Let Us Tell You About Our People

If walls could talk, they say. We do. Made out of grass, sticks and cow dung, we are. We fear nothing but the rain, yes, the rain. When it falls dimly she's our friend, but when it pours angrily with those thick drops of life, sometimes we break and sometimes we die.

Then our women, yes our women, come and fix us. We like women. They caress us with their long fingers, and they show their children how to fix us too. But the littluns they're not so gentle, at first, they tickle our bellies with their tiny claws. Then we want to shake, shake the tickles away, but we don't. We remain still. Always still. Always silent.

We don't mind our frugal lives, no, we don't. We'll tell you why if you stay with us.

The smell of us we've never known. Our people don't seem to mind but sometimes pale creatures come to visit, and they cover their pointy ends and pull funny expressions. These creatures are so pale, pale like moonlight, like milk, like illness. And they wear strange skins to cover their nakedness. Our people dress in reds so vibrant they challenge the sun. But the pale ones wear colours of the Earth and they camouflage so well we can't see them. We hear them coming, loud as they are, but by the time they're right beside us, it's usually too late and they get inside our bellies and look around, and pinch their noses, and smile and say, oh wow, oh God, but it smells like cow shit, right John? That they whisper. And then hi hi, ha ha, and with their black boxes they throw sharp lights at us and we fear our souls may get trapped inside them.

We love our people, yes we do, very much. Because they bring us to life and fix us when we're broken. Tall like ladders, they are, our people, and slender and soft and kind. Black like the night, like the nooks inside us without sunlight, like the unknown.

They jump, high, higher, up and down as if they wanted to touch the moon. But when they build us, they make us small, the smallest they can and just use what they need for our creation. Grass, sticks, cow excrement and soil. Shelter we give, we give them shelter at night. They are our makers and we become their nests. They sleep so peacefully inside us, like little black birds, they do. Like black birds wrapped in their reds and blues and purples. The men when they sleep inside us, they do with an open eye. Warriors, travellers. My people. Our people. Maasai, means my people.

Don't be sad when we tell you we don't live long. We don't live long, no, live long we don't. We don't live long because after a while we have nobody to host. When the time comes, our people leave us to find greener pastures and cannot take us along. We are big and heavy and quiet, we couldn't go, we're not made to travel. We're made for a purpose. Built to endure awhile. To home awhile. To be awhile. Made from soil and nature and back to nature and soil. It's the way of life. Hakuna Matata. Yes, Hakuna Matata they say, the people inside us, our hosts, our friends. We live and let live.

We are a womb, warm, dark, cosy. Quiet, always quiet, watching. Witnesses of their unfolding.

We hear everything they do. Sometimes we're filled with the sweet scent of milk or the iron smell of blood. These we can smell, not ourselves, no, but everything else. Our people eat inside us or feed their children from their breasts. We love the smells that stick to our interior faces. When our people lay at night with an open eye, in case there are predators lurking nearby, we hear them whispering to each other. Sometimes they laugh and their laughter echoes through us like a song. We hum along, but only in our minds. They can't hear us, no, but we hum with their laughter. Hum, hum, hum.

Sometimes a few families fit inside us walls. But when it's just the two of them, a man and a woman, we hear them lay together, very closely, like husband and wife. Our rough surfaces then get steamy with heat, noises and growls and grunts and laughter and other sounds stick to us like honey and we feel happy and we are silent still, but we know, if we could really talk, all we would tell you about love and desire and sometimes lust.

We hear everything but we're always quiet, we don't tell. Quiet, quiet. We don't speak the secrets we protect. We shelter our people and our people give us life. We serve them loyally if they built us eloquently. When they don't, we fall apart. Don't be sad, no, sad be not. We're not made to live forever, a fraction of life is better than none.

The beauty in our brief existence is worth every scorching sun and every killing storm.