on a six-to-ten-hour journey .
Rule number three is to time your eating and drinking . You can only start to crave a meal or a snack after Naivasha or after one and a half hours of driving . Though we have exemptions , for those whose stomachs are resilient ; they eat groundnuts , take a soda , biscuits , a kangumu and down a bottle of water . As you wait for the bus to fill up they would still eat anything shoved their way by roadside traders and at all the stops along the journey . Yet they will not complain of any stomach ache or show discomfort . Better be safe than sorry , so kindly be modest on your eating on this long trip .
Rule number four is not to be friendly to strangers . There are many stories where travelers were given sleeping pills through innocent offers of drinks , meals or snacks . Other stories are told of strangers who drugged unsuspecting passengers and alighted with them to harvest their valuables , ransom or body parts .
Rule number five entails not sleeping throughout the journey . You have to remain vigilant especially when you are about to alight . We know of people who woke up at the border yet they were to alight many kilometers behind .
Thank God for the checks the government has put in place , vehicles and passengers are screened . PSV vehicles are fitted with speed governors , bus driver and crew are validated by NTSA including road blocks to authenticate road safety , overloading , speeding etc . We also have hotlines that travelers can call or text if any of the laid down policies , regulations and laws are being flouted . Before these , we were at the mercy of drivers and crew , they had a field day on the roads . And many lives were lost . We are still not out of the woods yet but we are grateful for the big strides made in enforcing laws on our roads .
When we arrive in the village for Christmas , long prayers are made , chicken slaughtered and laughter shared of our journey mercies . Neighbors are summoned or show up by themselves to “ greet ” you but we all know they come to audit ! They check “ kama umenona ”, they come to confirm “ kama umechanuka ” from your clothes , hairstyle even shamelessly audit what you carried from the city . Then the grapevine news start doing rounds . “ Wamekonda , inakaa wanateseka sana huko nairopi ” “ hata hairstyle yake ni ile cheap cheap - hii nikama hawalipwi visuri ” “ wamevaa vitu tight tight kwani hawana heshima ya mama yao na vile ni semanzi kanisani ”. These go round until we are told of them at the posho mill or at the “ pombo ” ( water spring point ). In the sharing , the exaggeration sometimes is so exorbitant that the real persons ’ identity is lost and therefore it becomes a hearsay story .
Above all the visitors flower our market places on the daily , trade is enhanced and the night is not so quiet anymore . Laughter throngs our homes , music from stereos ferried from the city or local ones that have now been powered to entertain visitors . Story telling goes on till late into the night . The kitchens become almost twenty-fourhour factories . The visitors visit each other and locals jump in . Infatuations develop and illicit interactions are forged . Until some come to know they are relatives and thus they are prohibited by customs not to be lovers .
Dotting lights in the village become the norm until the wee hours . Villagers are forced to speak their little Kiswahili and dabble the recently learnt “ sheng ” in between . Visitors break their mothertongue as they tweng words in barbaric measures . The village people are very accommodative they make do with the exaggerated truths , the utter lies , the unnecessary information and the blunders of the visitors . They know what city workers earn and they quietly accept the “ kuomoka ” brags they are given .
They know many city dwellers are in the slums or middle-class estates with no room for village visitors but they accept the invitations gladly . They do not need to know the soap operas on dstv , Netflix or other streaming channels but they humbly listen as they think of their daily chores . They do not need the distractions of storytelling visitors but they still manage to clock in the required hours of productivity every day .
They gladly serve tea , heat up bathing water and tend to the farm as the visitors wake up late and complain of the scorching sun . They accept to be sent to the market endless times as if the visitors do not know how to consolidate one shopping list so as to make one trip . They look at the visitors in awe and genuine admiration even though some make more from their farming than them . They are not fancy but are happy they feed
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We need to visit the villages more often ; we need it more than they need us . Remember , they live simply so the monthly spend of a city home can easily run several rural homes . Let us spend more in the villages this year .
the nation and lead sustainable lives devoid of the expensive exaggerations .
They know the hymns by heart because they live the scriptures each day . They trust God for good weather as they pray for better harvests , bigger market returns and their city relatives . They are simple and village adaption is a complex science but they take it all in stride .
They are knowledgeable but silently so . They improvise rather than complain . You see they are solution oriented , complaining is not their strong suit . They are a peculiar people from whose hands we came and whence we feed from . Their produce ends up in the supermarket and we pay top dollar but pay them no heed each Christmas .
Many schools in our villages post stellar results and surprisingly the termly cost we pay for one kindergarten pupil can run a whole school for a year . If we cut our excesses and channel our energies in increasing productivity in the villages then we can appreciate the increased value we will certainly create . This will spur even more activity in the urban places and thus our economy will grow .
We need to visit the villages more often ; we need it more than they need us . Remember , they live simply so the monthly spend of a city home can easily run several rural homes . Let us spend more in the villages this year .
Let us boost production by investing in sustainable farming methods . Let us pull together because as my grandmother Mkere Vugutsa says we are all villagers . We eat food from the villages , most of our apparel ’ s raw materials come from villages , our ancestors came from villages and so we are all villagers .
Lunani Joseph is a Technology & Governance Professional , currently serving as the County Executive Member for Transport & Infrastructure for Vihiga County . You can commune with him via email at : JLunani @ insynqueafrica . com , Instagram : @ lunanijoseph , Twitter : @ joseph _ lunani , or LinkedIn : @ joseph-lunani .