Tribute to MZEE ELIPHAZ
It showed me that what Eliphaz needed was not simply a longer life but to be where he is accepted, loved and cared for.
Memory serves me right to the year 2000, we were afraid that a hole would swallow the earth, fire would whirl like a torrent of dust, and a storm would fall on us like a bag of nails. I am not sure who propounded this theory. We feared the world would end in a pain that lasted like a stump of feet over a walking millipede. Spiritual or natural, we would be the unlucky generation never to account to the next creature that would, if lucky enough, find our remains.
That morning the cock never crowed nor the hens chuckled: I thought they were gone already. Clare, a cousin of mine who had been staying with us, ran away from my parents’ home to gather with her family that was about a kilometer of straight line distance away: We started to think that may be the end of the earth would take one by one but we were later told she was at her parent’s home. Clare’s goal was to embrace that day’s tragedies with family.
Clare and I thought alike. That day, my brother Osbert and I were closer to our parents than ever before. That morning of 1st, January 2000, we executed all tasks they told us to. We didn’t want to break the 4th Commandment, “Honor your father and mother, that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God gives you.” We wanted to live longer but if that didn’t happen, we couldn’t miss the crown and sing melodiously with the seraphim and cherubim in heaven after our last gasp on life.
My father stood akimbo on the verandah with his eyes fixed to the ground. I thought he was troubled by the deep hole mined by the water that fell from the roof’s gutter whenever it rained or he was thinking about how lightly he had punished me the day before and wanted to do better the next time I erred.
My father took a deep breath as if he wanted to make peace with everyone including Augie, our dog whose leg he had injured with a stone while aiming at an ibis. He came to the kitchen, bent to my mother’s ear and left many a word for a whisper. I heard, “Come out.” My mother and father took shade of a banana plant shadow from the morning sun. Pretending to be enjoying the gooseberries, the lines on my mother’s face didn’t prove what I thought, “They wanted to renew their marital commitments without a priest.” But her facial expression showed that dad was speaking what was strange to her.
Moments later, Elias, a neighbor who had bought his new hero bicycle was summoned and was seen to test the medical condition of his bicycle (testing its breaks and bell). Elias was nicknamed,”Rutashara” due to his fast riding skills to mean, “one who doesn’t see road corners.” Elias rode off after a conversation that was full of direction signs as if dad told him, “Turn left after that big avocado tree and you will see a hut next to a kraal and that is the place.”
My mother became busy making turns of saucepans on the hearth and my dad splitting wood after wood. I imagined, “This is what it takes to prepare a last supper.” Moments later, Augie barked and we would hear the bike bell in the compound. It was Elias’ new hero. “It is Muzeyi Eliphaz. Onesmus come see this man. We played the fiber ball and grazed goats together many years ago,” My father said in excitement.
After our lunch, Osbert and I guarded the chicken from destroying our neighbor’s bean garden. However, this man Eliphaz was a wonder. Not like our seven wonders of ancient, medieval and modern worlds but we wondered if this was the grandfather we had never been told about. We took turns at going to the sitting room to stare at this grey-haired man.
That night when all doors were closed and it had occurred to me that Mzee Eliphaz was staying for the night, I asked my father, “who is that man? I fear him. Doesn’t he eat people?”. Laughing and lowering his height in a seat, he said to me, “That man is a very old man. I was so little in the grazing lands of Kagati when I first met him in 1972. I was only 10 years old. He was a great friend of mine even though he was 53 years then. Today, he has no family, nowhere to stay and nothing to eat. Your mother and I considered that from this day he will be one of us.” I then knew I had enough time to stare.
Mzee Eliphaz became my friend for the rest of the time he stayed with us till 2009 at the time of his death. I remember the fairy tales of Ishe Katabazi he told me on the verandah as he sat on his wooden stool. I have not forgotten the note he wrote to me for my Primary Leaving exams, “ekaraamu teshangurwa.” Translated as, “ink can’t be erased.”
It was a troubled, weak, quiet Eliphaz at the time my mother and father took him in as one of our own. Months later, he would be friendly, strong, peaceful, happy, welcoming, humorous etc. It showed me that what Eliphaz needed was not simply a longer life but to be where he is accepted, loved and cared for. I am glad that my parents had the heart to share with him the very little we had and that they gave us a chance to take such a lesson.
We may be somewhere thinking about how we can help and give to others. Sometimes, accepting others as they are and letting them be part of us is the best thing we can give. Rest in peace Eliphaz.
By Onesmus Kansiime.