Where the lie lies by Nyamani Marwa Matiko

Published in Qwani 04

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Until one has walked through your doors, there are always some expectations you may have about them. Reality, though, quickly settles when you see how human they are. In fact, the stories you tell before all the rituals begin are normal day stories. There is this idea that they are known or advertise themselves on the posters you see crowding electric poles in Nairobi, squeezed between PLOTS4SALE notices, maid jobs abroad and fading campaign posters, but that is also a lie.

You get to meet them when you talk to a friend about a problem, and the friend mentions another friend who had a problem and how someone helped, and by the time you meet them, they already know your story, and somehow you know theirs, and conversation flows easily between you two as long-lost friends.

She arrives a bit later than agreed. She tells you how she wished she had taken Mombasa Road instead of Jogoo Road matatus. She had to alight and take a Bolt Boda. You take this as a cue to reimburse her that money. You agree with her that the jam in the city can sometimes be so unpredictable.

You are not a bad person, but you are a sceptical one, and even though she looks and presents as normal, you mark all the utensils you have used to serve her. After all the catching up and stories, she requests you to show her where she can change, and she disappears for a few minutes before coming out. She is now fully dressed, from her headwrap down to her feet. Her feet are covered by the long gown she wears. A bit of fear and curiosity settles in you as she rummages through her bag, taking out small, wrapped bags and ornaments that could easily pass as artefacts.

“This has been a gift in my family for generations. It always goes to the firstborn daughter,” she explains to you when she realises that you may have begun having second thoughts. But you don’t have second thoughts. You gave up on God’s intervention. His ways were weird, and the people who claimed to have heard his voice or were appointed as his middlemen on earth were nowhere near whatever a God was meant to be.

These men, you saw them around every time you went to work. Early in the morning in the matatu, there was always one, who waited until the car jerked forward and they would start preaching. When you crossed Aga Khan Walk, there were several of them, Bible clutched, shouting over each other, in fight of the few lost sheep. Nairobi never lacked for prophets and these were just the ones you never interacted with.

You remember those you interacted with.

First was the exorcist who did more of spitting as he prayed than all the holy water he had sprinkled around your house to cast out the demons. He looked dirty; in fact, he presented more as a wizard than the famed miracle man you had been led to believe. His eyes were blood red and shifty. Hippopodes, that is what you named him as you watched his calloused hands, with dirt enough to trigger an endemic beneath the fingernails, roughly grab the crisp notes you handed him over after he was done. He promised that all evil in your life had thus been exorcised in Jesus’ name, and you would instantly feel the changes. Of course, this does not happen, and as soon as he leaves, you unleash your can of Airwick and cleanse the atmosphere around your house from his foul smell. You immediately block and delete his number, and for the first time, a thought comes in that you may need to register a separate line for communication with these God-fearing businesses.

But this lady is different. She reminds you of your grandmother. With the reminder comes the harsh reality of what your grandmother stood for. She had made sure that all of her children were fully Christians, and even the bare talk of witches, wizards and rituals was never to be entertained. You loved her, but sometimes you feel like you grew detached from religion altogether, maybe because of her. She represented the group of believers who chose which sins were greater than the others. When your aunt died, she refused to attend her funeral. And was that not a sin in its own way? Was it not even a greater sin than what she had condemned your aunt for? Did the Lord’s Prayer not say: Forgive us as we forgive those who trespass against us?

You remember the last conversation you had with her, your aunt. It was only a week ago when you visited her. The local parish priest had visited her, and you were forced to sit with them for free adulting advice. Before your aunt had died, she had let you in on a secret. The parish priest, this fatherly man with soft eyes and soft voice ,the man whom you would think you were safest with if trouble came, had touched her once, not in a fatherly manner. This happened when your aunt was still in her teenage years and had wanted to serve as an altar helper.

One day, in the sanctity just before mass had begun, your aunt had found herself with the priest alone. The truth is, when people grow up, they develop crushes, and sometimes it happens that these crushes extend to older people. Your aunt may have had a crush on him, but it was just that. A crush. She had never told him of it, but once during confession she may have mentioned that she had felt attracted to a priest. In fact, as your aunt told you, it was after this confession, the first day being that day in the sanctity, that the priest began being extra friendly with her.

That first day had been a hug. There was nothing to read about it, really. Just a harmless hug. Your aunt had tried to give him the side one, but he insisted on the full frontal one and maybe had pressed her a little closer to him. For a crush, that moment was one to live for, right? But as the years went by, things became weirder. Since he was also the chaplain for the youth and your aunt was one of the most active youth members, they almost always spent every weekend around each other. By now, your aunt was in her last teenagerhood years and the crush had waned off, but the priest had become more daring, and one day during a youth camp-out, he had dared expose himself to her.

He tried to convince her that there was beauty in the nakedness and that there was nothing weird. She had refused, and when the camp was over, she was shocked when she was called for a meeting with your grandmother and other women of the guild. She had been accused of seducing the man of God.

Her defenses were shut down immediately. She was forced to go for confession and confess sins she never even could fathom. The priest was, of course, prayed for; the devil had lost this battle, and God was to prevail. Your aunt never left church; she just changed to another church, but she stopped going home once she joined the university. Your grandmother always insisted she had forgiven her on that matter, but she never wanted to discuss it.

The reason your grandmother refused to attend your aunt’s funeral was again on sins that even she had no control over. The church taught that it was normal to have same-sex attraction ideation but never to act on them. In university, your aunt finally knew what it meant to love someone, and it turned out to be a woman. She acted on this ideation.

Without warning or anything, with the same priest who had always tried to take advantage of her, your grandmother stormed your aunt’s hostel for a forceful exorcism. But it seemed God did not mind the relationship, and in that moment, your aunt chose the new woman she had loved over the woman who had seen her as a liar when she needed womanhood more. And she insisted and maintained that she was still Catholic, even in her death.

Your grandmother could not attend the burial of such a sinner. During that last visit, you looked into the eyes of the sinner your grandmother chose to see as less evil. You made the choice that a Catholic priest would be the last person you would call for this kind of business. In fact, by the time your aunt had told you her story, you had already been sceptical about the whole God business.

Of course, you knew that God existed, but there was something utterly wrong with how people around Him and the structures operated. Of course, you knew that it was not really the colonialists who brought religion, but you knew the version they brought was not the same version of Christianity that had existed in Africa before their coming. This, coupled with so many other loopholes just in the logic alone, had forced you to silently begin revolting against the idea of religion, especially Christianity.

When your aunt gave you her story with the priest, and when you saw how the same church treated her differently, you wondered why she never left, even at death. You promised yourself that the Catholic priest would be the last person you call for this kind of business. And now watching this woman who has just reminded you of your grandmother, you realise that maybe you are almost nearing that point.

“This world is very spiritual, but we block ourselves from experiencing it. Your troubles are not abnormal. People generally tend not to like others, and sometimes they extend curses for generations. Spirits hold grudges also. What I do is the same as what the other did to your family. With my gifts, I can help manipulate the spiritual. Follow my instructions, and together we will bind this malice and send it back to wherever it came from, even if the proclaimer of it is already beyond the grave,” the woman tells you after she is done arranging her things on the table.

For the first time since you began seeking help, you realise that this is not going to be the same.

There is always some aestheticised version of African Spirituality on social media, and sitting here, you slowly realise that whatever others glorify on social media is nowhere near the reality. You get scared. What do you mean, send it back? What do you mean, manipulate the spirit world? You suddenly feel like you are really not up to it, but you realise it is too late to back out.

“Here, chew on this root,” she orders and hands you the dark brown plant part. The look on her face, which reminded you of your grandmother, is now gone, and in its place is something else. It is almost surreal, and at times it even feels like her face is shifting.

You chew the plant, and it is very hard. You try to wet it with more saliva. When it finally begins breaking in your mouth, you realise its taste. A very sharp, bitter, and pinching taste. You close your eyes as you try to control your stomach from emptying.

“Some call us witches and the devil’s advocates, but the truth is, we hear Earth speak. That root has some protective aspects to it. You will need protection. When I reach out to the other side, sometimes things that are not supposed to come over, come over. I can expel this one and probably leave you with a more sinister one,” she advises as she picks up a beaded ornament.

Chills settle in your body, and suddenly, the atmosphere in the room shifts. You feel like you are being carried from room to room, and you begin hearing voices. You hear the voices in the most bizarre way that you can only describe as hearing faces. But the cold is what unsettles you the most, and suddenly you find yourself in your bathtub. It is half-filled with water, and there are many green plants. One would think you were cooking vegetables there, but no, you are actually fully naked and sitting in this concoction.

The spiritual lady is standing beside you while she pours water from the bathtub over your head, and you shiver. She speaks, but you cannot hear what she says. However, you notice that she is using the same cup you served her with.

“These plants know the secrets of this earth. These plants have learnt these secrets and have taken it up on themselves,” she says. “Take this!!” she shouts as she hands you a bunch of plants bound together.

“Talk to it. Command it. Tell it that this curse you are going through, it should take it and redirect where it came from!”

Seated in the bathtub with green leaves around your naked body, you find yourself looking hard at a plant and instructing it. This is the side of African spirituality that you did not expect to experience.

The next parts flow quickly. You rinse yourself; you dry up and dress up. She gives you a herb ointment and more leaves, barks, and roots with instructions on how to use them. It is all over. She no longer has the white gown or head wrap. She is back in her kitenge dress, once again reminding you of your grandmother.

She promises all will be well. But before she leaves, she gives you some advice; you suspect she can probably read your mind.

“I know you might be wondering about our gods, right? The truth is the same. The truth is universal. God is one, the same one who created all. What our people did was discover that God had also created other spiritual entities and blessed them with different powers and limitations. These are the entities our ancestors set altars for and worshipped.

“To us, these entities are as dangerous as they are helpful. All you need to do is appease them in the right way, and if the heart you have is a good one, you could do good with them. And if the one you have is evil, then evil will prevail. That is what sets them apart from God.

“Some of our ancestors die, and they join these entities sometimes. Others die, and with the nature of their death, these keepers of the spirit world cannot allow them to enter and disrupt the peace there. So, they are left to wander around seeking the ruin of souls until they can finally find that peace.

“These restless spirits, too, can be manipulated. But remember that God is still the One in all this. Sometimes we get so lost in our ways, we forget Him, and I know of many, from many places, who totally forgot Him and replaced Him.

“I can guarantee you that whatever spirits were after you have been bound and sent back. But the funny thing with our ways is that these spirits will always try to find a way back. And so, constantly, you will find yourself in these battles.

“Personally, I am a nurse by profession. But once in a while, some people really need my help. And by these gifts blessed upon me by the Lord, I can only serve Him by helping out.

“But if you really want my good advice, find God in whichever way you can, because He is the one with the full dominion over all this.”

Of course, you are shocked. There is a lot that goes unsaid in discussions concerning spirituality. Of course, to you, it has always been a thing of going back to your roots and embracing them. But finally, you are here, at your roots, even having chewed some of them, and you realise you do not know enough of it to be sure of it.

And the advice from someone whom the ancestors speak through is very vague, but nonetheless, a warning: One should not just start practising some of these things if they are not rooted enough in them. That these ways are sometimes cursed. And the heart of man is easily corruptible, so imagine what these spirits could do if they found someone not wise enough to deal with them.

And finally, imagine being able to manipulate these spirits, but in the end, forgetting the one behind them all, the one who could only help when it all falls out.

You are happy she does not leave you with a bracelet or ask you to set up an altar. She herself confesses she does not set up altars, for her allegiance is with the one true God.

“You begin setting these altars and soon you have a god for everything, but very powerless in the real sense,” she adds as she laughs out loud.

That is when you notice her neck and see a rosary. Her eyes do not miss a thing, and she immediately explains to you that she is a Catholic and that even at some point she may have wanted to become a nun. But God needed her elsewhere.

That is when she tells you the next shocking thing.

“The truth is that I always pray before and after these activities. I do not think God sees them as sinful, really. All I ask from Him is protection before I walk into it, and forgiveness when I am done, because a lot of the time, I forgo invoking His name and directly deal with the spirit at hand.”

That same evening, after she leaves, after you have soaked the things she used in hot soapy water and washed and rinsed them over and over to your satisfaction, your husband returns. He is different. You cook for him, and with the instructions given, you put some herbs in his meal. Outside, children chase each other and the 9pm Citizen bulletin theme song blasts from the living room. The universities are on strike again and Nairobi City Council and Kenya Power are still on with their petty games. The parliament has approved the new financial bill and the Gen Zs are silent. You watch him more than you watch the news as he eats.

That night, he does not touch you as if it is a forced duty on him. No, he holds you as if his own life depends on it, and your body reacts in the way of remembering how it felt to be wanted.

That night, with sighs and moans and gentleness, you accept that you have your man back. One part of the curse is lifted.

In the coming weeks, you go about your business, but a thought is still stuck in your mind. It is the question of where the lie lies.

You start thinking that maybe it is time you started going to church again. This time round, at least you have some knowledge of things that most never talk about concerning the spiritual. You realise that a lot of it is in the grey areas.

You still cannot understand how the woman who helped you with your spiritual battle still professed belief in the same God you’ve had trouble with. The same God who deserted your aunt. The same God who extended grace to the priest. That in running away from it all, you still find yourself deep in it. Maybe that is the truth that your aunt too had accepted and ended up embracing this God that people had tried to convince her did not like people of her kind.

You still wonder why, in it all, He must leave His human subjects, who by the look of it all are the weakest, to try and make sense of things He could just instantly shed light on.

You remember your ancestors before, who were convinced of the evilness of their way, while in truth, it was not that simple. You remember your grandmother, who forgot it all and only embraced the appealing aspects of religion. And you remember those who also forgot the evils of the spiritual practice and pretended to embrace only the good side.

Finally, you remember that there is much left to be cleansed.

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