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The Green Leaves 3
men who had been sent to the police station by the clan came
out.
'Where is the clan elder?' the white officer demanded.
Olielo stepped forward.
'Tell me the truth. What happened? I don't believe a word of
what these people are saying. What did you send them to tell
me?'
Olielo spoke sombrely and slowly in Dholuo, pronouncing
every word distinctly. His words were translated by an African
police officer.
'I sent them to inform you that we killed a thief last night.'
'What! You killed a man?' the white man moved towards Olielo. The other policeman followed him.
'You killed a man?' the white officer repeated.
'No, we killed a thief.' Olielo maintained his ground.
'How many times have I told you that you must abandon
this savage custom of butchering one another? No one is a thief
until he has been tried in a court of law and found guilty. Your
people are deaf.' The white man pointed at Olielo with his
stick in an ominous manner.
'This time I shall show you how to obey the law. Who killed
him?' the white officer asked angrily.
'All of us,' answered Olielo, pointing at the crowd.
'Don't be silly. Who hit him first?'
The crowd was getting restless. The people surged forward
menacingly towards the five police officers.
'We all hit the thief,' they shouted.
'If you want to arrest us, you are free to do so. You'd better
send for more lorries.'
'Where is the dead man?' the white man asked Olielo.
'There,' Olielo replied, pointing at the heap of leaves.
The police moved towards the heap. The crowd also pushed
forward. They wanted to get a glimpse of him before the white
man took him away.
The last time a man had been killed in the area, the police
took the corpse to Kisumu where it was cut up into pieces and
then stitched up again. Then they returned it to the people
saying, 'Here is your man -- bury him.' Some people claimed
that bile is extracted from such bodies and given to police
tracker dogs; and that is why the dogs can track a thief to his house. Many people believed such stories. They were sure
that this body would be taken away again by the police.
The European officer told the other police officer to uncover
the body. They hesitated for a while, and then obeyed.
Olielo looked at the body before them unbelievingly. Then
he looked at his people, and at the police. Was he normal?
Where was the thief? He looked at the body a second time. He
was not insane. It was the body of Nyagar, his cousin, who lay
dead, with a sizable wooden stick driven through his right eye.
Nyamundhe broke loose from the crowd and ran towards
the dead body. She fell on her husband's body and wept
bitterly. Then turning to the crowd, she shouted, 'Where is the
thief you killed? Where is he?'
As the tension mounted, the crowd broke up into little
groups of twos and threes. The women started to wail; and the
men who had killed the thief that night looked at one another
in complete disbelief. They had left Nyagar entering his village
while they walked on. They could swear to it. Then Olielo,
without any attempt to conceal his tear-drenched face,
appealed to his people with these words, 'My countrymen, the
evil hand has descended upon us. Let it not break up our
society. Although Nyagar is dead, his spirit is still among us.'
But Nyamundhe did not heed the comforts of Jaduong'
Olielo nor did she trust the men who swore that they had seen
Nyagar enter his village after the incident with the thieves. She
struggled wildly with the police who carried the corpse of her
husband and placed it on the back of the lorry to be taken to
Kisumu for a post-mortem. A police officer comforted her with
the promise that a village-wide-enquiry would start at once
into the death of her husband.
But Nyamundhe shook her head. 'If you say you will give
him back to me alive, then I will listen.'
Nyamundhe tore her clothes and stripped to the waist. She
walked slowly behind the mourners, weeping and chanting,
her hands raised above her head.
My lover the son of Ochieng'
The son of Omolo
The rains are coming down
Yes, the rains are coming down
The nights will be dark
The nights will be cold and long.
Oh! the son-in-law of my mother
I have no heart to forgive,
I have no heart to pardon
All these mourners cheat me now
Yes, they cheat me
But when the sun goes to his home and
Darkness falls, they desert me.
In the cold hours of the night
Each woman clings to her man
There is no one among them
There is none
There is no woman who will lend me a
Husband for the night
Ah, my lover, the son of Ochieng'
The son-law of my mother.
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