The Thief’s Hand, and other stories from Wamba, Kenya
by William Rubel after stories by Babu of Wamba
These stories are based on recordings I have made of Donald Zakayo, known by his family and friends, as Babu, in the village of Wamba, Kenya. These are more heavily edited than the first group of stories that includes Babie’s Coachand Goat Woman.The stories in this collection are drawn from nearly sixty recordings that include children’s tales, stories of warriors coming in contact with technology for the first time, stories of crime and passion, stories about the colonial era, stories about stupid ‘mazungus’ — white people who make mistakes through arrogance — and stories about local characters.
Many of the stories included here depict brutal acts of sadisitic violence. Are they true? I have no idea. When I asked friends in Maralal about Sanana, a musician whose music you can find elsewhere on this web site, I was given a different explanation about why Sanana became a beggar than the one Babu gave, and when I told both these stories to an anthropologist while waiting for my plane home in the Nairobi airport a third possibility was suggested. And so, as with many works of fiction, there may be more than one path to the underlying truth.
The stories largely take place in the manyattas, small groupings of small huts surrounded by a fence made out of the branches of thorny acacia trees. The huts are small structures built of sticks and plasted with dung. They are round, there is a small door, and no windows. The roof is low and one cannot stand up in them. Stories that take place in village structure — like in ‘The Thief’s Hand’ — are more substantial — taller, but the walls may be made of mud although a few houses are plastered, and I would imagine a plastered house for ‘The Jealous Boyfreind.’
I have read all these stories to Babu, with the exception of ‘Sanana’, more or less in the version that I am publishing here. He approves of them all.