Lament of Chetambe

Coward Fate stares at us in our eye tonight;
I see the naked fear in us in its bolder eyes.
The moonlit silence of the enemy in siege
Is to us, Were Khakaba, a deafening dirge!
A herd of hundreds of humped bulls still stands
between our old Fort and their new Trenches,
on the soft dewy Bukusu hill grass, untouched
under the pallid skies of the month of May.
Hobley’s whitemen and men from Wangaland
know not the old ethics of real war:
peace offers are equal to a noble surrender,
so they like puny wily Wangas they are, await still
the war conch at the sight of the amber sunlight
to break our world into tiny fragments
and fill the Nzoia with our arrogant blood.

Kha!
The butchery at Chetambe will bear witness
to the distant land of the living dead
as survivors narrate how the white terror of the Maxim
the rumoured ruthlessness of Banubi mercenaries
the bloodthirsty Kakungulu, hound of Kabaka,
his uncircumcised warrior-boys from Buganda
and the rest now formed into an alliance of war
met a justified death at edge of our swords and tip of spears!

We say bring the war! Bring the war! Bring it!
The peaceful sons of the Thigh of the Elephant
Now in full battle regalia and erection await it!
Bring the war not in the redness of a cold dawn
Bring it as you want it, cowards, bring it white!

They did
We died

But
the memory of our last stand against
the lead and brimstone of the white wars
lives on, on the silent Chetambe stone hills
west of Webuye’s Brodericks Falls
and
in the proud mourn
of our blood that survived
we still laugh when we lament:

“Khwafwa Khwabuna eee nga lumerera,
wa Chetambe eee nga lumerera eee.”

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Chetambe Fort was stormed in the decisive battle between the Bukusu sub-nation of Kenya and military forces of the British Empire in the great battle of Chetambe Hill in the spring of 1895. Overpowered by a better-armed alliance of several white military officers led by C. W. Hobley, Wanga soldiers from Mumia's, Nubian, Maasai and Baganda mercenaries, the last bastion of Bukusu independence capitulated but not before a spirited campaign that mounted heavy casualties on their foes and family. The rest is history. The fort was founded by Chetambe Yifile, ruler of the Abangachi clan in the 19th Century. The Bukusus are some of the few people in the Great Lakes region known to have lived in forts before the dawn of the 20th Century. Oral historians claim they carried this tradition across tens of generations from their olden home on the banks of the Nile. There was a fort that also stood at Lumboka, etc. A direct descendant of the last inhabitants of this fort continues to draw attention to the historical importance of this place as a site of resistance within Kenyan national history.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* This poem is taken from JKS Makokha’s new collection of poems, Nest of Stones (written under the pen name Wanjohi wa Makokha), published by Langaa RPCIG. (ISBN 9789956578306).
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at Pambazuka News.