The Skull in London by Grace Suge

I have here a piece of fiction based on the true story of my great grandfather Koitalel Arap Samoei. He was a chief leader and medicineman of the Nandi tribe who was shot dead by Captain Richard Meinertzhagen of the Colonial forces on the 19th day of October 1905. Captain Meinertzhagen cut off Koitalel’s body and took his head to London as proof of his death as well as a morbid trophy of colonialism. Besides his head, Meinertzhagen also shipped Koitalel’s leadership paraphernalia including his batons, his cloak, and headdress. This can be authenticated in his book -My Kenyan Diary (1902-1906) where he confesses. "My drastic action on this occasion haunted me for many years. I Richard Meinertzhagen murdered Koitalel Samoei, the Nandi Orkoiyot on the 19th October 1905,"
Koitalel's royal batons and other artifacts have since been returned to the country and are currently in exhibition at a mausoleum built in his honor. But the skull and some more artifacts are alleged to be on exhibition at the Pitts Rivers Museum in London.

The Skull in London

The curator lowered him onto a stool at the Orkoiyot’s Mausoleum. He was a person highly sought after and waited upon to witness what should have been a momentous occasion yet in history. Soon, his attention was called to the two royal batons displayed prominently on the wall behind a glass case. He raised his glance towards them, his eyes evincing a true longing, his face flushing with warmth. 

“Give me them,” he said.

The curator carefully extricated them from the case and brought them over to him. The man brought his eye and laid it upon the batons on his lap. Touching gently, he turned them this way and that way, looking here and there, and both together, before he nodded his head. The pleased smile slowly filling up the curator’s face was fallen off by the man’s swinging dewlap,

“What is the good of these batons? What is the use of me here?” he asked. “This that I see is but a small thing, and more, they have neither teeth nor gap, and more, they have no word these once,” he groaned.

The curator, his countenance lost its light completely.

“In good truth, is the Orkoiyot’s skull on display, like these were up there, at a museum in London?” 

 “Yes….eeer..No…it is just said in whispers …” The curator tried to answer the man, his splaying hands betraying his evasiveness.

‘Trained to a wall on the right side is a standard bearing three full-faced and walking golden lions and a wreath of English flowers on the left,’ It was said to him, ‘the medicineman’s skull, adorned in a lion-skin headdress, sits below them inside a golden glass box, displayed in full profile to the public.’ This revelation spoilt the man’s heart. It finished the others; taking away the dignity of the skull of his father, the animal totem of his clan, and a grass token for good. 

Not content with what the curator had answered him, the man angrily shook a creased finger at the curator,

 “What words are those? It is not good to lie. Firstly, the British are not doing well if that were the case; secondly, they did not treat him in a proper way; thirdly, I am in bitterness about him, and lastly, why couldn’t you bring his head and his batons in toto? They have not been there seven days, they have not been there thirty days, haven’t they been there at the museum many many days?”

The curator, he was a silent person. 

 “He will not know it, and I am sorry to say: a runner who for himself runs in front of people who were gathered there to gaze and obtains a height higher than all stepping onto a rump; a wreath of flowers in one hand and a gold medal in the other, has spoiled our name. If you see him standing there, he is not unlike an artifact displayed in a museum in London.”

The man ground his gums, hastily handed back the batons, and clicked his mouth loudly. His sinews, they all clicked in chorus as he raised himself from the stool by propping on a staff with all his might before he tottered away. What was thought of as good tidings for the Nandi— having their petition sent back down to them from Britain— was all put into confusion.

***

It was one of the days when the moon was very late, Orkoiyot, his foster father, was wakened when the waters at Kaptumo swamp were still roaring. The then boy, from his sleeping place, peeped out to watch Orkoiyot put on a Columbus monkey-skin cloak from his ketet and arrange the cowrie shell on his lion-skin headdress. He watched as the Orkoiyot inserted the sacred stones in the ketet, and shake it before casting them on an ox skin. And as always, the cast stones did not engage the boy’s interest, his eyes were fixed upon the Orkoiyot’s when he looked to see what answer the oracle gave to him, this time noting the wrinkled brow after the Orkoiyot had obtained his omen. The Orkoiyot became quiet, his troubled brow seeming frozen in place and the boy instantly knew that the omen could hardly hold a good front.

Orkoiyot had him up before the sun had grown and informed him of his rendezvous with Kipkoror, the white Captain of the colonial forces. 

“The white man has called me we come to talk with one another. Even though my heart deeply distrusts him, I just must go to hear the matter he wants me for.”

 “But papa, my feet are very good. Let me run to see it is clear before and clear behind before you go there.” He pleaded to his father.

“You weri, I know your feet are fair, but you will not be in my going of today. I am going to attend to him who is calling me and will do so myself directly. Let your soul be trustful that I shall return in health and the heavens will not have fastened before I have fetched you from there, in the fields. Be off weri.” The Orkoiyot spoke to him, his baton showing the way to the fields.

It was times like this, with his mood sore, that the boy thought of his former home country, of his former parents, of his former kinsmen. His thoughts wandered as he sat on a hill with the mountains of the Maasai country looming in sight.

It was said that the Orkoiyot, in an effort to placate a wife who was dear to him—the one who was lucky to obtain her head in a kraal yet she did not grow big with young—mounted an expedition to the Maasai lands and ordered the warriors to obtain cattle together with any child they found.  It was amazingly said too that his head went with the warriors whilst his body remained in his kraal. 

The Orkoiyot entrusted the foundling— him— to the care of the said wife. Their hearts were straight, the Orkoiyot and his family, and he did not hold them in his even though he became bound to them. The Orkoiyot put the boy in his own eye, under his roof, to keep him, for he loved the foundling so much that there was nothing like it.

He was of no great age when he was lifted with his father’s cattle; the memory of his past life did not linger long in his head. His then name might have been Lemuani or Lemaron or even Mapinko Ole Kantai, he will never remember, but what he had to remember was to water the sheep and goats before the sun had stood upright and the Nandi were now his kindred. 

***

Today, the weather was full of foreboding. They howled, the strong winds of this day, they could be caught in the palms. And the sun, standing there upright, bent him over with tiredness after the folds had drunk water. Growing in great luxuriance were great trees of every kind, but he was quite content choosing a small doum palm and sat down quietly upon its trunk hoping to be met with rest there. 

All at once, there was a burst of noise, so infernal, the ground resounded from it, splitting his stomach. Afterward, he could hear the terrible voices sounded by bullroarers in the warriors’ arms, the tooting horns in the village criers’, the growing rattle of guns in the colonial forces’, and the oft baaings and bleatings of sheep and goats in his.

The panicked boy, in great haste, arose, and with the greatest speed ran to the village Square. There, he came upon a posse of warriors arrayed in fighting gear and villagers gathered about their elders listening. He stood at the outer edge of the crowd, desperately giving ear to what the elders said; how the cunning Kipkoror shot his father, cut his head, and carried it off together with his batons as a trophy. The elders cut the meeting, villagers kept their mourning, and the warriors, readying themselves for war, bustled about in a fierce Kambakta dance. The boy, unready to join in, stepped apart from them. Hot with anger, he shouted with pain, wrenching the sonaiek— a mark of his father’s Talai clan —from his neck. To dissuade him from further violence, some warriors rushed upon him and started to war with him, stroking his cheeks lightly with the palms of their hands until he was persuaded to relent. He went away homeward when his mourning was ended, only to be replaced by denial on his arrival there.

***

The sonaiek sundered, he was no longer a boy, so, he matured a plan in the night like a man and planned to act on it himself like one. Sleep abandoned him—he was astir before the oxen had gone to the fields. First of all, he prepared himself while it was yet early; uprooted sheaves of wet grass, clothed himself with sprigs of loincloth, and off he went in pursuit. He ran a very long way away until he came up the road of the puffing iron snake that came with the white invaders. 

It crept along, the snake, —just like his father had prophesied— blowing thunderous bellows and puffing up smoke like an ancient on his tobacco pipe. With grass forming the Seretiot in hand, he lifted it in appeal, extending it towards the driver of the snake while at the same time inquiring most anxiously after his father’s head.  Each wave propitiated the driver to stop and hand over the head before it had come to a stop in the colonialist’s lands. Lagging, he held out the Seretiot on passengers on the next carriage and the next, to which they also seemed insensible. He saw their manners, they were not at all good, they laughed while pulling their fingers out at him as if he were making jokes. 

Carriages started to pass along like waves until the snake was gone away fully. Eyes downcast, he turned home ill with hunger at a time when porridge would have been bubbling up in the cooking place and his mother feeding the fire. But neither was his mother sitting at home waiting to attend to him when he should come nor embers in the cooking place when he passed inside. There was nothing and nobody to see, neither woman nor man, old nor young. The kraal lain deserted, with him the only stayer. 

The next day he was the first to open the door of his father’s hut and without loss of time, a fresh Seretiot in hand, he was off before the land had become light. Running, he came up with the snake and made overtures for peace with the driver and the passengers in it. Like the day before, they all seemed impossible to induce. He turned back when neither man nor tree was recognizable and made to arrive where his home was supposed to be, the land lay open before him, from here to there, desolate. The huts, the granary, the kraal, and the whole village were all black as soot, scorched by Kipkoror and his forces. He passed the night alone, with not a shadow of man, beast, or plant to embrace.

On the third day, he was wakeful seeing the moon ascending higher, and headed out without opening a door. On coming in sight of the snake, he trod its path from the front, making straight for it. All his efforts being unavailing— he was nearly thrown down the snake’s ponderous wheels before he got off in time.  Kiptum, his friend, saw him nearly crushed and thought him possessed by a suicidal spirit. Kiptum made to reach him, whirled him around, till he came to a stop.

“Eh, you mad one you, what does all this running mean? You want the creeping thing to crush you like millet to your death?”

“No matter. If I die I die! If it comes by the snake, so be it.”

The boy pushed Kiptum out of his way and continued to run.

 “Weri, wait for a little, I want us to talk together.” Kiptum entreated as he ran after. “Come away from there. Let us go to the shade of that tree, so that you may stay your feet from this sun.”

 “Depart from me, weri,” The boy cried. “There is nothing the matter with me.”

“See, the sun is fierce and your skin is raw running such a far road,”

“Very good.” 

“You will be sorely troubled if you continue to exert yourself too much. Anger is there, hunger is there, thirst is there. Put down your burdens, let me lend you a hand.”

“I am enough by myself only. Leave me to go my way and I will leave you to go yours.” 

“Then your pacesetter has come. I am ready, let us be going.” Kiptum persisted.

To taste his vigor, Kiptum began setting a pace for the boy and the boy kept his legs to press on. They had not run far before the driver of the snake put out his hand and let go of something from his grip. Hastening forward, the boy stopped and peeked at the item on the ground thinking it was his father’s head, only to find it a block of half-eaten bread. Seeing the bread, Kiptum threw away his Seretiot, went up furiously to grab it, and opened his mouth. The remaining handful bit after he had heaped up to his fourth stomach, he held it out to the boy, but it was refused.

“Is it little?” he asked, “or you don’t like it?”

The boy shrugged his shoulders and watched silently as his friend got it finished.

 “But this thing is pleasing food. So, satisfying food this one. There is none like it!” Kiptum exclaimed.

“Indeed! What is the good of you coming along anyway?”

“If those white people in the snake have a diet this sparing, very much food as to throw them at us, then it will be good to come running with you every day.”

He no longer set himself up a pacesetter, the rotten Kiptum, he set himself up a rival, and the harder he ran to stand on the boy’s head, this being his stratagem to get to the food first. Other children of the former village, now living in the forest, their hearts had been pushed to one side by hunger too. So, on hearing about the boys’ luck by the road that day, Kipchoge called out to Kiptoo who called out to Cheruiyot, and one by one, they came, many of them, to haunt the road. They strove against one another, their upheld hands empty—desperately begging for scraps—and like a small doum palm waving amongst great trees, they overshadowed the Seretiot in the boy’s hand until at last he stopped and let go.