One morning last December, I was seated with my mum, when we hear a small commotion in the kitchen. I look up from my phone, my mum from her notebook. We stare at each other for a split second, strain our hearing with our heads slightly turned towards the source of the noise, and squint our eyes as if prompting the noise to do another take.  It heard us telepathically (whatever it was). A bit louder this time, the noisy commotion goes again. This time, we sprung to our feet and rushed to the kitchen. I am a bit scared, but my mum’s face is gleeful.

Mum: Yes! Finally you have been caught! I knew it.  You thought you could go on with this for a while?  No way!

Me: (looks at her blankly, but she offers no explanation).

Mum: God is great.  Your time has come to leave this house. In Kanye? Ipondo Kanye? Aol gi wach mar ni jikon mara ema isiko ka ikethoe gik moko. Iparo ga ni iriek? Ndaloni orumo! Kutkut mi goyo ga, orumo! Nyalie wa! Kawuono oyudi! Kawuono bura oloyi! (Translation; where are you hiding? I am tired of things being spoilt in my kitchen. Today is your day of reckoning).

Me: (more alarmed and wide-eyed, am perplexed that my mum is conversing with a non-existent person). Who are you talking to? Ng’ama bura oloyo?

Mum: Oyieyo moro ne odonjo e oda ka, nyocha.

Phew, so the other party in that conversation was a rat! For a moment I thought it was a ghost….. wait a minute, a RAT! I jumped (ladies instincts’ are always to jump, something about protecting our legs; after our faces that is. Protecting the selling points kind of a thing, I guess).  A rat! What the hell was a rat doing in my mum’s kitchen!  Now I am furious!  How dare that rat just swagger into my mum’s kitchen. To do what? Was it just passing by on its way to shags, now that it’s December and all bunnies (summer, costo or shags) are immigrating? Was that it? A shags bunny that is, on its way to upcountry in Nduberi or Chebarbar?

My fury can only be understood by someone who has never encountered a rat, but has grown up reading all those books that place rats below the gutters (ratatouille included); disturbances which need to be terminated at sound and sight. In my community, when someone refers to you as an Oyieyo, they couldn’t have degraded you much lower than that.  You are basically the scum.

“Oyieyo kayi to kudhi”, is a famous saying. It means that a rat bites you and blows into it so that you don’t feel it. Hence, you can’t feel the pain but it continues to bite. Essentially, a rat is the enemy within.  A Judas Iscariot of sorts.  The kind that sits with you plotting the teachers’ strike, but later sneaks away to statehouse to sell you out in the middle of the night, after sipping some statehouse tea. Translating this explanation is an arduous task, so forgive me if it doesn’t sink in. This is how we classify rats;

• Oyieyo mar gudhu gudhu or Oyiiech gudhu gudhu – a farm nuisance. Urban folks refer to it as a rodent. It eats the leguminous plants.
• Oyieyo mar Kanisa or Oyiiech Kanisa – a church mouse. My mum’s pastoral version is that makes people poor because is eats the blessings in the church (so now you know who to blame for your poverty).
• Oyieyo mar ot or Oyiiech ot – rummages in neighborhoods; prefers the comfort of houses.

Master Oyieyo, the terror rodent that dared set foot in my mum’s kitchen, falls in the third category.  Yes, I have given it a name and salutation. After all, we all deserve some respect, right? It looked young, hence I christened it Master Oyieyo. Mr Oyieyo, I presume, is some geezer somewhere who is yet to know what trouble his young’ un has squeezed himself into. Girls don’t get into senseless trouble, so no, its not female. (Gender peeps, drop some rocks in your Chivas and continue reading, it’s never that serious).

Back to our discovery of Oyieyo, it had been caught on this DOOM thing that look like a bait, and seems to be the in thing for catching rodents (did we do away with mouse traps and poison?) Being a diligent and ardent #KOT Sacco member, my phone is at hand.  I just press the camera button and click away.  This moment has to be captured.  This is a highlight in 2015.  Others have tried before, but failed. Their DOOM failed them miserably.  Ours didn’t. Here we are (or my mum rather) having achieved that fete! We stand on the brink of greatness, if I may be allowed to call it that. Allow me some floss mode seconds here.  I have never been part of a mission; covert or other. So this is big.  Plus we are in 2015, where we take photos of an accident first, post them on FB/Twitter to brag about being at the scene, then proceed to assist he victims (if ever). Oyieyo deserved a picture moment, his 15 seconds of fame; we all did in 2015.

“Kawuono omaki! Today is the day”. I can’t help but think my mum is having a field day with this Oyieyo mission. She is on a high about its capture and continues having a conversation, the rat caught and hoisted. She asks me to bring a paper bag and marches out of the kitchen triumphantly. As willing deputy commander of the mission, I retrieve one and follow her outside.

Our march takes us past the main gate, the watchman looks bemused and says, ‘ndiyo hiyo?’ She retorts, “yes, can you imagine!” Even the watchman is aware of Master Oyieyo. Proof that women are great talkers.

She puts the sticky DOOM thing with Oyieyo inside the plastic paper bag and orders me to look for a big rock. (Luos and rocks *sigh*. It’s not just our ability to retrieve & hurl them with lightning speed and precision, we go a long way. Our history with rocks that is. From Luanda Magere turning into a stone after his Nandi wife found his secret source of strength, his shadow and pierced it; to Luanda Bindu where apparently there is holy water and once you enter in, you don’t come out; to Got Kwer where the Legio Maria Leader was buried and Kit Mikayi the weeping rock.

As I try to hand her the rock, she commands me to stone Oyieyo. “Nege wa?” wow! That was not part of the plan. Atleast the willing deputy commander of the mission had not been briefed on that part.  Or was this plan B, which is effected if plan A has been compromised? In that case, only the Commander knew it.

‘What?You want me to kill it? Are you sure? Isn’t it enough to just throw away the bag in the trash?’ At this point, I have caught feelings for Oyieyo. I have been taking pics for a couple of minutes, so we were already bonding. I was directing the photo shoot.  He was my subject of study. Never mind that I had brought the killing stone. Still, the death penalty has not been effected for years, such sentences are commuted to life imprisonment. Oyieyo deserved that; to be left out in the cold. He wasn’t going to be free from that sticky DOOM stuff, why not just toss away the bag and let the cats to do rest?

She was having none of it.  “Nege, nege wa! If you don’t it will creep its way back”. Later, I thought, she must have been in a catch 22. If she didn’t finish Oyieyo, he might come back (with a gang) and finish her pantry.  It was a battle after all, shoot first before you are shot.

Oyieyo is gone (I plead the fifth on the how). Master Oyieyo will not be coming back. Maybe his brother. My mum is not taking chances though. The battle is still on, so her stash of DOOM Glue Rat Bait is intact.