Superstition, pretentiousness: The tale of a Caine Prize winner

Since Binyavanga Wainaina won Kenya’s first Caine Prize in Literature, I have formed the tradition of finding the winning stories for each edition and reading them as soon as I can.

When I heard that the Kenyan writer Idza Luhumyo had bagged the 2022 AKO Caine Prize, I rushed to find her winning entry, Five Years Next Sunday. It did not disappoint. 

Over the years, the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing has given us stories that have represented the diversity of Africa.

Whether it is the painful realities of war in Yvonne Odhiambo’s Weight of Whispers, the dynamics of slum dwelling in NoViolet Bulawayo’s Hitting Budapest, the playful improvisation of Makena Onjerika’s Fanta Blackcurrant or the experimental immersion into escape and pretentiousness of Ironesen Okojie’s protagonist in her story Grace Jones, the stories have challenged and educated us in equal measure. 

Once one starts reading Five Years Next Sunday, the urgency with which it is written becomes clear.

The protagonist’s locks are not just a choice — they are a burden that defines her relationship with those who live in her quarter.

Perhaps in terms of the ostracization theme that runs across the story, it is closer to the 2016 winner Lidudumalingani Mqombothi’s Memories We Lost, a haunting tale of a girl ostracized for her mental illness.

Stylistically though, Five Years Next Sunday is in a class of its own. Incandescent — that is how the panel judges christened it.

Unique power

The story is about a young woman in possession of a unique power — she can call rain through her hair.

This power is something that is in her family line, evidenced by the fact that her sangazimi (father’s sister) and the one before her had this power in their hair too.

The young woman’s hair has not been cut for a long time. Consequently, rain has not fallen.

Little wonder then that her mother, father, brothers and community fear and hate her. 

Living within her shell and counting the years she has had the locks as a painful drought bites, the young woman has a chance encounter with a foreign mzungu, an encounter that changes her life for good.

The man shows reverence and awe at the girl’s hair.

An avid schemer, the man draws an elaborate romantic episode, even going as far as roping in the young woman’s parents through his endless gifts and money.

Whereas her parents had seen her as a good-for-nothing burden who had to be hidden, their attitude towards her changes when they realise she can be the family cash cow.

They open a shop business with the money received and totally change their lifestyles. They can now talk to her as part of the family.

Even her siblings no longer see her as the family embarrassment she was before. 

Despite the false sense of new-found acceptance and love, the woman, perhaps too trusting after a lifetime of ostracization and hate, falls too easily into the trap of blatant deception.

The female white man’s compatriot tricks her into cutting her hair.

When she emerges, confident that her new-found female lover will take her away, she is shocked that like in the times before, she stands alone.

Luhumyo balances the precariousness of superstition with the painful realities and challenges of life.

In this community, the weight of superstition is felt by the women who are unfortunate enough to have this hair that calls rain.

Rejected by her family and feared by her community, this woman bears the brunt of a belief system that fails to accept “the callers” for who they are.

Consequently, the protagonist lives persistently on the edge. Ironically, the hair that puts her life in danger and exposes her to the indignity of being ostracized is the same one that offers her protection.

In fact, it is asserted that “even though the fear of thirst — and death — is strong, the fear of those who have the rain in their hair is stronger.” 

Greed

These people would rather starve than touch her even while they know so well that she grows rain in her hair. The story exposes the indignity of greed and the pretentious nature of human beings.

Her parents’ change in attitude towards her is purely motivated by the financial benefits they get.

Her brothers who have nearly never talked to her since she was born suddenly become her friends.

Because they are now sure that their child’s hair could be a source of their enrichment, they have no sense of community and do not mind whether the drought bites on so long as they benefit financially.

In the repeated words of her father, “No need for rain”. They revel in the suffering of the others even as they put established neighbours out of business.

Deep down, the protagonist is aware of their pretence and is sure they will take part in banishing her to the land of the witches by burning her at the stake. 

The writer seems to mock a deluded sense of sophistication in the way she describes the change in her family’s lifestyle.

Her mother and father adopt new lifestyles. Her mother begins to read books and now spends her time “stretching out on the beach chair, now staring out at the ocean, now with cucumbers on her eyes”.

Her father is now into reading foreign magazines, securing subscriptions for Newsweek, the Times and Reader’s Digest.

They not only destroy the sense of community by putting local traders out of business but also make a mockery of their own culture by showing greater reverence to all things foreign.

Luhumyo’s choice of the language defines her unique style. She for example uses repetition to strategically achieve emphasis.

In the first two lines, for example, she uses the words “black” and “dark” three times, foregrounding to the dark times she is to face and the day of reckoning that is fast approaching.

The interspersion of Swahili words and phrases is not obtrusive either.

They complement what the Prize judging panel affirmed by saying it had “exquisite language”.

Those who love good endings will never smile at the end of Five Years Next Sunday.

As the story draws to a close, the looming fear that hangs over the head of this woman draws closer home.

Earlier, she had declared that “My hair is a small god”. But now as a group of men lurk in the darkness with torches of fire, a sense of inevitability that not even a deity can stop is felt.

The story ends just like it began, with her alone and powerless, only now she lacks a more important thing — her special hair, and it might cost her her life.

The writer teaches Literature, Ringa Boys High School, Homabay County