The Bowl, the Railway Line, and the Water Tank

Inside a land with abruptly changing terrain, was one valley in particular, in which nestled a village. This valley resembled the effect left when a huge, many-sided bowl, is forcibly sunk into soft mud, thus displacing fresh earth outwards into a series of gentle and steep hills around its brim. An unadventurous community occupied the said bowl, in shiny-roofed and thatched habitations scattered about, like polka dot gone awry. Those hills at the brims of Kiriku village had (seemingly) severed direct contact with the rest of the world. Come to think of it now, there wasn’t a reason to drive the community to venturing beyond Kiriku, in the so-called search for greener pastures. If the need to fend for the stomach and retire without a serious complaint is anything to go by, then comfortable indeed were the people.

Kiriku’s vegetation, which was thick and diverse, suggested agricultural suitability at its best. On the eastern side of this valley, there was a stream that thoughtfully meandered its way from the hills around, seeking an entrance. It appeared to flow towards the centre of the bowl, before making a turn towards some two other hills, and losing itself.

Kiriku also boasted of a huge escarpment, the face of which was sliced by a neat line of a rusted railway track that had seldom served its purpose, if a guess based on its looks may suffice. This track had weeds of all kinds growing in generous abundance between the rail sleepers. Following the track, one came to a section that had some horizontal attitude to it and in which the heavily cultivated escarpment opened into a calmer view devoid of human cultivation. A few paces adjacent to the railway line here, there sat several weathered brick structures, one of which was an elongated strip divided into equal single-roomed houses. Our casual observer would have deduced that these structures had once served as some kind of a train terminal, probably to water the engine, or to wait for the opposing train to pass. The overall trappings of the surrounding requested to be dated to the era of the steam engine. A second set of rails had branched away from the parent ones albeit for a hundred yards, before rejoining. Mid distance along this diversion was a tall, tubular thingummy whose poise suggested that the steam engine had many a times, halted under its mouth to be fed some water, before resuming its journey towards the thick forest beckoning yonder.

If rail service to these parts had for a long time been in disuse, it was not the same case with the station’s other accessories. The dilapidated houses were occupied by the larger Kiriku community, larger in the sense that they were further in distance from those inhabiting the centre of the valley. Being geographically elevated, (in some sense an advantage), another of these over the ones living on the valley floor was their proximity to fresh water. While those down below mainly drew their water from the stream, their rail brethren had an eternal supply of cleaner water from a miracle tank within this ancient railway station. This miracle tank was no more than an elevated metal water-tank. The few parts of it that you could see, were dark brown in colour from layers of rust. The rest of it was suffocated, and well camouflaged, with creeping flora. Overhanging weeds gave the entire structure the look of a dreadlocked giant in awkward amble up the escarpment, as the supporting truss structure had partly yielded with age. Vegetation was denser under the tank, a result of too much irrigation from water leaks above. Immediately behind the tank, the escarpment resumed its steep ascent.

How the tank had continued to serve its purpose when the rest of the infrastructure had crumbled after years of redundancy, was a riddle not many of the simple village folk had bothered to decipher. To Kiriku residents, the ‘miracle’ was at face value; that the fresh water was eternal. Perhaps the real miracle of it was that at such high an elevation over the underlying land surface, it had been no sweat to strike the water table. To utilise this geographical marvel, the engineers of the time had simply employed the myriad of skills at their disposal to erect this tank, into which water was pumped using a manual contraption, in reality, a suction pump operated by pedals. The current villagers had taken upon themselves to continue maintenance operations on this device for as long as they needed water – and this, unsurprisingly, was always.

The Station Brethren

The entire population living within and in the whereabouts of the station could not make ten families. The rent for those living on actual railway property was payable to a certain village personage who had allocated himself a grander home within the railway station - the three-roomed former office of whoever it was that had been the highest-ranked officer in the times of the viable rail. The rest merely occupied single rooms. The rent paying itself was not a straightforward affair, as the grapevine had it that some tenants paid regularly as required, others irregularly, and some not at all. How this villager had come to be the deserved benefactor of this scheme was yet another tale that had contributed to the convoluted story, part of which is the question of how the valley had become an established community with its own history, and hopefully, its legacy.

The Old Hag

Another person of worthy mention in this community is an enigmatic character - a haggish woman - who bore all the hallmarks of purported wizardry, for lack of a fitter description. She was a short, bent, and lithe creature, that walked in measured steps which on occasion, erupted into a gallop, the perfect instance being when she was in the forest gathering firewood and the clouds were dark with impending downpour, forcing her to hasten home. Her choice of clothes did little to douse the ever-flaming rumours of her alleged wicked inclinations. She had a predilection for garments of the darker variety, her perfect caricature being her dressed in a dirt-brown dress; tightly but imperfectly tied with a string around the waist, and flowing to the ankles in waves of disharmony. She forever wore a beaded anklet that had grazed her skin ashen, plus a hundred this and that on her wrists. Her head had never seen any covering, contrary to what was the norm for women of her age in the valley. Her grey-spangled hair had maintained a steady density and length, being half a finger in height.

She occupied the isolated and last station house in the direction of the forest, a square structure barely measuring five idle steps either way. Among her possessions was an ancient single-band radio that crackled inaudible static once in a while. A bed occupied half the room, sitting behind the swing of the door and across a chimney, on whose fireplace always rested a sooty pot atop three stones. This house had quite a yard. A broad-leafed, thick-stemmed and buttressed indigenous tree dwarfed the surrounding thick maize garden; all giving her house a sense of privacy. Among other crops in this yard were carrots, potatoes, and several other root and surface vegetables she had been adept at cultivating. An emaciated donkey akin to Rocinante, Don Quixote’s famed mount, could be heard once in a while braying within her compound.

During idle talk between some village idlers, one had jokingly offered that he had once seen, or thought he had seen her, milking a donkey in her yard.

“That’s nothing,” dismissed idler number two. “She was coming up the slope and in my position, I caught a glimpse of a Hyena’s canine hanging on her neck.”

This had brought about a lengthy and witless argument analysing many of her traits.