Muthoni Garland's story "Tracking the Scent of My Mother" was recently shortlisted for the 2006 Caine Prize for African Writing--Africa's largest writing award. Below is an excerpt from the story and commentary from Garland.

"Tracking the Scent of my Mother was inspired by the climate of private fear in which many children and women in our part of the world exist. Not because of disease or war or famine, but because of men who abuse them. Statistics point to a shocking increase in rape and defilement in East and Southern Africa. In Kenya, where it is widely accepted that these crimes are under-reported, it is said that a rape occurs every 30 minutes. But numbers alone are not enough to reflect the pain and suffering caused to affected individuals, nor do they serve to increase understanding about why it happens or how to address it.

"Our parliament is currently debating a Sexual Crimes Bill. The debate, unfortunately, seems to pitch men against women, and the diplomatic and NGO community against locals. I pray our leaders rise above this and soberly reflect on the personal, social and economic ramifications of sexual violence. It diminishes and debilitates all of us. I pray that they go beyond issues of punishment to issues of education and socialisation. I pray the day will come when women in my world will be free."

--Muthoni Garland

Tracking the Scent of My Mother
By Muthoni Garland

My father wooed my mother in a 1200 Datsun pick-up sold so soon afterwards that it must have felt to her like a false promise. But she did not complain about that, or the fact that he was already married. Senior-mother, a stout and loudly religious woman, had borne him five daughters - Mercy, Charity, Faith, Hope and Grace.
His five acres grazed the River Sagana in Ihwagi on the outskirts of Karatina, where the old Mountain-of-God loses its shadow. Ihwagi is a small village, five miles from a small town, two hundred miles from Nairobi. Until my notoriety, it was a village that might only be visited by an outsider during political campaigns.

By day my mother tilled the land, and by night my father tilled her. She birthed me and my brother, Joshua, in quick succession.
Drippings of my father's bragging reached us though the rumour mills of Senior-mother's bible study meetings, and in the conversations of casual labourers during tea-picking season. But what was there, I wondered, to admire in a boy who couldn't climb trees or swim in the Sagana like me? A boy who swelled his mouth like a Colobus monkey to release nasty screams? A boy who gripped my mother's breast and sucked until she whimpered?
Miano, a neighbouring farmer and famous brewer of social muratina and medicinal miiti, often came to visit my father. He was a talkative man who gestured widely with his hands, and salivated over other people's troubles. When I eavesdropped on one of their drunken evenings on the veranda, I heard Miano boast that now the gates were open my father would soon flood the country with sons.

My father had never been to school because in the old days when leopards and buffaloes roamed, at least one son remained behind to herd the goats and cattle. Uncle Erasmus, a lecturer at a private university in Nairobi, always made the effort to visit, advise and donate to us. In his presence, my father chewed his mswaki twig to curtail his tongue, but when Uncle Erasmus was gone, my father always said, “Life speaks in proverbs; anyone who is intelligent will understand.”
Still, there must have been a time when earnings from tea and four grade cattle were good because my father's house, a rectangle with three rooms, was built with cemented bricks. The veranda, whose sloping roof darkened the rooms inside, served as his lounge and observation point.
Sitting there with his legs poking out from under his long brown coat, my father pinched snuff up his nose from an old can of Kiwi shoe polish. Given that he rarely cut or combed his hair or beard, spikes of which stood on end like barbed wire, he looked like the men in old photographs of freedom fighters - those dusty men of the forest who'd fought for our independence.
Even when he was still, I knew when my father was on the veranda. I'd feel his eyes drill and weigh everything in the dusty compound, including the yellow-bark fever tree that marked the halfway point between the house and the kitchen. But my half-sisters were not as sensitive and when they giggled or dawdled or messed around after school, he'd say, in his slowpoke manner, “Shrill voices are causing me a headache that even Aspro cannot cure. Isn't there any work in this house?”
Other than pronouncements, and matters of permission and money, my father avoided engaging with his household of women. He often said, in a deep amused voice, “Women have no upright words. Only crooked ones.”
I didn't mind this as he clearly referred to Senior-mother's lot.
I remember the roar of water during the rainy season, and the rickety plank-and-rope bridge on which our Nairobi City relatives swayed and groaned under the weight of the flour, sugar, Tree Top orange squash and Cadbury Cocoa they brought us. It was on this same rickety plank-and-rope bridge a couple of years later that I pushed my half-sister, Faith, into Sagana's rushing waters. It was not my fault that she had never learnt to swim.
At Easter, Uncle Erasmus parked his car on the other side of the river under a roughly constructed awning of sisal sacking. It was a white Toyota saloon or 'Sweet Sixteen' according to Uncle Erasmus, who to counter the weight of his oversize stomach, leaned so far back it seemed he'd topple.
We shook hands with him and his family - Aunt Perpetua, Cousin Wangui and her sister Shiro, and Cousin Ndemi. We were hearty in our verbal greetings but too over-awed by their hairstyles and bright-bright clothes to attempt hugs. I didn't know that it was the heavily-fluorinated river water rather than lack of detergent that dulled the colours of our clothing.
Cousin Ndemi, plump and soft looking, shot off to study how close they'd parked the car to the precipice. His shirt was stained with juice and hung over his trousers. Scratches decorated his leather shoes.
My father muttered, “The young beloved whose parents buy a costly spear does not show gratitude by carrying it properly.”
Resting one hand on the car, Cousin Ndemi stretched his body and raised a leg so that it hung over the precipice.
“How about a photo of me like this, dad?”
“I'll take it. I'll take it,” shouted Cousin Shiro even as she scrambled in the car to find it.
We didn't expect such a precious item to be entrusted to a girl, especially one who spoke as though she didn't even need permission. Uncle Erasmus surprised us.
After she'd snapped this photograph, Aunt Perpetua said, “Why don't you take one of all of us, my dear, to mark Wangui's success in the exams. A's in everything you know. We received the results last week.” She turned to Senior-mother. ”Isn't that something to celebrate and thank God for?”
For the first time in history Senior-mother found a reason to defer prayer. “It's hot here. Let's take your picture and then we'll go and pray where it is cooler.”
Of course, her own daughters, Mercy and Charity who were older than Wangui had repeated classes severally and were not due to sit the KCSE examination for another year.
Cousin Shiro strutted about, prodding us to stand like this and like that. She insisted that we smile and say, “Cheese.” Because we didn't know what that was, and were scared to say it wrong, we said, “See.”
Shiro giggled and her hands shook. But it turned out to be the best photograph. In it, my father is stroking his beard. Uncle Erasmus is shiny-faced and winking. Aunt Perpetua and Senior-mother, slim and fat respectively, present similar pious expressions. My mother is staring at Cousin Wangui's hair, while Wangui and her plump brother smile like well-fed cats. Charity and Mercy hold each other across the shoulders. They seem frightened. Hope, Grace and I crouch near the ground. We smile very widely. My brother stands next to us, his nose running. Faith is cut off - only the left side of her body is captured. Already she was fading from the scene.
While the men gathered by a distant clearing to slaughter a goat (or “slit its carotid artery,” according to Uncle Erasmus), we pounded mukimo in the compound. We gossiped about the latest city fashions - flares and curly-kits - and practised rolling out sentences in the nasal English-English spoken by my cousins.
“Good afternoon to you. My name is Scholastica.” I formed my mouth into an exaggerated 'O' shape. “How do you do?”
“My name is Charity and this is my sister Mercy. How is you?
Our cousins, Wangui and Shiro, darted amused glances at each other.
“We are Hope and Grace. We are twins.”
“Me, I hamu Joshua.”
“No, say it like this,” I said, pinching my nose, “My name is Joshua. How do you do?”
When my brother repeated it carefully after me, I turned to my mother. She parted her lips, then clapped a hand over her mouth as though scared of what might come out.
“Werro,” said Senior-mother, tapping her chest, and talking English with gusto. “My name his Sister Hannah Wairimu, senior wife of Mr. Bethwell Korogosho, the number one brother of Mr. Erastus Mageria. I hamu a mother of many and I hamu saved by the brad of Jesus Christo, and I do ferry fine thangiu.”
How we opened our mouths in laughter.
After the feasting, the men meandered off to baptise a half-drum of muratina, or in the words of Uncle Erasmus, “To partake of the fruit of the hog-dog tree, otherwise known as Kigelia Etiopica.”
Because seventeen-year-old cousin Wangui's stellar KCSE results punctuated her mother's every other sentence, nobody complained when Wangui slipped a cassette into father's player. She tied a khanga around her hips, and wriggled to the spiky notes of Congolese lingala as though attacked by red ants. Of course, I joined her, and discovered that even at six, my limbs were looser than hers.
My mother hovered on the fringes of the group, and her darting eyes kept lighting on me. She laughed that afternoon for all of Karatina, but the hollow in her tone confused me. I didn't realise then that my mother was only four years older than Wangui. I didn't understand that a woman who gives birth is like a tall and leafy banana tree that breaks under the weight of its own fruit.
Uncle Erasmus never brought his family to us again, and to this day I've not clapped eyes on Wangui and Shiro, although they sent me a photograph of them sitting on a white sheet that they called snow.
In Ihwagi, their last visit came to mark the point at which we slid into poverty. Drought hit us that year and the next, and a shortage of maize seeds. A bout of foot and mouth disease in the area made it impossible to sell cattle. Scandal brewed at the tea processing plant.
Worse, a new dissatisfaction gnawed beneath our hunger, as though a taste of our relatives' citified ways and goodies had summoned a deeper appetite in us. Perhaps the visit also impoverished us.
For the rest of the Easter holiday, Senior-mother badgered Charity and Mercy to cram for KCSE exams. My father fretted more about overdue payments. To remind us women of our place, he took to asking upon the slightest excuse, “Since when did the neck stretch above the head?”
What nobody could have foreseen was the extent to which the visit affected my mother.

To read a Guardian article about the Caine Prize shortlist, click here.