The book Blossoms of the Savannah presents Ole
Kaelo as behaving in a cowardly manner. This essay observes Kaelo’s acts of cowardice
and how they shape the trajectory of the story.
Kaelo is one of the main characters in the book.
He is the father of Taiyo and Resian. Kaelo’s decisions make the story’s
conflict skyrocket into a struggle for the rights of the girl child.
Generally, we pick up Kaelo from the moment he
retired. However, it should be noted that Kaelo’s confidence begun the moment
he moved to Nakuru. With a lucrative job and a lean family, Kaelo displayed a
confidence never seen before. In the comfort of Nakuru, he defended his decision
to remain monogamous and delineate himself from the barbaric female
circumcision for his two daughters.
The security of employment in the sprawling
Nakuru city offered Kaelo enough confidence to denounce culture and call Nasila
elders as ‘megalomaniacs who were stuck in the past. In Nakuru, Kaelo found a
safe haven in which to abhor and condemn Nasila’s culture. Since he was
isolated from the decadent culture he felt far civilized to engage into its
abuse of the womenfolk. In this regard, Kaelo can be observed as having run
away from Nasila since he did not have the guts to attack the Nasila culture
from within. He knew the culture was abusive and was aware of its atrocities
but he could not bring himself to be an advocate of change like Parmuat or
Minik ene Nkoitoi.
The Swahili have a saying, ‘Mwacha mila ni
mtumwa,’ ehich means when one forsakes their culture, they become slaves.
Kaelo’s act of slavery ends when he is terminated at his place of employment.
The security he had felt in Nakuru crumbles around him. He has no option but to
return to Nasila. This means that he must reenter the very culture he had abandoned.
Could he rebel against it from within Nasila?
Like the proverbial prodigal son Kaelo realizes
that he needed his people in order to maintain his sense of identity and
progress. Coming back as a businessman meant that a majority of his customers
would be the community members. Therefore, going by what the elder Ole Musanka
said in the homecoming ceremony, Kaelo was like a piece of hair that wind had
blown away from the head but fate had brought it back. Like that strand, Kaelo
had the role of twinning himself on other hairs so that he does not fall off
again.
In the effort to twine himself back into the
community, Kaelo becomes the very thing he sought to destroy. Desperate for
money and acceptance, he asks his wife to prepare the girls’ for circumcision.
This was supposed to be a gradual process but it is sped up by the entrance of
Oloisudori Lonkiya. Kaelo’s benefactor. Oloisudori demands his pound of flesh
and offers to marry Resian.
Although Kaelo had sworn to protect his
children, he finds it hard to choose between defending them from culture and
Oloisudori. Accrodng to the Nasila culture, Kaelo’s daughters should have been
married of a long time ago. They were at the prime of their teenage years and
yet still living with their parents. On the other hand, Oloisudori held the key
to Kaelo’s financial success. When one observes the unfolding events in the
lens of tradition, Kaelo had no right to oppose Oloisudori his greed
notwithstanding. Therefore, he fell prey to both tradition and Oloisudori.
Kaelo’s decision to let go of Resian spins the
conflict of the story- the struggle for feminism in an overly patriarchal
society governed by tradition, curses, fear and sweeping loyalty. Like a
seasoned chef, Kaelo also throws Taiyo into the mix.
Was Kaelo blinded by greed and tradition? It is
hard to tell but what is apparent is that losing the job in Nakuru threw kaelo
into a turbulence that created the present conflict. He had brought his
children up in Nakuru where, in a mixture of cultures and modernity, they had
learnt their own independence to choose a suitor and also resist harmful
cultures. The girls, especially Resian, were ready to defend this new found
freedom. It is this struggle that now pits Kaelo against his own daughters and
spins the story in the novel Blossoms of the Savannah.
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