Barefoot. Reincarnation

“You were a mad person in your past last,”my sister argued

“Noooo! I told you I was a teacher in the 18^th century, mark you in Africa and Kenya to be precise during the second coming of the missionaries.” I affirmed

“A teacher indeed. You don’t look like one.”She looks at me keenly,sneers and continues. “I bet you were a chokora and this is irrefutable,indisputable,unassailable and incontrovertible.”

My sister likes putting up stout defense on her Words. She strongly believes in reincarnation which she at times manages to impose this ideology in my mind. This conversation always ensue when she sees me walking barefooted around the compound.

“You like walking barefooted which defines your previous life.”

“Mmmmm!”I looked deeply into her eyes and asked her. “Because you love sleeping,were you the sleeping beauty we read about in our fairy tales,or tse tse fly which bites people to sleep hence the gods are punishing you with crime committed in earlier life.”

“No,I was a lion.”She says laughing

I also break into laughter. She amazes but also intrigues me with her reincarnation theory.

“Why a lion?”

“A lion, as it spends most of its time sleeping”

I gulp for air,awaiting for her to continue fascinating me with her beliefs. She is so placid and mild that she doesn't lash out during her elucidation hence I get so enthralled by the subject that I hardly notice it is her fantasy of her world within.

She whimsically takes me back in the early 19^th century and how she was a lion in Africa. She tells me she had to be a lion so that she can be who she is now and her love for sleep originated from being one and she affirms that she was a male lion as they sleep 20 hours. She too can sleep 20 hours at times, which to me is abnormal. I can only do 15 hours if I am hanged down not on a normal self. I hate it but I think at times I believe her and her theories.

“Before being a lion what were you?”

“A white woman,lived in the united kingdom and married to a knight with three kids,two boys and a girl who unfortunately died at the age of nine due to measles which was common in this century.”She posed, "I was called Elizabeth Thompson,my husband was called William Thompson,whom I think is a dog in present life."

",A dog!,How do you know that?" I asked

"You recall that dog we saw at aunt Mary’s,the one which was really barking at us as we passed by it,when I looked at it and it instantly stopped barking,then ran too me."

I laugh,

"ya I do. So you want to say that was William! You will never seize to maze me siz."

"yes it was him. I could see it in its eyes. It wanted to tell me something. If only I had taken the dog with me?

She looks pale and worried having disappointed her one time lover

“Ever since then,the dog invades my dreams. That was William,siz."

I wore a slightly startled expression as she neither blinks nor forgets her original reincarnation story anytime she narrates to me. She has been telling me this for almost a decade and a half. She lived then. She believes this as solid as the ground we stand on.

She expounds on the kind of dresses she used to don when she was in UK and how she really misses such kind of attires. The zeal is seen in her eyes. The dresses were called Frock which consisted of a long skirt with an attached bodice,a high neckline and long sleeves. They had mob cap in their head which had deep flat border surrounding the face and tied under the chin. She explains this with enthusiasm giving her intrinsic reinforcement recalling her past with pride and pleasure savoring the exquisite joy of the memories. She makes me believe her claims but I stridently don’t believe what she says I was. Never.

I always clarify that I was a teacher,a black teacher during the second coming of the missionaries. I became a teacher because I was lucky to be taught by the missionaries as my father was welcoming hence some of the missionaries lived with us getting the privilege to be taught by them. I extended my knowledge to friends who had the will to learn like me. Just as I do in my present life. I love sharing e-books with e-friends who have the passion and volition to read so as to impact knowledge. In my previous life I used to walk 10 km to the well barefooted to meet other young ladies in the well to teach them something new before heading home with buckets full of water. I tried to justify my love for roaming barefooted in my present life,which felt lenient than the one she imposes on me. When am explicating this theory I don’t feel it the way my sister does. I know I dint live before but so as to avoid her own reincarnation theory about me I try to feed her with the teacher's one. I prefer this than her telling me that I was a mad person tending to justify my barefoot passion.

At other times I tell her I lived in 1500s as Niccolo Machiavelli as I tend to agree with his philosophy on politics and the prince written by him being my favorite political book at my present life. On other occasions, I was Mahatma Gandhi and other great philosophers. My sisters reaction to this is that I was a bad person,probably a ruler who ordered for the masses to be massacred or an assassin that’s why I don’t recall who I was as my soul refuses to be tied with such characters. She believes that I was part of the french revolution hence responsible for the deaths of more than 40,000 civilians. She says this because France is the country of my dream ever since I was five years old.

My reincarnation theory changes every time the conversation ensue but my sister's is the same today,tomorrow and forever. She still insists that I was a mad person in previous life that’s why I never have a constant personality regarding my reincarnation as at times I claim I was a teacher,a politician,a scholar/philosopher . She is one kind of a person that loves observing very minute details in someone so that she can tell them what they were in their previous life.

I finally told my sister after so many years of her reincarnation theory and it always coming up when am walking barefooted is because she has fear of walking on the ground like me but she would love to,She comes up with the theory to comfort her fears. I went further and clarified that whoever came up with this ideology,was involved in complicated maze of lies during his time. He was bogged by fear of the unknown hence visualized himself as someone in the past life to seek solace and satisfy his ego that once he was an important person,he had traveled a lot so should not worry about his present life and also assuring himself he had more lives to Live in future. I argued that person must have been a lazy person and had intense disappointment with his present life therefore living in the past.

My sister never agreed with me as she was as cunning as a fox with her implanted idea. She even told me to Google and find proof. Who has time to Google such? I have piles and piles of e books to read to better me and others. I would rather waste my entire day on facebook than Google reincarnation. Am I living in denial? Was I Hitler?,Empress Wu? Godfrey of Bouillon? All in all she has imposed fear on me for walking barefooted as someone will also come up with theories of their own of why am not six inch tall.

By 

Esther Wavinya