The sound of rain hitting the roof, the steam on windows and watching rain drops fall down. The window brought back the memories of home, specifically those of singing and dancing on the rain barefooted in a floral dress with the sun shining at the same time. The matrimony of monkeys my grandmother would say as I would watch my cousins and siblings dancing merrily in the rain, not caring what happened or who said what. I wanted to join them like I used to but I thought to myself, who would take care of my siblings if they caught the flu and I did too?

That ladies didn’t do that, that if a young man walked by and saw me dancing like a mad person in the rain they would see me as a child and not want to marry me, that’s what my grandmother instilled in me at a young age. I used to dance in the rain a lot before I was given a lot of responsibilities at home, before I was fed with beliefs and a spoonful of culture.

I used to be free and I felt young before I was made to grow up before my time, talk about walking before crawling and not going through all the stages of life as if my own life would fast forward.

The loud conversations that suddenly lingered as echoes in the air reminded me of our neighbour’s conversations, I would eavesdrop and be battling with crickets that would be singing a lament song for the day that would be slowly fading into darkness and the sound of cattle, sheep and horses grazing on grass in the afternoon, some stray and some on their way to their kraals, signaling to me that I am done for the day. Their sound calling me from a distance to run back home with my twenty liter bucket so they would accept the water I had left home, during the day claiming I was going to fetch.

With no clock then to tell me when to walk in home but the belief that if a girl fetches water from the river when the sun had set, the spirits of the mermaid from the river would follow her and my old lady’s incessant voice as she would yell, “if you come in here with that water when the sun has already been laid to rest, I will not use it to cook, in fact, do not even bring it near my yard, better throw it away as you are coming back” were enough to ring in my head at exactly the right time to go home so I would not reduce the number of merit cutting I had in my grandmother’s scrapbook.

As a young girl then, that sense of responsibility mixed with the joy of bringing water home to prepare our meals, bath and clean the house had me running back to our bungalow like an athlete on relay ready to pass on the bait to the next team member, My granny, our cook. It became imperative to ignore the sharp pain of stones and thorns pricking my feet as I ran barefoot singing: “Don’t let the team lose, do your part, don’t let the team lose, many depend on you, don’t be selfish,” trying to suppress the thought of twenty-something stomachs groaning, unfriendly smiles to hunger throughout the whole night made me cringe. So I would gatecrash my grandmother’s smoking sessions by the bangalou, drop the bucket of water on the floor and prepare my lungs to inhale the smell of snuff, tobacco, firewood and dried cow dung pieces that were used as fuel as a meal is prepared on the open fire.

Tell us: Do you’ve any song you loved to sing when you were young?