Kikuyu Village Hut
My mother was getting her degree in anthropology when my family and I moved to Kenya for a period of time in the 1970’s. One of the things she did was move out into one of the villages about 40 km outside of Nairobi up in the highlands before you get to the Rift Valley. There she was unofficially adopted into the Kikuyu tribe and lived as a Kikuyu person. She learned to speak their language and cooked, ate, and slept as the Kikuyu did. Meanwhile my father, brother, sister, and I lived not too far from the village in a typical expatriot environment.
Even though we were apart, we would go visit my mother in the village all the time. We loved to visit her. She lived in a very small, one room, unfinished, wooden hut with a dirt floor. It was always really dark inside because there was no electricity. There were just these two cutout windows with shutters on a hinge that would close. I remember that it would get really cold at night so she’d close the windows. In the daytime there was some sunlight coming through those tiny windows, but she also had these small tin cans that were crafted to be little paraffin oil candle burners, which served as her form of light. There was always black soot on everything. But the soot always made it warmer and it smelled good.
In one corner there was a little handmade wooden cot. The cot was very low to the ground and not very wide. The frame was made of rough-hewn wood with ropes that went from side to side. She had a thin bedroll that served as the mattress and rested on the ropes. Across from the bed was a small counter, also handmade. She had a couple of enamel porcelain coffee cups that were chipped and speckled. And she had an iron hibachi grill, a little “gico” they called them. You’d put your charcoal in and your clay pot on top. Every morning three young girls would go down to the river, about a quarter of a mile away, and they would fill the pots with water and bring them back to the village. And they would always bring one to my mother. My mother always had water in a pot.
She cooked on the grill, mostly vegetables, occasionally there’d be chicken or something. She ate a lot of ugali, which is a maize that you boil in water until it firms up. We’d eat the soup or stewed vegetables that she made with our hands using that bread to scoop it up. There was always the smell of cooked foods, but really earthy smells. And there was always the smell of burning wood. I have memories of sitting with her in that hut, sitting on the little wooden stools, eating and drinking tea almost in the darkness. It was absolutely wonderful.
It’s the scent of that experience in my mother’s Kikuyu hut that’s imprinted in my memory to this day. It’s a very complex smell, almost ancient in its natural, deep earthiness. It’s a combination of the smell of the charcoal that’s embedded and infused in the clay pots, with the smell of the old rough-hued wood that has absorbed the aromas and the smokiness over many years. It’s a deep, woody, smoky smell. Like the smell of a house that had been on fire over a year ago. It wasn’t fresh. It was old. It was a warm, wonderful smell.
And because my mother would often cook when we were there, you always smelled the cooked vegetables; the hearty, thick greens that were slow cooked for hours along with the onions. That smell would blend in with the smokiness of the charcoal and the smoky clay pots the food was cooking in. It combined to give this aroma that is definitely the fragrance of my life.
But within that smell was also the ambient smell - the smell beyond the hut. You could smell the garden outside and the red soil. And that was mixed with the smell of goats and cow dung. You could smell the outside inside because there was no insulation. The outside smells seeped in. The scent was grassy, woody, and smoky all at the same time.
Overall, I’d describe the smell as really earthy, woody, smoky, and a little grassy. That smell makes me feel safe and comfortable. It’s calming. It slows me down a little bit. It grounds me. It brings me back to the essence of who I am and away from the artificialities of everyday life. It reminds me of a time in my life, and a feeling in my life, of safety and warmth. And that brings me back to who I am at my core.
The smell was enveloped in a blanket of generosity that I felt from the Kikuyu people. I especially saw it at Christmas when we’d go to the village. You see, for the Kikuyu people, the holiday was all about people. It was about walking around the village and visiting with people. Going from hut to hut and someone boiling a cup of tea for you. Occasionally, someone would make a really big, generous gift of slaughtering a chicken and cooking it. But overall it was about being with people and moving around and just being together. You would shake someone’s hand and you wouldn't let go. You’d hold their hand as you’re talking. It’s a kind of closeness I don’t find anywhere else. That was the real essence of Christmas. It had nothing to do with wealth and gifts. That feeling of the Kikuyu people wrapped around the smell of my mother’s hut is something I’ll remember, and treasure, forever.
My mother passed away many years ago. I remember, as she was dying and I was spending the last days with her, we were talking and I would ask her for advice on things. She said “You already know what I’m going to say. After I’m gone, I don’t know what my situation will be like, but if, wherever I am, in whatever form I am, if there’s an ability for me to contact you, just to let you know that I’m ok, I’ll do that.”
Every now and then I’ll open a box that will have some of my mother’s things in it. Or I’ll grab the wooden stool that I’ve kept from her hut. If I put my nose right up against it - right where the bowl meets the leg of the stool - when I get a whiff of that smell, it’s all encompassing. It just fills me with this feeling that just immediately transports me back to her Kikuyu village hut.
It’s something that I smell rather than something I think of. It creeps up when I least suspect it. Even the faintest smell, just a wisp of it, feels so big.
In fact, it happened years after she passed away. I opened a box of her things we had in storage. I was looking for something, I don’t know what. All of a sudden I smelled it. The scent instantly took me there and put me right with her, in her hut in Kenya, as if we were sitting there live. At that moment, I had forgotten that she had said she would try to contact me. But then I suddenly knew that it was her contacting me and saying that everything was ok. That was as real as anything around me. It was amazing. It came when I least expected it. I didn’t ask for it. It just came to me. I hadn’t thought about it at all.
The smell immediately takes me back to my mom. Every time. It helps me rediscover who I am, or rediscover things about me. It really does define me. I thought a lot about why this smell is so important to me and I think to me that smell represents the discovery of what matters to me in life. That smell is why I like street food as opposed to restaurants. That smell is why I like to be in the woods, or why I like things a little more fringy. I like to go to places that are a little unfinished or rough around the edges. Not so much the modern, the sleek, the industrial. Don’t get me wrong, I like all that, it’s fine, but it doesn’t make me feel like I belong. That smell makes me feel that this is where I belong. I feel like all of those values stem from the experiences I had when I was exposed to those smells. The smells gave me the values. Those smells help define to me why I am the person I am. Smells can tell you a lot about yourself.
If the scent had a sound, what would it be?
A low, deep and hollow sound that would resonate in a soft, rich tone. It would be gentle on the ear, like a thick hollow log or old wooden drum thumped by a heavy wooden stick. If I had to compare it to the sound of a musical instrument, it would be to an Australian didgeridoo or a low-toned Brazilian berimbau, but with a slow, steady, African rhythm.
If the scent had a color, what would it be?
A deep, rich brown, but not completely solid brown; more a mixture of brown shades that would both absorb the light around it and also reflect it outward in occasional glints of light and color. Like petrified wood mixed with dark chocolate.
If the scent had a texture, what would it be?
Slightly rough-hewn; not smooth and slick, but a little coarse and fibrous, like a very old piece of wood, weathered to a texture beneath its aged, dark patina.
If the scent could give you advice, what would it tell you?
It would remind me that patience and steady tenacity is important in all I do. Of avoiding taking extreme positions unless it is truly what I feel, and following a balanced, middle path. The advice would be old and wise and proven by the passage of time, as if given to me by an old man with deep insight and nothing to prove.
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