A SILENT SONG ESSAY QUESTION
War adversely affects families and communities. Making reference to Boyi by Gloria Mwaniga, write an essay to support this statement.

When conflict thrives, it destroys family ties and communal bonds. Family members are affected when they are separated from one another, some are traumatized and others killed as a result of the crisis. In Gloria Mwaniga’s Boyi, the militia meant to protect community land from strangers turns out to be the enemy within, wreaking untold havoc on the same community they had vowed to protect.

First, Mama is adversely affected when her son is separated from the rest of the family. Madness enters Mama’s eyes when Baba gives Boyi away to the militia leader as collateral until he finds 40,000 land protection tax. As if fire ants had invaded her body, Mama stands up abruptly. She tears off her kitenge headscarf and start shouting. Mama says that Baba must be sick in the head to think Boyi would return. He must be deaf if he has not heard tales of neighbours whose sons had been recruited by the militia. A child was not a mat that could be folded and returned to the owner or a dress that one can borrow from a neighbour. Baba is enraged but he just sits there. In a metallic whisper, he asks Mama what she wanted him to do. He justifies his action by saying he did it to protect his family from the militia’s cruel actions of chopping off heads of whole families, carrying off fresh heads like trophies and hanging them on trees or eating them like Idi Amin. They also tortured victims by chopping off their ears and feeding them worm-filled earth. Mama does not buy this explanation. Hives break out on her skin. Her eyes are deathly white like the eyes of one who did not know her own mind. The narrator feels queasy as if someone had pulled her insides out through her nostrils. War indeed has a devastating effect on loved ones. (P91-92)

Apart from that, Boyi’s family is gripped with fear, desperation and anxiety. When reproached by Mama, Baba holds his rage firmly with his hands. He pulls in his lips to a narrow thread, like a line drawn on his dark face by a ruler. His voice sinks to a metallic whisper and he asks Mama what she wanted him to do. He tells her that the militia was chopping off heads of whole families if one did not give them money. They carry off fresh heads like trophies and hang them on trees or eat them like Idi Amin. They torture their victims by slowly chopping off their ears and feeding them worm-filled earth. Boyi’s sister feels queasy as if someone had pulled her insides out through her nostrils. The family knew that the militia would come to their house. Chesober, Baba’s friend who taught at Chepkukur Primary School, had them that the militia had a long list of people who aided the government exercise to subdivide their land and give some of it to the strangers. Baba had lent a panga and ‘makonge’ ropes to the government surveyors. When news breaks out that they had begun attacking government representatives, Mama desperately starts blocking the sitting room door with sacks of maize and beans. Out of fear or denial, the narrator and Boyi laughed at the thought of the militia attacking them, their own kin. That is the night Matwa Kei knocks at their door and demands to be given 10,000 land protection tax and 30,000 betrayal tax, failure to which they would be shown “smoke without fire”. That is when he pushes Boyi forward and tells Matwa Kei to hold onto him. Surely, war causes fear within families or communities. (P92)

The war also causes devastation that pushes Mama to the brink of insanity and disconnection from reality. Boyi’s sister finds her mother seated alone on a kitimoto in the kitchen. She neither looks up nor responds to greetings. She screams at the girl to leave some tea for her brother who will return from the caves hungry. The screaming goes on for weeks. “Stupid girl, you want to finish tea and your brother will come from the caves hungry,” she bawls. She would sit stunned gazing at the whitewashed wall, declaring in a quiet voice that she was seeing a vision of a dazzling white dove. God of Israel was showing her that her son was returning home after escaping from the snare of the militia. After her monologues, she would sit sadly and silently. When her madness takes a walk, they would brew tea together with a girl and she would nostalgically reminisce stories about Boyi; about how he saved her marriage, his shiny ebony skin and eloquence in English which was too good for a fifteen- year-old like him. This is a clear testament of a mother’s agony, anguish and disconnection from reality. War really causes devastation to families. (P92-93)

The war drives Baba, a Christian, to partake in a strange cultural practice to escort Boyi’s spirit away. Together with his cousin Kimutai, he digs a shallow grave and buries a banana stem wrapped in a green cotton sheet. He asks death to take that body and never bother his family again. They do this after Saulo brings news that a troop of two hundred Armed Forces men had been dispatched in green lorries to carry out an undertaking dubbed ‘Operation Okoa Maisha’. They were coming to flush out the militia. The war had gone on for too long and it is them themselves who had forced the mighty arm of the government. Boyi’s sister is taken aback that her pious father had turned his back on religion. Her mother refuses to play a part in the mock burial. She only follows Baba’s movements with her eyes. Mama’s voice bears manic vibrancy when she declares that she would not participate in escorting her son’s spirit away. She has lost touch with reality and lives in denial. This is as a result of the pointless conflict.(P93-94)

In her anguish, Mama is too despondent to eat. She sits muttering to herself without touching her food. The ugali would remain untouched until a crusty brown film formed and the food had to be thrown away to the chicken coop. Boyi’s sister would catch the twist of her mouth when she would sit and talk to herself for hours on end lamenting about her suffering. She asks God to tie a rope around her stomach – to help her bear the anguish of losing her son to the ruthless militia. She asks Boyi’s sister if she remembers his perfect teeth. After weeks of watching Mama, Boyi’s sister gets tired and starts going out with the rest of the children to the chief’s camp in Cheptap-burbur where the army had pitched their green tents. War really causes suffering of family members. (P94)

Boyi’s sister helplessly wishes that rituals would protect her brother. After getting tired of watching Mama, she goes with the rest of the children to the chiefs camp in Cheptap-burbur where the army had pitched their tents. They spend hours peeping through the Cypress fence eavesdropping the soldiers’ conversations and making up fabulous tales from them. The very black officer called Sah-gent defeated Idi Amin in Uganda. He told the others that Matwa Kei had more magic than Idi Amin. The man is a real djinni. Boyi’s sister pictures Matwa-kei’s favourite Chicago Bulls red cap absorbing Sah-gent’s bullets. These stories make her think of the tales Boyi was telling her about the militia. How they drank magic potions from Orkoiyot so that their bodies, like the Luo legend Lwanda Magere, would become stone and enemies’ spears would slide off them. Their bodies were embalmed in bloody cow dung to make them invisible for successful raiding missions. When they marched through dry lands, clouds of red dust would rise up to the heavens like a swarm of locusts because the earth god Yeyiin went with them. She held on to these stories tightly. Willing them to be true. Willing Boyi to be more powerful than the soldiers. (P94-95)

Boyi’s sister recounts horrific tales of the militia’s cruelty. That December the farmers do not clear their shambas for the second planting of maize. The militia steals young crops from the fields and goats from the pens. Instead of working, men and women sit under mtaragwa trees and exchange dreadful tales of the horrendous cruelty of the militia. The militia cuts up people and throw their bloodied bodies in rivers, pit latrines and wells. They recruit boys as young as ten who are forced to kill their own relatives. Instead of protecting the land from being given to lazy strangers, the militia goes on an indiscriminate killing spree, and their kin are victims of the aggression instead of beneficiaries. Koros, their neighbour, informs Baba that the recruited members of the militia had to first go home and kill a close relative so that their hearts were strong to kill others. Baba replies solemnly: “Puoot, war is a maggot that nibbles and nibbles at the heart of men.” Boyi’s sister has a terrible dream that her brother, whose eyes were the colour of Coca-Cola, attacks her and chops her into “small-small” pieces so that his heart would become strong to kill. The thought is traumatizing. She wakes up feeling like an anchorless red balloon was floating in her stomach. (P95)

The chilling tales of war causes fear and trauma. There is a mass exodus to Bungoma and Uganda as families try to escape. The family of the narrator’s friend, Chemtai, moves away to Chwele. The villages of Kopsiro, Saromet, Chepyuk and Chelebei are engulfed in a thick yellow fog of fear. They did not understand the militia’s motive anymore. The thugs take away girls to cook for them. They decapitate people and throw their heads in Cheptap-burbur river which was scarlet with fresh human blood from the floating human heads. They also rape their own relatives. The abused women and girls end up giving birth to transparent “plastic bag” babies. The narrator imagines the horror of seeing Boyi’s “plastic bag” baby playing Tinker-tailor-soldier-sailor with boats that fell from the flame tree. Since school is disrupted by the war, such thoughts haunt the young girl as she spends her idle days under a flame tree at home.

Boyi’s family members are devastated when they hear the news of how Boyi goes from a pious boy to a marked man. Boyi’s sister wonders if it is Mama’s mourning that courted misfortune or Baba’s total refusal to talk about Boyi that made their ancestors forget to protect him. It is raining and the narrator is standing at the kitchen window staring at the silver droplets when she sees Chesaina, an old friend of Baba, who works as a watchman in a grain depot in far away Chwele market. She is surprised to see him visit. Chesaina tells Baba and Mama that he got word from a trader, who got it from the mouth of a big government man, that boy was now a marked man. Because of the war, innocent children turn into savages. Apart from the boys who were forced to murder or rape their own kinsmen, Boyi has also gone from a God-fearing young man to a wanted criminal. Chesaina says: “This war has taken with it the mind of your son.” Boyi’s sister hides behind the kitchen door watching Mama. Mama says in her old voice that she must not be told such rubbish about her son. She tells Chesaina that if he wanted Omo to wash his dirty mouth he should just say so. Her eyes are flooded with tears. She puts both hands on her head. She asks: “Matwa kei what did I ever do to you? Tell me Matwa kei, tell me now so that I repent.” Her voice chokes. The narrator wanted to tell Chesaina to shut up but her tongue is clammy and it sticks to the roof of her mouth. Baba tries to calm Mama down. He tells her that Boyi was a good son who used to recite his responsorial psalm earnestly. The distressing news crashes Boyi’s parents and reduces both of them to tears. They cannot wrap their heads around the fact that their good son is now Matwa Kei’s right hand man and an enemy of the state. Mama keeps crying so Chesaina walks out in the rain. That day Boyi’s sister sees Baba’s tears for the first time: Two silver streams rolling down polished porcelain. War really devastates families. (P96)

War causes sad memories as family members think about the broken bonds. Boyi’s sister sleeps on Boyi’s bed for the first time. His blue bed sheets, with prints of chicks coming out of yellow egg shells, enfold her with deathly coolness. They smell much of him; of his boyish laughter which shone like toffees wrapped in silver foil; of brown butterscotch sweets which appeared as though by magic from his sticky pockets. She fondly remembers how he used to hoard items Baba declared illegal for example jawbreakers and sticks of Big G. She presses her sore stone-breasts on the sheets willing the pain her brother felt in the cold caves on herself. She imagines him staring with shiny eyes as she tells him about the soldiers, especially Sah-gent, whose adventures she knew Boyi would love the most. She also imagines them playing Ninja soldier as they had done as children. Boyi is wearing his checkered school shirt while she is in a T-shirt. She remembers when their mother caught them playing that game once, and scolded them for courting misfortune and calling death by its name. War affects families and communities adversely. (P96)

Lastly, Boyi’s family is devastated by the news of his killing. Boyi’s sister knows it was a bad omen the night thunderstruck and a bolt of lightning shattered the huge Nandi flame tree at the front of their house. Mama jubilantly declares that the evil which was to come to their house had been struck down and swallowed by the Nandi flame. She then sits next to Boyi’s sister on the animal print sofa and listens to the tatatata as the splinters of tree fall on the mabati roof and shake the whole house. Early the next morning, Simoni dashes into their compound and hands her a copy of the Nation newspaper whose headline screams coldly, “Ragtag Militia Leaders Killed by Army Forces.” Something throbs with both fists at her chest as she runs like a mad woman and bangs on her parents bedroom door. She does not stir when Baba crumples like an old coat due to shock after reading the article. She does not frown when Mama’s ribbon laughter pierces the early morning. She does not weep when neighbours start streaming into their house pouring consolations for war has robbed them of their kin in the prime of his youth. Mama does not fall on the ground as Simoni describes how Boyi had been captured in the sacred cave. She does not weep when he describes how Boyi was murdered brutally by Sah-gent who threw him out of an aircraft which was mid-air, without a parachute. There was no body to bury or for Mama to slap for that matter. She looks at Baba with unclouded innocent eyes of lunacy. With death in her voice, she tells him that the government Sah-gent had thrown Boyi down “without a parachute, imagine”. Her voice is neither bitter nor sad. It is flat. It cracks a little like dry firewood when fire eats it. Mama does not fling words at Baba when he takes his Sony transistor radio and the Nation newspaper and throws them in the almost full pit latrine outside. She is truly devastated. She speaks Boyi’s name softly as though the syllables were made of tin. She sits on Boyi’s bed together with her daughter who weeps uncontrollably, her tears soaking her blue silk blouse and purple boob top. Boyi’s sister does not tell her mother that she had felt life leaving Boyi’s body. War indeed affects families adversely. (P97)

In summary, it is evident that conflict or crisis has no positive outcome. They instead destroy families and communities.