A SILENT SONG ESSAY QUESTION
People living with disability face many difficulties in life. Using Mbane in Leonard Kibera’s A Silent Song, write a composition to support this assertion.
People living with disability find it more difficult to do certain activities or to interact with the world around them. In Leonard Kibera’s A Silent Song, Mbane is a visually impaired and disabled man whose movement and other activities are constrained as a result of his disability.
First, Mbane’s movement is inhibited as a result of his disability. He gropes slowly towards the door of his hut. He can only crawl weakly on his knees and elbows. He cannot go further since the pain in his spine and stomach gather violence rapidly. The pangs paralyse him for a short tormenting moment. The pain soon disappears but with the same savage fury of its onslaught, leaving Mbane cold with sweat. He anticipates another imminent attack. Giving up the fight, he lets go his chin and hits his forehead on the dirty flea-ridden floor. Mbane’s freedom of movement is curtailed by his visual impairment, disability and pain. He is restricted to the suspicious hut.
Secondly, his perception of time, day or beauty is limited. Although he is hungry, he does not know what time it is. He wallows in the gloom of his eternal night. Time, day and beauty lie beyond the bitter limits of darkness. He is restricted to feeling, hearing and running away from danger. He is also limited to a world of retreat. Due to his lameness, he can only crawl away. He has no power to hit back. Surely, people living with disability suffer certain restrictions.
When his brother Ezekiel brings him from the streets to his home, Mbane is restricted to his new confinement. His brother says that he rescued him from the barbaric city so that he could see the light of God. The hut is serene but so suspicious. This is Mbane’s new life away from the streets of the City. His new confinement is devoid of the urban ruggedness and noise. It lacks the quick prancing footsteps of the busy city people. In his limitation, Mbane can never fathom their business. Also, he is restricted to pleading with the people to help him stay alive by offering him some coins.
Because of his disability, Mbane had little comprehension or knowledge of the city. He earns his living on one street only, retreating to the back lane when it was deserted. His condition inhibits him from telling the length, width, beauty or size of the street. He is used to the talk of bright weather, lovely morning or beautiful sunset but he cannot take part in the small talk. He feels challenged when pedestrians sing to the blue sky and whistle to the gay morning. In his impediment, he cannot perceive these senses. During the day, Mbane has to endure the overly generous heat of the sun and obstinate flies mobbing the edges of his lips. At night, he cannot escape the hostile biting cold when he retreats to the back lane unsheltered, to surrender to his vulnerability to sleep and is occasionally victimized by some ignoble thieves.
Mbane is also constrained in his ability to eke out a living since he is disabled. He is forced to beg on that lonely street of the City. Mbane has come to understand that money is the essence of urban life. He is therefore happy with gay people since they mostly answer his plea. Dull people with heavy tired footsteps and voices have empty pockets. Unlike him, the good men and women of the city have the ability to work in the buildings next to him and more up the street. He has no option but to endure the scorching sun and stubborn flies. At night, he is tempted by the strange rhythms but cannot indulge because of his condition. He is limited to hearing voices cursing and singing and bottles cracking. Mbane is restricted from joining the good men’s and women’s merry-making after a hard day’s work. Only pimps and whores enjoyed the proceeds of the good men’s sweat.
Also, Mbane’s condition has restricted him from getting married. His brother Ezekiel is married to Sarah. He must have been married around Mbane’s age. Mbane would never be able to reach out his hand in fulfillment of his life in the same way. He can only yearn impotently, sadly constrained because of his darkness and lameness. He is overcome by bitter self-pity and can only console himself about his own light and thus he would smile broadly and bravely. His brother’s wife occasionally brings him some bitter medicine. His condition impedes him from getting a wife of his own and settling down.
Mbane has become accustomed to limited conversation or communication. His brother enters his hut and sits on his bed but for a long time no one speaks. Mbane cannot be expected to start a conversation. All his life, he has been speaking to himself in his thoughts while living on the streets. He had no one to address except himself. Occasionally, he would blurt out a mechanical plea of “Yes?”. Now, if anyone speaks to him, he carries the subject on a line of uncommunicative thought in his own mind. When his brother asks if he believes in God, Mbane replies that he does not know since to him he does not matter.
Apart from that, Mbane’s condition makes him feel alienated and thus he holds a different religious view from his mother’s and his brother’s. His mother views men as one stream flowing through the rocks of life. They would twist and turn the pebbles and get dirty in the muddy earth. They cry in the falls and whirlpools of life and laugh and sing when the flow is smooth and undisturbed. Some cry in the potholes of life’s valley, while others laugh triumph elsewhere. Mbane’s condition inhibits him to not only ceaselessly crying but also feeling that he is not even part of the stream. He feels like the bitter fluid in his own throat. His pain gives him no reason to believe in God. No one understands his darkness. God is white cleanness of eternal light but his life only contains darkness and blackness. He is forgotten and unnoticed. Sometimes, he is cursed and called able-bodied, only crippled by idleness of leisurely begging.
Lastly, Mbane feels trapped in his unwashed body which reeks of sweat. He craves freedom that he cannot achieve. He dreams of a glorious future away from his pangs of darkness where light lies. Right now he is restricted since his eyes are denied the lights. He dreams of a future where someone would understand him and raise the innocence of his crippled life along with the chosen. It gives him hope and he sings his own happy song, silently to himself. He cannot seek refuge in the brothels like other men so he can only find it in his silent song. His soul has a destination, or so he thinks. But for now, he has to make do with it being incarcerated in his sweaty smelly body, which is unwashed except when in the rain. Surely, disability can be limiting.
In conclusion, people living with disability undergo many impediments and limitations that deny them some pleasures or opportunities in life.
