BOYI PDF ANALYSIS – Gloria Mwaniga

A Silent Song and Other Stories

Characters in Boyi

• Boyi
• Baba
• Mama
• Chesober - Baba's friend
• Matwa Kei – military gang leader
• Saulo
• Kimutai
• Koros – neighbour
• Chesaina - Baba's friend
• Simoni
• Narrator - Boyi's sister

 

Focus

• Devastating effects of war
• Conflicts ruin families/communities

 

Boyi Summary

War ruins families and communities. In Boyi, Gloria Mwaniga recounts the horrifying experiences meted upon families in Mt. Elgon alluding to the insurgency carried out by a self-styled militia, the Sabaot Land Defense Forces (SLDF) between 2006 and 2008. The leaders of the ragtag group claimed they were out to correct injustices committed during a land distribution exercise in the region.

The villagers erroneously think the militia’s mission is to protect their ancestral land from being given to “lazy strangers” but they are shocked when their own kinsmen go on an indiscriminate spree of rape, murder, torture, abduction, theft, destruction of property and physical punishment of perceived enemies or traitors. The saviour turns out to be a veiled savage enemy that leaves devastation in his wake. 

What starts as a simple mission to protect community land deteriorates into a bloody massacre …  and “war is a maggot that nibbles and nibbles at the hearts of men.” (pg. 95)

The narrator recounts the anguish they experience as a family after her brother is forcefully recruited into the militia when he is only 15 years old.

The militiamen raid their home to demand 40,000 land protection tax which the father could not raise. Matwa Kei, the leader of the illegal outfit demands 10,000 land protection tax and 30,000 betrayal tax since Baba lent a panga  and makonge ropes to the government surveyors. In his desperation to save his family, he brings out everything of value that he owns including his savings, his precious Sony transistor radio and his hunting gun.  He promises to sell his bull Mtambakaki and give Matwa Kei the cash. Matwa Kei declines. That is when he’s forced to hand over Boyi to the ruffian, as collateral, till he can raise the money.

Boyi’s mother is stunned, when his son is dragged away into the darkness. She tears her headscarf and starts to shout, enraged with madness. Baba is adamant that he had to surrender the boy to spare the rest of the family the wrath of the barbarian gang who are now infamous for chopping off people’s heads, carrying off the heads like trophies and hanging them on trees, eating them like Iddi Amin, and torturing them by chopping off their ears and feeding them worm-filled earth. 

Boyi and his sister (the narrator) must have been devastated by Matwa Kei and his army's callousness since they had laughed off the idea of being attacked by their own kin. After all the militia was formed to protect them against the strangers who had been given their land, or so they thought. 

Baba regrettably sums up the hopelessness they felt the day Boyi was yanked from their care when he says sadly: “Our very boys, who ate oaths to protect our ancestral land have turned to us like the angry chameleon that eats its intestines” (pg 92)

Boyi’s mother spends her subsequent mornings sitting in the kitchen alone, numbed by the devastation. She does not answer greetings. She would shriek at the narrator, “Stupid girl, you want to finish tea and your brother will come from the caves hungry. Leave him some.” She sits gazing at the walls and declares that she had seen a vision of her son returning from the caves. Her monologues alternated with torturous silence in the room. The narrator feels her mother is running mad.

The neighbours stream in to console the family following the anguish of losing a son to the ruthless ruffian army. Soon after, the stream of visitors dies down.

The government later sends the army to quell the vicious onslaught of the militia. About 200 soldiers descend mightily upon the region.

Boyi’s mother stops eating and starts muttering to herself, sadly wondering why she has to suffer like this. This goes on for weeks. She refuses to participate in escorting Boyi’s spirit away when Baba and his cousin, Kimutai, bury a banana stem a - custom performed to wade away the spirits of death.

The narrator hopes her brother is more powerful than the soldiers so that he is not killed. She is encouraged by the stories of how the militia drank magic portions from Orkoiyot (spiritual ruler) that made their bodies like stone and how their bodies were made invisible when they were embalmed in bloody cow dung. She also heard that earth God Yeyiin protected them.

The war prevented people from working on their farms. The militia stole young crops and animals like goats. Women did not work. They sat in groups and recounted how the militia killed people and dumped them in rivers, pit latrines and wells. They went door to door recruiting boys as young as ten and forcing them to kill close family members in order for them to be strong.

The war leads to the displacement of many fearful villagers who flee their homes in Kopsiro, Saromet, Chepyuk and Chelebei to Bungoma, Chwele and the neighbouring country Uganda.

The militia whose mission was to protect community land turns completely rogue and abducts young girls to go and cook for them. River Cheptub-burbur floats with human heads. The men rape their own blood relatives and they give birth to “pale babies.”

The war also interrupts schooling in the region. The narrator is haunted by thoughts of being raped or killed by her own brother (p 95). Boyi’s mother is an obedient woman who always sides with her husband but now she says she could never run away and leave her son behind.

In January, a neighbor brings disturbing news that Boyi is now Matwa Kei’s right hand man and is thus a marked man. The war has turned an innocent pious boy who recited his psalms earnestly to a cold blooded savage. His parents shed painful tears when they fathom this. The narrator misses her brother so much. She remembers his boyish laughter and their childhood games and mischief. She sympathises with him when she imagines his harrowing experience in the cold caves. She fantasizes about his return and hopes to fascinate him with tales about the army soldiers. 

That night mother and daughter experience different emotions when lightning strikes the Nandi flame tree in their compound. The girl senses something was wrong whereas the mother declares that the evil that had struck their home had been stricken down by the lightning.

The following morning news reaches the family that their son and brother Boyi had been brutally killed alongside other leaders of the militia. Simoni, a neighbour, brings a copy of the Nation newspaper that bears the grim news. The headline forlornly screams Ragtag Militia Leaders Killed by Army Forces.

"Boyi was hoisted to the aircraft and then after it had ascended up, up like a kite, he was shoved out by Sah-gent 'without a parachute, imagine'" (p97) 

Baba crumples on the floor like an old coat. Mama laughs in despair. The narrator is too devastated to weep. The mother is too stunned to mourn or roll on the ground. She only stares at her husband, with lunacy filled eyes. The situation is sombre. 

The devastation caused by the meaningless war culminates into mourning for the family when they lose their innocent son. The narrator's deluge of tears soak her blue silk blouse and purple boob top as she sits on Boyi's bed with her grieving mother. The father dumps his Sony transistor radio and the Nation newspaper in a pit latrine. 

As the country celebrates the killing of murderous militia brutes, the family mourns the loss of a loved one – a cheerful boy who spoke good English and played with his sister, who fondly refers to him as Boyi.

Next: Cheque Mate analysis 

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