Digital Story from the Bawso Stories Project.

Chosen’s story, “Fireplace in Kenya”, inspired by a visit to St. Fagans National Museum of History, brings her memories of cooking with firewood in her Kenyan village and gathering around it as children to hear traditional stories about monsters that taught lessons on obedience, blending fear, culture, and family traditions.

English transcript: So, the first object I saw, it was a fireplace. I don’t know what they were using it for, but according to me, it reminded me of way back, before we used to use gas cooker, we were using the three stones and fire wood to cook and that is mainly used in the village, because in the cities or in towns, most of the people are using gas cookers. But if you still go to the village, my grandmother will still use the firewood instead of the cooker because she is used to that. I can also add by saying that the food from the firewood, it’s better than the food from the gas cooker. So, about the fireplace, it was not only meant for cooking. When we were young and we would go back to the village to visit my grandparents, we would sit around the fireplace and our grandparents would tell us stories. I don’t know if they were real stories. They would tell us stories about ogres, monsters and they would make us very scared. Even to go outside to the toilets just to ease ourselves, because they would tell us stories about monsters and when you wake up during the night, you will see a real monster in front of you. The story that they were telling us, it was in our tribe language, so I don’t know how to call it, but it was a type a big monster which used to eat children who were not obeying their parents, and they gave us an example of a child who was sent to the shop by the grandparents and the child went to the shop and they did not buy the thing that they were sent for. The child ended up buying sweets and shared it to other children, and when they came back, they lied to the parents that the money got lost, but the parents did not believe them. So, they gave them the punishment. So, it was all about, we should obey the parents in the name of this monster that eats children that doesn’t obey their parents. We believed the stories because they were making it sound so real, and even when you’re alone or maybe in the dark, you would see the monster itself, but it was all about your mind and what you were thinking, and what you were being fed in the name of stories. OK, in the village it is said that you should not bathe every day, so most of the times, the grandparents are making stories to us, to just wash our legs and sit around the fire, wash our legs and use the same basin, the same water from the first child to the last child. And it was amazing. It was a good experience for us.