On a Sunday morning, outside Gitithia village churches, the air was filled with the crisp sound of children reciting Ephesians 6:1-2. It was like a chant passed down for generations, always delivered in Kikuyu, the local vernacular. Every child who attended Sunday school knew it by heart. It was uniform that village church school wore. They would rehearse it outside the church and later recite it to their mothers, aunts, grandmothers, and the few men who joined the service.
"Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise." The words were like a badge of honor, spoken with confidence and pride. But in Gitithia, the villagers believed this scripture was meant only for young children. Once the boys were circumcised, or the girls started developing boobs, they silently declared that they were no longer children, no longer bound to these sacred words.
When the youth of Gitithia left Sunday school, they left behind not just the verses but the values attached to them. The respect and obedience that once held them close to their parents withered away. A dark transformation swept over the village. The generation that once recited scripture with such innocence now became the worst Gitithia had ever seen.
Parents in the village began dying before their time, their hearts broken not by age but by the relentless pain caused by their children. The warnings of old fell on deaf ears. These grown children did everything their parents despised—stealing, drinking, and embracing a life of defiance. A mysterious affliction known only as ciiiiiiii swept through the village. It wasn’t a disease of the body, but of the soul. It found citadel on parents with 'grown up' children
Ciiiiiii was the sound of grief, an invisible sickness that filled the stomachs of starving parents when they heard their children had been arrested. It was the sting of watching a son speak to his mother while holding a cigarette, or seeing a daughter stumble home drunk. It was a sorrow that settled deep in the bones, turning laughter into tears and hope into despair.
When word spread that the police were in the village, ciiiiiiii sank into the hearts of anxious mothers and fathers. When the neighbors whispered about theft, ciiiiiiii poured like poison into the homes. The parents began to waste away, not from hunger or illness, but from the emotional weight their children placed on them.
The signs of a parent struck by ciiiiiiii were easy to spot. Their faces turned dull, and their once-straight backs bent under the weight of unseen burdens. Mihotoro, the old rags wrapped around their waists, were tied tighter and tighter every day, as if they could hold their shattered hearts together. Their minds wandered, always far away, lost in a place where they no longer had to worry about their wayward children.
Unlike the village pioneers, who peacefully waved goodbye to the living as they went to rest with their ancestors, this generation of parents died early, their eyes never meeting the joy of seeing grandchildren. The early graves were filled with souls who had been broken, not by the passing of time but by the rebellion of their offspring.
Yet, even as they buried their parents, the village children, now adults, did not change. They stood at gravesites with cigarettes in hand, untouched by guilt, indifferent to the pain they had caused. After all, Ephesians spoke of children, and they were no longer children. To them, those words were for babies, irrelevant to their advanced age. They couldn’t see that their actions were shortening their own days, as well as making their lives bitter.
But who cared anymore? In Gitithia, the cycle of sorrow continued, as children became parents themselves, and ciiiiiiii waited, silently, to claim its next victims.
"Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise." The words were like a badge of honor, spoken with confidence and pride. But in Gitithia, the villagers believed this scripture was meant only for young children. Once the boys were circumcised, or the girls started developing boobs, they silently declared that they were no longer children, no longer bound to these sacred words.
When the youth of Gitithia left Sunday school, they left behind not just the verses but the values attached to them. The respect and obedience that once held them close to their parents withered away. A dark transformation swept over the village. The generation that once recited scripture with such innocence now became the worst Gitithia had ever seen.
Parents in the village began dying before their time, their hearts broken not by age but by the relentless pain caused by their children. The warnings of old fell on deaf ears. These grown children did everything their parents despised—stealing, drinking, and embracing a life of defiance. A mysterious affliction known only as ciiiiiiii swept through the village. It wasn’t a disease of the body, but of the soul. It found citadel on parents with 'grown up' children
Ciiiiiii was the sound of grief, an invisible sickness that filled the stomachs of starving parents when they heard their children had been arrested. It was the sting of watching a son speak to his mother while holding a cigarette, or seeing a daughter stumble home drunk. It was a sorrow that settled deep in the bones, turning laughter into tears and hope into despair.
When word spread that the police were in the village, ciiiiiiii sank into the hearts of anxious mothers and fathers. When the neighbors whispered about theft, ciiiiiiii poured like poison into the homes. The parents began to waste away, not from hunger or illness, but from the emotional weight their children placed on them.
The signs of a parent struck by ciiiiiiii were easy to spot. Their faces turned dull, and their once-straight backs bent under the weight of unseen burdens. Mihotoro, the old rags wrapped around their waists, were tied tighter and tighter every day, as if they could hold their shattered hearts together. Their minds wandered, always far away, lost in a place where they no longer had to worry about their wayward children.
Unlike the village pioneers, who peacefully waved goodbye to the living as they went to rest with their ancestors, this generation of parents died early, their eyes never meeting the joy of seeing grandchildren. The early graves were filled with souls who had been broken, not by the passing of time but by the rebellion of their offspring.
Yet, even as they buried their parents, the village children, now adults, did not change. They stood at gravesites with cigarettes in hand, untouched by guilt, indifferent to the pain they had caused. After all, Ephesians spoke of children, and they were no longer children. To them, those words were for babies, irrelevant to their advanced age. They couldn’t see that their actions were shortening their own days, as well as making their lives bitter.
But who cared anymore? In Gitithia, the cycle of sorrow continued, as children became parents themselves, and ciiiiiiii waited, silently, to claim its next victims.
