By Sue Muraya

“What happened to your first language?”
My mother asked me after my first day of school
“They only teach numbers in English,” I said,
“One! Two! Three!”
What was I supposed to learn?
I thought that is why she took me to school
She was glad I learnt how to count though

Everyday we’d go to school
Our teacher would call us caterpillars
I didn’t know much about them
Only that they were worms
Eating through my father’s crops
I liked the name still
It was a great add to my vocabulary
But my Kikuyu-struck tongue hated it
Because it could not tell between the sounds “L” and “R”…yet

“That is why they took us to school,” I thought,
“To teach my tongue to reject my mother’s, to beat home out of us.”

We didn’t know metaphors back then
To us, a word was only what it meant
The sun was this giant ball of fire in the sky
A pen was just a tube with ink
And being called Angel didn’t mean we had wings
It didn’t give us wings either

But it made me wish I had wings
I didn’t know I would grow wings with time
Just like our teacher told us, who we were, caterpillars–Butterflies of a lesser form

Years later I am still in school
I call home and we talk about how prices have gone up
“Sukari hainunuliki!” Mom always complains
“I miss you,” I tell my mother
She pretends not to understand so I try to translate
But in Swahili there’s no word for that
We borrowed from English ‘miss’ but my mother never did
There is no such word in her vocabulary
She can only understand ‘Nakukumbuka’
But that is never enough, at least not for me
So mother, forgive my tongue
Because the first language it ever learnt
Speaks more of remembrance than longing
I am burnt by your absence and I don’t know how to make you understand
What really happened to my first language
Why are the things I wish to say most
Always lost in translation

Translations
Kikuyu – a language spoken by the Agikuyu people who are majorly found in Central Kenya.
Sukari hainunuliki – Sugar is unaffordable.
Nakukumbuka – I remember you.

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Sue is a young writer who is trying to use their voice where it matters. In their poetry they try to write about some of the things that most people turn a blind eye to.