I Had a Dream and it Keeps Recurring

By Jossi Tinga

As a child I believed in ghosts. They were always lurking in the dark waiting to strangle or suffocate me. Many nights I ran off to my parent’s room to escape from killer ghosts out for my life. Every night I ran away from ghosts, Mom shouted at me and Dad shooed me right back. I learnt to pray and sleep with a Bible right next to my head from early on. Ghosts could not breach the shield radiated around me by the family Bible. Some nights, we fought with my little brother over who should have the Bible. Then, Dad gave up the old Bible handed down from his father; our Grand-dad.

The biblical shield was always not enough to deter bad dreams. I often dreamt of snakes. I dreamt of piles upon piles of snakes weaving under the bed. I am sure I broke the world Long-jump record for boys many times as I leapt for safety far away from the bed. Dad would escort me back to our room with a flashlight and a walking stick. Not once was any crawling creature found under the bed.

The worst nightmare came when I was around eight. Back then I shared a bed with my big brother. We had moved to a smaller house forcing a reorganisation of the sleeping arrangement. It suited me fine. For the first time I slept soundly. My brother was ten years older and in high school. He lifted makeshift weights and was quite muscular. I had no use for the family Bible with him around. Then the worst happened.

A calm sea- in my dreams it rises against me

Usually, I dreamt of a hedgehog approaching the bed. We slept in a long, narrow room that would have been the veranda. It was shuttered all the way on one side. Some nights you could see the moonlight. It filtered into the room through the spaces in the woodwork. The light drew patterns on the floor and on the wall beyond. It was quite nice when the moon shone.  I was not really bothered about a stranger climbing to peep at us or a robber ripping out the wood to attack us. Dad and big brother could take care of physical threats. 

I would rise up on one arm from my dream to check on the approaching hedgehog. Usually, there would be nothing. I would then go back to sleep behind my burly brother. He never stirred in his sleep and was always first to rise. He walked no less than ten kilometres to school every day.  We the little ones walked about five kilometres- it was nothing. Life was exactly as God willed.

On the fateful night I started from my sleep as the hedgehog made it halfway across the room. To my horror, it was still there even after I sat up. Shaken, I woke my brother. He got up and scanned the room. I could see the hedgehog clearly. It was hobbling close to the wall heading towards the bed. I was not really afraid anymore. It looked like an ordinary hedgehog. They were many in the neighbourhood. To my consternation, my brother said he could not see anything. I screamed!

There was frantic movement from the inside of the main house as Dad rushed to the rescue. When he flipped on the light, the little hedgehog was gone. We chatted briefly as they reassured me it was just a bad dream.  He said a prayer and left.

We retreated to our bed at the end of the room as Dad made his way out. He stopped by the switch at the extreme end of the room to turn the light off. This time the hedgehog was right next to the bed. I must have lost consciousness briefly as I belted out the loudest scream ever heard in Kilindini High Level, Mombasa. That night I slept in my parent’s room. The next morning I was too ill to go to school. I never dreamt of the hedgehog again.

Not all the dreams were nasty. Many nights I dreamt of me and friends at play. We usually played under the huge mango tree right outside our home. Our houses consisted of long rows of mud brick houses. They were many such blocks in the neighbourhood but for some reason our playgroup comprised kids from two opposite blocks. There was me, my little brother Furaha, Jenga and his brother Dairo, Wire` and his brother Pilsner plus John and his brother Danny and their sister Laiki. Occasionally other kids joined.

Laiki was the only girl in the group. She shunned other girls and liked to play football. There was always an argument over which side she would fall as we drew lots for the teams. The boys never liked her on their side. I always played on her side. I liked her. She liked to play infield but the boys would have none of it.

We always forced her to be the keeper. Many times she made daring runs for goal living our team badly exposed. We were better off when she played striker but that only happened if she was drawn on the same side as her little brother Danny.  It is only Danny who could give up an infield place for her. The boys called you a sissy if you gave up your place for her. 

Many times I played one-on-one with her. It was just for kicks- or was it? By some unspoken agreement we always rushed from school to play one-on one with Laiki. I believe she let me win many times. She was quite good. Sometimes, when we tussled for the ball we rolled over. I can still remember the smell of her sweat. It was a pleasant, slightly pungent odour not very much unlike tangerine. Tangerine reminds me of her.

In the dream, we were hard at play under the mango tree. Then another girl appears round the corner. She is fairer than Laiki, more feminine and nicely dressed. She heads towards us. We stop play, probably to let her pass. No one speaks. We just stop play as we customarily do when someone passes because paths crisscross our playground. Instead of going her way, the girl stops to join us. She does not speak. We look at her in amazement. I wake up before the matter is resolved or anything is said for that matter. 

I was to have this dream till when I joined college.  In our Engineering class there was only one girl. She was Rosemary. I had also been with her in boarding high school. She was like a sister to me. She reminded me of Laiki. Once when students rioted in high school we retreated into the bushes around when police charged. I remember running into Rose in the company of another girl. I was with a male classmate. They scurried away from us in the dark begging us not to attack them. It took me a while to figure why they regarded us a threat. Apparently, many girls were raped that night. We became the best of friends and I still have her contact thirty years hence.

In my freshman year, a friend asked me to the Institutional Management block. They had many pretty girls in the course. I was hoping to get cosy with them. I was never popular with girls really. I was neither fashionable nor funny and could not lie without blinking. The Institutional Management course is actually a Hotel Management course and just about all the girls at the Kenya Polytechnic were enrolled. The rest of the courses were in engineering disciplines. 

Ruth, the girl my friend chose for me, was in the Institutional Management class. I trembled when we were introduced. I could hardly speak. Something crawled into my neck literally strangling me. My friend tried to make things easy cracking jokes and making fun of me. 

Ruth just smiled politely. She seemed to understand my situation. She was the girl in the dream interrupting our play. The resemblance was astonishing. It was not just the looks but also her posh demeanour. She had that narrow-eyed probing look I had seen in the dream. Of course she was older than in the dream but it was almost as if we had met before. We exchanged greetings whenever we met but never became the lovers David wanted us to be. We never became friends either. I have never had the dream since.

I wonder how it would have been if Ruth and I had hit it on. It is the same with Laiki. In our high school days we became lovers. Laiki is the first girl I ever kissed. To me, love is what I recall from that encounter. We just held tightly, kissed and I could feel a welling up in my heart. The most I wanted was to bury my face in her silken hair, to inhale her natural odour.

It was not a wanting of flesh but a wanting of only the best for her. I wanted her to finish school and be a nurse or a teacher- I wanted to be a truck driver-and to be with me forever. I wanted her to live, be happy and healthy. I wished only the best for Laiki. We never had sex. We just held hands, kissed and prayed for each other until Mom caught us. We parted on parental advice- we were too young to be lovers, they said. I have never felt the same for any woman since. She, too, was another dream- it seems. I know she, just like me, was later to have relationship problems.  

I was to take even more serious notice of dreams later in my college years. In another recurrent dream, I was at our rural home in Rabai. It was night and I was fetching water at the outdoor tap. Just as I stooped to turn the tap I noticed a snake coiled around it. I usually woke up with a start. 

I had nearly forgotten the dream when one night I approached the tap in our homestead. Dad always insisted on a flashlight whenever approaching the tap at night. Usually, he sat with his flashlight immediately after dusk. We never took him seriously.  No one I knew had actually been bitten by a snake. Yet there were many snakes in the area. Snakes usually scurried away if you approached
.

Well, not that night. I was just about to turn the tap when I noticed something like a short piece of pipe coiled around it. It was far much shorter than the piece of pipe we used to fetch water. It was also much darker. In the poor light, it looked much like a piece of rope. I was just about to ignore it when I remembered the dream. I stopped and brought my father’s flashlight. A dark snake with orange stripes was coiled around the tap. It was an African coral snake- venomous and ready to strike. We disabled it with a paraffin shower before killing it.

Lately, I have been having a dream about a tidal wave hitting Malindi where I live. It has not been the same dream really. In one version, I am struggling to race to the upper floor of a building to escape the flood.  In another version, I am shocked after I notice a huge wave racing towards land as I walk by the sea. I should think this dream is inspired by images from the tsunami that hit Japan.

I would have been especially concerned about the tsunami dream but for the fact I still dream of my Advanced Level exams twenty-five years after the detail. This is probably the longest I have heard a recurrent dream. I performed according to my expectation but not as per my wishes in that exam. My longest recurring dream - that is, excluding my memories of Laiki.

PS

·       Some names have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals