The Old House

My uncle took me on a little drive a few days ago. To show me where my parent's old house used to be in Parklands. It was sold when they left Nairobi in 1975. Since then, it has been turned into a three-storey apartment building but oddly, the neighbours' houses on both sides remain the exact same. My uncle said he was pretty sure the people living in those houses were the same as well.
As I walked up to the compound where my parents used to live, I peeked through the iron gate. I saw the building standing in front of me, modern and a little cold, as it looks now. Then something strange happened. Time slowed down for a moment, and I saw the house that once was. The one that stands so proudly in all my parents' photo albums. The one where my dad was posing out front with his old blue mercedes and where my mom, wearing a long flowing dress, was holding my older sister, just a baby at the time.
Whenever my parents or grandmother talk about the old house or the old factory my grandfather ran, they always mention the backyard. It used to have every type of fruit tree imaginable.
"You would never have to go to the market if you wanted a piece. You would just pull whatever you wanted right off the tree," my grandmother always said. "But if they fell on the ground, you always leave them there. You have to save something for the birds."
My grandparents owned a business and made jams and juices in Kenya. They grew a lot of the ingredients themselves.
Whenever my dad and his siblings reminisce about the house, they can't forget how much my grandmother loved to cook. How the sufrias on the stove top were always steaming and bubbling with biriyani, somosas or chapati. They would come home from school for lunch, and always know there was a delicious meal waiting for them. Made with care and love. Each and every day. I pictured the inside of the house, as it was then, filled with the scent of pilau, penda and mandazi. I could hear my grandmother humming her favourite Indian tune as she prepared paratas with a rolling pin, the veins in her hands slightly swelling from the heat as she worked.
As I snapped a few photos to send to my parents back home, who were curious about how the house looks nowadays, I started to walk away. Then paused. My grandmother's words rang heavily in the back of my mind. I wasn't sure if those fruit trees were in the back, or still existed where the factory once stood. I couldn't really see from where I was standing. But if even a few remained, I sure hope the people who live there now leave a little something on the ground here and there. You know, for the birds.