I was born with many words; a restless spirit. I cried often. I screamed. I was angry. I had tantrums. I sharply wielded the sounds within me until I could turn them into words.
In a hut that still stands today, my grandfather sat before his fireplace. He pierced a knife into the ground and tried to balance a gourd upon it. Then he began to call on the names of the deceased. Spirits of the Kaparketur clan.
“Kojeruto, Kokiptoo, Kochelang’a,” he began. The gourd fell with each name.
“Kokibet, Kopkipkor, Koprono.”
Nothing.
“Kopchumba, Koyano, Komurkomen.”
The gourd would still not balance. None of the spirits accepted the child, accepted me.
My grandfather did not relent. Then he remembered Kojeptoo.
“She always fought with my father. She was a woman of many words,” my father would later tell me in my adulthood. “But her husband was a cool quiet man.”
“Kojeptoo!” My grandfather said. The gourd balanced upon the knife.
“Kojeptoo.” The gourd continued to balance. The ritual was complete. A spirit had accepted the granddaughter born with many words. Kojeptoo, the wife of his cousin, the gregarious woman who always fought with him, had accepted me.
I am told that whenever the words overtook me, my family invoked the name of this spirit who had accepted me. Kojeptoo. And the anger subsided. Kojeptoo. And I would be silent for a little longer. Kojeptoo. And I would scratch myself a little less.
“She would take your grudges upon herself. She accepted you because you were like her. She is your spirit, your oyiin,” my father says to me.
I have always known about Kojeptoo, but I have not always accepted her. For a period of my childhood and teenagehood, I rejected her. I did not want the name of an angry woman; mama wa makelele, they called her. They named me after mama wa makelele, and yet I did not want to be mama makelele.
“God, take away my anger,” I remember praying when I was 10 or 11. And He did. I was no longer consumed by anger and a tantrum that caused me to scratch myself and roll on the ground. The anger left me, but the words persisted.
I grew from the child of many words into a woman of many words. And in my adulthood, I began to wonder about the name Kojeptoo. The name my family invoked to take away my anger. Who was she? What did she fight about? Who did she fight? What were her words?
The older I grow the more I wonder about Kojeptoo, especially when I am told to accept the words of men.
“You are named after her because your character resembles hers,” my mother reminds me.
Like Kojeptoo, I cannot contain the words within me. The older I grow the more I see how hard it is to escape who we are and the spirits who accept us in our infancy. This grandmother of mine who fought with men, who always had a sharp word for my grandfather, did not contain the words. This spirit the same grandfather invoked to accept me.
Kojeptoo. My grandmother. My spirit. Oyiindenyu.
a book of remembrance 