MINISTRY OF EDUCATION
LITERATURE QUESTIONS
S6 CANDIDATES
LITERATURE IN ENGLISH WELCOME TEST/ 30 Marks
The journey found us. Long after it was over, I returned to the place of first love. My mother was the first person to hug me when I reached home. She felt my flesh, my bones, my heart. “You’ve lost so much weight, dear child!” “It’s been a hectic life, Mama.” That’s normal justification when you live in the city. Dad appeared from the farm gate just across the compound, carrying a large cabbage that weighed about 10 kilograms. He was wearing his usual calf length black boots, being the farmer he’s always been. A surge of fondness welled up in me. He held me for over five minutes, until his red cotton shirt was warm and wet with my tears. “Welcome home,” he said. But I know he did not have to say those words, for they were carried on his hands as he smoothed and flattened my back. They were said in the way he hugged me, his eyes searching for the soul in me, his heart bleeding for me. Mama whistled and sung at the same time. She stroked my dreadlocks like I had not stormed out of the house threatening no return, tired of the country life. Wind blows in the eucalyptus trees. I stand still in the compound, consciously smelling the honeysuckle that’s grown wildly on our fence. I inhale the sweet nectar and stretch out my arms to gather and hold as much sweetness as I can contain. I want to cuddle the earth and holler that this is where I belong. I want to clasp time in the cold palms of my hands and not look back to wonder where my years have gone. Mama disappears into the kitchen and shortly returns with a pot of coffee.
“I have mixed all the spices you used to love.” “Yes, I smell the cinnamon, especially.” “We shall sit here, outside.” The sun is setting behind the hills. The sky wraps around herself a beautiful purple hue; it makes me want to weep. In our dreams, that’s the color we had chosen for the wedding clothes. I hold the coffee cup and it warms my hands. I want it to reach the ice on the outside but it does not, cannot. Mama is across the table, silent. I could sit here forever in the quiet. “Whenever I watch the golden sunset, your face breaks right through,” she says. “You used to threaten me that Lakelekele, the green monster, would kidnap me if I did not move into the house.” “You didn’t even fear the mosquitoes. You were so loyal to that sunset you had no life indoors.” I fight the desperate urge to cry. Just like me, sunsets were his favourite. Sanyu, the girl who lost both her parents and ended up staying home, is laying the table for dinner. Dish after dish, she puts food on the tablemats and invites us to eat. Dad has completed his evening tasks, checking the paddocks and making sure all the farm gates are closed. He hangs his long coat on the nail in the dining room and joins us at the table. “Lord God we thank you for your provisions that never run out, and we thank you for Nama who is with us tonight. Sanctify this food that it may nourish us, in Jesus’ name we pray.” Dad’s prayers were always brief and to the point. “God has the whole universe crying to him, he doesn’t need an essay to answer us,” he would say, when we told him, that the reverend would call his requests ‘popcorn prayers bursting out so fast’. “Nama, here’s your favourite dodo,” he says, giving me the vegetables I’ve long missed. “And here, groundnuts in mushroom sauce.” “Here, your roast pumpkin, you used to love that, remember!” “Oh yeah, thanks.” My voice can hardly manage to audibly pass through the maze of food in my mouth.
“And this is smoked beef in simsim paste; there’s your chicken breast; the mashed Irish potatoes you liked as a child; here’s the eggplant mixed with bitter tomatoes; sliced carrot in tender bean-pods; rice sprinkled with newlypicked peas and cardamoms, and your favourite millet bread …” Dad keeps passing round more of this and more of that. The feast melts my heart. Then jugs of sweet porridge, sour porridge, fermented pineapple juice, sour milk, hot African tea flavoured with ginger, and every type of tropical fruit to be found in Kigezi. Sanyu has taken care to cut the watermelon in triangular shapes, papaya in rectangular blocks, mangoes and avocados in oval shapes, oranges and guavas in crescent shapes, the berries retaining their round shapes … they dance before my eyes, and I pray to the Lord to make me brave so I do not make a mess of myself. The conversation is punctuated with lightness, laughter and talking spoons. Even when we discuss sad issues that are the village’s concern we connect like I haven’t been away too long, like I just slept yesterday and woke up today with no estrangement between us. We discuss the sand and bricks business that’s a trademark of our village; the neighbour’s son who drowned; the couple who are going blind with age; heavy rains that flood our gardens from time to time; the villagers who have died of AIDS … we talk long into the night. When I finally retire to my room, I stretch out on the bed and listen to the once familiar songs of frogs croaking in the swamp nearby. The cockroaches stir the night with their melodies; the crickets make known their high stereo pitches. Through my curtain-less window, the night is seductive. I summon the verdant green trees to be my shade. I see the moon peep to greet me with her smile. I smile back. The stars shine brilliantly and I marvel how they are held up there, without falling, while we who walk the earth where we are supposed to be from, are always in a fall. She walks into my room unannounced. I am watching the sun rise to the sorghum fields in the horizon. She puts her hands flat on my shoulders and works out a soothing massage. Because I cannot laugh or cry, I heave a pregnant sigh of relief. Gently she caresses my neck, my face and my tangled hair. “You love my locks?”
She ignores the question. Her hands magically snake through the locks and squeeze my scalp. Energy flows back into me through her hands. This woman that is mother is a god. With her restorative touch, my walls come down in total release. “His name was Selestino,” I say. “We did not set out on a trip, yet a few months later we embraced the future and talked wedding plans.” Mama knows how near the surface my buried hurts are. She works her way, from the surface to the deep, slowly moving down my back, circling rings of spine softly but firmly. I close my eyes and relax. “He was an economist, he loved reading my dark poetry. All is gone and a wound grows festering inch by inch.” The hands touch parts I’d never known to feel the kind of sensation I was getting. The kind of weightlessness that comes with being a leaf floating on a wave. The kind of lightness known only when you’re touched by love. “I remember mostly how he made me feel. With Tino, love was not the fiery passion of a bush in flames, but a calm fire kindled from beneath and brought out in soft whispers.” Her hands remove the ache from my body, heart and mind. “His love was not the loud hammer that shatters rocks, but the gentle falling drop of water that melts the stone.” “Are you still clutching the past like gold nuggets that cannot be put away?” Those are Mama’s first words since the confession. I had thought she would chide me for never telling her about the relationship while it was soaring high. “I have moved on, but I do not forget. Sometimes I call out to him like deep calls to deep. I see him in rays of the sun breaking through dawn to my day.” “You’re throwing away the present.” “The past was beautiful.” “Learn to face the future.” “I can only learn to survive the transition, to accept the interval. Years have gone with the locusts. I still seek his brown eyes to look for the soul that gave me wings.” “I feel your pain,” Mama speaks from the depth of her kindness. “I think love and pain have a symbiotic kind of relationship. They are intertwined like twigs in a crown of thorns. You cannot have one without the other. This I never knew.
“There are many things we do not know,” she calmly responds. “You and Dad have always loved each other, how do you do it?” “We have many lifetimes in a lifetime. Like seasons, we do not take any for granted.” So we talk about winter, summer, fall and spring. Each has a beautiful purpose for which it was created. Each sheds a different life on mother earth. Earth does not complain when spring leaves and there’s winter. Neither does she grumble when summer ends and fall sets in. I recall how I groaned within when Tino left me. When he told me he had prayed and God advised him to cancel our relationship. It was God’s doing, not Tino’s decision per se. He always took cover in spiritualizing everything. “What else did God say in your prayer?” I had the nerve to ask. “He showed me another woman.” For a whole week I was a bundle of nerves and only a thin sheet of mercy held me from losing myself. Half the time, I was dizzy and suicidal, the other half of the time I was truly mad. “I am glad you’ve come home. I am glad you’re sharing with me what happened to you.” Her hands are now making repeated performances, playing in my locks and running to and from my spine. That day I chose to become earth. To embrace each season, each love, each friendship in its lifetime. To release each season when it goes without questioning why or when it would happen again. On nights when I look up, the sky is full of a million stars. Clouds and all, I rejoice to be part of that heavenly orbit. On days when it rains, I open up to the softness and touch of rain and drink to my fill. When the sun comes out, I welcome the warmth, the heat. When the wind blows falling leaves over me, I receive them. I have found the joys of being mellow in spite of the scars. I have been earth since talking with Mama.
I. Questions individually, answer the questions below. /10 marks
a. What is the title of this passage?
b. Discuss all the settings from this passage.
c. With evidence, state the point of view used in this story.
d. With evidence from the story, explain the main theme in this story.
e. Identify the message of the writer to the audience.
B. POETRY
Their Civilization by Ochieng Orwenjo
Theirs is uncivilized civilization,
They have table manners –
Meals singly silently taken.
They love in church
And hate in court. Their families,
private and confidential–
No grandparents and extended uncles.
They love selfishly–
Polygamy is heathen;
a mistress good.
They keep their dead in cemeteries –
A dead man is dead.
A child can have a mother
But no father That is their civilization,
So dearly cherished
II. Questions related to Poetry /10 Marks
1. Which culture does the poem talk about?
2. What is the likely period of time the poem was composed? What is the reason for your answer?
3. What possibly made the poet to compose the poems?
4. Identify all the literary techniques used within
5. What is the central theme in poem?
III. Match the terms in column A with those with Column B/ 5 Marks
| No | Column A | Column B |
| 1 | lullabies | This is also oral or verbal literature |
| 2 | Fiction | A metrical foot consisting of two stressed syllables |
| 3 | Bibliography | An imaginary story that is created by the writer for the purpose |
| 4 | Spondee | A quiet song that is sung to children to help them go to sleep |
| 5 | Traditional literature | A list of sources one consults and references in a research paper or project |
IV. Randomly, select three teachers in advanced level and discuss their character traits here at school/ 5 marks
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