The sky is blue with only a few streaks of grey threatening to destroy its endlessness. The sun is sifting in through the woods as the sweltering heat is shielded by the maples and the evergreen oaks and the beech and the elms and the palm trees which are surrounding my house and I can feel myself a spider surrounded by this intricate web. My legs are swinging on the Green Verdi Black base chaise lounge which I hand painted. I love green. In my house everything, well, almost everything is green. In fact my house looks like one of them Little Red Riding Hoods' Grandmother's house in the woods.

I am a big fan of children's books and everything childish, you know, but my mannerisms are not near childish, that I can tell you before you start muttering about my indulgent reminiscences.

From where I am seated I can see my lovely wife wrapped around in a lesso only and her brown skin is exposed from the breasts up.

I wave at her and she yells, 'Its coming.'� She's referring to the lemonade which I had requested earlier.

The children are playing by the pool side and I envy them but I can't go and play with them. I have to finish reviewing this book which I am holding titled 'A grain of wheat'.

From afar I can hear the buzzes of bees and the singing of birds in the trees. The strong hum of the bees is increasing and I begin to tremble nervously, looking wildly about me to see from which direction they might be coming from.

I hate bees. Ever since they attacked me some two years ago I have been having this phobia about being stung by them. I always dream of them and now my wife too has heard the buzzes and she's coming towards me screaming, 'GET IN THE HOUSE!'� But I remain immobile.

The buzzes are increasing and now my wife has stopped dead on her tracks and she also looks wildly around her. She's also afraid of them. The goats are bleating loudly and the two cows are also mowing loudly.

There's a strong odour of bananas. But I don't grow bananas, I muse, rather aloud.

Something must be wrong somewhere because the last time I sensed that smell was when I had been looking for a plot to build my house. I had been going up the many uncharted hills of Mazeras, passing through the botanical gardens which are commonly known as 'mauani' by the local folk to mean a flowered place in Swahili. The gardens are hardly frequented for the right reasons and the area is now famous for it's abundance of firewood and cow dung and monkeys.

Further up, the cool breeze from the sea washed over my kind-of-plump face in slippery waves and the silence was exotic, only the squeals of monkeys and endless birdsongs filled the bushy and somewhat rocky hill top. A small heaven this was going to be for me and my family.

I now move my feet but they feel as though they are laden with Lead. I make some few steps towards the house but I later stumble upon a tuft of dry grass and I fall face down and I collapse.

Images of my first real encounter with bees keep flushing through my mind.

After walking up the hill for some two hours or so I happened to stumble upon something soft, like a deflated ball, which was covered by a mound of dried leaves. I kicked again, determined to dismantle the 'trap' which I thought had been set up by a hunter or some of them spoilt kids who usually came to this place to smoke some weed or to escape from the household chores.

I felt something fidget from under the mound and I stepped back a little. I then picked up a long twig and started poking at it, thinking the thing was a snake and this time a light growl emanated from under the mound. Careful at first, I pushed aside the dried leaves and saw a furred creature which had large, round eyes and big, bat like ears.

'A KOMBA!'� I exclaimed aloud. Also known as bush babies, these creatures are nocturnal and are almost extinct since in Africa, especially here in Mombasa and around the Mijikenda community, it is mostly associated with bad omen and witchcraft.

I lowered my rucksack'which had now been emptied of a couple of sandwiches and some oranges, which were meant to keep me going, and now contained a pullover and an assortment of books'and I picked the creature up. It was wounded. Its silvery coat was stained by a big, red blotch, blood it was. On its thigh a shattered bone was sticking out and its guts were almost spilling out. I touched the injured spot and it whined. It was still alive but I was struggling with whether to go ahead and finish it off, because it was definitely going to die and even if it didn't die, who would take proper care of it? Everyone was hunting them anyway.

I turned round and began my descent, this time using a different route from the one I came with. This path was filled with undergrowth merged with shrubs, small trees and larger trees.

All this while I was holding it close to my chest like a new born, feeling sorry for the poor creature, contemplating on whether to keep it as a pet or not if it happened to survive, though I knew my wife wasn't going to be pleased 'she's a Mijikenda too, you know.

The smell of ripe bananas from its fur filled my nostrils and reminded me of how hungry I was now feeling.

Just as I was approaching a clearing I heard a buzzing sound from above me. I felt my knees failing me as the buzzes increased. Soon they were all over me and the bush baby. The biggest mistake I ever regret doing was to kill one of them and rub the yellow stuff on my clothing 'cause its like I aggravated their fury. They were now all over me like a hailstorm and I started running as fast as I could.

I had chanced upon a pig house as I was coming up, now this was going to be my solace. If they were to feast on me, they could also have a serving of pig skin. I crawled through some bushes and descended to the west side of the hill and I approached the pig house. I could hear the hum of traffic from afar and the snorts of the pigs as I edged closer to the sty. I later squeezed my barn like body through the wooden barriers of the sty and stood on top the feeding trough and the pigs stood still. A nice dilapidated spot this was. The snorts of the pigs increased amidst the onslaught of the bees and a while later everything fell silent, except for the croaks of frogs and the chirps of crickets.

I noticed that the sky had started turning to crimson - I would have to hurry if I was to reach home before darkness had set in.

Insects were sweeping through the woods and every time I heard a buzz I had to lower my head, thinking they were coming back, with the komba still at my chest.

I heard the sound of a streetcar - or was it a waterfall? As I later approached a nameless path with scrap metal shops along the side. I moved on and arrived at 'Slapper Limited'� and entered the place where I and my kids were lodged. Some people were walking their dogs and one stray cat gave me a quick look and ran away and I could not understand why until I had seen my reflection in one of them shop windows. My boyish looks had been distorted and my face now looked like a balloon about to explode. One could hardly notice the bridge of my nose. My eyes too seemed like a chameleon's, yet I didn't feel any pain. I could feel the eyes of the people scorching at my skin. Soon everyone was laughing and their laughs felt like furore within my ears. I felt the world spinning. Even my own wife and kids were all laughing at me. Their laughter soon turned to shouts of 'UA! UA!'� and everyone soon pounced on me; they had seen the komba and were now trying to dislodge the creature from my clutches. I felt my mouth move frantically as I tried calling my wife's name. I struggled to sit up but felt some heavy claws on me and I started up. The whole of me was now drenched in sweat and I saw the lovely face of my wife closer to mine. She was now stroking my brows and i knew everything was going to be alright.

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