by Meja Mwangi
As they were introduced the cell mates told how they had landed in prison. Some owned up with pride and others denied the offence, but there was little remorse. They had three meals a day, with little to no work, and it was more than they had outside prison.
Maina had told them about his friend, Meja, a brilliant student, who studied in his sleep but still could not find a job. They had believed it was another prison tale, like the ones they told to while away the hours. Now that they had seen he was real, they expected him to tell them of the great, and extraordinary, events that they believed must have landed him in number nine. But Meja was not in a hurry.
The warder came to lock the cell door, counted the inmates, slammed the door shut with a flourish and turned the key with unnecessary force. Down the corridor warders were ordering prisoners to keep quiet and go to sleep.
Mats were unrolled, blankets unfolded, and the prisoners settled down for the night. Then the tale-telling began. The stories did not have to be true or even realistic. Maina went first, and he told how he and Meja had led a mob of instant justice through the backstreets for an entire day without being caught.
“They caught up,” Meja corrected him. “But, as you can see, I am still here.”
“See,” Maina said to the others. “What did I tell you? My man is tougher than any of you.”
“What did you steal?” someone asked.
“What was in the bag?” Meja asked Maina.
“Mangoes,” said Maina.
“That, was it?” asked a cell mate incredulous.
“Rotten mangoes,” Meja confirmed.
“You stole rotten mangoes?” the cell mate asked Maina. “And left your best friend to die for them.”
“I did not steal them,” Maina said. “It was a joke we played on an old man. I did not expect him to chase us so far.”
He turned to Meja.
“And I did not leave you to die,” he said. “You ran the wrong way. You know that.”
Meja was silent, looking up at the ceiling. The bulb cast an orange light over the cell. The posturing aside, he was beginning to come to terms with the fact that he was in a prison cell with his best friend, and it was not in his plans. His friend seemed have come to terms with eating and sleeping and being counted and locked up. He worried that he too might eventually be forced to accept the situation.
“So, what do you do here?” he asked them. “Apart from eating and sleeping and being counted like goats?”
“We do whatever the warders say,” Maina said. “Here you do exactly as they tell you.”
“I meant work.”
“Are you allergic to work too?” someone asked.
Meja smiled at them, as to a gang of children, and shook his head.
“Has any one of you ever worked in a stone quarry?” he asked them. “Unlike you, I did not just go out and rob somebody. I first tried to make money the old way, by working for it. See this hand? It has done more work than all of you together.”
He held up his crooked hand, scars, and all, for all to see. It was no longer a thing of shame or a symbol of weakness. He was used to people staring at it horrified. He liked to scare people with the imagined violence.
“This hand has been inside a shark’s mouth,” he said to his cell mates. “That is why they call me Barra Kuda.”
“Barra …?” cell mate asked.
“Barracuda,” he said.
“Barracuda can strip a man to the bone in minutes,” Maina said to the man.
“In seconds,” said Meja.
They were impressed, so he told them the extended version, the one where he and his men hijacked ships off the coast of Zanzibar and Pemba, stripped them of their money and cargo and set them on fire. He had created several myths around his mangled hand and the limp, several different versions that never failed to amaze and impress. One day he would tell Maina the real story but, for now, this version was more interesting.
“Did you go home?” Maina asked.
“I did,” he said, “but I did not stay.”
They waited to hear why he had not stayed home. Instead, he told them how he had returned to the city and worked at a quarry. It was backbreaking work, and paid for little more than food and drink, but it was real work, for real men, and it had made him what he was. They toiled seven days a week, and spent their money right there in the quarry on food and drink. On Saturdays, when they got their week’s pay, the miners splashed it on meat and drinks in the squatter shacks above the quarry, and danced with the girls who sold them food, and gave them all their hard-earned money. Meja had made good friends there, but stayed too long.
Then the quarry had finally run out of quality rock, and the crusher was moved to a place too far away from the city for most of the miners. Those with wives and children, and those who had given all their money to the food women, were rehired at a fifty per cent pay reduction and they went off to stat another quarry. The rest went to the city in search of jobs.
Ngigi invited Meja to stay with relatives in Shanty Town, where they shared a house so small they slept in turns. Meja and Ngigi sat outdoors at night moved inside the house in the morning, when others left for work. They reinvented themselves as car washers, porters, and charcoal sellers, but their tough, work-hardened physical appearances intimidated customers, and made the suspect. Then Ngigi’s relatives tired of hosting them and kicked them out.
They landed in the street decided to do whatever they could to stay alive. They picked pockets, snatched purses, mugged, and stole car mirrors. They were eventually discovered by a gang of advanced criminals and recruited for burglary, holdups, and carjacking.
“That is why I am here,” he said.
He was ashamed of it now, he admitted, to be arrested for burglary, when he had robbed payrolls, mugged pedestrians on Main Street in broad daylight, and stolen cars and got away with it.
“What happened?” Maina asked.
“It was my friend Ngigi’s idea,” he said. “A girlfriend who worked as a maid had informed him her employer had a large amount of gold and diamonds jewellery, and bundles of money in a safe at the house.”
Meja and Ngigi had gone to the house, when the master was away, tied up the watchman, made friends with the dog, disabled the alarm and spent the whole night looking for the safe. There was no money or jewellery anywhere in the house.
“Ngigi’s girlfriend had made it all up, to get back at her boss for firing her without cause.”
But, just so as not to waste their time, Ngigi phoned a friend, and the friend brought a lorry, and they loaded it with furniture and clothes and everything they could, drove it all back to Shanty Town. Selling fancy clothes and furniture, and freezers, and cookers and television sets, in Shanty Town proved to be a bad idea. The police were there in a flash, sniffing around looking for the source of the stolen items. Ngigi and the others heard about it and escaped.
“They forgot to tell me about it,” Meja said. “That is how I am here.”
It had been a busy three months of shuttling between the courthouse and the police stations. Now he was ready to lie down and sleep.
“The blanket?” someone asked him.
“The blanket?” he laughed. “The girlfriend’s employer recognised the fancy suit that I wore to court, and I had to take it off. The shirt, the shoes, the socks, and underwear were also his. Everything I wore was declared material evidence, and the police gave me a blanket to wear. I pleaded guilty, to save the court’s time, and the judge decided to be lenient with me. I got eighteen months.”
The cell mates looked at one another. Some of them were serving longer sentences for petty theft. They must remember to save the court’s time next time, they said.
“What are you in for?” Meja asked.
“Nothing so interesting,” Maina said.
“He stole milk,” someone said.
“What sort of milk?”
“Milk-milk,” said Maina. “Riverside Dairies.”
“What for?�
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“To sell, what else?” Maina said. “Don’t laugh, but it seemed like a brilliant idea at the time.”
Someone snored. The sound irritated Maina.
“Shut him up!”
There was a thud and the snoring stopped.
“Why milk?” asked Meja.
“I am a thief,” Maina said. “Like everyone here. That is why.”
“Tell him how you almost got away with it,” Chege said. “And what you told the judge.”
“Another time,” Maina said.
Most of the others were asleep. Chege rose to use the bucket by the door. Meja now realised the source of the smell he had assumed was the smell of convicts.
Chapter Thirteen
It was the rainy season. The earth was soaked, streams overflowed and rivers broke their banks. Crops reached for the skies, and the weeds followed in competition, spreading where crops could not. The rain continued, the maize grew tall and strong, and emboldened by the farmers’ inaction, the weeds shot after the maize and encircled it and tried to weak and choke it. For many days, the farmers could not go tend to their crops for the streams and the rivers were impassable, and rain was still falling.
Then the rain stopped, and the sky cleared, and the sun was warm and bright and full of hope. Streams and rivers went back down to their old courses, and the farmers went out to their fields and took care of the weeds, which were as tall as the maize and growing. They worked fast, for the rainy season was not over, and the rain could return any time soon. They cleared the weeds and waited for rain. It did not return that month, or the one after that, or after that. Rain did not return that year.
The rivers went down, the land dried up and the crops started dying. There were cries of anguish, when faces turned to the sky and saw not a single cloud in sight. The farmers turned to their leaders for advice. A delegation went to the city to seek help from the Government.
They were gone for too long. Everyone hoped, and some were even convinced, that the delay was good news, that they were getting together the aid they would bring back. When it finally came back, the delegation brought back neither food nor money, but a team of Government officials to make sure that the delegation was not exaggerating the hunger. The Government team stayed two days, feasting with the chiefs, then left promising to return. They were never heard of again.
When a dignified period had passed, the farmers sent a second delegation to the city with an urgent request for aid. The crops had died, they said, the livestock had died and now the people were dying.
The second delegation returned much sooner than the first, and it brought disturbing news. The cooperative society, which sold their crops and kept their money, had died, and been buried by a Government commission of inquiry leaving no records of any kind. The commission had neither the money nor the mandate to take care of the needs of the farmers.
A few people died of starvation and heartbreak. Others sold their farms and left while they could. A few turned to witchcraft to restore the lost prosperity, and the old rainmaker brought down his tool bag and set to work. The last rooster in the village, itself about to die from hunger, was sacrificed to the rain spirit. The spirits of revenge and justice, would have to wait for more roosters to be hatched.
The rainmaker did his magic. Then he stepped outside to check for results. A speck of a cloud appeared in the horizon, but it would be days before the speck turned to rain. The old man crept back in his hut and lay down to wait.
Rain came when all but the rainmaker had given up hope. The land turned green again, and the crops thrived again, and the livestock that had survived the drought grew big and fat. Calves pranced with joy and children played late into the evening. Song and laughter were heard again. Everyone was at peace with everyone else, and with the spirit.
There were rumours that the cooperatives society had resurrected too and scouts were prowling the farmlands valuing the next harvest. Now that the tough times were over and forgotten, no one was bitter or angry with the cooperatives men, or with the Government that had stolen their money and refused to help in their hour of need.
It was in this season of forgiveness that Maina returned.
The sun was setting, the sky was red and gold, and a cold wind was blowing. Rain clouds were gathering above, while everything below braced to meet the coming storm. Maina was sweating, despite the cold, and his heart was full of apprehension. Many years had passed since he left to find a job in the city. He had grown from a boy to a man, from a man to a thief, and from a thief to a suicide looking for forgiveness and love.
Coming home was the hardest decision of his life. It was a parting of ways with his old self, the thinking, hoping, and loving self that had kept him sane for a long time, even as he sunk in a swamp of desperation. It was the real suicide.
Razor’s gang had broken up, when Sara decided it was more fulfilling to be a woman and a mother, than a gang leader, and went off to raise Maina’s son away from Shanty Town. Maina was devastated. Heart-broken, Razor sought solace in chang’aa and was found drowned in a sewage ditch only a few meters from the house.
Several gang members tried to lead the gang, to hold it together, after that. Kifagio tried too hard to instill discipline and ended up killing Jitu. Professor nearly went mad trying to make one-eyed Jicho see life from an unfamiliar perspective. Then it was Maina’s turn to run the gang that Sara had ran so effortlessly, but he did not have the heart for it. He abdicated and went in search of Delilah to marry her and start a new life. He had not seen her since the great fire burned down the old Shanty Town. Many lives and dreams were destroyed along with old Shanty Town. But Delila had said to come back when he was ready and mature, when he tired of being a bad boy.
He was now as mature as misery, and he was sick and tired of being bad, but Delila was nowhere to be found. He searched every slum in the city, in the bars and boarding houses, and asked anyone he thought might know her. No one seemed to know what happened to Delila after the great fire. He went looking at the last place she had told him she worked.
Friends Bar was deserted but for an unfriendly barmaid, and three gangsters huddled in a corner table. The men looked up, and stopped talking, when they saw him enter and walk up to the bar. The woman listened, shook her head, and walked Maina back to the entrance. She pointed down the road and went back inside.
The bar down the road was as dead as the first. The girl behind the bar directed him to another girl dozing in a corner. Angry at being woken up, she was short and stern.
“I don’t know where she is,” she said to him. “Ask Rose, over there.”
“Rose,” she called, as Maina walked over, “he wants your friend Dalila.”
“Dalila is in prison,” said Rose.
“Not Dalila,” said another barmaid. “Delila.”
“Delila is not my friend,” said Rose. “I don’t know what happened to her. Ask Mercy, she was her friend. Mercy?”
Mercy joined them from the kitchen.
“He is looking for Delila.”
“The one who had Aids?” asked Mercy. “She died.”
“That was Daniela.”
“Oh.”
“Delila, the tall girl.”
“Oh, that one? She went to have a baby.”
“When?” Maina asked them.
“Months ago. She went back upcountry?”
“Wasn’t she also getting married?”
“That was what I heard.”
The women had stopped talking to Maina and started talking among themselves.
“What sort of man would marry a woman with a baby?” they asked themselves.
“There are good men?” one said.
“Where?” Maina asked.
“Upcountry,” one said. “Back in her home.”
“But she was born in Shanty Town?” he said.
“Was that what she told you?” They laughed.
Maina looked down, and walked away his heart weighed down by sadness. He did not look
up until he was back in Shanty Town, and inside the house. The gang was out and he had no one to talk to. He lay on the bed they had inherited from their dead leader and hoped to die. He was there for a long time, looking up at the roof, thinking how his life had turned out all wrong and meaningless. It was all too much for him.
They found him dangling from the roof with a rope round his neck, and they cut him down, and revived him, but were lost for what else to do. No one they knew had ever tried suicide before, and they did not know what to do or say.
“Why?” one asked.
“You can’t understand,” he said.
“We understand,” said Professor. “Lack of perspective. No perspective at all.”
“You don’t understand,” Maina insisted.
“We understand very well,” insisted Professor. “You are sick and tired of life as you know it. But you are not alone. This is Shanty Town; we are with you all the way.”
“We are not,” a voice said from the doorway.
Meja stood at the door, looking on as he had while they cut his friend down and brought him back to life.
“Why not?” Nyoka asked.
“It is as it is,” Meja said. “As it has always been. The strong survive, and the weak take the painless way out. He taught me that himself.”
He looked at the angry eyes around him. None of them could be as angry as he was. He felt betrayed and let down. He turned to Maina.
“Be strong or perish,” he said to him. “Isn’t that what you taught me?”
Maina avoided his eyes.
“Nothing is given to man?” said Ruguaru, the newest member of the gang. “Isn’t that what you taught us in prison?”
Maina looked down to avoid facing them.
“We can’t help him,” Meja said.
He picked up the rope and tossed it at Maina.
“Go do what you have to do,” he said. “Just do not do it here. Go now. Get out!”
The gang watched startled, as Maina picked up the rope, studied it for a moment, turned and made for the door.
“Make it good and tight,” Meja said, with more anger than sadness. “Don’t let someone else to cut you down by mistake, as we did.”