by Meja Mwangi
Maina stopped by the door. There was neither anger nor hate in their eyes. Just a sad realisation, an understanding that only a true friend could show. He stepped out of the hut and was gone.
Nyoka shot up to follow him. Meja grabbed him and shoved him back in the room.
“Sit down!” Meja ordered. “Sit down all of you. He must face it alone.”
“You are ...” Nyoka could not find the words.
“Heartless,” said Meja. “How many tears did you shed when Razor died?”
“If he hangs himself,” said Nyoka. “I will …”
“Hang yourself too?”
Nyoka did not know what he would do, and neither did the others.
“Settle down,” Meja said to them. “Maina will not hang himself. No one does that twice on the same day.”
“But what will he do without us? Where can he go?”
“Upcountry,” someone said. “Back to his people.”
“I don’t think so,” Meja said to them. “I do not know what he will do, but Maina will not go back home.”
That was where he was wrong.
Maina was so embittered by his Meja’s words he decided on the one thing that would test his had courage.
But, as he walked the road to his home, his determination started to fade. He was assailed by doubt. Would his people recognize him? What would they say? What would he say? What would they do? Would they accept him broken and jobless as he was? And then what would he do?
Darkness fell as he stumbled through a maize field, forded a stream and walked about looking for a landmark. He blundered along dark village paths for some time before he came to a house.
The woman who opened the door was a stranger, and he could tell, by the look on her face, that she did not recognise him either. She was about to close the door on him.
“Wait,” he said.
He was from here, he told her, but he had not been home in a long time and had lost his way in the dark. He was looking for his father’s house. Kamau’s house.
“Kamau?” she said. “What is his other name?”
“Chief,” he said. “They called him Chief.”
“Chief?”
“He was not a real chief. They just called him that.”
“Chief,” she said. “And not a real chief. The only Chief I know is Chief Kimani. He is a real Chief.”
Maina walked away from her door, and retraced his steps along the path that led him there. Lightning flashed and thunder boomed, and rain was not far behind. He made his way to the next farmhouse down and knocked on the door. A man in boxer shorts opened the door. He seemed to be going bed.
“There are many Kamaus here,” said the man, impatiently.
“Kamau Chief.”
“Chief Kimani?”
“Not a real chief,” Maina said. “They just called him that.”
“Ah, that Kamau,” the man suddenly remembered.
“You know him?”
“My wife called him father of Maina.”
“I am Maina,” Maina said. “Where is his house?”
“Are you really Maina?” he asked. “The son who went to school? Where is your car?”
“I don’t have a car.”
“How did you come here?”
“I walked.”
“All the way from town? That is such a long way.”
Lightning lit up the night illuminating the man’s puzzled look.
“They said you had a job in the city. A big house and car.”
“Can you direct me to his house?”
“His house is over there,” the man pointed. “It is the third one from the big tree.”
Then he shut and bolted the door.
Maina walked back the way he had come, following a path more felt than seen. He counted two houses after the big tree, and came across a fence he did not remember. He walked along the fence until he found a gate. A dog barked from the other side. He banged on the gate. The dog barked louder. A voice called out from the house.
“Who is there?”
“Maina,” he said. “Your son Maina.”
“Wait there.”
The voice called for someone to go open the gate. Maina heard footsteps approach and a key turn in a lock, then a chain fell off the gate and it opened a crack and someone looked round it. Another flash of lightning lit up the face of a young man. The young man took him to the door of the house then disappeared round the back with the dog. The man at the door was not his father or anyone he remembered.
“Who are you?” asked the man.
“I am Maina,” he said. “I am looking for my father. Kamau Chief. I am his son.”
“His son?” The man was suddenly suspicious.
“Is this not his house?” Maina asked.
“This is my house,” the man said. “Kamau Chief does not live here anymore.”
“Where does he live?”
“I do not know,” said the man. “I bought this place from the bank at an auction.”
Maina’s mind went numb. The man said he had lived there for over three years. He did not know where Maina’s family went after selling the land.
“I heard stories,” he said.
He had heard that Kamau Chief was a good man, loved by all. That was why they had called him Chief. Because he was a good man, a reliable man, worthy of leadership. But Kamau Chief had fallen on hard times, after taking a cooperative loan to send his son to the city to find a job. The son never came back to pay the loan as expected.
Maina dug his fingers in the wood of doorframe to support himself. His head was spinning and his legs about to give way.
“During the drought, Kamau Chief sent his other son to the city to look for the first. He too did not return. It seems the city is a bottomless pit from which no young man ever returns.”
Maina barely heard him; so hard and fast was his head now turning.
“It is cold out here,” the man said. “Come inside.”
Maina backed off. He could not enter that house now, not the house in which he was born, grew up in and that now belonged to a stranger. The house in which he left his parents to languish in poverty. He walked away, back the way he had come.
“Which son are you?” The man called after him.
Maina heard the gate close behind him, and the dog start barking again. Tears ran down his face. He did not know where he was anymore, or where he was going or why.
Then the rain started falling. Thunder roared over the hills, lightning lit up the fields, and rain fell with fury. Maina staggered on, blinded by the tears and the rain. He tripped and fell, and lay in the soaking mud crying.
He lay there for a long while, unable to rise and accept the truth; that, because of him, his family was gone, scattered by poverty and despair; that because of him he no longer had a home or family. He closed his eyes and hoped to drown in the rain that was now pouring down with a vengeance.
The rain was still falling, when he woke up some hours later. He had not drowned, but he was cold and his body was one big ache. His limbs were cramped and his head was throbbing. He got up and staggered along. Lightning illuminated another house. He went and knocked on the door. A voice asked who was knocking.
“Maina,” he said. “Open up.”
He hammered on the door, and, eventually, it opened a crack and a face peered outside.
“What do you want?” asked a man’s voice.
“Let me in,” Maina said. “I am cold.”
“We are sleeping.”
“Then give me some food,” Maina said. “I will eat out here. Just give me something to eat, please.”
“Who are you?”
“My father was Kamau Chief. Did you know him? I do not know where he is. No one knows where he went.”
The man tried to make sense of what he was saying, decided he was drunk, or crazy, and started to close the door. Maina threw himself at the closing door knocking the startled man back inside the house. Maina charged in after him. The man scrambl
ed to his feet and grabbed a panga from behind the door. Maina closed in. They fought for the panga, upsetting furniture and breaking things.
Outside the hut, lightning flashed, thunder rolled and rain poured. The dog at the house that once belonged to Maina’s father howled. The howling woke up the neighbours, and worried them for the rest of the night.
Chapter Fourteen
The van driver stepped down and waited for the warders. It was late afternoon and he was tired after another long day outside the courthouse.
“Affande, you will not believe who is back,” he said to the head warder.
He unlocked the van door and swung it open. Then he stepped aside to let Affande see for himself. Affande smiles at the sight of the prisoner.
“Chokora?” he said, “what are you doing back already?”
“Not Chokora, Affande,” said the driver. “This is the other one. The Barra ...”
“Cuda,” said the prisoner.
“Kamongo, you promised not to come back.”
“They brought me back, Affande.”
“Come out here, let me see how you are,” said Affande.
Meja crawled out of the van, yawned and stretched. He hacked loudly and spat at the driver‘s feet. Affande stepped back to have a better look at him.
“Am I mistaken or have you grown smaller?” he asked.
“I have not eaten well for two weeks, Affande,” Meja said. “They don’t waste food on remand prisoners anymore. I pled guilty not to starve to death in their cells.”
“I’ll see what I can do for you,” said Affande. “But you have to tell me why you are back.”
“Life outside is not what it used to be, Affande,” Meja said.
“So you chose prison?”
“They caught me, Affande.”
“Doing what?”
The driver handed over Meja’s file. Affande glanced at it. His eyes widened.
“You did what?” he said.
“I did not, Affande,” Meja said. “This time, it really was not my fault.”
Van Driver guffawed.
“Tell me,” said Affande.
“Affande, it is a long story.”
“No hurry, Kamongo,” Affande again glanced at the file. “You have how many years to tell me about it?”
“Many years, Affande.”
He was looking past Affande to the prisoner compound.
“Affande, you have so many boys these days,” he said.
“No one listens to their mothers anymore.”
Meja waved his chained hands to someone behind the wire fence. Affande ordered a warder to unchain him. Meja rubbed at his wrists and, keeping his voice level and inoffensive asked Affande why he was still in prison.
Affande’s face broke in a smile.
“I have to take care of the convicts,” he said, pointing at the prisoners gathering along the inner fence to welcome Meja. “They will not listen to their mothers, so they have to listen to me.”
The driver shut the van door. The Affande was looking the prisoner up and down, noting how he had really lost weight since the last time, which all prisoners did after release, when they had to work to eat. They came to him thin and scruffy, and as hard as nails, and left cleaned up, plump, and swearing to never return to prison.
He once believed he could change them, with understanding, and compassion and fatherly advice, but he was beginning to doubt even life could do that. They returned full of anger and excuses, blaming society, destiny, upbringing, tribalism, and everyone but themselves.
“What can I do?” they cried. “I can’t get a job. The Government is corrupt, and society is mean, and life is hard and God knows I tried to be good. What else can I do, Affande?”
Some of them cried real tears when they told him their woes.
“I am only a man,” they said. “If God needed me to be different, he would have done something about it.”
Affande heard that too often from men who seemed sincere and sane.
They took Meja to the reception office, where the warders stripped him of the symbols of freedom and choice, his watch, his gold chain, and a startlingly empty wallet.
“What, no money?” a warder asked him.
“What happened to all the money you stole?” Affande asked.
“Allegedly stole, Affande,” Meja said to him. “The police stole it from me.”
The warder pulled on a pair of surgical gloves.
“Bend over,” he said.
“There is nothing there,” Meja said. “I haven’t changed that much.”
“The rules,” said the warder.
“Is this necessary?” Meja turned to Affande.
“Regulations, Kamongo. They too have not changed.”
Meja obliged and they did their body search, poking and probing until they had humiliated him, according to regulations, enough.
“Welcome home,” said the warder.
“Back to Number Nine?” he asked.
“All your roommates are back. All except one.”
“What happened to your friend Chokora?”
“They shot him, Affande.”
“I bet it was not his fault.”
“It was not, Affande.”
“Must it always be prison bars or police bullets with you boys?” Affande wondered. “Why don’t any of you ever die of disease or accident? Why don’t you walk under a car and save society the trouble?
“You would have no work, Affande,” Meja said.
“I would find something to do,” he shut the register with a loud bang and gestured at the warders to take him away.
“Affande,” Meja stopped at the door. “I did get myself ran over by a car.”
He held up his scarred hand.
“That did not prevent me from coming here.”
“I wondered about the scars,” said Affande.
Then they took Meja out of the office and across the parking to the second gate and the prison blocks. An armed guard let them through and shook his head, watching Meja swagger to block nine. Other prisoners were already locked up.
The cell mates had kept their promise. His bed place was waiting for him, the few possessions he had left behind piled neatly on his rolled up sleeping mat. He stopped by the door and inhaled deeply to get used to the smell of sweat, disinfectant and the night bucket by the entrance.
“It is great to be home,” he said.
The cell mates went to their sleeping places, unrolled their mats, spread their blankets and sat or lay down waiting news of the outside. They had heard how life had changed for the worse, how money was scarce, how everyone was desperate to make a living, and how policemen had been equipped with new uniforms, new and faster vehicles, and bigger, more powerful weapons.
“And better pay too,” said Chege.
He had heard old warders were quitting to become policemen.
“No chance for old men,” said Meja.
The force was staffing with educated young men, easier to train, and quicker on the trigger. Old criminals were retiring in droves.
“Did you see my woman?” someone asked.
“She can’t wait for you to get out.”
“What did I tell you?” the man said to his neighbour.
“What about my wife?” someone asked.
“She is back with her parents,” Meja reported. “Your son is out of school, and your brother says he can’t find the money where you say you buried it. They built a hospital on it.”
The man groaned and covered his head in despair. The conversation went on in this manner late into the night. Meja handed out hopeful answers to desperate questions, and told lies to make life bearable and everyone happy. True to his word, the Affande sent some food from his own house and Meja had the last home-cooked for the next seven years.
“What did you really do?” one of his cell mates had to ask.
“Same as last time,” he said.
“Housebreaking?”
“Nothing.”
�
�What happened to all the talk about banks and payroll heists? Was it just talk?”
“You have been here too long,” Meja told him.
Banks were no longer guarded by old watchmen armed with jembe sticks and dustbin lids. They were guarded by eager young policemen in bulletproof vests and armed with automatic rifles.
“Cowards do not hold up banks,” said a voice from the corner.
“Was that you, Gitoo?” Meja asked.
Gitoo was serving time for a string of violent holdups and armed robbery. Much of the bank security reforms now in place were in response to his reign of terror as the most notorious criminal mastermind in the city. Using toy guns, homemade guns, pangas and bow and arrows, he had robbed so many banks he was legend.
“When I leave this place,” he boasted to his devoted fans, mostly composed of failed pickpockets and muggers, “I will be a rich man.”
“No, you will not,” Meja said to him. “You should have known better than to bury your loot in the ground.”
Gitoo shot to his feet.
“Sit down,” Meja said. “A gang of city workers found it while digging for a new sewer. It was in the newspapers. Police identified the metal boxes you stole it in.”
Gitoo sat down, put his head in his hands and wept. They left him to his grief.
“Did you see Chokora?” Nyoka asked.
“You have not heard then?” he asked them.
“He kicked Razor out of the house and married Sara,” someone said. “He is the new king of Shanty Town?”
It took them a moment to realise Meja was not laughing with them. He was staring at the light bulb with pain in his eyes.
“Did he ...?” Nyoka could not get the words out of his mouth.
“No,” Meja told him. “Maina did not hang himself. He went home instead. He had sworn he would never go back there, but I made him go and he did.”
“So?” Chege asked. “What was wrong with that?”
“He killed a man there,” Meja said. “The man lived in his fathers’ house.”
“Why?”
“I do not know,” Meja said. “I read about it in the papers. They said he was found confused and covered in mud and blood.”
There was a sad silence in the cell. The bed bugs were getting impatient waiting for everyone to lie down. He could hear the men scratch under the blankets.