After taping the old newspapers around her packages, Suba reached into the sweets jar and took out a handful. “These are for the children. My good little friends always offer to push my laden bicycle up the hill for me on my way from the market.”
Rona smiled coyly and took the bundle.
Before she stepped away into the darkness, Rona glanced back and, as the shopkeeper’s eyes met hers for the second time, he jerked his thumb slightly over his shoulder and gave a little wink that his wife—who was still engaged in the argument with the elderly shopper at the other end of the counter—couldn’t see. It was a brief signal that anyone watching from the path wouldn’t have noticed. And then Rona turned and was gone into the night, her long skirts sweeping into the darkness like the tail-fin of the mermaid the shopkeeper had painted on one of the shop pillars.
Suba leaned against the counter for a while, listening to his wife argue with the adamant customer as he pored over the faded pictures on an old newspaper page. A couple of children came up to buy sweets, lingering a while to joke with the shopkeeper as they wet the palms of their hands on their tongues and pressed them on the counter to draw the spilt grains of sugar. Soon after they left Suba rose and announced to his wife, “I am going off to see to the cattle. That boy we employed doesn’t quite lock them in properly. You had better hang around for the last customers.”
With a last glimpse around the well-stocked shop he collected his coat from the nail behind the door and left, struggling to get his thick arms through the narrow sleeves.
***
In the darkness of the path-side bushes the two lovers were a little shy of each other, as if they were meeting for the first time. They kept glancing over their shoulders, as if expecting someone to suddenly appear, even though they knew the path to the well was seldom used at this hour. They stood, holding hands, close enough to feel each other’s body heat through their clothing. A shaft of moonlight stole through the tattered banana leaves overhead and fell on Rona’s face, highlighting her fine features.
“Let’s go,” Suba said, tugging at her hand. In the darkness his eyes glowed with the hopelessness of the totally devoted.
“Uh-uh,” she whispered, shaking her head. “Not today.”
“But why?” he pleaded.
For answer she gazed steadily into his eyes, standing on the tips of her toes so that his warm breath caressed her face. “You haven’t heard, have you?” she asked with that soft coyness that set his heart afire.
“Haven’t heard what?” he asked, inching closer so that the tips of her pointed breasts brushed against his chest.
“Oh, I see you haven’t,” she said with a slow nod. “Well, it can’t be tonight,” she added with a slow shake of her head. “No, it would be too soon after.”
“Just what are you talking about?” he asked, pulling her into his embrace. “Come on, you aren’t changing your mind now, are you?”
“Uh-uh!” she said with a shake of the head.
“After all we’ve had? You don’t enjoy it, is that what you are saying?”
“You know I do,” she whispered, pressing herself against him. “You know I enjoy it as much as you do.”
“Well, what is it then?” He passed his hands behind her shoulders and cupped her face in his hands, staring intently into her dark eyes.
“Just not today,” she said, roping her arms about his waist.
“Oh, let’s go,” he pleaded, crushing her against him in his tight embrace. “Come on, we must go. Only tonight. I will go mad if we don’t.”
She knew where he meant. It was their usual rendezvous. The stack of fresh nappier grass the cowherd left behind the cattle shed for feeding the cows the following morning was softer than any bed either of them had ever lain on, and the cowherd’s old sack covered with Rona’s lesso wrap made for a perfect bedspread. They had lain on this very bed the previous night, gazing up at the stars in the night-sky as they explored each other’s bodies.
“No, it can’t be tonight,” she said, shaking her head firmly. “It can be dangerous, believe me.”
“You know you really are driving me mad,” Suba said, crushing her to him, an irrepressible sense of urgency overtaking him. He had drawn up the skirt of her dress with his left hand and was stroking her warm buttock through the thin fabric of her nylon panties. “We must go today. Only today,” he pleaded. As she hesitated, he tugged at his belt-buckle and unzipped his pants, letting them pool around his feet. And as he drove his naked thighs up against her warm soft flesh, he closed his eyes and a soft sigh escaped his parted lips.
But before she could answer, a figure suddenly loomed on the deserted path, having detached itself from the surrounding bushes with a rustle, and the two lovers were washed in the bright light of a six-volt flashlight.
“Oh, so it was you all the while, was it, Suba?” Godo’s words shattered the stillness of the sheltered banana grove like a curse, freezing them in their tracks. “So it was you messing with my house all this while?”
Before they could turn around a deafening slap had cracked on Rona’s cheek, ringing in the conspiratorial stillness like a pistol shot. It sent her reeling back, a shriek escaping her lips.
“Suba, goooooo…I just can’t believe it!” screamed Godo. The bicycle repairman’s cries roused the entire village and they appeared one by one, sleepy and disheveled on the path to the well. They paused, waiting to find out who else among their neighbors had heard the commotion, rubbing their eyes to clear them of sleep. In little gatherings they drew closer to see what was the matter. “Come and see; come and see for yourselves…goooooi!”
Godo, leaping at the dumbstruck shopkeeper, brandished a piece of rusty metal piping that he had carried in the sleeve of his coat, aiming for Suba’s head. The shopkeeper, rooted to the spot and blinded by the glaring flashlight, swung up his arm to ward off the blow and caught it squarely on the upper arm, the resultant thunk suggesting a broken bone. Suba cried out, trying to regain his balance but disadvantaged by his trousers that pooled still around his feet, entangling him.
It took three strong men to disentangle Godo, who straddled the half-naked shopkeeper on the ground, pounding at him like a madman. Rona sat huddled a little distance away, screaming helplessly at the horror of the fighting men.
The trial was held at the village square two days later, conducted by the Council of Elders. Respectable clansmen from both sides had turned up to lend support to one of their own, heads carefully cocked for any discrepancy to traditional procedure in a case of this magnitude. But the lead counsel was evidently an old hand at the business, and would ensure that all proprieties were duly observed.
The court sat on the worn logs arranged in a semi-circle underneath the old fig tree where the chief usually held his weekly baraza.13 The accused sat on the swept ground to one side of the semi-circle, head lowered as he listened to the proceedings. Suba cradled his injured arm, encased in thick white plaster in his lap, and drew support from his clansmen who had positioned themselves behind him. The complainant glared at Suba’s bowed figure from the other end of the semi-circle, equally hemmed in by his clansmen. The woman sat on the ground a little distance away, her back turned to the court, unable to lift her head for shame. A band of young men were positioned around the court, keeping away the village children who attempted to have a peek.
It proved to be a difficult tussle of a case, with both sides putting up strong arguments. But everyone knew that, in the end, it was the testimony of the witnesses that would carry the day. Godo had lined up four good speakers, including the miller, Onzere. Another villager—who had been among the first to arrive at the scene of the crime—gave a lengthy, if unnecessarily graphic, description of what he had seen that left everyone in stitches. He, too, had been carefully chosen, as one who had paid through the nose for petty items at the duka; a man, in short, who was not the best of friends with the
accused.
As the sun climbed high in the sky, the elders finally rose to consult with one another about the verdict. “The court is agreed that the accused has committed a crime,” the elders’ spokesman finally announced after lengthy deliberation. “And we all know the fine for breaking someone’s leg.14 As per our custom, Godo will be required to pay a cow, together with a sum of money that the complainant’s side will agree on.”
Early the Monday after the trial Godo was seen leaving the village, dressed in his black boots and the fine tweed coat a relative from Nairobi had bought him. He swung his walking stick jauntily by his side in the manner of someone who was going on an important journey. His daughter Adema followed behind, resplendent in her bright new school uniform, her hair shaved. Bringing up the rear was Godo’s wife, bearing Adema’s new metal trunk on her head.
* * *
4 Swahili for ‘greetings’
5 bicycle/motorbike taxi
6 millet
7 maize meal, a Kenyan staple.
8 dried sardines
9 Cotton wrapper for women introduced by the Swahili people of the East African coast but now commonly used by rural women across the country.
10 Swahili for “the government.”
11 A whip cut out of an old car tyre
12 shop
13 A formal meeting in the village at which the chief makes important announcements from the government
14 A euphemism for having a love affair with someone else’s wife
The Stronger Hand
I was a master brewer by the time I was nine, as was expected in my family, and since no one in their right mind would employ a three-and-a-half-foot midget anyway, this suited me fine. Growing up in the remote district of Apac, Uganda, my sights weren’t exactly set on brewing when I came of age. I dreamed of spreading my wings—like the buzzards that flocked the local slaughtery whenever there was a kill—and taking to the air. It was clear in my mind even as I helped my Uncle Papa, who was charged with my upbringing, out with the brown lumps of jaggery15 at the brewery deep in the valley on the lower side where the town’s sludge flowed. My destiny lay among the clouds where the birds soared, not hustling droop-eyed drunks for their last shilling in dingy shebeens. I had decided that as soon as I turned eighteen, I would present myself at the nearest army recruitment office to be trained as a helicopter pilot. This, I knew, was what the gods had intended for me.
On the cusp of my seventeenth year, when a recruitment exercise was advertised near our home—and against the wishes of my family—I made good my burning desire. I recall the army officer bending down to look me over, a wry smile twitching at the corners of his hard-set mouth. He was a tall, dark Dinka from the Sudan border, and he possessed the contemptible gleam in his bloodshot eyes that the Goliaths of this world reserve for the Davids.
“You really want to join the army, young man, eh?” he asked, bemused.
“Yessah!” I bellowed, pushing my puny chest out as far as it would go. I was conscious of the bemused side glances of the other hopeful recruits waiting tensely in line.
“Well, that is quite ambitious,” mused the officer. “And you might just pass the tests, judging from the burning ambition in your eyes.”
We recruits had stripped off our shirts for the physical examination; those of us not in shorts rolled our trouser legs up over our knees to expose what we were made of. The officer examined me carefully, taking particular interest in my well-toned calf muscles, as a butcher might size up the morning delivery of carcasses.
“You look fit enough to me,” the officer proclaimed at length. “But, my little man, there is one qualification that you could never hope to pass.”
Perhaps one of the cruelest things to say to a pigmy is that they are short. I felt the blood rush to my ears as the tip of the officer’s hard cane softly but firmly pushed me out of the line. I walked with my head held high, even as the sniggers sounded behind me, out of the recruitment center. It seemed that my presence had done nothing but provide comic relief to an otherwise dour exercise.
That afternoon I got very drunk on my uncle’s brew before sneaking into a grass-thatched hut to screw one of my uncle’s concubines. Later, after copious vomiting, I slept through my heavy hangover. When I awoke, my mind was made up. I was leaving. My uncle had, for some time, been urging me to leave for Nairobi, where we had relatives who were doing quite well for themselves. Our family brewing empire had so spread its influence over the years so that we now had a presence in virtually every city in East Africa. It was time for me to set up my own operation.
Our Apac home was getting crowded, but my uncle would not tell me so openly. I had come to the south after fleeing the violence of a LRA-NRA exchange in the northern town of Gulu. My parents both fell victims to the gunfire, and my sister had been captured by Kony’s goons—doubtless she was someone’s sex-slave in the bush. I was the only one of my nuclear family to escape the brutality and, for this reason, my uncle had felt obliged to keep me on until the opportunity arose for me to leave.
I accepted the tickets from my uncle and reported early at the Akamba bus station in Kampala the following Monday. After I had boarded and was on my way, I reflected on my uncle’s words and the bundle of letters—written in pencil in halting vernacular on grubby papers pulled out of old school notebooks—for me to take to our relations.
“You will be in safe hands, Apuka, believe me,” the old man had said. “Our people there will show you the way more than I ever could here in Apac. I know the Papa in Nairobi—he is a good man and will set you up well. You will make a fine brewer with a business of your own—for was it not I who honed your hand?”
While I knew what I was leaving behind, I had little idea of what awaited me. I would miss the barefoot easy-to-lay girls of Apac and the older women with hand-chiseled gaps between their front teeth who knew how to time their husbands’ return. I would miss their warm thighs and their full breasts in my palm on a starlit night. I would miss the gonorrhea and syphilis, too, which, like a tail on a dog, naturally came after in these matters—afflictions which the village healer aptly resolved with several bottles of bitter leaf extract. I would miss the hills that were shrouded in mist in the mornings and tinted gold at sunset. I would miss the easy, carefree life and the ringing laughter; the smell of cattle and the fresh air of the fields; the taste of fried sun-dried white ants eaten with ugali and matooke,16 and the pot-cooked meals that only Apac women knew how to make. For even though I had never been to a big city like Nairobi, I felt that I was migrating to a place where people burrowed like rats through narrow spaces.
My people received me at the station and we drove off in a battered Bedford taxi, one operated by another of my uncles on the Lunga Lunga route. As we wove our way slowly down the crowded thoroughfares of the strange town, my earlier fears were proven correct. I had never seen such an early rush as that on Tom Mboya Street. The pace of the serious-looking people on the sidewalk was dizzying, as was the bumper-to-bumper traffic, the screeching brakes of reckless drivers, and the deafening car music. The streets were crowded with foul-mouthed cab drivers, with their elbows hooked over their windows and their jaws working furiously at lumps of qhat17 like some sort of sacrament required to stay awake on the job. It was an alien world.
We followed Valley Road out of town and wound between groves of soot-colored trees where fine red-tiled houses were tucked, surrounded by smooth patches of lawn. I wondered why such beautiful homes were walled in by six-foot walls, topped with coils of shiny razor wire. I reflected upon the simple thatched huts of Apac that were enclosed by a low-trimmed, waist-high hedge. We passed Yaya Centre and the Valley Arcade, and I watched as the elegant houses started to give way to the less-pleasant dwellings of Kawangware.
Again, there were hordes of people crowding the sidewalk, a
nd the air had thickened with a warm putrefaction. The rickety tin-and-timber kiosks, built over open sewers, leaned into the road, their dirty lace curtains flapping to and fro on the breeze. We left the main road and wound our way through the narrow alleyways of the Congo slum toward Uncle’s house, with frequent stops for a bony dog or a pot-bellied child who were in no hurry.
After my arrival I bathed, ate, and rested before being escorted to my uncle’s club in Congo for a drink. Congo came alive at night in such a way that only those who lived there could truly appreciate. While much of the city congregated in the hip, up-market venues to unwind after their day, the Kawangware residents sought out the delights of Congo. The patrons of Congo’s nightlife consisted of guards who worked in the private homes in the neighboring suburb of Lavington, as well as gardeners, houseboys, plumbers, electricians, house-helps and all manner of handymen who derived a living in one way or another from the affluent residential areas bordering Kawangware. They found employment in lowly jobs that paid just enough to keep their shirts on their backs; and they would descend upon the town at the end of their work day in dust-blown droves, intending to drown their sorrows in Congo’s tins and plastic tubs before retiring, staggering and bleary-eyed, to their abodes in the darkened tin city.
The tin-walled shebeens were arranged haphazardly around a man-made lake that shimmered like a mirror in the fading rays of the sun. At the fringe of the lake a four-piece band belted out tribal music from a set of tin drums, a lyre, and several homemade electric guitars wired to an amplifier and loudspeaker and powered by an old car battery. A handful of their fans were just warming up to the act, shaking a leg here and snapping a finger there as they drank from the rusty tins. A little distance away, one of the shebeen attendants tipped a huge sooty drum full of waste water from the brewery into the frothing lake. Another staggered to the edge of the lake, unzipped his trousers, and sent a jet of steaming urine arching above the shimmering lake. At the far end of the lake, where a church group had erected a striped tent, children stripped off their school uniforms and jumped into the lake, sending a flock of wild ducks that had been idling on the rippling surface scuttling into the thick marsh that ringed the perimeter.
Dog Meat Samosa Page 3