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39 spicy Indian rice
40 The eight-stringed lyre of the Luhyia tribe of Western Kenya.
41 The showy and fashionable moneyed young men and women of Nairobi’s middle class.
42 A bus conductor, staffing the privately owned public service vans and buses. Usually they compete for customers by hanging out the bus door or window and shouting out their routes and fares. They are often very rude, aggressive, street-wise, and foul-mouthed.
43 Swahili for ‘barbecued beef.’ A delicacy in Kenya, especially with beer drinkers.
44 A merry-go-round group (mostly for women) where the members pool their money at the end of every month and give it to one member to invest in a project of their choice; this is repeated monthly until every member has received their pooled kitty, after which the group breaks up or the cycle starts all over again. Sometimes they lend out a portion of the kitty to either the members or outsiders at set interest rate. They can also choose to invest jointly in a major project.
King of the Night
He lay on his back in the dark, listening to the sounds of the night. He could hear the echoing call of a night bird in the trees outside, and the chirps of countless crickets and cicadas that lived in the tall gum and flame trees that surrounded the school compound. If he listened keenly enough he could even catch the gossamer swish of the ghost’s long robes as he took his daily night tour. All the boys knew that the founder of the school, the mzungu, was buried beneath the massive rock by the toilets; and that at night the rock shifted and his restless ghost came out to torment night stalkers and to choke those sleeping boys who had spoken ill of him while awake. Inside the dormitory the muted snores of his mates resonated from one end of the old hall to the other, some soft and feathery, and others deep and nasal like a sewer toad in a pipe. Intermittent sighs provided the occasional break in this sing-song chorus as someone rolled over.
He shifted slowly to his left, easing the pressure on his right ribs. The thin blanket spread across the bedsprings did little to cushion the curled wires that cut into his back. The school matron had removed his mattress because his term’s tuition and boarding fees had not been paid. But it scarcely mattered; he had already made up his mind to escape this dreary ghost-infested place, and he thought longingly of the open spaces of the country and swimming with the village lads in the muddy river down in the valley.
It was a chilly night, but he was fully dressed in his green jersey, khaki shorts, nylon socks, and black leather shoes. He could feel his toes pulse inside the stiff shoes and knew they would be a pale grey come morning, the skin wrinkled and sore. Uncomfortable as his shoes were, he couldn’t take them off because come dawn he wanted to get up, slip out of bed, and bound out of the place like a silent and stealthy ninja. There was no need to risk waking the dorm prefect and spoiling the show as he groped for his shoes under the bed.
A hearty fart exploded at the far end of the dorm like a punctured balloon, the exhaust petering out at leisure. A startled cockroach—one of those giant brown ones that lived in the school’s sewer system—paused in its exploration of a carton box, its feelers probing the air for a sign of danger. A little distance away a squealing argument arose between two mice fighting over a morsel, their claws scratching the dusty cement. All these vermin that had crawled out of their crevices at lights-out had come close to starving in the four weeks the school had been closed for the holidays. Now was the time to make up for lost calories.
The occupant of the bunk beneath turned over and scratched himself, the scrape of his fingernails raking a buttock amplified in the dead silence, after which he resumed his rhythmic snore.
It amused him to listen to these sounds. He was like a lone sentinel in a graveyard, with only the faceless, formless ghosts for company. He was like God in a morgue of prostrate corpses, with all the time on His hands to select His chosen few. In the still of night, there was no difference between the wealthy students from Nairobi who hauled trunks crammed with expensive crepe-paper-wrapped delicacies purchased in top stores in the city, and the likes of village kids like him, with barely twenty shillings to their name, and who brought fried white ants and roasted groundnuts wrapped in old newspaper as snacks. The night made equals of them all.
For a while he toyed with the idea of getting up and joining the cockroaches and the mice in their feast. He could work the trunks and lockers from one end of the dorm to the other, taking what he wanted. The metal trunks were easily broken into; all he needed to do was lean his weight on the centre of the top and slowly twist one corner upwards, creating space enough for his hand to slip through. Why, he could have buttered bread and marmalade, or chapattis with fried chicken; or even char-grilled fish and chips. The mere thought of these culinary delights caused his belly to turn over in an angry rumble, disturbing the baked mélange of arrowroot and cassava that he had consumed at home earlier that day.
He lay panting softly in the dark, watching the shifting shadows thrown by the security light outside play on the cobwebbed roof. On this first day, the shifting shadows were an alien sight. In his family hut in his village, the night plunged into pitch dark after the tin lamp was doused. As the shadows wove into each other, so did his thoughts swirl, and he thought of a movie they had watched in the assembly hall the previous term. Say, what if he were Count Dracula? Why, he would have a feast, moving from one still body to the next.…
He squeezed his eyes shut for a while, and his thoughts shifted to the fat school matron in her crisp starched uniform standing at the head of the dining room stairs, a bunch of store keys dangling from her thick ringed finger. Her chubby face swam in and out of his vision like an image reflected in a rippling pond, her eyes hard like polished black stones. She seemed the very image of a jailhouse keeper, smugly satisfied that not one convict had escaped in the night.
He opened his eyes, a thin smile spreading slowly across his face.
The night dragged on, the light shifting ever so slowly through the gap between the roof and the wall. He remained alert, while everyone else had succumbed to sleep.
He knew just when dawn was approaching and could sense the night wearing itself out. The din of crickets faded slowly as the little fellows tired out. The strange flapping and sighing sounds from the trees ceased as the ghost completed his sojourn and returned to his resting place and the pin-drop silence of the netherworld. There was a brief lull just before dawn, where he could hear the reluctant sigh as night let go its stranglehold. The dew would be at its thickest now in the valley back home, the chill biting to the bone. It was also the hour when the shortwave frequency on his dad’s wooden Philips transistor radio would be clearest. There was a sudden clarity to everything at this hour before dawn.
From a distance he heard the first stirrings of the cockerels in the nearby village and the sharp call of the peculiar bird that resided in the tall trees that lined the schoolyard. This harsh bird cry rose above the other birds, slicing through the matted cobwebs of dawn like a hot knife through butter. It wasn’t exactly musical, but it was hard to ignore. He had never heard the call outside the school and had yet to discover the identity of the bird that made it. Nevertheless, it seemed as if the bird called to him most particularly, as if bird and boy knew each other intimately, even though they had never met.
It was time to go.
He rose slowly on his elbow, rolling over with hardly a creak of the rusty springs. He swung his legs over the side and lowered himself carefully, supporting himself on his bent elbows until his feet touched the frame of the lower bunk. A warm musky smell that had accumulated through the night hung in the narrow corridor between the rows of bunks. He padded down the aisle, walking carefully on his toes, and pausing by the bunk where Ojamaa, the dorm bully, slept. Despite his intimidating physique, Ojamaa slept naked like a baby, his fat belly bared, his limbs thrown out so that his hands
and feet hung over the bedframe. It would have been satisfying, he thought as he paused, to puncture that fat belly and give the bully a taste of the misery he inflicted on everyone else.
The front door’s heavy iron bolt eased back with a grating screech, his body tensing with the sudden adrenalin that coursed through his veins. Leaning on the heavy wooden door, he eased it open an inch, the wood scraping faintly on the sandy cement, and slipped out into the cold night.
The dawn chill slapped him in the face, stinging his cheeks. The mist had settled around the naked security bulbs strung high around the square, dimming their light to a hazy glow. He made his way along the whitewashed wall and slipped into the shadows, pausing to survey the silent square, his ears cocked for the slightest sound. From his nighttime vigils he knew that the night guards rarely patrolled the school grounds at this hour. He could hear their boots clamp on the cement walkways only up to just past midnight, then they went away to curl up in their long woolen coats in their sentry boxes. Assured that there was no one about, he turned away and slipped into the night.
The security light at the school gate was dim in the early mist, but he could well imagine the sprawled form of one of the night guards inside his wooden hut that leaned at an angle against the gatepost. The charcoal brazier at the guard’s feet had long since burned out, and now he would be curled tightly within his old trench-coat, knees drawn up and chin tucked into his collar for warmth.
The old guard was rumoured to be the lightest sleeper, however, and the last thing he needed was a rusty arrow fired off in alarm sticking into his backside. Cautiously skirting the gate, he scampered deftly on the balls of his feet, feeling like a furtive night-stalking ninja. Coming to an opening in the fence, where the boys usually crawled out to buy homemade cane gin and cheap sex with old hags who smoked filterless cigarettes with the lit end sticking in their mouths at the village, he flopped down on his belly and was out in a flash.
Dusting down the front of his green jersey, he walked briskly past the gate and the slumbering guard, blowing into his palms before digging them deep into his pockets. The road was clear, without a soul in sight. From the main road ahead he could hear the roar of the cane tractors as they hauled their night loads to the factory. The thump-thump of the pump at the nearby water pumping station accompanied the whine of the tractors.
Strolling past the village duka, he heard a low growl as the bony black dog stirred from its nap on the verandah. Close by, its minder was miles away in dreamland, wrapped up in his long night coat, his guard duty forgotten. He scooped up a handful of pebbles, ready to hurl them at the dog if need be, but the shaggy beast lost interest and went back to sleep.
As he neared the cluster of shops opposite the church he saw someone up and about. It was a man, and he was walking briskly toward him from the side path that passed behind the shops. The boy’s heart drummed violently in his chest as he realized the man’s identity—the school’s duty master who lived in the nearby town. The boy hastened his pace, crossing to the other side of the road, but the faster he walked, the faster the teacher approached, and it became apparent that there was no way the meeting could be avoided. And, indeed, the man’s eyes were trained on him.
Just at that moment a cane tractor roared, its headlights stabbing the dawn as it trundled rapidly down the murram road, the bloated trailer swaying from side to side as the huge hind wheels bumped in and out of ruts and potholes. Surprised, and clearly illuminated in the tractor’s headlights, the boy saw the duty master raise his arm and prepare to dash across the road.
The tractor rumbled between them, the loose cane protruding from the trailer, and whipping the air dangerously behind, the roar of the exhaust and the crunch of the huge wheels on the murram, drowning out the duty master’s words. The boy ran fast alongside the tractor, making for the line of shops. He could hear the duty-master’s shoes pounding along the road as he sped after him, shouting at him to stop. At the shops, the boy cut across the road and ducked into a narrow lane. The alley opened into an unkempt yard full of scrub and thorn bush, which served as a dump for the neighboring shopkeepers. The duty-master raced into the overgrown yard and stopped, panting heavily. While the teacher combed the bushes, his ears cocked for the slightest sound, all he saw were the scrawny grey cats that paused in their scavenging, eyeing him malevolently. Cursing, he kicked at a margarine tin and turned, wiping the moisture from the exertion off his brow.
Crouched behind a guava thicket, the boy watched the duty master until he finally departed. He knew that the teacher would, before the hour was out, ring the assembly bell for roll call, after which the boys would go into the mess hall for their breakfast of half-cooked porridge.
He slipped his hand into his pocket to reassure himself that the bus-fare money was still there, then walked toward the bus park. He could see the first of the day-school students hurrying up the road to beat the duty-master’s bell. These boys, from the villages surrounding the town, were easy to differentiate from the boarders—their shirts were almost always crinkled from leaf-soap, and near to threadbare from a thorough dashing against the stream-side rocks; the shorts, patched on the seat from wear.
The day-school students possessed the unkempt look of goatherds, their feet cracked from a daily acquaintance with the morning dew and a lifetime’s lack of shoes. Unlike the boarders who would have a proper barber clip their hair in stylish cuts and apply brilliantine through it, the coarse kinky hair of the day-scholars was often roughly cut using blunt tailors’ shears that left bumpy ridges criss-crossing their scalps like patterned melons. These students carried a distinct smell, which came from their early dip in the river and a thorough scrub of river sand and tallow soap. He knew these things because he, too, was a village boy. As they hurried along in nervous anticipation of another grinding day of tolling bells and freshly cut cypress canes whacking wriggly bottoms, he had no qualms about heading in the opposite direction.
A rickety, patchy, tarp-roofed matatu van that leaned heavily on its hind wheels like a sick old dog was waiting at the head of the bus queue, its engine idling to prevent another jump-start. A few passengers were crammed inside the low-slung smoky cab, waiting for it to fill up. He squeezed inside, and as he made himself comfortable on the hard bench that quivered to the rhythm of the spluttering engine, a low sigh of pure joy escaped him. He could already savour the smell of home in his nostrils.
A Call from Down Under
Demosh was a tough guy, who lived his life in the fast lane. He got what he wanted, and he feared no one. He had money, he had bling, and he could have any girl he wanted in Kangemi. Most important of all, he commanded respect—albeit, a fragile respect born from raw fear.
Demosh sat at the bar at Bottom-line Pub with his lackeys around him, waiting patiently to prove a little man wrong. This diminutive fellow, a stranger to the neighbourhood, had issued a challenge to Demosh and everyone had crowded around the bar, eager to watch the action.
A stack of crumpled old notes—confirmed by the bartender to be five thousand shillings—sat on the bar, next to a glass and three 750-ml bottles of Safari Cane liquor. The stranger perched on his stool at the end of the bar, a curious smile playing about his thin lips, his bloodshot eyes still struggling with yesterday’s hangover.
Demosh cleared his throat and proceeded to roll back the sleeves of his black silk shirt, exposing an expensive Rolex watch on one thick, hairy wrist and a gold chain, together with a huge tattoo of a dragon, on the other. As he passed one beefy hand over his shiny clean-shaven pate the line of diamond rings adorning each finger glinted in the dim light. The barman, after muting the TV behind him, reached through the steel grill that encased the bar and moved the bottles closer.
Demosh flexed his thick shoulders and snapped the cap off the bottle with the practiced ease of a man snapping a twig, pouring a quantity slowly into the glass. His moist fingers closed around the glass, circling it momentari
ly as if sizing it up, leaving sweaty smudges behind. With a glance at the stack of notes, he raised the glass to his lips, angled his head back on his short thick neck, and knocked back the contents in one short gulp.
“Ah!” said someone at the end of the bar. The exclamation became infectious, sweeping in a murmur around the half-circle of eager spectators. With a calm half-smile, Demosh passed the back of his hand over his thick wet lips and refilled the glass. His huge hand closed again around the little glass and the contents disappeared down his throat in the blink of an eye.
Demosh’s hand was steady as he finally poured the contents of the last bottle into the glass. A cheer swept the little gathering as he calmly turned the bottle upside down, verifying that the last dregs had been drained, before setting it next to the other empty bottles lined up on the bar. Beads of moisture popped up on his sloping forehead and he took a pressed handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his brow. His eyes were calm but fixed of focus, as if they were concentrating on a point inside his mind that only he could see. For the fifteenth time that night, Demosh flexed his huge prizefighter’s shoulders and lifted the glass. The mouths of all the bystanders hung open as they watched his huge jaw swing open and swallow down the contents of the glass.
Demosh placed his hand on the wad of notes and drew them over, dragging his hand over the polished bar. He counted the notes slowly to make sure the full five thousand was accounted for. With a wink and a nod at the poor dumbstruck stranger who had dared throw the challenge his way, Demosh folded the bills into a roll and pushed them into his hip pocket. Then he stood, slapping his black mailman’s cap on his head, and walked slowly out of the bar. A stunned silence followed him as he wound his way through the tables.
Dog Meat Samosa Page 9