I do not mean to suggest that I am a sophisticated socialite; far from it. Even as I make my money helping powerful, moneyed men with bloated egos to unwind over the weekend, deep down I still harbor simple village tastes. I was, after all, raised in a village, and there is some truth to the saying that while you can take a villager out of the village, it is not so easy to take the village out of him. I may have flown Club class to London, sipped vintage champagne from thin-stemmed, cut-crystal glasses, and spent weekends at exclusive resorts in Watamu and Shela, but I know that I am not one of them.
I occasionally return to Kawangware slums to drink busaa from a rusty tin and dance isukuti47 with those who speak my native language in its raw, unfiltered form. Sometimes I spend the weekend at Amukanga’s tin-walled shack and prepare his meals and share his narrow bed, and, at the end of it all, accept his twenty shillings’ fare for a matatu ride back to my house in the wealthy part of town.
Amukanga is an interesting man. During the day he works as a cook for an Asian family in Parklands. On weekends he dons his long white robe fringed with red and green, together with a skull-cap and thick tortoise-shell spectacles—prescribed by no optician that I know of—and becomes a pastor of the African Divine Church. His pastoral duties often require him to spend the night at the funeral wakes in the slum, overseeing the fund-raising service; however, he doesn’t mind losing sleep over these obligations because a percentage of the night’s takings usually end up in his briefcase.
Amukanga conducts funerals and weddings and resolves all manner of disputes on behalf of his flock, a good portion of which are engineered by his randy accomplices. For these undertakings he collects a fee, either in cash or in kind. I have occasionally carried his briefcase for him to some of these functions. Inside the tough ox-skin briefcase he keeps a well-thumbed Swahili Bible with a cracked leather cover and an old Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary that is falling apart at the spine. The dictionary adds necessary weight, for Amukanga never made it through elementary school. Typically the senior woman in the church hierarchy, the Mama Assembly, takes responsibility for carrying the briefcase, which indicates how highly I rate. Once, Amukanga tried to persuade me to take up a role as the Mama Assembly, but I politely declined.
Amukanga is also the father of my son—something that gives him immense pride, despite the fact that he has never financed anything in the boy’s upbringing, save the sponsoring of his circumcision when he came of age. And this isn’t to say I hold anything against him. Indeed, he once offered to help, but I firmly declined. His three wives upcountry and their numerous offspring are already a weight upon his purse.
My relationship with Amukanga is as natural as that of a man and a wife. He eats my meals with relish, which makes me very happy, and he takes an immense pride in introducing me to his visitors, which makes me happier still. And in the sack he still plucks a fine tune from the old fiddle, which makes my happiness immeasurable. We go back a long way, he and I. I met him on a job-hunting mission in one of my first trips to the city. The years in between have been a long tale of binge drinking and partying, fierce fights and making up, and innumerable trips to see the wazee48 upcountry.
Throughout the years, we have remained comfortable together, like a hand in a glove. Amukanga remains the only man who can make me feel calm in a crisis. Evenings spent in his company are always golden, whether we are drinking busaa from old tins in Congo or drinking bottled beer at Bora Bora and dancing to band music. With Amukanga, unlike my wealthy clients, I never have to pretend, and I have often thought that he would make the perfect husband—if he had money, if he didn’t already have three wives. He is also the only man who doesn’t have to wear a condom when we are together.
When I discovered how he made his money, however, I was shocked. Not that this revelation wasn’t entirely unexpected in this city of many secrets—secrets being something I know much about. What surprised me was that Amukanga’s schemes had been going on since the day we first met and I had, for so long, known nothing of them.
Late one Friday evening, I’d just returned from a date with Munir at the Serena. Munir’s wife was threatening divorce, which would mean a ton of money changing hands and a ton more in monthly maintenance when she took the kids with her. Listening to the figures Munir was reeling off so casually, I decided I was much better off. While these rich folks might have millions in the bank, it would appear that they have zillions of problems trying to keep that money there. All those millions seemed to attract mostly misery and stress, and I concluded that I’d rather remain right where I was—nibbling at the fringes of the pie like a world-wise rat.
As it turned out, the old boy had just wanted someone to talk to. Munir had paid for a room for two, only to change his mind after I had soothed him awhile in my lap and he felt strong enough to face his devils waiting for him at home. I still found it incredible, the money these rich clients would throw around, and the waste of it all—an expensive dinner that was barely eaten, an expensive suite they didn’t sleep in. Was it any wonder their women were always scheming how they could get a share of the action for themselves? I wasn’t really looking forward to spending Friday night in the company of a sulking millionaire. What mattered to me was what he would tuck in an envelope after the evening was over.
After he had put me in a taxi and left in his custom-made Range Rover, I sat a long while in the back of the cab before asking the cab driver to take me to Kawangware. I had been a little edgy myself over some business with Mamsaf. While our misunderstanding was supposedly about a hand-painted porcelain jug that I had accidentally broken the day before, we both knew that Mamsaf’s simmering anger was due to the tips and gifts her husband had been giving me. The day before, I caught the Mzee staring at my booty as I hoovered the rug in the TV room. By the time Friday evening rolled around, I really needed a good lay with someone who understood me, preferably after a few drinks.
I found Amukanga at Bora Bora in the company of a few of his friends. I always liked to come to the old club in the heart of the slum; it seemed nostalgic, all those drinks and nyama choma we had shared in the club over the years. There was a comfort, too, in the fact that everyone knew everyone else, unlike the clientele of the swankier Half London across the road, where beer was sold at the downtown price, and skinny girls carried prescription tranquillizers hidden under long fingernails, waiting to be slipped into someone’s glass. The Bora Bora band was playing Luseno’s “Mukangala”, which suited me just fine. As we waited for the motherly waitress to take our order, Amukanga rose with a disarming smile and held out his hand. I gave him mine and we moved to the dimly lit dance area.
It was midnight before we left the club. Amukanga had pending business upcountry the following morning and didn’t want to stay out too late. I stopped to buy half a kilo of tripe and liver from a late-night butchery, and we made our way through the narrow streets, still crowded with drunks.
A funeral wake was taking place a stone’s throw from Amukanga’s house, and as the area pastor he needed to make an appearance while I prepared supper. There was always a funeral occurring somewhere in the slum, and almost always it was that of an African Divine Church faithful. While Amukanga was away, I prepared the evening meal on his cheap Chinese stove, keeping the flame low to keep it warm. Then I stretched out on his cheap sofa, working my way through the bottle of Richot I had brought with me from the club. At that moment I felt that I was a content African woman waiting for her man to return home from an evening out with the boys.
I must have drifted off to sleep because I didn’t hear Amukanga letting himself in. I helped him out of his greatcoat and made him comfortable on the sofa with a glass of Richot. I ladled out the meal and we sat down to eat. He had brought in a carton box and a big bag, which he intended to take with him in the morning.
After the meal was done, I dimmed the lamp and rose, shrugging off my dress and dropping it on the couch. Amukanga gu
lped down the remainder of his brandy and rose, following me to the bed, which was separated from the sitting area by a Chinese bed sheet decorated with huge blue peacocks.
Our activity woke our neighbor to the right, who wasted no time in seeking the same with his own unwilling partner. When the creaky bedsprings finally fell silent and the sighs were let out on either side of the mabati wall, I drifted into a deep, contented sleep.
I was awoken by shuffling feet and a low whistling. Amukanga was already up and had just returned from his cold dousing at the bath shelter in the yard outside. Dressed in his red nylon shirt, with a towel wrapped around his slim hips, he was bending over the cheap nylon suitcase he had brought in the evening before, packing.
I was about to call out a “good morning” but the word died in my throat. Through a parting in the peacock bed sheets, strung from nails in the rafters, I saw a horrifying sight. Had it not been for the shifting light of the kerosene lamp, I might have missed it entirely. The suitcase was crammed full of clothes, presumably ones he was taking with him for the journey, and he was trying to close the zipper and lock the case with the padlock that encircled the handle. Every time he drew one side of the zipper closed, the opposite one would pop open and the lid would spring upwards. It was then that something slid out of the bulging suitcase, and, cursing softly, he hastily crammed it back inside. It was a tiny human hand with five fingers that were short and chubby.
I watched aghast as Amukanga pondered the problem, his chin resting on his hand, his back turned towards me. Then, seemingly reaching a decision, he opened the case and flung back the lid. Inside, covered by a few clothes, was the bloated corpse of a small child, his belly ballooned with gas, and clearly the cause of the problem. Amukanga rolled up his sleeves and, feeling the swollen belly the way a farmer would a well-fed goat up for sale at the local cattle market, spread his hands across the taut skin and leaned heavily upon them. The soft hiss of wind escaping the orifices sounded like a male trombone in a somber Salvation Army band piece.
Amukanga then replaced the clothes atop the corpse, spritzed the contents with a canister of the cheap but strongly scented Yolanda spray, closed the lid, and slid the zippers with ease. After securing the padlock, he rose to his feet and almost caught me peeping, so mortified was I by what I had seen.
“Lorna?” he called softly. “Are you awake?”
I turned over in the bedclothes and purred like a butcher’s cat, curling into that embryonic position we of the animal species remember from our short stay in the womb. Amukanga came to the bedside and patted me softly on the shoulder.
“I have to leave now,” he murmured. “Don’t bother waking up to make me anything; I’ll have tea at a kiosk. I will be back tomorrow evening, and will bring you some bananas and cassava from the farm. Meet me here after work, and I’ll buy you a drink at Bora Bora.” Then he leaned over and kissed me softly on the forehead and pulled the covers over my shoulders.
I shivered, feeling like a child who had discovered monsters under the bed. To conceal my confusion I burrowed deeper into the bedclothes, pretending sleep. I heard the blade rasp on Amukanga’s cheeks as he shaved in the doorway, then the sounds of him dressing, and the gentle thud of the wooden door closing softly behind him.
I sprang from the bed, dressing quickly, relieved that I had left behind a thick poncho on a previous visit. On the bedside stool, I noticed he had left a fifty-shilling note for my bus fare, but I ignored it. After ten minutes had elapsed, I left. I already knew where he was headed.
Most of the cheap country buses had cubbyhole offices at Stage Two in Kawangware, having relocated from Machakos Country Bus Station downtown, where they would be obliged to pay the City Council a fee to pick up passengers. These buses—unlike the more organized, expensive bus companies that had offices in town—were quite convenient for Amukanga’s business; there were no security checks to pass through before boarding, whereas the chances of smuggling a corpse in a case on to a town-based Easy Coach or Akamba bus without detection were slim indeed.
I trotted along the deserted sidewalk that would soon be crowded with dried-sardine and sukuma-wiki sellers, hugging the poncho around myself. The early risers were already leaving the slum. Young men in twos and fours were trekking to town or wherever it was they toiled for the day’s wage. The women traders, clutching gunny sacks, bunched together at matatu stops, waiting for the first matatu to take them to Wakulima market to buy fresh vegetables. Along the dusty sidewalk, the flames leapt around the sooty frying pans of the mandazi49 sellers as they hurried to prepare breakfast for their customers.
The country buses were lined up like trail hounds that had cut the spoor, straining restlessly on the leash, engines revving loudly as they belched out clouds of black diesel smoke. Bands of touts tried to shepherd the few arriving travelers to the buses whose drivers paid their commission. From behind a shop pillar, I watched Amukanga purchase a ticket from one of the ticketing agents and then walk towards his bus, the bulging suitcase close by his side. One of the elders from the local church, whose name I knew as Shivachi, had joined him. They both wore church skull-caps and operated with a practiced smoothness that suggested they had long been accomplices.
One of the touts offered to stow Amukanga’s suitcase on the roof rack but he firmly declined. I had to admire Amukanga’s aplomb. He carried himself with all the dignity of a shantytown pastor, his polyester suit crisp from the dhobi’s50 coal iron, and three multicolored Bic biros neatly aligned in his breast pocket. His pastoral briefcase was carried by Shivachi, who might have sprung out of the pages of a fashion magazine from the Sixties, with his bright cravat and wide-lapelled, midriff-hugging tweed mutumba suit. I watched until they took their seats, the suitcase, with its macabre secret, stowed under the seat in front. It was an ingenious scheme—two church elders off on some church business upcountry. It was highly unlikely that a cop would stop them to ask their business or solicit a bribe.
Later that morning, as soon as I had seen my boss and the missus off to work, I settled myself by their bedroom phone. One of the unwritten perks that accompanied working as house-help for UN expats was that they footed all the phone bills their staff accumulated while trading gossip with friends after they had left for work; it was an old rule, but one cast in stone. For some time, I speculated on the handful of chatty women from Kawangware, wondering whom to call, before deciding on Ezina, the choir soloist who worked as an ayah in Spring Valley. I could hear her surprise when we finally got to the subject on my mind, after all the necessary small talk about employers, husbands, exes, boyfriends, friends’ boyfriends, and so on.
“You mean you’ve never known what Amukanga does all these years?” she asked in disbelief. “Well, you must be the dumb ear of Kawangware. And I thought you and he shared a blanket occasionally?” A burst of chortling laughter exploded from the earpiece.
Well, the short of it—or so I learned from Ezina—was that Amukanga worked in cahoots with Shivachi, and another younger man called Ambunya, as undertakers or hearses for hire, servicing Kawangware residents who could not afford to bury their dead at the City Council cemetery in Lang’ata or transport them upcountry by conventional hearses. Amukanga’s fee for this service depended upon the size of the body. In addition to bus fare and an allowance for travel refreshments, a body that fitted in a thermos flask carton—anywhere from a fetus to a six-month-old baby—cost two thousand shillings to deliver. A pressure-lamp carton of bigger size cost three thousand shillings. Chinese suitcases, then, came in an additional range of sizes, each costing incrementally a thousand more.
The business had its share of mishaps. The trio had once transported the body of a twelve-year-old boy in a huge metal trunk, but after the conductor dropped the trunk while lowering it from the roof rack, they decided to place a size limit on future jobs. Although the lid, fortunately, didn’t burst open, the poor fellow inside was jolted rather badly. The dead,
apparently, have feelings that the undertaker respects.
On another occasion they sat the body of a grown woman in the seat next to the driver, covering her with a khanga.51 While the front seat was conveniently easy to access, the drawback was that the scent of body rot would disseminate faster next to the heat of the engine. Amukanga and his accomplices strategically took up seats around the dead woman, preventing the other passengers from getting close enough to sniff the morgue fluids. Transporting a corpse by public transport was, after all, a chargeable offence. The journey was not without incident. The bus was stopped at a roadblock by cops seeking thieves who had escaped using a public service vehicle after robbing a cash-in-transit van. Everyone was required to get off the bus for a body search. When the cops asked why the woman in the front had not left the bus, the conductor explained that she was ill. Fortunately for Amukanga when the cop went to investigate, the corpse’s head slipped forward, as if she were drooping in sleep. The cop withdrew and the bus crew again covered her with the khanga. When Amukanga and his accomplices finally offloaded the body into a pickup truck in a dark backstreet in Kakamega town, the bus crew, who had been part of the deal, demanded extra pay for handling the tense business with the police.
In addition to transporting corpses, the enterprising trio also conducted burials and disposals—in the case of aborted or still-born fetuses. Since it cost a small fortune to bury ones dead in Lang’ata Cemetery, Amukanga and his band accepted a fraction of the fee to do the job at the disused City Council cemetery across the valley at ‘84 in Kangemi. The City Council had closed the ’84 cemetery because if you scratched the surface more than one foot deep at any spot in the trash-strewn field you would most likely disturb a fellow who was resting in his heavenly peace with the maggots.
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