by Ted Neill
For that reason I avoid it for almost two years.
Then there are other slums, smaller ones, that are forgotten, and because of that, worse off. Dagoretti is one of those. With a slaughterhouse perched on a hill overlooking the slum, Dagoretti has the semblance of a thriving economy. Street boys come there from the city to work and earn five shillings a day to spend on glue, on a movie, or to have taken from them by older street boys. Dagoretti has a particular smell. It comes from the blood that runs down gutters into streams where it mixes with raw sewage. These are the same streams which street boys use to drink and bathe.
It comes to me that I know Lazarus’ mother, or at least have known so many like her that by now I can picture her well. She’s young and unmarried. In Dagoretti her chances of being HIV+ are about 50/50. She’s unemployed, she may be homeless, she likely is addicted to local brew—a mixture of alcohol and just about any other chemicals—paint thinner, insecticides, cleaning chemicals—purveyors decide to toss in. I know despite all these things, all mothers love their children and would not leave a baby in a trash pit unless scared, threatened, high, deranged, or all these things. No one in their right mind would do such a thing, and in Dagoretti, who can be in her right mind? Sure Lazarus’ mother failed him, but Dagoretti failed her. I look into Lazarus’ face and I can muster no anger, only resignation.
It is night. The children have just finished watching a movie in the schoolhouse and they have scattered back to their cottages. Lights in the bedrooms have gone on as they change into their sleeping clothes and get into bed. Miriam is locking up the schoolhouse. When she finishes she runs up behind me and leaps onto me for a piggyback.
“Yah, mule,” she says and makes the unique cackling noise that is her laugh.
I take her around the school once and by the basketball court I look up at the stars and ask her if she knows that she is supposed to make a wish on one each night. She says no. I stop and tell her to pick one.
I wait as she leans back and studies the sky. Her weight shifts as she leans left to right to consider her selection from horizon to horizon.
“Have you picked one yet?”
“Nope.”
“Now?”
“Nope.”
“How about now?”
“Ok, you can go.”
I start walking towards Cottage Yellow. I start to wonder what an HIV+ orphan would wish for, given anything, so I ask.
“Money,” she said over my shoulder.
“Money?” I say as I put her down in front of Cottage Yellow. “Why money? Didn’t Jesus say it is harder for a rich man—”
“Blah blah blah,” she cuts me off with a wave of her hand, then becomes very stern, shaking her finger. “You know what is wrong with all the children in the home.”
“I do, but do you?”
“We all have HIV.”
“Yes.”
“It does not go away.”
“No.”
“And people, they hate us for it.”
“I don’t. All the people here don’t.”
“But many people out there do,” she says, waving her hand towards the gate. “I want money so I can take care of the children here. So we can take care of ourselves.”
“I guess that is as good a sentiment as any,” I say.
Then she comes up to me and slaps my face, somewhere between affectionately and painfully. I’m a little stunned.
“That is so you won’t forget,” she says.
It is a little before noon. The sun is shining bright on the bougainvillea and the flame tree blossoms. My preschool class is running all about me, but Edison has held back a bit today. For what reason, I don’t know, but he wants to hold my hand this morning. I oblige and move at his slow pace down the drive, both of us in the warm embrace of the sun.
I don’t have a paying job, I own only four shirts, three pairs of trousers, two pairs of shoes, seven pairs of underwear, a couple of books, and a mobile phone. All of it could fit into a duffle bag with room left over and yet, I am happier than I have ever been in my life.
I get to know more of Eve’s family. All of them but her oldest sister, who works for UNICEF, live at home. This includes her three other sisters, May, Chiru, and Chloe, as well as her brother Anthony and even her cousin Maurito, who is practically a brother. It is a two-story brick house. The family has one car which they rarely use. By Kenyan standards they are right in the middle of middle-class.
They are also Kikuyu. Stereotypes can be foolish, but they exist in every culture and every society. The Kikuyu, the dominant tribe in Kenya, are known for being industrious and incredibly stingy with their money. One evening when Chloe arrives home with milk, she announces that she bought it from a Maasai and not a Kikuyu.
“Why would you do that?” I ask, thinking that as a Kikuyu she would want to buy from her fellow tribesmen.
She laughs.
“I don’t buy from a Kikuyu if I can help it. I am Kikuyu, I know that we will try to cheat you every time. The Kikuyu sellers water down their milk! The Maasai are honest.”
Eve’s mother, Nelly, is a police officer. The police are known for being the most corrupt institution in Kenya, regularly taking more bribes than any other public officials. It is a topic I would love to explore with her mother, but not knowing her well I am uncomfortable bringing it up. That changes quickly though when Nelly learns that I have been to visit Malaika. She tells me how she once was called to pick up a dead body, only to find a child hanging in a tree from her wrists, just clinging to life. She asks me how Agnes is doing.
The first thing that strikes you about Kibera—as long as you look beyond the raw sewage—is the vitality of the place. To a great degree, this is due simply to the density of people within the slum: there are 1.2 million people in a six-square-kilometer area. That is more than half the population of Botswana. All those people within Kibera normally do not sit around idle. They inevitably do something—they have to, to stay alive.
And with children running and laughing, occasional cars tumbling along the rutted roads, men chopping wood, pounding metal, teenage girls fetching water, women selling tomatoes, avocadoes, tubs of charcoal, electric cords, soap, and shoe polish, the pervasive feeling is that the place is alive.
People move to Kibera from the countryside because of the promises of work and opportunity that the city holds. And although the opportunities are often not as numerous as the inhabitants had hoped, the people still must get on with the business of living.
After you notice that, you would then definitely notice the sewage. Once again one might imagine taking half the sewage from the country of Botswana and depositing it, daily, in a six-square-kilometer area, then building a development of sticks and mud on top of it. Water and sanitation is the first and foremost problem in Kibera. Many teenage girls don’t go to school. They spend the day crossing the slum with seventy-pound buckets of water on their backs. Along every road there are ditches of green-gray sewage. Even in narrow walkways where there are only inches between dwellings, one has to share the foot space with such streams of effluence. There are places where the streams have swollen to large puddles or even ponds where houses are simply constructed on stilts and built over top.
These streams must be constantly dredged, otherwise they fill with newspapers, plastic bags, corn cobs, avocado pits, wine bottles, and beer cans. The litter is raked out then left in a pile. Once the ooze covering it has dried, the trash is set alight. Hundreds of these piles of trash are burned each day so that there is often a pungent scent of melting plastic hanging in the air, not to mention ash. Gray ash, the same color as the sewage, covers everything. The roads are almost sandy with it.
Then amid all of this you might find a flowering eucalyptus or flame tree growing up between rusted corrugated tin roofs. Why such trees are not chopped down for firewood, when so many other trees have been, I cannot guess.
In aerial photos of Kibera those tin roofs look like a log jam, no space between
and no order whatsoever. From above one can’t help noticing the housing subdivision that has sprung up beside the log jam. These homes, in great contrast, are white and as neatly spaced as vertebrae on a spine. The contrast is striking, but the subdivision homes seem boring and dull in comparison.
Underneath the corrugated tin roofs, it is interesting to see how similar houses in Kibera are to homes in the countryside. Here they are still made of mud and sticks—those that have traveled from rural regions often only know one way to build a house. The difference is simply the closeness between them. It can be pitch black in many homes since the next house is so close that any sunlight is blocked from the windows.
But unlike the rural regions, in Kibera there are movies. Small shacks and huts have chalkboards beside their doors reading: “Shaq in Steel, 8:30; Jackie Chan: Boat to Shanghai, 10:30; A Night to Remember, 4:30;” (the last of these being pornography). The sound on the movies is turned up in order to advertise to passersby. That noise mixes with the noise of radios playing Celine Dion or Phil Collins. All this powered by electricity that is stolen by jerry-rigged wires from the power lines above.
The power lines are one of the few signs of municipal services. The waterlines are the other. There is a network of fourteen or so quarter-inch pipes that run alongside one another through the slum. All are empty though. The girls that step over them with their buckets collect water from one of the few pumps that pump it from underground.
Then there are the train tracks. As many as five trains a day pass through Kibera, on the same line, the lunatic line, that was built by the British in an effort to make central Africa and Lake Victoria more accessible to trade. The line was supposed to go all the way to Uganda but was cut short at the shore of Lake Victoria as a result of unforeseen expenses and difficulties (including the man-eating lions of Tsavo).
The residents give the tracks only what space is necessary for the running of the trains (sometimes not even that much) and build their houses right up to the edge. Most of the time, the residents ignore the tracks, only paying them heed when a train is grinding past, at which time huge crowds of people build up on either side of the countless walkways that crisscross the rails. In places the steel ties are stolen and used as bridges over refuse streams. Near the western edge of Kibera, a train will pass a clearing where tarps lay covered with drying millet—a key ingredient of local brew, the cheapest and quickest way to get drunk in the slum.
Amid all this are flies. They are pervasive, flying from the shit underfoot directly to the food being sold in kiosks. They land on crippled children and old men and women that cannot move to swat them. There are rats and there are also cats; both drink from the contaminated streams. And there are children. Children dressed in crisp-looking school uniforms, children in tattered clothes, and children in nothing. The youngest ones become covered in the gray ash if they are not supervised, which they often are not. The children can navigate the passageways and alleys of Kibera better than any adult. The paths between houses are packed down into hard earth by the passing of their feet.
This is Kibera. This is where Tabitha is from.
Chapter 25
Something
I wrote to the kids. After ten years they were hardly kids anymore. Over the years they had friended me on Facebook, but I had been leery of being too close to them, as if I were afraid of the loss it might lead to, or afraid that I would simply miss them.
I shared my thoughts of writing a book. Emphatically each one told me I should write it, but not for the reasons I imagined. Not for them, not even for other kids in similar circumstances, but, “for the people who live there in America who can’t afford to come to Kenya, so they can know what our lives are like.”
They felt that we in the rich, privileged west needed to be more educated—enlightened.
I still debated. I wavered. I was scared. Scared it could all go wrong, scared of the memories and nihilism that had overtaken me, scared of falling into some trap of self-aggrandizement. At the same time I was afraid it would seem like just another self-indulgent solipsistic examination of white guilt—a rambling documentation of what was ultimately just a case of white fragility. I said as much to my psychiatrist again but he just shrugged, impatient with me now. “Anyone ever tell you before that you over-intellectualize things?”
“Maybe.”
He let out a sigh, frowned and nodded at the same time as if I had exposed myself in some indisputable way. “You know my opinion: write it,” he said. “It will be good for you. It can help you get over the trauma of watching children die. You lost meaning and purpose after witnessing what you did at the orphanage. Maybe, this is a way of getting it back.” He waved his pen at me. “And now you have the kids telling you to write it. They trust you. That means something.”
Chapter 26
Pigs and People
Maureen’s house was nice even though it was a long matatu ride away and up a steep hill. The best part was that it had a view of Kiseran below which Harmony thought was very beautiful. Maureen said that on clear days you could see Nairobi. Inside Maureen’s yard she had lots of chickens and even a dog. The dog came over to Harmony, barked at her and sniffed her. Harmony was very afraid but Maureen said that as long as he was wagging his tail she should not be worried.
The inside of the house was large and had four rooms, five if Harmony counted the pantry, six if she counted the shower and toilet, but they were partially outside so it was hard to include them. Maureen showed Harmony where her room was and then where Harmony would sleep. The bed in Harmony’s room was smaller and there was also a crib beside it. Harmony asked Maureen if she had her own children. She said she once had a son but he had died. Now she felt that God had called her to take care of orphaned children. Harmony asked where the other ones were. Maureen said that she did not have enough money to take care of them forever, but kept them a little while until she could find them more permanent homes.
Harmony told her she wanted to stay with her because she was nice and her house was large.
Maureen next took Harmony to the shower where she made her wash with soap and water. Afterwards she found some clothes for her and threw away her old clothes. Harmony liked her new clothes; they were bright, they were not torn, and they smelled clean.
Harmony liked staying with Maureen. She made food often for Harmony and she even took her to school one day. Harmony was not able to read very much, but the headmaster said she could start next term. Some Sundays they even got dressed up and went to church together, which Harmony enjoyed because she loved to sing and the women all told her she had a beautiful voice.
Maureen often asked about Harmony’s mother. Harmony told her everything. Maureen’s friend was a social worker and she came and listened to Harmony as well. She asked a lot of hard questions like, what was Harmony’s mother’s name—Charity. What was her mother’s surname? Harmony did not know. What was Harmony’s birthday? She did not know. Where was her mother from? Kericho. Did she still have family there? Yes, but Harmony did not remember the name of her grandmother and she certainly did not tell them about her father. She said she simply had never known him or where he was from.
Harmony would play with the children that lived nearby. Most of the children Harmony’s age were in school during the day, so she played with little boys and girls. She would pretend to be their mother and they would make chipatis and oogali out of mud.
Harmony also liked Maureen’s friends. She had many but the ones that come over the most were John and Steven. They would come over at night and drink beer with Maureen and sometimes her friend Evette. This drinking was fun because Maureen and her friends would listen to music and dance with Harmony. Harmony would sing for them and they would cheer and clap. Often they would stay all night, which meant that Harmony would have to sleep in bed with Maureen and Evette while John and Steven slept in her bed—which she did not like because the next day it would stink like them.
One night when it was just
Maureen, John, and Steven, Maureen drank so much she could not talk straight. She kept telling Harmony how sad she was that she lost her son, but that she loved Harmony and would take care of her. She even offered her some beer, which Harmony did not like the taste of, but then Maureen said she should never drink it anyway. Maureen got very tired then and carried Harmony into her bedroom to go to sleep.
Later Harmony woke. She was in her room and John and Steven were over her. They were pulling her trousers off so that she was naked. She twisted to cover herself but they suddenly became forceful. John held down her arms and Steven pressed her to the bed with one hand on her belly. With his other hand he unzipped his trousers.
Then Harmony saw his penis. It was not like the little finger she had seen on the naked boys running around the village. It was upside down and stiff like a corn cob. So stiff it was like a club and Steven took it and tried to stab it between Harmony’s legs. She cried out that he was killing her but John covered her mouth. She bit him and felt flesh tear away like she was ripping undercooked chicken meat off the bone. Then something struck her face. She saw a bright light but did not remember much after that.
Miriam did not know what to draw for Frieda. She thought of making a picture of their families, but she knew that it was not good to think too much about their families at a time like this. She decided to make a picture of Jesus instead, that way Miriam could also show Jesus that if Frieda died, she would not be jealous that Frieda was with Jesus and not her.
When she finished, she took the picture to the death room, but when she entered she saw that Frieda was pooping in a white pot. Miriam went back to the cottage. It was dinnertime, which meant there would not be another opportunity to visit Frieda that day.
She went the first thing the next morning, even before breakfast. She showed Frieda the picture, but she did not seem very happy. The nurse told Miriam she should go to school. After school that day Mum Amelia told Miriam that the two of them were going to visit Frieda in order to say good-bye.