by Ted Neill
Miriam knew by now what this meant. She began to cry but Mum Amelia told her she will not be allowed to see Frieda if she cried, so she did her best to stop. When they went to the death room, they found Catherine beside Frieda’s bed. Frieda was not moving but she was breathing quickly then slowly, then quickly again, like Miriam’s father did. Catherine was praying. Miriam hoped that her picture of Jesus was helping Frieda. No one said anything. Finally when they turned to go, Mum Amelia told Frieda that she was a good girl and that they all loved her very much.
Frieda died that night.
Tabitha lived in a world of magic. Other children went to school. Tabitha did not. She would explore Kibera’s back alleys with other children. Sometimes her mother would send Tabitha away to go play with her friend Flo. This happened most often when men came to visit her mother. If Flo was not around, Tabitha would go to Dorris’ house. Dorris lived down in the same alleyway as the boy with the crippled legs. This boy moved about on his hands and knees. His skin was gray because he did not bathe. His family fed him out of a dish on the ground like a dog and they did not allow him beyond the doorway of their house because he was cursed.
As a rule, when she was alone, Tabitha did not venture too far down back alleyways. But the one day she did she rounded a corner and came upon the crippled boy pulling himself along the ground. Tabitha screamed; so did the boy. Then Tabitha ran in the opposite direction. She was afraid his curse would spread to her and her legs would become twisted as well.
Living in the slum could be dangerous. Tabitha knew she had to be inside by dark every evening because there were men on the streets that drank, as well as ghosts. The ghosts were often the ghosts of people who died in their houses or of people killed on the train tracks.
Tabitha remembered the last man that had been run over by the train. The train whistle had been blown particularly long that morning. But apparently the man still had not heard the train coming—he may have been sleeping deeply because he had been drinking local brew.
It was Flo that had come to get Tabitha and they ran up to the tracks together where there were dozens of people gathered. The man’s body parts were scattered over several feet, so the crowd of people was long and spread down along the train tracks. His chest and head were still in the place he had been laying, but his arms and his legs were farther down. His hand had gone the farthest. Flo counted thirteen ties between his body and his hand. It was good Flo counted because Tabitha did not know her numbers.
At one point a street boy reached between the legs of the people gathered and stole the dead man’s hand. Tabitha and Flo knew why he had done this—street boys would do anything for money, even work for witch doctors. If a witch doctor was given this hand, he could bury it and then the ghost of the man would come back to find it. Then the witch doctor could enslave the ghost and make him kill the people he did not like. As long as the ghost never found his hand, he would be bound in servitude; however, if he did find his hand he would surely kill the witch doctor.
Harmony could not walk for a long time after that night. It also hurt to go to the toilet. A few days later Maureen took Harmony to a clinic to see the doctor. Harmony did not want to show him where it hurt but Maureen made her. After that she had to stay in the clinic overnight for a long time.
Maureen told her that she should never tell anyone about what happened or else Harmony could get hurt very badly. Harmony promised she would keep it a secret.
Maureen was funny after that. She still cooked for Harmony but she was not as nice as she used to be. Before she would talk to Harmony while she cooked, but now she was silent. When Evette came over, Maureen would send Harmony to her room or tell her to go outside and play.
She did not see John or Steven.
Then one morning Maureen woke Harmony up very early. It was a Sunday and Harmony thought that maybe they were going to church, but they did not put on their church clothes.
Maureen was walking very fast. Harmony followed her down the hill until they came to the matatu stage. There was a crowd gathered there around something in the road. Maureen turned to Harmony and told her that she wanted her to look very closely at the man on the ground.
Harmony said she would. She followed Maureen around to the far side of the crowd. There were many people and many children too. There was even a camera crew there from Kenya Television Network (KTN). They had their camera pointed at the man who was on the ground.
Harmony knew he was dead. There was lots of blood all over him and his jacket. It was because his neck had been chopped open with a panga. Maureen pushed Harmony closer and told her to look at his face. She went around and did.
It was Steven. Harmony felt sick and scared at the same time. She went back to Maureen.
“He is dead?”
“Yes,” Maureen said.
Harmony looked back at him. She recognized his green jacket now, but had not before because it was covered in so much blood. Because she knew he was dead she was not as afraid so she moved closer. He was on his belly, so she could not see his penis again. She looked at his neck. It was red and white on the inside. She realized it looked much like the insides of pigs and goats when they were slaughtered and hung in the windows of the butcher shops.
Maureen was calling her, so Harmony took one last look and followed. Her mind was suddenly spinning now that she knew that, on the inside, people and animals looked the same.
Chapter 27
Cottage Blue
Maina was one of the Maasai guards at the home. Unlike many of the other guards, who are middle-aged with wives and children, Maina is young and still single, so there is a certain affinity we share for one another, which manifests as the occasional cup of tea we share together wherein I fumble over my Kiswahili and he politely tells me I’m improving.
One Saturday he watched two cars pull up to the gate. One of them parked just outside while the other continued down the drive. Two men got out of the car that had stopped outside the gate and walked up to Maina. They made an effort to be very friendly, greeting Maina enthusiastically and then striking up a conversation by asking abundant questions about the Maasai.
The Maasai were one of the few tribes in East Africa to still cling tightly to their traditional ways. One could see them walking the city streets of Nairobi, the men in their red robes, the women in colorful blue, orange, pink, or any other bright color they might choose. But most Maasai still lived a semi-nomadic existence in the farther reaches of the country. As a Maasai living in Nairobi, Maina was used to the feeling of being a foreigner in his own country. He was patient about answering questions regarding his tribe’s customs. When the men asked about the holes in his ears, he explained to them that he was actually Samburu, a tribe closely related to the Maasai, but with a slightly different dialect and unique customs. Maina explained that the Maasai actually made the holes in their earlobes much larger, as opposed to the Samburu who kept them smaller.
The men appeared very interested and had already maintained their interest for longer than most usually did. Maina was already wondering if they were going to ask him for a favor of some sort when the phone in the guardhouse rang. He turned his back on the men and picked up the receiver. An urgent voice told him to close the gate, that a car was leaving and the people inside had kidnapped Hezekiah, a four-year-old from Cottage Yellow.
Maina turned but one of the men was waiting for him with a pistol pointed at his chest. He told Maina that if he interfered, he would kill him.
Hezekiah had been at the home for a few months. He was in a unique position. Both his parents had died within a short time span. His father was Muslim, his mother Christian. Hezekiah was their only child and after their deaths inherited a substantial amount of land, animals, and money. But neither parent had left a will. The paternal side and maternal side had been fighting over him since. The dispute was further complicated by the fact that the paternal side belonged to a sect of Islam that did not believe in any medical treatment. Hezekiah w
as kept alive by his medical treatment since he was on antiretroviral therapy, which the maternal side would continue if they had custody. The paternal side would not, a certain death sentence.
While they battled things out in court, Hezekiah had been sent to the home, temporarily, until the dispute was settled.
But now, believing that possession was nine tenths of the law, Maina realized that one of the sides was kidnapping Hezekiah. His heart sank as he watched the car come down the drive. There were three passengers in it, a driver and two women in back. They were driving very fast. The man without a gun opened the gate for them to pass through. Watching the car pull through the gate was torture. Maina knew he was Hezekiah’s last chance and if the car reached the road they would never see him again.
The man that had opened the gate ran to his car and started it. There was a good deal of traffic on the road and both cars had to wait for it to clear. The man holding the gun looked over his shoulder to see if the car with Hezekiah had pulled onto the road yet. Maina seized his chance.
He swung his arm and struck the gun as hard as he could. It went flying out of the man’s hand. Instead of running after it, since Maina did not even know how to use it, he reached for his bow and quiver of arrows—each one had a poison tip. The man abandoned his gun, leapt in the waiting car and screamed at his companion to drive. They pulled out into traffic suddenly, cutting off the car with Hezekiah.
Maina ran to the driver’s side of the car with Hezekiah. The window was down and he aimed the arrow at the driver’s neck. The women began screaming. Maina asked where the child was, but they said they did not know what he was talking about. Maina wanted to kill the driver, but he knew he could not. If he did, their families would be drawn into a blood feud. Instead, Maina leaned closer, then reached inside, pulled the keys from the ignition and threw them away as far as he could.
The women got out, incensed. They said many derogatory things about him being a backwards Maasai. They opened the trunk and showed him that it was empty. All this time Maina noticed the driver did not move. Maina told him to get out of the car. He refused and said he did not need to take orders from a goat herder. Just then Maina heard Hezekiah call for help.
Something inside Maina broke just then. He rushed to the car door and pulled it open. Maina was short and stout for a Maasai. Most were tall and lean. Maina was barely five feet. The man in the car was over six feet but he had long locks. Maina took the man’s hair in his fists and yanked him from the car. He came out screaming. Maina made sure to pull the hair down low so the man fell to the ground.
He looked into the car. Pressed into the seat where the man had been sitting was Hezekiah.
Maina grabbed him in his arms, ran to the far side of the car, putting it between him and the driver. Then he drew his sword. It held the women at bay while he inched towards the gate. By that time Bonava, the moms, and the rest of the staff (including me) were running down the drive. Once he was beyond the gate, Maina began running towards them. He did not stop when he reached them however, he just kept running, past the offices, the nursing room, the cottages, and the schoolhouse, all the way to the farthest corner of the home, the cemetery where the children were buried. There he waited, with his sword drawn, and Hezekiah in his arms, until Bonava came and told him it was safe.
I meet Nea (Kiswahili for radiant, shimmering) while on a visit to a school on top of the Ngong Hills. It has a spectacular view of the lush green countryside that surrounds Nairobi to the east and the parched rift valley to the west. The spot on the hills is called Corner Baridi (Cold Corner) for the cold wind that is always whipping the ridge here. On rainy days with low clouds the place feels more like the Scottish Highlands than Kenya.
The school is a boarding school and a sort of home for children with nowhere else to go. It is one of the few places deaf children can attend and learn sign language. Most of the children who board there go home on breaks but a few remain who are orphans that have been abandoned. One of these is an eleven-year-old Maasai girl fleeing marriage to an older man. Another is Nea. She is not deaf but she is HIV+ and when I meet her she is sick and withdrawn, walking from the cottage where she shares a bed with other children to the schoolhouse with all the lethargy of a child with fever. She is tiny for her age, nine, but has a long face and wide cheekbones and light eyes—it’s easy to see how she earned the name “Radiant.” I learn that both her parents died of HIV and she was living with her grandmother until she passed away. On this first meeting she is bundled in a winter jacket, scarf, and hat, standing in unpolished shoes on the front steps of her cottage, trying to negotiate the wide mud puddle that encircles it.
The school proprietor’s name is Josiah. He is a gracious bear of a man with a wide smile and an easy way with children. He studied sign language on scholarship in the US before returning to establish this school. He is nearly always dressed in a suit and tie and lives on the campus in a furnished home. His college-aged children are also well-educated and attending local universities. They can sometimes be seen walking about the campus with their MP3 players and mobile phones.
Josiah and his family’s comfort makes some visitors, including myself, uncomfortable. This is due to the great contrast between Josiah and his family’s quarters and the spartan, crowded, unsanitary conditions of the children. At Malaika, Mama Seraphina lives in the same conditions as all her children. Josiah does not. While the children sleep three to a bunk bed with tattered blankets and dirty floors, Josiah’s living room is well-lit, furnished with comfortable couches, and even doilies on the end tables. The pig sty, with all its accompanying stench and filth, is adjacent to the children’s sleeping quarters and the smell pervades the bedroom. There is no place to study in the children’s cottage; it is filled floor to ceiling with bunk beds, the space between them barely wide enough to fit an adult. The school itself is typical for a Kenyan school—bare rooms made of cinderblock, corrugated tin roof, old desks that seat two to three children at a time. Chalkboards sit on the floor and lean against the wall.
So as I sit with Josiah and sip tea, I am of two minds. By Kenyan standards, his school and living quarters for the children are adequate, even luxurious compared to facilities in rural areas. They hardly meet the standards of Rainbow, which is an unfair comparison since Rainbow is a very different institution. Yet the contrast between Josiah’s comfortable home and the school and sleeping cottages is stark and sears itself in one’s mind.
We sit on Josiah’s couches and discuss Nea.
“She is an orphan,” he says. “And HIV positive, her health is not good.”
Of course not, I think, she is sleeping in a freezing cold shed that smells of urine and pig shit on a mountaintop where the wind never stops blowing.
“She has had a cough for so very long,” Josiah adds.
I have the distinct impression that Josiah wants me to take Nea off his hands. She is too much for him to handle, a burden, and there is no one to pay for her. Unfortunately Rainbow is full at the moment. Instead I enroll Nea in our outreach program so she can receive drugs and check-ups. I give Josiah some money for gas.
“Please bring her by our nursing room this weekend. We’ll get her checked out.”
Josiah promises he will.
Oliver is in the nursing room for days on end now. I make sure he has enough books to read. He has finished the first four Harry Potters. When incoming foreign volunteers ask what they might bring to the orphanage, I add to their list of medical supplies the fifth Harry Potter book. In the meantime, Oliver burns through The Chronicles of Narnia.
I ask Amelia if she is worried that Oliver is in the nursing room so often now. She says that he has been sicker in the past and that he tends to bounce back. His CD4 count (white blood cells) is five (healthy is 1300 to 1400). The clinical definition of AIDS includes a count lower than 300). Oliver’s count has been five or lower for a long time, she says, and still he persists. She is right. In a few days he returns to the cottage.
I realize I am completely besotted with Eve: her poise, her equanimity, her sense of humor, her statuesque figure. I take her on dates with the kids, Miriam, Josephine, Tabitha. We go to movies and to Nando’s, like a family assembled from spare parts. Once while Eve waits in line, leaning up against the window of a store, I see the entire street as a backdrop to her beauty, as if she is a Goddess and the entire world her dream. One night when it’s just the two of us, after I make her dinner, we kiss. I’m so nervous my hands are shaking.
“It’s ok,” she says. “Your first black kiss?”
“Yes, but I didn’t kiss you because you are black.”
“Good, cause I didn’t kiss you because you were white.”
But it’s over before it started. I start trying to imagine a life with her back home and once while on a date in a coffeehouse, I ask her if she would move back to the States with me. She becomes quiet and downcast, looking down into her cup of coffee. “It’s not my favorite place, Ted.”
“The US? But you’ve never been. How do you know you wouldn’t like it?”
“It’s not that I hate your home,” she said, reaching across the table to touch my hand. “It’s just that I love mine. I want to die in Africa, you see. I love it here.”
Sadly I understood. I tried to take it as a compliment, so many beautiful Kenyan women would date average looking guys like myself in hopes of a green card and citizenship, but Eve dated me because she liked me, just not enough to leave her country permanently. It betrays my own arrogance in thinking she would immediately want to live in a place away from her family, away from her business, away from this place where the air smells just so after the rain, where she tells me even the sunlight has a smell (like drying wood, she insists), while I had not even considered staying for her sake.