by Frank Coates
Joshua was again surprised at Koske’s knowledge of the details of life in Kibera.
‘Sasa,’ Koske continued. ‘I also hear that many of your team players are in need of boots. Football boots. Even you. How can you play with no boots, uh?’
Joshua shrugged. ‘I can kick without boots. Others have found cheap boots in the markets.’
‘Old boots. Second-hand rubbish!’ Koske sneered. ‘You need boots if you want to beat those fellows out by Nairobi dam. Si ndiyo?’
Joshua nodded.
‘Here, my friend,’ Koske said, producing a plastic shopping bag. Inside was a shiny new pair of football boots.
Joshua’s mouth opened and closed. He was unable to make a sound. When he recovered from his excitement, he jabbered a string of thanks before Koske lifted his hand to stifle them.
‘Enough, Otieng. You will find I can be very generous to my friends. I have some surprises for you. Soon. But I also may need a big favour one day, you understand?’
Joshua nodded.
‘Even now, I have a little job. It’s nothing, but you will help me. You and your team.’
‘We will be happy to help you in any way, Mr Koske.’
‘Yes. And if you do a nice job, I may be able to help with boots for your whole team.’
Joshua’s eyebrows lifted in interest.
‘Boots for the team, and perhaps something else for you.’
Joshua waited.
Again Koske allowed the suspense to build unbearably.
‘I mean, you are a Luo, si ndiyo?’ The question was rhetorical. ‘And your man Odinga is a Luo who is standing for president.’ Koske slowly stirred his tea.
Joshua could bear it no longer. ‘You said boots…and maybe something else for me?’
‘Boots, possibly. And surely a Luo boy such as yourself would be prepared to do something special for Mr Odinga? I mean, to help him succeed on election day.’
Joshua nodded, unsure where Koske was leading him.
‘Good.’ Koske replaced his spoon on the table. ‘That is all I need to know at the moment.’
He raised his teacup to his mouth, concealing his widening grin. Joshua was reminded of a hyena he’d once seen on a poster in the travel agent’s window.
CHAPTER 2
Simon Otieng sat at the simple bench he and his son used as a table, pushing the remains of his irio around a chipped plate. From its position on the shelf above the small refrigerator, the portable TV blathered on about sorghum prices in Voi.
‘There is food in the pot,’ Simon said to Joshua as he ducked under the opening into the corrugated-iron-clad shack.
Joshua grunted a reply, went to the stove and spooned the greenish vegetable mash onto a plate.
‘You keep strange friends these days,’ Simon said as his son sat opposite him to eat. ‘I saw you taking tea with Gideon Koske on Kibera Drive today.’
When Joshua didn’t respond, he added, ‘Is he the kind of man you should be seen spending your time with?’
‘Mr Koske is a man who will stand up for people like us,’ Joshua answered curtly.
Simon scoffed. ‘The only person Koske fights for is Koske himself. Or else he finds others to do his fighting. People like the thugs who come to collect his tea money.’
He pushed his plate aside and placed his hand on his son’s shoulder. ‘Joshua, have nothing to do with that man. He can only bring you trouble.’
‘He gives me work. And he will pay me for it.’
‘You don’t need money from people like Koske.’
‘Am I to continue to sell newspapers and stupid children’s toys on the streets for the rest of my life? Am I a man or a boy?’
Simon removed his hand. ‘You are my son, and you will hear what I say.’
‘I am a man, and a Luo. I will follow the Luo ways.’
‘You know nothing of the Luo ways.’
‘And who is to blame for that? Isn’t it a father’s duty to pass on his culture and the old stories to his next in line? I know nothing of my family. Nothing of my tribe. I should know these things.’
Simon took his plate to the plastic bucket that served as a washing receptacle.
‘Now you have nothing to say,’ Joshua said scornfully. ‘As always.’
‘There is nothing you can learn from me,’ Simon replied. ‘Forget Luo ways. They will not support you here in Kibera.’
‘Mama told me about you when you lived in Kisumu. In Luoland.’
Simon’s hand hesitated over his plate, but he made no comment and resumed scraping the scraps into the bucket.
‘She told me that you killed someone, and then you ran away.’
Simon took a piece of newspaper and carefully wiped the plate.
‘Who was it?’ Joshua demanded. ‘Why did you do it?’
‘It was a long time ago. Those days are gone.’
‘Was it like before? In our history? Was it a tribal war?’
‘It was not a war. The old ways are dead. And good riddance. They brought nothing but hatred and death.’
‘There was honour in the old ways,’ Joshua said angrily. ‘It is our heritage to follow them—Luo heritage.’
Simon wondered about honour and the old Luo customs. When he was a child, his grandfather had told him that the Luos’ customs were very important. It was his grandfather who had taught him the dances and the Jo-Luo songs, and how to hunt and to throw a spear. And when Simon’s father died and his father’s brother inherited Simon’s mother as another wife, as was Luo custom, it was his grandfather who had explained why Simon also had to leave his village and his friends and go to a new place.
His father’s death hadn’t been the last time that Luo customs had had a profound effect on Simon’s life, but he recalled it was the first time he had begun to question them. He knew he could not escape the consequences of that questioning in his own life, but he had no intention of also allowing his only son’s life to be ruined by them.
Looking across the table at Joshua, he could see the same glint of defiance his grandfather might have seen in him all those years ago.
‘I will not have you fight for something that is so far in the past,’ he sighed. ‘Anyway, there is no honour in violence.’
His son glared at him. ‘And is there honour in being a coward? Is there any honour in killing a man and then running away?’
Simon straightened as if his son had struck him in the face. His voice, when it came, was almost inaudible. ‘You know nothing of these matters, Joshua.’
‘There is nothing to know.’ Joshua flung the words at him. ‘You were a coward then, and you are still a coward.’
He got up from the table in such haste that the chair fell backwards. He burst through the door, which clattered against the sheet-iron wall, and continued to swing back and forth on its worn leather hinges long after he’d gone.
Simon’s shoulders remained tense with anger as he stared at the space Joshua had vacated. After a long moment he let his breath slowly escape and his shoulders slump. He began to massage his broken knuckles—three on his right hand and two on his left. They always seemed to ache more when he was upset. Koske probably couldn’t remember the day it happened. He certainly wouldn’t remember Simon. Still, the bitter taste of utter helplessness remained vividly in Simon’s memory.
Since arriving in Kibera, Simon and his family had always been beholden to someone, be it for the roof over their heads, water, access to sewage facilities, school fees, or the many other daily needs of a family. There was little left over from his small income so they had not been able to save more than a few shillings at a time.
Things improved when he found regular work at a new hotel site along Uhuru Highway. He was given a hard-hat and a half-hour break at midday.
Simon began to consider buying a plot to build a house of their own. For some time, he’d had his eye on a vacant site above the drain that ran through Kisumu Ndogo. It was a very small site, only enough for three rooms, but he knew it w
as all he could afford.
He made enquiries in the area and one day met the owner, a Nubian woman who claimed that her family had held the land all her life. Since there were no title deeds for Kibera land, Simon could only do so much to establish if the woman was speaking the truth and was indeed the owner. He consulted as widely as he was able, talking to friends, to people who knew people in the area, and to those who would be his neighbours. Of the ones who knew the situation, all agreed the woman could be trusted.
Buying the plot consumed all their money but, as he earned further funds on the Uhuru Highway site, Simon bought second-hand building materials. After work, he would hammer and saw until darkness made it impossible to continue.
One day a man arrived while Simon was up a ladder, putting a sheet of iron on the new roof structure.
‘What are you doing here, my friend?’ the man asked cheerily.
Simon looked at him. He wasn’t the usual onlooker passing the time with idle questions. He wore a suit and an open-necked shirt.
‘I am building my place. As you can see.’
‘I can see that you are building,’ the man said, taking a large white handkerchief from his pocket to dab at his protuberant eyes. ‘But who gave you permission to build on this plot?’
‘I have bought the plot. It is mine.’
‘No, no. That is not possible.’
Simon, becoming agitated by the man’s superior attitude, again looked down from his ladder. ‘And who are you to tell me what is possible and what is not?’
‘Because I am the owner of this plot.’
Simon came down the ladder on unsteady legs. The man was tall and had broad shoulders, but it was not merely his size that gave him his swagger.
‘I am Gideon Koske,’ he said, as if the name alone would explain the situation.
It didn’t, and Simon stared at the man with a growing sense of panic. He knew enough about life in the slums to understand that a man in a suit had power beyond anything that people like Simon could match, regardless of the legalities.
‘But considering you have invested so much in building materials, I am prepared to sell the plot to you on very favourable terms,’ Koske said.
Simon began to laugh. He laughed until the sound grew hollow, and then stopped as suddenly as he’d started. The man’s claim was just too frightful to contemplate.
‘Leave,’ he said through clenched teeth.
Koske considered him coldly. ‘It is better that you take my offer, my friend.’
‘I am no friend of yours! I said, leave! Get away from my house! Do you hear me?’
Koske shrugged and walked away.
Two days later, three men arrived at dusk as Simon was packing his tools into the old Gladstone bag he used to carry them. One of them took the bag from him. When he protested, the other two grabbed him and flung him to the ground, standing on his forearms to keep him there.
The first man, who had a large silver ring in his ear, rummaged around in Simon’s tool bag and pulled out the hammer. He hefted it in his hand and smiled down at Simon.
At the time, Simon had thought the pain unbearable, but long after the agony of his broken fingers had subsided, the pain of losing his only chance to own his own place in Kibera remained.
He thought it sadly ironic that long after Koske had changed the course of his own life, he had returned to threaten that of his son.
CHAPTER 3
This Bus Runs on the Blood of Jesus! said the sign on the rear of the lumbering, lopsided Mombasa–Nairobi bus. Mark Riley peered through the plumes of black diesel smoke billowing in its wake and dared to ease his Land Rover Defender out to check the road ahead. A truck approached crablike on displaced axles, horn blaring. Riley was hungover and in no mood to have his jangling nerves tested. He waited.
On the next attempt, the road was clear, but as he passed the bus it swerved to dodge an enormous pothole, causing the mountain of suitcases and string-tied bundles on its roof to lurch alarmingly in his direction. He planted his foot to the floor and the hulking Land Rover reluctantly responded.
When the bus was in his rear-view mirror, Riley rolled down the window to empty the fumes from the cabin and rubbed his red-rimmed eyes. It had been a busy twenty-four hours, culminating in one too many lime daiquiris at the bar of his hotel. He almost always drank whisky. Why daiquiris were suddenly in favour he put down to boredom.
He reached for his cigarettes, and hesitated a moment before succumbing. I really must give them up, he thought as he lit up, then sucked the smoke hungrily into his lungs.
The road ran straight through a scene that he’d been warned would be endlessly repeated during the long journey to Nairobi. Here and there were scattered huts of corrugated iron. Dusty children ran behind old tyres, using sticks to steer them. A donkey cart moved precariously close to the tarmac on wobbly wheels, its load of crated chickens, bagged charcoal and baskets of maize towering above the driver. Beyond the litter-strewn roadside, an occasional ancient baobab watched over the flat, ungrateful land like an aloof and disapproving guardian.
Riley had originally planned to fly to Nairobi, but he was in no hurry and decided instead to visit two or three of the game parks between Mombasa and the capital. He was not the gawping-tourist-in-a-minibus type, and after discovering the hire costs for a four-wheel drive to be exorbitant, he’d found himself a second-hand Land Rover at a very attractive price. He had a soft spot for the old Defender as it had been the model he’d driven around rural Indonesia, which had been the setting for two of his three novels.
But he didn’t want to think about his writing. Writing, or his recent inability to do so successfully, was one of the reasons he was now in Kenya. After two failures, his publisher had suggested he take a break. ‘Go somewhere exotic where you can rekindle your passion,’ she’d said. ‘After all, it’s not uncommon for a first-time author to have trouble with his next book.’ She hadn’t mentioned the statistics for a failure on the third.
He took the hint and decided to take a long sabbatical. He was a poor tourist and had chosen Kenya principally because it had been his wife’s wish to visit the country at some stage. In the year before they married, Melissa had started supporting an orphaned Kenyan child in the care of a charity called the Circularians. Now, Melissa was dead, killed in a terrible accident. Riley wasn’t sure why, but he somehow felt he owed it to her to visit the boy who had benefited from her kindness.
The Circularians were based in Mombasa and for that reason Riley had begun his visit there rather than in the capital, Nairobi. He had met with Horácio Domingues, the little Goan who ran the organisation, in a decaying stuccoed stone building on Mbarak Hinawy Road. The dark-skinned little man had brilliant blue eyes that darted about continuously as he attempted to inform Riley of the Circularian philosophy. Riley wasn’t interested, and had finally convinced Domingues to simply check his files for the details of where he might find Melissa’s orphan, Jafari Su’ud. When he returned with the file, Domingues explained that the boy had been adopted, but the agency had requested the details remain confidential.
This had piqued Riley’s interest. Melissa’s monthly contributions were still being deducted from what had been their joint bank account. If the boy had been adopted, surely they should have been notified and the deductions have ceased?
He diverted Domingues with a request for some information on the Circularians and, while the man poked into various cupboards and filing cabinets, Riley took a peep into the file. He found an address in Nairobi and copied it into his notebook.
Another belching bus blocked his path. Road Warrior—Death Before Dishonour it proclaimed beneath its rear window. Riley edged out to peep around it. There was just enough room to pass it before an oncoming bus reached him. He gunned the Land Rover.
Too late, he saw the pothole—it was enormous. The old Defender shook as if struck by a wrecker’s ball and Riley’s head hit the roof. Dust filled the cabin and there was a sickening crunch as the
Land Rover bounced off the side of the bus.
The oncoming truck filled the windscreen.
Riley yanked the wheel right and headed for the bush. The Land Rover left the tarmac and became airborne. It snapped a sapling at bumper-bar level and the foliage momentarily blinded him. When the windscreen cleared, a donkey cart loaded with charcoal bags blocked his path.
The last thing he recalled as he swung the wheel hard was the cart driver’s terror-stricken eyes. The Defender went into a savage four-wheel drift, throwing Riley’s head sideways into the unpadded door pillar.
Riley’s head rocked from side to side, sending painful darts into his brain.
He risked squinting into the light. The brightness hurt and he closed his eyes but not before he registered a bizarre scene—a man in a red dress leading a pair of bullocks that were hauling his car across the barren landscape.
He gave in to the overwhelming fatigue and slipped back into darkness.
When he opened his eyes again, the intense light was gone and he was lying on a narrow bed. His head pounded and he felt slightly nauseous. A figure in a white short-sleeved shirt appeared above him. He was Indian in appearance and had dangling from his neck a stethoscope, which glinted in the light from the window.
‘Mr Riley. Welcome back.’
‘Thanks.’ He gingerly turned his head to each side. ‘Where am I?’
The room was a small hut, like a motel room with a thatched roof.
‘You are at Twiga Lodge, on a nature reserve near Tsavo National Park. I’m Dr Dass. You’ve had a knock on the head.’
‘Thank God. I thought it was the lime daiquiris.’
The doctor looked perplexed and Riley abandoned the attempted joke.
‘The car…How did I get here?’ he asked.
‘David here was herding cattle near the Mombasa road.’ Dass indicated a tall black man standing near the door, bare-chested except for a short red toga draped over one shoulder. ‘He brought you in.’
Riley nodded, tried to smile in appreciation. His head still throbbed.