by Frank Coates
‘No.’
He suggested they walk together as he also lived with a friend in Kianda.
‘Tell me about your visits to the national park,’ he said.
‘I’ve already told you. Papa would drive the old Bedford into the park—he knew the rangers and we didn’t need to pay—and we’d park under a tree for a little while. Papa would turn the radio on, but most days it was too scratchy to hear anything.’
‘But what did you see there?’
‘In the park? Oh, there were always gazelle and wildebeest. Many zebra. Once we saw a huge flock of ostriches. And there were—’
‘Lions? Did you see lions?’
She smiled. His enthusiasm was touching. She told him about the time her father had parked under their usual tree, but as she was about to open her door to climb the rocks they used as seats, her father had shouted and grabbed her by the arm. He’d then pointed to the lions among the rocks that neither of them had seen as he’d driven in. She laughed as she recounted the story, but it wasn’t amusing at the time. She remembered her distress at her father’s raised voice, his painful grip on her arm and her tears.
When they arrived at the shack Joshua called his home, he was still engrossed in their conversation. She was surprised at how basic his dwelling was. The house where she and her father lived was nothing more than an enclosed space divided into two rooms by a curtain; but, as far as she could see, Joshua had nothing but a piece of clear plastic spread on the ground under a few sheets of rusty iron.
‘I live here with Kwazi,’ he said, pointing to the person bent over a section of reinforcing mesh that straddled a small fire. ‘Kwazi! Meet Mayasa.’
‘Habari,’ Kwazi said without enthusiasm.
It was impossible to say how old he was, and his face was so disfigured she couldn’t read his features or expression.
‘Sijambo,’ she answered without thought.
Kwazi raised his eyebrows. Mayasa felt she could just bite her tongue. She had inadvertently used the more correct reply of I’m fine, instead of the more casual Kenyan Kiswahili mzuri, meaning nice. It was a small matter, but when she used what Tanzanians called pure Kiswahili, it tended to mark her as something of a snob in some Kenyans’ eyes.
‘I’ve seen you around,’ she said in English, trying to move on from her gaffe.
‘Most people have no trouble remembering me.’ Kwazi’s smile twisted his face and it was again impossible to read the expression behind his disfigurement.
Mayasa almost winced. She felt she was doing nothing to improve the impression he might have of her, and it seemed important that he like her since he was Joshua’s friend.
Joshua came to her rescue. ‘Mayasa knows the Serengeti National Park,’ he said, as if announcing she were a personal friend of the president.
‘Mzuri,’ Kwazi said with perhaps just a trace of sarcasm.
‘Well, I’d better go,’ Mayasa said. ‘I have to cook for my father.’
‘Okay. Maybe we’ll meet at the pitch again soon?’
‘Maybe.’
They said their goodbyes, and she made a point of including Kwazi in them.
On the way home, her spirits were higher than they had been for some time. Mayasa had found it difficult to find her niche in Kibera. Many thought her too highbrow with her pure Tanzanian Kiswahili and educated ways. Apart from one or two of the girls at work, she’d made few friends. All of a sudden, and for no other reason than a few visits to the Serengeti as a child, she felt she’d made a lasting impression on the very handsome Joshua Otieng.
The Department of Community Development clerk was a short, slightly paunchy, middle-aged black man with an ill-fitting suit and anxious eyes. Riley spotted him from Kazlana’s description as soon as he entered the coffee shop. When he’d taken his seat, Riley joined him.
‘Mark Riley,’ he said.
The man quickly scanned the restaurant. ‘I am David Omuga,’ he said, nervously wetting his lips.
‘Thanks for coming, Mr Omuga. We can talk in confidence here.’
Riley had no idea if that were true, but it seemed Omuga needed some reassuring.
Omuga nodded, appearing not at all convinced.
Riley was unsure of the protocol, but took the envelope from his pocket and slid it across the table to Omuga, who glanced around the coffee shop and slipped the envelope into his jacket pocket.
‘I believe you’re worried about giving me information about the orphanage,’ Riley said.
‘The Circularian orphanage is very different, Mr Riley.’
‘You mean there are irregularities in the way it works?’
‘There are irregularities everywhere. But there is more to this orphanage than others. I want this funny business brought out. For the sake of the children. Things must change in Kenya.’
‘Is that why you’ve come to me? To change the system?’
‘You could go to the newspapers when you find out about this orphanage.’
‘You’ve got the wrong man. I’m not a crusader. All I want is some information on the orphanage.’
‘But you could help.’
Riley studied the man again. There was nothing exceptional about him. He appeared to be a typical public servant—quiet, conservatively dressed in a dark blue suit, well-spoken. He certainly didn’t look like an idealistic whistle-blower.
‘Why have you done this, Mr Omuga?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, I’ve only asked for information; information that your office could have given me in the first place. Now I have to pay you five thousand shillings and fight your battles.’
‘Mr Riley,’ Omuga said, ‘I am a Luo. As you may be aware, there is an election in a week’s time and there is a Luo candidate standing against President Kibaki, a Kikuyu. Kibaki promised to stop all this corruption, but he has failed. Everyone is affected by it. People continue to be cheated by parking officers and the police. The road contractors get the job to fix the roads, but the money goes into someone else’s pockets. We are sick of it. Raila Odinga will fix all this. He will end the corruption. I can’t get a telephone connected, or find a postal parcel that supposedly has been lost, without giving a little something. Money—it is always money. A little here, a little there. I have been in the department for twenty-seven years. The pay is steady, but for a man who is of the wrong tribe and not well-educated, it is not so good, and the prospects for advancement are very limited. I have eight children and an ailing wife.’ He shrugged.
Riley knew exactly what the shrug meant. Just like the corrupt road contractors, Omuga wanted something for his trouble.
Riley was torn between feelings of disgust and pity. Omuga was a fraud. He claimed to hate corruption, but not enough to refuse it when offered. Conversely, he felt sorry for him, a menial, unable to avoid paying his share of the endemic petty graft, but without the power to change the system. Omuga knew, like everyone else, that change had to come from the top, and there was very little chance of that happening. He was stuck in the corruption trap like millions of others.
‘It is not only the money,’ Omuga said. ‘This is why I have agreed to speak to you.’ He pulled a wrinkled page from his pocket. ‘This is the information you want.’
Riley glanced at it. It was a long list of names. ‘Are these the children at the Circularian orphanage?’
‘They are the ones that have passed through in the last few years. I don’t know how many remain.’
Riley ran his eye down the list. Jafari’s name was there.
‘Where are these children now?’
‘I don’t know, but it is not only people in America or Europe who love children, Mr Riley. People who have no children will do anything to have them. The children come to Nairobi, and then…’ he flung a hand in the air, ‘suddenly they are gone to their new place.’
‘Where I come from we also have people desperate to adopt a child,’ Riley responded. ‘But it takes a long time for them to find a match. Boy or gi
rl, age, so many different wishes.’
Omuga made a crooked attempt at a smile. ‘Perhaps you didn’t look carefully at the names I gave you. Was there nothing special about them?’
Riley shook his head. He’d only checked for Jafari’s name.
‘They are all Swahili boys.’
‘All boys?’
‘Swahili boys. I think the clients are from the Middle East, looking for a son and heir. They want a child who looks like them. Not black like me, but brown like them.’
It took Riley a moment to comprehend Omuga’s theory. The Swahili were descended from the Omanis who first conquered, then engaged in trade with the coastal people centuries ago. Over time many moved to the East Africa coast. In the process they intermarried. The descendants of those unions became the Swahili people of the Coast Province whose features retain similarities to those of the Middle East.
‘I think they are fortunate, these children,’ Omuga continued. ‘They receive everything that money can offer. Education. A good home. In time their fathers will provide them a very good wife and, after all that, they will inherit their father’s wealth.’
Omuga spread his hands as if to rest his case. ‘Why do you worry about them?’
‘Does the organisation in Mombasa know of this…this trade?’
Omuga shrugged. ‘Again, I don’t know.’
The shrug made Riley suspicious. It was quite likely that Omuga was the inside man in the department, ticking the necessary boxes to allow the kids to be smuggled out of the country—no questions asked.
‘Let’s say I forget about the official paths,’ Riley asked. ‘How could I find a child that has been at the orphanage?’
‘People will want the child to be certified as healthy. Once that is done, he is taken to an unregulated border crossing. There, another organisation delivers him to the client.’
‘Why would it be necessary to have the child’s health checked?’
‘The new parents would not want a child with AIDS, or some other hideous disease.’
‘I see. So the doctor has all the records?’
Omuga nodded, his eyes darting around the coffee shop.
‘And where is this doctor located?’
Omuga hesitated. ‘I believe it is somewhere in Nakuru. But now I must go.’
‘Where?’
‘I don’t know; you should ask the man who owns the orphanage,’ Omuga said. ‘But I must warn you to be very careful how you proceed. It could mean your life if he learns of your investigations. And mine if he discovers who gave you your information,’ he added.
Riley thought Omuga had been watching too many American movies.
‘Who is he?’ he asked.
Omuga pointed to the name on the bottom of the page. ‘He’s a businessman and a politician. A very dangerous man. His name is Gideon Koske.’
Kazlana was at home when Mark Riley called her mobile phone. ‘I just rang to say thank you,’ he told her.
‘Not at all. Did Omuga give you what you were looking for?’
‘Well, I’ve made some progress, but he raised as many questions as he answered.’ He told her that he’d found his sponsored child’s name on the department’s list but that Omuga knew nothing about his whereabouts. ‘After he gave me the head guy’s name, he refused to say any more.’
‘Who is the head guy?’
‘Name’s Gideon Koske. Omuga says he’s a businessman-cum-politician.’
‘Koske…I can’t say I know the name, but if he’s in the government you had better be careful. These men can be very difficult if outsiders come asking questions about their business operations. Why don’t you let me do some checking before going further?’
When the call ended, she tried to remember where she’d heard the name Koske before. She thought it might have been in connection with a recent newspaper article on the latest government member to jump ship to support the opposition candidate for president. It wasn’t an unusual occurrence in Kenyan politics, but Koske’s name had another connection and she couldn’t quite recall it. She decided to check her father’s old business files.
Kazlana drove to her office. The security guard was surprised to see her at such a late hour, and disarmed the security system on her office as she ascended to the tenth floor.
She tugged the light cord in the small room where her father’s files were stored. They were arranged in neat stacks on the shelves, exactly as the workmen had left them nearly twelve months earlier. Each time she had decided to sort through them, she had felt bereft and emotional. Seeing her father’s signature on correspondence brought him back to mind but sadly not back to life.
She threw herself into the task now, but had trouble making sense of the filing system. She gave up after an hour, sorting the papers into stacks based upon the likelihood of success. In the maybe stack she found a file with a list of accounts.
Her father’s bookkeeping had been perfunctory at best. At heart he was a true Ramanova—more of a pirate than a businessman—but running her finger down the list, she finally found what she was looking for.
Gideon Koske was signatory to a payment made for supplies flown from Mombasa to Nakuru. The client was the Circularian organisation.
CHAPTER 12
Gideon Koske hardened his resolve. Around him in the antechamber to the parliament were the elected members of President Kibaki’s political supporters. They streamed past him, either pointedly ignoring him or giving him hostile glances. It confirmed his suspicions that the party was now fully aware of his defection to the opposition, thereby sealing his fate should Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement not win the forthcoming election.
Political party disloyalty was not unusual in the Kenyan parliament, even for junior ministers like him. There’d been far more celebrated defections than his and, although irritating to his erstwhile colleagues, it was not a matter to warrant more than the mild hostility that they now made no effort to conceal.
In Kibaki’s party Koske had felt like an interloper—a neophyte among masters—and he was realistic enough to understand his poor prospects for advancement. He’d been a nobody before scrambling out of a Kibera council position to take up a fortuitous party vacancy in the Kibera electorate. It had cost him a lot to gain preselection and a lot more to buy the support needed to win enough votes to get into parliament. Having gained his seat, he was devastated to discover he was very low on the pecking order. The most he could win was his junior minister’s position in an insignificant portfolio. It was then that he had decided to throw his support behind Odinga. If he could win favourable recognition from the ODM party machinery through his efforts to get Odinga elected president, then he felt sure he could secure a higher position in Odinga’s new parliament.
Even then he would need funds, and, having invested in the wrong people, he had to do whatever was necessary to build them again. His acquisition of the Circularian orphanage was a wise investment, one that he knew would ultimately repay him in both financial and political capital. It was a bold strategy, but he was not a man to tolerate second-best. He had already sacrificed more than one life in his quest to succeed.
He would continue to do whatever was necessary to achieve his ambition, or die in the effort.
The walk to the football ground was longer from the place Kwazi called home, especially as Joshua preferred to bypass Kisumu Ndogo. He was not afraid to meet his father; he simply wanted to avoid the confrontation that would ensue. He had no reason to add anything more to what he’d already said.
He was further delayed by a large gathering of Kibera residents at a mass meeting called to protest against the restrictions on campaigning imposed by the administration police. The mood was volatile and Joshua’s inclination was to join in, but he couldn’t be late to training. As captain he needed to demonstrate the discipline he tried to instil in his fellow players, although deep down he knew most of them were merely involved for the fun. It sometimes appeared to Joshua that he was the only one training
with a purpose.
When he arrived at the bare earthen ground used by his team as a playing field, he saw Koske, who signalled to him that he wanted to talk. Joshua trotted over.
Koske was more than usually smug. ‘You see that man over there—at the rear of the goal?’ he said.
Joshua nodded.
‘I’ve asked him to come to see your team’s practice game.’ The smug smile widened. ‘But really, it’s you he has come to see.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he owes me a little favour. You see, he’s from the Limuru Leopards.’
Joshua gaped. He looked from Koske to the man in the goalmouth and back again. The Limuru Leopards were one of Nairobi’s premier football clubs.
‘Yes, it’s a very important team,’ said Koske. ‘And, as I said, if I do something for a friend, I expect that friend to do something for me. That’s how I work.’
Joshua could hardly conceal his excitement.
‘I’ve asked him to look at you and see if you are good enough to play in a trial match later this month.’
‘Yes!’ Joshua’s heart leapt in his chest. ‘I’m ready!’
Koske put his head back and laughed, but as quickly as the laughter had begun, it stopped. He grasped Joshua’s shoulder. ‘This I do for you, my friend.’
‘Thank you, Mr Koske. Thank you.’
Koske nodded and smiled, appearing satisfied with Joshua’s response.
‘Now, go,’ he said. ‘Play your best!’
Joshua quickly stripped to his shorts and tee-shirt and bolted onto the field to join the practice game. Almost immediately, he was among the action, but it wasn’t until some time later that the ball came to him on the wing. He dribbled down the flank, defeating two opponents’ tackles, then lost and won the ball twice in the box before slotting it past the goalie into the top corner of the net.
After the game, Joshua searched the scattered figures around the ground but could only see Koske’s broad figure on the sideline. He tried to hide his disappointment as he joined Koske. The big man made small talk until Joshua could bear it no longer.