Softly Calls the Serengeti

by Frank Coates

  Joshua eased past his father and stepped into the darkness.

  Joshua followed Koske’s slow and deliberate steps as the man avoided splashing the slush over his beige suit. The other man, twice the size of Joshua, followed a pace behind. They stopped not far from Simon’s house, where the moon cast some light at the crossing of two alleys.

  Koske turned to Joshua. ‘You know something, my young friend,’ he said, stroking his chin and smiling, ‘you have made me very unhappy. No…Let me say you’ve made me very…disappointed.’

  Joshua tried not to swallow. The spit accumulated in his mouth until he was forced to gulp.

  ‘Haven’t I been your friend?’ The edge had crept back into Koske’s tone. His jaw tightened under a knot of sinew. ‘Haven’t I helped you so many times?’

  Joshua wondered if it were worthwhile apologising, then abandoned the idea. He knew Koske’s soft hand of friendship concealed an iron fist. He would know his fate soon enough, regardless of anything he might do.

  ‘And…the football match. My, my. Such a good goal. Oh-oh-oh. Yes, it was such a good goal I thought it should be your last. You see, I had in mind to end your football career soon after your big game at Moi International. Knee injuries are so painful. But I couldn’t find you. Where did you go, my friend? Not even a word goodbye.’ His coal-black eyes glared at Joshua from under his heavy brow. ‘And in time I became soft. I know, it is a bad habit in business, but what can you do?’ He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose loudly. ‘No matter. You’re here now. But I saw the good work you were doing in the protest march and the rallies—those young men of yours are very good—and I thought, why not give the boy one more chance?’ He scrubbed his nose with the handkerchief and stuffed it back in his pocket. ‘I have another important task for you. And this time you will not fail me. Si ndiyo? You are still a supporter of Raila, ah?’

  Joshua wasn’t sure any more. Yes, he supported Raila Odinga, and yes, he felt Odinga had been cheated out of his presidency, but he was now not so sure about the tactics being used by some to secure his victory. Perhaps the news commentators were right. Maybe the result could be tested in the courts? He’d seen too much violence already. Innocent people were being hurt.

  ‘Yes, of course I support Raila. He should be our president.’

  ‘Good. Then this is what I want. You will get your people together for another strong protest. I will get you chang’a and bhang, whatever they need to get them in the right mood. I want to see you and your men in the KICC. You know how to get around the police. I want to make a big problem for the police in there.’

  This was the first time Koske had offered to supply the illegally distilled spirits and marijuana to Joshua’s group. He wondered why they were needed now.

  ‘When?’ he said.

  ‘Tomorrow night.’

  He knew the parliament would be sitting in a special session the following evening to pass the motion for vice-president. From all accounts, it would not be Odinga. Security would be intense and any protest would be met with a savage resolve to prove that the government could still enforce law and order.

  ‘How many others will be there?’

  ‘I only want you and your team.’

  Now Joshua understood the reason for the drugs and alcohol. It would be suicide to attempt such a protest with only the hundred or so whose support he could call upon.

  ‘It is not a march,’ Koske added. ‘I will arrange to have a van parked outside during the day. It will look like it is owned by the security company, but it will not have security people in it. It will have fuel—something to show the parliament that we are very serious about our claim for Odinga. Your team-mates will distract the police. You will go to the van, you will unlock it and you will light the fuel.’

  Joshua stared at him.

  ‘Yes, it will be a difficult day,’ Koske said. ‘But it will be a big message.’

  It wasn’t the message that Joshua feared, but the backlash from the police.

  ‘You can do it. Your followers will go wherever you lead them.’ Koske replaced his hat and brushed an invisible speck from his beige sleeve. ‘If you do this well, I may feel better about letting you keep your knees. And I may consider letting your girlfriend go home again. She is such a sweet young thing, si ndiyo?’

  A steel band tightened around Joshua’s heart. He looked into the cold black eyes and knew that Koske was deadly serious. He was lucky to still be alive after what he’d done to this man who controlled so many lives in the slums. And he had no doubt Koske would kill him and Mayasa if he failed to do exactly as he was told.

  CHAPTER 37

  Joshua slept badly. Early the next morning, he thumbed the text message to his team-mates and supporters, giving instructions about the time and place to meet. He set up the broadcast call but his finger hovered over the Send option. He had no heart for continuing the battle. He and his fellow Odinga supporters were not achieving what they wanted. While there were thousands legitimately involved in protests against the actions of the government, there were many more who simply used the confusion to loot, rape and destroy indiscriminately.

  He knew his team-mates would follow him into the bloody situation that Koske wanted at the KICC that night, but it would almost certainly mean more deaths. For Mayasa’s sake, he felt compelled to do as Koske demanded, but it would be a cowardly retreat for him.

  He deleted the text message.

  Once he had made up his mind, he knew he had to act swiftly. When Riley didn’t answer his mobile, he called Charlotte.

  ‘I must speak to Mr Mark,’ he said.

  ‘He told me he was taking the car to a garage for some repairs. But are you okay? I’ve heard terrible news about the riots and looting.’

  ‘Yes. I am, but…’

  ‘Yes…?’

  ‘I am worried about Mayasa.’ He told her about Koske’s threats. ‘We need to find somewhere to hide outside Kibera. Can you help us get out?’

  There was silence on the line for several heart-stopping moments.

  ‘I might be able to do something, but let me make a few calls first, then I’ll find Mark and we can come and get both of you out of there. Text me later and tell me where to meet you. Is Mayasa with you?’

  Joshua sighed. ‘No, and I don’t know where to look.’

  ‘Just be calm. Think. Where could she be?’

  Joshua clenched and unclenched his fists. ‘I’ve asked Kwazi to find where she is.’

  ‘When will you hear from him?’

  ‘I don’t know, but if I don’t find her before tonight, I don’t think I’ll ever find her.’

  Mayasa was only half awake, dozing in the heat of mid-morning, when the mobile phone rang. It made her start. She’d not heard it ring in all the time she’d been confined in the orphanage. Somehow she knew the call would be about her.

  Bull took the call and immediately sat up straight in his chair. Mayasa kept her eyes half closed and listened, but Bull made no comment other than an occasional nod and grunt of acknowledgement. She watched him scratch his head and wrinkle his brow. He turned in her direction as the call ended, but remained seated for a moment, still scratching his head. Then he stood, straightened his shoulders and went to the door.

  The Jackal followed him back inside, and, as usual, his eyes went directly to Mayasa. She kept her eyelids hooded to feign sleep and listened as the two men began to talk.

  Bull said he needed to go out and that the Jackal should remain inside until he returned. He took the long, naked-bladed panga from the younger man, who had apparently been using it to slash the weeds in the compound, and placed it on the meeting table. At the door, he turned back to glance at Mayasa, who now sat up, pleading with her eyes that he not leave her alone with the frightening Jackal.

  Bull turned away and pulled the door closed behind him.

  The Jackal grinned.

  CHAPTER 38

  Joshua unbolted the door and Kwazi entered, merel
y nodding to Joshua’s greeting of ‘Habari’. He did, however, take Simon’s hand in the respectful African way, his two hands encircling Simon’s in an encompassing grasp.

  Joshua noticed Kwazi’s eyes. They were flint-hard, and he took time to move to the chair where, without waiting for the customary invitation, he took a seat. From years of observing Kwazi’s almost impenetrable moods, Joshua knew his friend was in pain.

  ‘Where’s your wheelchair?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s gone. Last night someone threw me from it and stole it.’

  ‘Ah, ah, ah,’ Simon said, shaking his head. ‘They must be from outside.’

  ‘Maybe, but the whole of Kenya has gone mad,’ Kwazi said. ‘Anyway, what good is a wheelchair in Kibera alleys?’

  ‘There are so many of these young thugs running about, making trouble,’ Simon added. ‘I don’t know who can stop them. It was lucky you had no money or it would be gone.’

  ‘Did you hear anything about Mayasa?’ Joshua asked Kwazi impatiently.

  ‘Do you know the old building behind Toi Market?’ Kwazi asked. ‘The one sometimes used as an orphanage?’

  ‘No,’ Joshua said. ‘Is that where she is?’

  Kwazi nodded.

  Joshua knew the implications. It was Kikuyu territory. He hesitated before asking the inevitable question. ‘Will you take me there?’

  ‘No,’ Simon interjected. ‘It is not safe. You know the Mungiki will be watching for any Kalenjin or Luo who enters there.’

  The Mungiki, a largely Kikuyu group modelled on the Mau Mau, had been accused of beheading opponents in a number of well-publicised incidents.

  ‘I must go,’ Joshua said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t you understand? I must go for Mayasa. It’s Koske’s men who have her, and now that I have defied him he will use her to make me pay.’

  ‘I will go,’ Simon said defiantly. ‘The Mungiki will pay no attention to an old man.’

  ‘The Mungiki have no respect for anyone,’ Joshua said heatedly.

  He wasn’t angry at his father, but at himself. He had been foolish to think he could accept Koske’s help without paying a price. How could he have believed he might win a position in the national football competition on his own merits?

  He softened his voice. ‘Thank you, but I must do it. I will go alone.’

  ‘You will not.’ Now it was Kwazi who spoke sternly. ‘You don’t even know where you’re going. I will come with you.’

  Kwazi was exhausted by the time they reached the burnt-out remains of Toi Market. He’d been forced to trot behind Joshua’s hurried strides. Now, Kwazi’s hip sent fireballs of pain down his leg and his back was in spasm.

  ‘Is that it?’ Joshua asked as they stood at the end of the badly potholed road. A hundred metres away was a cement-block building behind a stand of lop-eared banana plants.

  ‘It is,’ Kwazi replied, panting.

  ‘I don’t see anything. Maybe it’s not the place?’

  ‘It’s the place. My friend has seen Koske’s men coming and going, but there is never a time when there is no one here. They must be inside. With Mayasa.’

  ‘Let’s go!’ Joshua said.

  Kwazi grabbed his arm. ‘Wait! What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m going to get Mayasa, of course.’

  ‘Look, my friend, I have heard about these fellows. They are Koske’s thugs. They do the work that even Koske won’t do. They are big, and very bad.’

  ‘What can I do? I have to get her out of there.’

  ‘Do you think you’ll be invited in when you get there? No. So let’s do this. We go down and ask if Mr Kirangi is around—he’s the caretaker. We make like we’re looking for a job. But we check to make sure Mayasa is there and see how many men are inside with her. Then we come back here and think before we do anything. Si ndiyo?’

  Joshua hesitated for an instant, nodded and turned to go.

  ‘Wait, wait,’ Kwazi pleaded. ‘Charlotte. You’ve forgotten to tell Charlotte where we will meet her.’

  Joshua pulled out his mobile phone, thumbed in a text, then set off down the pock-marked bitumen to the hall. Kwazi hobbled behind him as quickly as possible, cursing his aching hip and back.

  Charlotte hung up from her call to Dr Gilanga. Mark still had not returned from the garage. She called him, but received his cheerless recorded voice suggesting the usual options.

  When she clicked off, her message alert peeped. It was Joshua, saying they would meet her in the Nakumatt car park in Ngong Road.

  At the hotel reception desk she enquired about a courtesy car. The hotel clerk advised that, owing to the security risk, all hotel cars were temporarily unavailable.

  She asked the concierge to call a taxi, but no one would agree to take her anywhere near Kibera.

  In desperation, she walked to the lower section of the car park where the taxis congregated, moved boldly through the gathered drivers, found a driverless taxi with the keys in the ignition and stole it.

  Mayasa avoided eye contact with the Jackal, but she knew he was watching her as he made much of sharpening his panga on the unpainted cement-block wall.

  She alternated between concern about being alone with the Jackal for the first time and the reason why Bull had found it necessary to desert her. Both actions were unprecedented. She caught the Jackal staring at her again and decided to get off the camp stretcher she used as a bed.

  She started to pace the length of the wall with the shuttered window. Each time she passed she carefully examined the shutter’s slide bolts, trying to establish if the bolts she could see were the only ones that kept it locked.

  ‘You must not look out the window, ah?’ the Jackal said with a crooked smile from across the breadth of the room.

  ‘I…I’m not. I’m just…walking.’

  On the third pass, she decided they were not fastened other than with the two slide bolts. There was a chair further along the wall that would serve as a stepladder to reach the bolts. If she were quick enough, she thought, she could scramble onto the chair, slide the bolts and open the window before the dim-witted Jackal could react.

  On the next stroll past, she casually reached down to the chair and lifted it.

  Suddenly she felt a presence behind her. Before she could swing around, the Jackal grabbed her around the waist. She struggled to loosen his grip and in the process he spun her around, his twisted smile now inches from her face.

  Joshua heard a scream when halfway to the orphanage. He broke into a sprint, leaving Kwazi in his wake. The door was locked, but he threw his shoulder at it with all his weight. There was a splintering sound and the door burst inwards.

  Mayasa was on the floor. Straddling her was a young man, tearing at her tee-shirt. A panga lay on the floor beside them.

  Joshua bellowed and charged across the room, but the young man quickly leapt to his feet with the panga pointed towards Joshua like a sword. He was grinning like a fool, his teeth yellowed and broken.

  Joshua circled him, trying to get between him and Mayasa, but the man with the panga moved to block the only escape route.

  Just then, Kwazi came stumbling and cursing through the door.

  The Jackal spun about. In horror, he saw the face of a demon leering at him. He screamed and lashed out with his panga again and again until the ghost of the Nubian soldier lay bleeding on the floor.

  In another moment, howling like a madman, the Jackal was gone.

  Joshua stood frozen in the seconds it took for Kwazi to arrive and for the panga to fall on him. The first blow felled his friend where he stood, and now he lay almost at Joshua’s feet, the blood still flooding from his mutilated body. His neck appeared to have been broken by the force of the panga blow, and his face, frozen in the moment death had laid its cold hand on him, was twisted even beyond the ruin he’d carried with him through life.

  Joshua couldn’t move. He couldn’t bring himself to reach out to touch Kwazi in case the action confirmed his worst fe
ars. As Mayasa knelt beside Kwazi’s body, sobbing, he felt an almost unbearable urge to flee the building, the blood and the panga, and the tragic sight of Kwazi’s pitiful body.

  At that moment, he was once again a twelve-year-old with eyes of ice and a stone in place of his heart, staring at the incinerated bodies of his mother and three young sisters.

  Simon could not sit at home alone while his son faced such danger. He headed towards Kibera Gardens Road and as he dashed through the Nakumatt car park, he saw Charlotte sitting in a taxi. Oddly, she was in the driver’s seat. She flinched when he tapped on the window.

  ‘Charlotte,’ he said when she’d rolled it down, ‘what are you doing here? It’s not safe.’

  She told him about Joshua’s arrangements and he hurried on. Reaching the orphanage, he spotted Joshua and Mayasa from the garden. They were standing in the doorway.

  ‘Joshua!’ he hissed from the cluster of banana plants. ‘This way! Charlotte is there. She’s waiting.’

  He knew they would have precious little time to escape Kibera before the local Mungiki gang heard of the Luos invading their territory.

  Neither Joshua nor Mayasa made a move.

  He hurried to them. ‘We must be quick!’ he said, this time more insistently. ‘They will be coming!’

  He tugged at Joshua’s arm, then followed his gaze to the body lying on the ground like a broken and bloodied shell.

  ‘Haki ya mungu,’ he whispered. ‘What have they done?’

  Simon stepped between Joshua and what remained of Kwazi and hugged his son to him fiercely. ‘Oh, my son,’ he said. ‘What have they done to this poor boy? This poor, poor boy.’

  Mayasa, tears streaming down her face, joined them. They stood in silence until the clamour of voices from behind the first row of shacks alerted them to the approaching mob.

  ‘Come, Joshua,’ Mayasa pleaded. ‘We can do nothing for him. The…the gang. They’re coming.’