No Hurry in Africa

by Brendan Clerkin

  When I was visiting people like Nancy, old people sometimes told me that I was the first white person ever to set foot on their farm or their ‘townland.’ Some of these were very, very old.

  ‘I buried a 110 year old woman today,’ Fr. Liam told me around that time. ‘She had great-great-great grandchildren at her funeral.’

  Many in Kenya live to a very advanced age, being quite sprightly well into their nineties, and are still walking great distances and carrying loads on the farms even then. They never suffered from the excesses that a Western lifestyle entails.

  I was bidding a noisy farewell to everybody before the evening sun sank when, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed one small boy hiding. It was Nancy’s young son.

  ‘He is fearing you, Bradan.’

  I lifted him in the air and sat him up inside a domed hut (these are made of dry yellow grass and stand on stilts of wood). The boy immediately scrambled to the protection of the back of the dome.

  ‘Next time Bradan,’ Nancy assured me, ‘he will not be fearing the mzunguJ

  Mutinda and I finally set out on our return journey. Like the Pied Piper, there was a swarm of children silently trailing us, albeit at a discreet distance. It had been a tremendous day. Later that week, as she sat at her desk in Nyumbani, Nancy informed me proudly:

  ‘There has been a stream of neighbours coming to my home for days now, wanting to look at the mzungu.’

  Those children pulling at my hair that Sunday—it had been such an attraction—made me think about getting it cut. The scruffy long-haired look that I had favoured on most of my travels before now proved quite impractical in Kenya, what with the heat, not to mention the insects I kept finding in it each time I scratched my head. So, a week after my visit to Nancy’s, I hopped on the back of a creaky lorry with Mwangangi and about fifty other Nyumbani workers and grabbed a lift down the track to Kwa Vonza village.

  The barber sat outside, under the shade of a tree, at the side of the track near the village. He was using a car battery to power his clippers. Mwangangi had his head shaved first; like all the Akamba, he had it shaved right down to the skin. I had a job explaining in Swahili how this would leave me with a badly sunburned head. The barber could not grasp how the sun could burn skin. Mwangangi did not really twig it either. So the barber trimmed very little in the end. He charged us each twenty shillings (about 20 cent).

  Mwangangi and I flagged a lift on the back of bicycles being ridden by two random people cycling in the direction of Nyumbani. As usual, they were brothers of the wife of a cousin of Mwangangi’s wife, or something like that—everyone was related to Mwangangi somehow. As the bicycle careered downhill over bumps and potholes, my whole body was vibrating as I clung on. About two kilometres before Nyumbani, I yelled out,

  ‘Stop! Do you see that?’

  It was a huge brown tortoise, easily over a foot and a half high.

  The lads could not get over the size of the creature, a giant even by African standards. It retreated into its enormous shell when we investigated further. One of the cyclists had a large sack with him and we wrapped it around the shell. It took three of us to lift it. We were probably nearly two hours walking back those last two kilometres; we kept resting every few minutes, it was so heavy. Mwangangi had suggested we keep the monster as a pet. He came up with the bright idea of confining it inside one of our empty Kenyan-style henhouses (made from branches hammered into the ground). Of course, as happened with most of Mwangangi’s bright ideas, the tortoise escaped the first night and was never seen again. I was not entirely displeased; keeping such a magnificent creature captive would not have been right.

  CHAPTER 9

  TWO CHRISTMAS PARTIES AND A FUNERAL

  I CELEBRATED CHRISTMAS in Kitui on the fifth of December. Ilsa, Yvonne and I were sitting chatting in the gloaming in the dappled shade of a red-flowering bougainvillea tree. A big red sun was slipping below the horizon. When it finally set, we lit a couple of hurricane lamps. We were celebrating early because apparently Santa Claus comes to Holland on the fifth of December. Ilsa explained,

  ‘Sinterklaas—he is Saint Nicholas—is the patron of children. Sinterklaas wears a red bishop’s robe and hat and comes on a big lit-up steamboat into the port at Rotterdam every year. He steps ashore on Saint Nicholas’s eve with presents for all the children. The eve of Saint Nicholas is the fifth of December. It is truly wonderful … ’

  I could see she was feeling nostalgic, perhaps a bit homesick. Yvonne took up the story.

  ‘The Dutch colony of New Amsterdam kept the tradition going even after it became New York. He became Santa Claus over there.’

  Fr. Paul, a few Kenyan priests and nuns, a young Akamba man, the two girls, and I had enjoyed a great time earlier that afternoon, sharing food and jokes and presents. The girls had made Fr. Paul a present of a painted cardboard bishop’s mitre that he was forced to wear throughout. He let on he did not want to wear it. Yvonne handed me my ingeniously disguised present in turn, telling me,

  ‘Sinterklaas used to have lots of helpers known as “Black Pete” to wrap everything for him. He doesn’t anymore, because it would be seen as racist now to have lots of black people helping him for nothing. So he wrapped this one himself for you.’

  It was a clown horn for the handlebars of my bicycle so I could beep at everyone who kept walking in front of me. Sinterklaas had also composed a comical poem about me—with a little assistance from Ilsa.

  Sadly, just a day after that, the two girls contracted severe malaria. This was despite taking anti-malarial tablets, which incidentally had been giving Yvonne hallucinations of five-foot high grasshoppers jumping on her bed. Such delusions are not uncommon with anti-malarial drugs. The malaria weakened their systems so much they suffered other illnesses, and were bedridden until the ‘real’ Christmas arrived.

  People around Kitui seem to believe that illnesses, ill fortune or accidents never just happen by chance; they would insist it was a curse or a hex put on a person following some dispute. One of the few people they did not associate with this kind of thing was my good friend Mutinda, despite him being a ‘hocus-pocus’ herbal doctor-cum-vet. In view of what was about to happen, I would soon find this very ironic.

  On the Monday morning following the girls’ early Christmas party, I cycled the four hours back to Nyumbani, setting off before dawn had broken properly and waving wildly to early risers working on their farms along the way. I was in a cheerful mood and graced them with shrill hoots of my new clown horn. They were all surprisingly amused by this. None of them had thought to soup-up their own bicycle with a similar klaxon. Reaching my destination, I spotted Kimanze working at the gate of Nyumbani and let out a few raucous quacks from the horn. I dismounted and shouted a breezy ‘Good morning’ to him.

  ‘I hear you lost Mutinda,’ he spoke almost casually.

  ‘What, I lost Mutinda?’

  I was perplexed. It sounded to me as if he thought I had misplaced Mutinda and could not find him wherever I had hidden him. Kimanze straightened up from his work to pause for a moment and then said gravely,

  ‘Mutinda, he is dead.’

  My blood froze in every vein. I felt the insides tighten, and the hairs on my arm stood on end. I was short of breath, the colour draining from my face. It was a knockout punch that had come from nowhere.

  I had been speaking with Mutinda the previous Friday and he was in great form, just as he always was. Kimanze told me what had happened.

  ‘Mutinda had gone to Nairobi on business for Nyumbani. He decided that, instead of staying overnight in Nairobi, he’d get a late afternoon bus to Kitui. After it grew dark, there was a lorry in front of the bus with no rear lights and lots of thick black exhaust coming from it. The bus driver was speeding and was far too close to the lorry. When the lorry braked suddenly, Mutinda went flying forward. There were six others killed as well. Still more are unconscious in Nairobi hospital. It’s very sad … ’

  I slumped onto the dusty g
round in disbelief, trying to take it all in. Despite our age difference—Mutinda was in his mid-fifties—he had been one of my best friends in Nyumbani right from the very start. After some time, I wandered down to the office, feeling deflated. Nancy noticed me arriving.

  ‘We all loved Mutinda. We will miss him, every one of us,’ she spoke tearfully. ‘I cried and I cried and I cried, Bradan. My husband could not stop me crying all of yesterday.’

  I nodded, unable to find the right words; I could hardly grasp it yet. A good while later, Nancy broke the silence.

  ‘He will be better off in heaven. We must celebrate his life. He touched so many of us deeply. But God loved him more.’

  The mood was one of dejection in the days that followed. Mutinda had been one of those characters known to everybody, whether important or anonymous. He was a popular leader of one of the ‘community groups’ on the Project, as well as being in charge of a part of the farm. He had a great sense of humour, not beyond a bit of harmless devilment, and had such a hearty laugh. I regretted all the irreplaceable knowledge in his mind that was now irretrievably lost.

  I will never forget the day we buried Mutinda. It was two weeks later—this was to allow time to collect a contribution from everyone to pay for a big funeral, as is the custom. It was a typical Akamba funeral and quite a spectacle, lasting from dawn until darkness away up in the hills, at the settlement of round thatched huts that was his home place.

  On the morning of the funeral, we duly set off from Nyumbani in a convoy of four lorries crammed with people standing in the back. The Akamba in each lorry were singing burial songs together as we journeyed. But it was not an entirely solemn occasion. Everybody cheered loudly each time one lorry passed another. In Kwa Vonza, we all had to wait for the truck carrying Mutinda’s coffin to arrive from Nairobi. It was a typical hot and dusty village where nothing much was happening. We were sitting for hours in what little shade was available. A child occasionally rolled a tyre with the end of a stick along the street, puncturing the stillness.

  After a long time, the boredom was relieved when a car limped into Kwa Vonza, its bonnet dented and front windscreen smashed up. Apparently, the driver had just collided with a cyclist. Hundreds rushed up to surround the car. A lynching looked on the cards—only to be prevented at that very moment by the coffin of Mutinda arriving on the back of a pick-up. There were seven or eight people sitting on top of the white coffin, the pick-up decorated with ritual red ribbons.

  When we set off again, the mourners resumed the funeral songs. We were now into the mountains, not far from where Sr. MM lives. It was here the track ran out; we all had to walk in procession the last few kilometres to Mutinda’s home place; a vehicle could get nowhere near it.

  As is the modern Akamba convention, he was lowered into the red earth outside his front door to the accompaniment of much song and dance and many lengthy speeches. Mutinda’s walking stick was brought along, with its distinctive carved lion as the handle. I recalled how he used to carry it as he strolled around— the more decorative the stick the greater the status, according to Akamba tradition. Mutinda was a great man for tradition. He knew all the stories of his tribe, as well as being an expert on the medicinal plants and time-honoured remedies for both man and beast.

  As the sun went down, I was still sitting, lost in thought, on a tiny African stool under a lemon tree, looking across to the round thatched mud-huts on the hill opposite. Suddenly, I was mobbed by a gang of children who swarmed around me while others timidly hovered just out of view. And in amongst them, also hiding, was an African wearing a Dublin GAA jersey! Life goes on, I thought, heading back to the lorry and a lift home.

  It was around the time of his funeral, just before Christmas, that I decided, for a variety of reasons, to take a longer break from Nyumbani. I tapped on Kiragu’s door, and he looked up as keen as ever to see me and share his latest ideas.

  ‘I need a break,’ I told him, ‘I want to explore other parts of Kenya. I will return when my enthusiasm comes back. I promise you that.’

  He knew the causes; I had no need to explain, he had no reason to ask. He wished me all the best, and assured me he looked forward to my return. I did not really let on to anyone else what I planned to do, but gave a few hints to Nancy, Nzoki, Kimanze, Mwangangi, Nyambura, and a few others. When the time came I would prefer to slip away unnoticed.

  As with everything in Kenya, internal politics and splits had become rife, often running along tribal lines. I somehow managed to stay out of it, as I always instinctively tried to do; everyone still got along with me. However, on some occasions, the atmosphere was poisoned. Like many young volunteers whom I met in Kenya, even those working for organisations like the American Peace Corps, idealistic notions were sometimes swamped by disillusionment. The pity was that only a couple of short weeks earlier, I had been so passionate about the Project; it had such wonderful potential.

  It was around that time that I began to suspect that a financial accountant in Nairobi was either incompetent, or—as more often than not is the case in Kenya—guilty of fraud. My hands were tied. I could not start whistle-blowing, because I was on a tourist visa and would have risked being deported. Of course, I also did not know how many others, if any, might have been involved. Though having learned a bit about auditing, and through sheer intuition, I had my suspicions.

  The most obvious red flag was the late arrival of the wages every month. I had nothing at all to do with this delay, but I was the accountant they saw around everyday, and I suspected many workers presumed I had a hand in them not being paid on time. A young engineering volunteer from Letterkenny named Niall McMenamin had been shot dead in southern Kenya in the mid-1990s for much the same thing—something that was beyond his control. A teacher told me his tragic story one day, when I was reading the caption under his picture hanging in St. Eunan’s College in Letterkenny. The worry of a similar incident happening to me sometimes lodged itself in the back of my mind. One is automatically the outsider for being white. Anyway, the whole project was also being held up because the government would not officially release the land deeds. Apparently, some senior official in Nairobi was looking for a bribe.

  Leo, still universally referred to as ‘Jesus Hitler,’ had decided to leave the week before Christmas to work on a project in Mombasa. He had originally intended to go there before he left Germany. I became lonely as the only mzungu remaining in Nyumbani. Then a good friend from College committed suicide back in Ireland. I received this news by text message, of all ways. There was nothing I could do but pray; I had nobody to talk to. Mutinda was also dead. Suddenly, after nearly four months in Nyumbani, I felt really alone. I was punctured. The isolation had finally got to me. Sometimes, the only way to communicate a message was to wait until someone was cycling in the right direction to pass it on; and then you had to wait on a reply until someone was cycling back. It could take days. That, and surviving on plain rice every meal of every day. Frustration all of a sudden became exhaustion.

  That was also the week that Mwangangi and I became stuck down a thirty-foot deep well, when we were trying to collect water. The rope that was tied onto the bucket broke, and we climbed down the ladder to fetch the jerry-can resting in the water. One of the well-spaced iron rungs fell out as we were climbing down, and we could not reach the one above it to make our escape.

  ‘Here we go again,’ I laughed ironically.

  While we were patiently waiting to be discovered, Mwangan-gi slipped into conversation.

  ‘Could you loan me a few shillings for a new dress for my baby girl?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure, no problem, how much do you need?’ I replied before wondering, ‘Wait a minute Mwangangi, how old is your baby?’

  ‘About one week old,’ he replied, matter-of-factly.

  He had not even bothered to tell anyone he had become a father. Mwangangi could be secretive that way, just as he had been about his wedding. It took over an hour for us to be found down there, and anot
her hour to fix the replacement rung into the concrete to enable us to clamber out. That incident further fuelled my intention to escape.

  Coming up to Christmas, the famine was becoming acute. Some farmers had planted two or even three crops of maize— but with the rains so disappointing, they had harvested nothing. The other tribes always say that only the Akamba could survive in that region. The famine had also made life uncomfortable for me. In my own mind at least, I was now a sitting duck for bandits who might mistake me for a rich mzungu, as I cycled alone the four hours through the parched bush to Kitui village at the weekends. The only consolation was that there was no longer any need to wade up to my waist across swollen rivers to get there.

  However, my situation was far from being as dire as that of the local people. Some families now went from three to seven days between meals. The Catholic Diocese of Kitui was feeding over 250,000 people at this point. The situation deteriorated so badly that in one village, when relief food was being distributed, a troop of baboons ambushed children and grabbed their relief food. Some children had to attend hospital after the assault. The baboons were starving as well, and attacked the humans in an effort to survive. I recalled Nancy’s warning.

  It took two trips to Nairobi just before Christmas to have my visa sorted out at Nyayo House—an infamous government building where the public were interned and tortured in the basement during President Moi’s periods in office in the 1980s and 1990s. It is still fairly infamous among the white people, but for a different reason nowadays. Each time I entered, various immigration officers would tell me to do something different; they would contradict each other. I was sent from counter 9 to 1 to 5 to 2 to 7 to 3, up to the fifth floor, round the back, and back down to Counter 9 where we started all over again. I told them that I was still touring. Eventually they took my fingerprints, stamped my passport, but computerised none of it.