NINTH
I do not believe in God. Instead I believe in the power of Family. And occasionally, when I’m feeling optimistic, in free will. But blood is a force to be reckoned with. God, for example, can’t give you an excellent head of hair. Your family can. They can also give you cancer. And heart disease. Nothing kills like Family.
I see my past stretched out in front of me—one flawed, damaged, beleaguered ancestor after another. The secret. The tragedy. The unfulfilled promise. The one success that got away.
My present is a conglomeration of the mistakes, missteps, dubious additions to the gene pool, and bad investments made by my parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great-grandparents.
But after that, there is my future—what is left when the Family has left the building. Has finished fucking with me. It’s not much to work with, but it’s mine.
Thank God for free will, right?
Uganda, 1992. Nearly everyone in Africa is black. This, for some reason, is a complete revelation. Maybe it’s the effect of crossing four time zones in two days. Or possibly the heavy, steady flow of alcohol and sedatives into my system. Or the relatively few hours of sleep I’ve clocked over the last week or two. Or eight.
Or maybe it is just the truth—that compared to the rest of this continent, the passengers coming off my flight, myself in particular, are pasty, lifeless, bleached. That we look as if something integral has been removed. The part essential to the whole extracted from us in the night by space aliens or flesh-eating zombies. Or Jerry Falwell.
Deposited into this crowd of brown, I feel the sudden desperate urge to disappear into it.
Like a single drop of milk stirred into a cup of coffee.
Two tall, thin men in light-blue jumpsuits unload our baggage from the plane and wheel it over to the baggage area. The cart only holds six or seven suitcases at a time. After forty minutes of watching the two men go back and forth, I see three of my four bags make it onto the trolley. I am tired of waiting. Whatever was in the fourth can’t be that important.
As I stand in front of the airport scanning names on the dozens of cardboard signs held by dozens of black men, all wearing African-print shirts and Ray-Ban sunglasses, I feel a momentary impulse to break into one of Johnny Carson’s monologues. I imagine reciting the names on the cards as if they were jokes. Then I see my name. The impulse passes. I walk toward my driver and hand him my baggage.
When we pull up to the hotel, I immediately regret allowing the travel agent in Santiago free rein. She was a British expat in her sixties. She’d been working at the American Express Office for more than twenty years. She said she knew just what I’d like and that she’d take care of everything. And she reminded me of Rene, my secretary at the studio. Except that Rene was from the Bronx. Rene took care of everything.
I have not completely broken the bad habit of delegating my life. Not that there is anything wrong with the beautiful five-star colonial hotel set among five acres of tropical gardens. In fact, it is perfect. But perfect is a lie. That much I know. Especially in this part of the world. We have that in common. I decide to stay and enjoy the perfect lie for a day or two before moving on to look for the awful truth. Or at least a more imperfect lie. One I can live with for a while.
I take the concierge aside and slip him too many Ugandan shillings to set me up with a non-government-sanctioned tour guide. I want someone who will take me places the guests in this hotel will never see. Nikudi, the concierge, says he will have no trouble finding such a person and that he can guarantee I will be taken places meant only for locals. He cannot, however, guarantee my safety.
“Do you understand, sir?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say. “That’s fine.” The prospect of putting myself in harm’s way only adds to the adventure.
“This is not going to be a tour out of The Rough Guide. Once you go off with this person—who is, I assure you, quite trustworthy—I will have no idea where you will be and no way to contact you.”
“Sounds good to me,” I say.
At eight the next morning, I meet my tour guide, Kwendo.
“So you and Nikudi are friends?” I ask after seeing them embrace warmly.
“Brother-in-law,” he says, walking ahead of me so fast I have no choice but to follow.
“You’re Nikudi’s brother-in-law? Are you a tour guide?”
“I take you on tour” is the closest thing I get to an affirmative answer, but I cannot make myself care about his credentials.
“Where are we going?” I ask as I climb onto his motorcycle behind him.
“No problem,” he says, “I take you real Uganda.” And he is out of the gate so fast that the heat slaps me across the face and leaves me breathless.
The colors, sounds, smells, and heat of Kampala are overwhelming. At first it is like a circus or carnival. Swerving in, out, and between trucks spewing putrid exhaust and carrying live animals—chickens, goats, alpacas, and bicycles that double as taxis and a means to carry loads of bananas and bags of rice to market—is a dizzying ride. The relentless onslaught of swarming crowds and mixing smells of dung, cooking meat, sweat, and earth make my head feel as if it is going to explode.
I am relieved when we leave the city. The roads are unpaved, unmarked, an endless expanse of rust-red dirt. Women carry huge bundles on their heads. Women and girls as young as nine or ten. Little boys trail behind them, dirty, naked, trying to keep up.
“Where are the men?” I ask.
“Dead. AIDS,” Kwendo says.
“Not all?” I ask stupidly.
“Of course not. But many. Too many.”
At the Kalangala market, Kwendo has me buy several bottles of waragi, the local moonshine.
“This the best,” he tells me in his heavily accented English. “Made from cassava. Not like that sugar cane shit.” I nod like I know what he’s talking about. I also, as directed, buy several kilos of meat the seller claims is goat, bags full of cassavas and bananas, sacks of rice, and some kind of soft bread. Then we stuff it all into leather satchels that hang from Kwendo’s motorcycle where my legs used to go.
Kwendo climbs back on the bike and motions for me to get on. We drive for several hours with my legs wrapped around Kwendo’s waist. He drives fast. No one here wears helmets, and on several sharp turns I have to squeeze my thighs together to keep from becoming roadkill. The experience is everything I’d hoped for. Thrilling. Exhilarating. Anonymous. I am lost now and there is no going back. I have not a single relationship or responsibility. I have no history. I am my actions and then only insofar as they linger or I leave.
There is a boat waiting for us when we arrive at Lake Victoria. A sort of all-purpose barge with a motor and a bamboo canopy, it easily accommodates Kwendo, his motorcycle, our provisions, and me. It is the complete opposite of any boat you might come across in a hotel brochure for a luxury or even economy tour of Lake Victoria.
The captain and Kwendo embrace briefly—a quick but sincere chest-bump and backslap. The tall young man, who wears a very sharp, long knife tucked into his jeans, turns out to be another relative of Kwendo’s and of the concierge at my five-star hotel. I don’t know why, but I am beginning to feel as if there is another agenda at work here, that my off-the-grid sightseeing adventure is not at the forefront or even background of today’s plan. That, at best, I am along for the ride and have paid several hundred American dollars for the privilege (goat meat, moonshine, and cassava not included).
Every decision I have made today, from the minute I climbed onto Kwendo’s motorcycle in front of my hotel, has been risky and reckless. It would be appropriate to be frightened at this moment. I know this. Intellectually. But I am not. I have no feelings. I cannot connect my actions with any consequences they may or may not have. The concept simply does not exist. I only want to see what happens next. Lake Victoria is enormous. It takes a very long time to cross even a small part of it.
“This is quite a tour,” I say, trying to remind the
two men who’ve been talking to one another nonstop in what I can only guess is Swahili that I am still on the boat with them. “So, where we going?” Again, I am ignored. As tour guides go, they leave much to be desired. But I don’t mind. This is not that kind of tour.
We’re pulling into a makeshift marina, and as the captain steers the boat, Kwendo throws me a line. “Tie up your side,” he says. “Can you manage that?”
Little by little, over the course of the day, it has become clear that, while I may be the one with the money (which I am expected to spend freely), Kwendo is the one with the power. He calls the shots. I listen and obey. “Sure, no problem,” I say, having no clue what to do. When the captain cuts the motor, I imitate Kwendo as he jumps off the boat onto the dock and then wraps the line around the ragged-looking iron moorings sticking out of the dock.
“We go to supper now,” Kwendo announces.
“Great, my treat,” I say. “By the way, where the hell are we?”
Kwendo and the captain exchange a look.
“Kenya,” Kwendo says.
We have left Uganda and entered Kenya. I have no passport. Not even a fake one. No one has asked any questions. My kind of people. “We have been invited to dine with family,” he says, as if this simple statement explains our journey.
Obviously we have brought dinner for the family. And breakfast and lunch. For at least the next month. The agenda has revealed itself. I wonder how the three of us and the food are all going to fit on one bike. Fortunately, the captain (“Call me Richard,” he finally tells me) has his own motorbike.
The road signs indicate we are heading toward Kisumu city center, but just as we get close, Kwendo veers off in another direction. “Where are we going?” I yell into his ear, my thighs locked in a death grip at his waist.
“The whites and Asians live in the city,” Kwendo yells back. “The Luos live here.” Luo, I think, and make a mental note. Luo, not Swahili. Big difference. Wars have been fought over such differences—tribal, linguistic, territorial—it’s all the same.
I look around. The “here” he has indicated is a slum. A big one. Row after row of huts made of mud and aluminum siding. Occasionally a concrete slab. Sewage is directed via some kind of primitive aqueduct into the lake. Scenic Lake Victoria: toilet of the impoverished and unplumbed.
“This is my sister’s house,” Kwendo says, stopping in front of one of the tiny concrete squares surrounded on all sides by mud huts. The front door opens and four small children come running out. The oldest maybe eight or nine, the youngest just starting to walk. A pretty but exhausted-looking young woman follows behind them. It is nearly impossible to guess her age. I look more closely: still pretty but probably once gorgeous. Her limbs are long and very thin. She might look emaciated were it not for the basketball-sized pregnancy she is carrying.
Richard and Kwendo drop their packages and each pick up two children, hug them, spin them around. Standard-issue uncle behavior. Then they embrace the woman. She cries and hugs them. For the first time today, I wonder what the fuck I am doing here—in a Kenyan slum, voyeur to this surreal family drama. A feeling? I can’t be sure, but I suspect.
Next time you say you want to see how the locals live, be careful what you ask for.
“Greyson Todd,” yells Kwendo from inside the house, “bring in the packages!” Of course, I think, looking down at the load of bags lying on the ground, I am now the Sherpa. And am I really going to argue? Fine, but not before I have a drink. So I pop the cork out of one of the bottles of waragi and take a long swallow. And regret it immediately. It is like drinking moonshine mixed with turpentine with a splash of triple sec. I recork the bottle and start hauling.
Oma, Kwendo’s sister, lives in two rooms with a dirt floor. There is a sofa and an armchair, both leaking foam rubber filling. I cannot imagine where they all sleep. Oma is cooking dinner over a small fire.
But the place is neat and the decrepit kitchen table is covered with a lace cloth. Care has been taken. The paradoxes confound me.
“Where is the father?” I whisper to Kwendo.
“Dead. AIDS,” he says.
“What about your sister? How will she manage with all these kids?” I ask, feeling like an idiot for being so shocked at something that should be no surprise.
“She will have to marry her husband’s brother,” Kwendo says. “He will inherit her.”
“Inherit her? Seriously?” I ask, allowing my Western judgment to ooze out all over the dirt floor.
“It is tradition,” Richard says coldly. “Her brother-in-law will take care of her.”
“But I mean is she … what if she has …” I don’t know how to ask the question delicately.
“Is sick?” Kwendo spits the words in my face.
“Well …”
“I don’t know,” Richard says. “She does not want to know. Probably she is. And the baby as well. But that’s the tradition. And she’ll give it to him and he’ll give it to his other wives and so it goes.” He spits on the floor, his anger and frustration landing on the red dirt next to my judgment. “Any other questions?”
Probably, but if I’m stupid enough to ask, I don’t remember.
This is what I remember of the rest of that night: that goat tastes better than I ever imagined it could; that Oma dances with me to drum music that seems to come from nowhere and then everywhere, one hut at a time; that I drink toast after toast of waragi with Kwendo and Richard; that I develop a taste for it by the time I reach the bottom of my first bottle; that I have never smelled anything like Oma’s skin—grassy, nutty, pungent, sweet, and dusty with sage and the red dirt floors of her house. And that I tell her she doesn’t have to marry her brother-in-law.
“If I do not,” she says, “I will be thrown out of the family and the community and they will take all my property from me. I will be homeless.”
And after finishing the second bottle of waragi I lie down next to her on the old stained mattress out back behind her house, listening to the drumming, smelling the dirt, feeling so foreign that none of the rules apply.
“Do you have a condom?” she asks.
“No, but I’ll just run down to the 7-Eleven.”
“Don’t be stupid,” she says.
“I’m not stupid,” I say, sliding my hand up her dress and into her panties. “I’m reckless.”
“You have choices,” she says, her breath catching, beginning to speed up, keeping time with the movement of my fingers. “I don’t.”
“I am giving you a choice, and,” I add, stopping what I am doing and withdrawing my hand, “you don’t even have to sleep with me.”
She groans audibly, lifts her dress, and slides down her underwear. Then she turns and kisses me. “Some people don’t believe in AIDS,” she says, raising an eyebrow. “Some people believe it is witchcraft. That those who get sick have been cursed.”
“What do you believe?” I ask her, slowly positioning myself behind her, slowly remembering how to fuck a pregnant woman.
“That it doesn’t matter,” she gasps as I slide into her. “That either way the funeral is the same.”
I surprise Kwendo, which I did not think was possible, when I tell him I am staying on here for a few days. He is in no hurry and is more than a little suspicious of the white man who is far too comfortable being taken advantage of.
This is not exactly what he had planned. Especially when, on the third day, I announce my intention to marry his sister. Which I do—in broad daylight, so as to avoid the evil spirits that come to weddings held after dark.
Tradition. Family. Free will. And now, on top of all that, evil spirits to answer to as well.
And so I get a tour of the real Uganda and part of Kenya. And instead of a mask or drum or some other tourist trinket, I get a wife. Which in Kenya means a lot and not very much at the same time. I make promises but I don’t take her with me. It’s the promises that count and the rest that doesn’t mean very much.
Back in Kampala, Nikud
i, the hotel concierge, helps me arrange for a real house in Kisumu city center for Oma and her children, and for a bank account that will support her and pay the children’s school fees and her medical costs when she gets sick. The total cost is the equivalent of a new Honda. I add a little for emergencies.
The bank manager, a young, balding Brit, fills out the paperwork haltingly. He examines and reexamines the wedding license. He is sweating through his seersucker jacket. I make Nikudi a cosignatory on the account and entrust him with making sure Oma gets her check every month. Nikudi, the hotel concierge whom I have known for only a few weeks. But what choice do I have? Am I really going to oversee this responsibility myself? A ridiculous notion. And if some of the money makes its way into a different “charity,” it’s still doing more good here, in this place, than it would be in my pocket. Promising to take care of Oma was a good idea. I’ve worked it out to the best of my abilities under the circumstances. I simply can’t worry about the details after I leave.
I am checking out of the hotel. Nikudi hails a taxi and then stares at me, shaking his head.
“What?”
“When I say I could not guarantee your safety, this is not what I …”
“You just make sure Oma gets her check on the first of every month,” I say.
He nods, shakes his head solemnly again. “For as long as she lives …”
“And after that, all those kids.”
“Yes, right. All them kids.” Nikudi rolls his eyes. As if just the thought of Oma’s inevitable orphans is exhausting. “You one crazy motherfucker. You got a death wish—you know that, right?” he whispers, checking to make sure we are out of earshot of the other hotel staff.
“That’s really no way to speak to a hotel guest …” I pull the name tag pinned to his uniform close to my face. “Nikudi.”
“No, sir. Sorry, sir,” he says with false sobriety. Then he cracks up. “Well, maybe if you are lucky you’ll get knifed to death in Nairobi before you have a chance to die of AIDS.”
“I’m not generally a lucky guy.” I shake his hand. “Thank you for an extraordinary stay.”
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