While they sewed Chinika’s thigh up, I sat on a wooden bench in the waiting room. Next to me, a woman peeled a blemished banana and sucked the yellow fruity wetness inside it. Another woman in a black buibui ate cashew nuts. She was an excellent markswoman: She threw the nuts up from her navel, and they arched and found the middle of her tongue perfectly. A child sat at my feet, staring up at me. He had pathways of green viscous syrup inching down his nose. He sniffed. I watched his throat bob up and down, and knew that he had swallowed his own mucus.
A preacher in an orange suit paced about the waiting room. He thumped a Bible in the air, fluttering about its pink pages. “You with the tumour on the neck, you with no nose, you with the ear that can’t listen, you with a stomach that’s running a marathon, you should know that Lazarus suffered more than you. Lazarus languished. He languished and languished.”
“Languish” was a beautiful word. It didn’t suit the pus in Lazarus’s wounds or the maggots that crawled around the corners of his mouth. It didn’t suit the space in people’s limbs, where their arms used to be. It didn’t suit the space in people’s family portraits, where their mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters used to be. It didn’t suit the space in people’s eyes, where their tears used to be. It didn’t suit the space in their chests, where their hearts used to be.
Mama had rice and beans ready when we got back to the house. She spread out the sisal mat in the grass. “The hospital makes people hungry. Come and eat.”
I carried the food to the sisal mat. Mama and I watched Chinika limp towards us.
“What is wrong with her?”
“Baba cut her with a panga.”
“See? I told you: The rain washes a leopard but never washes out the leopard’s spots.”
“You are one to talk, Mama. Has the rain ever washed out your own spots?”
Mama ignored me. She ate quickly, silently. She went into the house to watch Kibaki and Raila sign the peace accord.
[Twelve]
THE WORD ‘LANGUISHED’ DIDN’T SUIT the space in the air where people’s houses used to be. I walked up the hill, and all I found was blackened rubble. I skipped over the stones, and tripped and twisted an ankle.
There was a camp for internally displaced people nearby. I saw the white tents in the distance. I walked down the hill towards it.
Men stood around in clumps, sharpening tools. They stopped, putting their tools down. “Yes, madam?”
“I’m looking for some people. They had a house up that hill.”
“A two-storey stone house with black tiles on the roof? A young man and his mother?”
“Yes. You know them?”
“The attackers threw petrol bombs from the road into their house. They burnt down with it.” The men picked up their tools again.
I walked away.
Hill, have you seen my tears?
River, have you seen the pieces of my heart?
Tree, have you seen my mind?
Tears streamed down my face. I took a long walk to the nearby river. It ran from somewhere in the distant hills, steadily, until it joined the Sosiani River and became a rushing bed of stones. It flowed with the same audibility as a sheer silk scarf fluttering in the wind. About fifteen metres off, it grew deeper. I looked beyond the trees and saw the shining water. It seemed to call out to me, pleading. I looked around me. Only virgin serenity stared back. Two hornbills were perched on the tree branch above me. They screeched into the air, and their beady eyes fell on me.
“PRUDE!” I thought I heard them screech. “PRUDE! PRUDE! PRUDE!”
Then my feet moved before I could stop them, flying over rocks and clumps of grass, until I found the bean-shaped part where the river deepened. I could still hear the hornbills screeching profanities at me. I would show them, I thought, unbuttoning my jeans. They fell in a heap around my legs followed by the rest of my clothing.
The water was warm in some parts and cold in others. I lowered my head until my face came near the riverbed. There I saw a red fish, an orange one, and small yellow ones. I tried to touch them, but they swam between my fingers and escaped.
I jumped in the water, threw my arms around, and splashed until I thought the water would empty out of the river. Soon after, the sun hid behind a dull cloud, and a breeze came from the trees. My teeth began to chatter. I got out of the water and got dressed. I lay in the grass and fell asleep. It was twilight when the song of the white evening birds awoke me.
“Ku-ku!” one bird sang.
“Ku-ku ku-ku!” the rest replied.
The first thing I saw was the sky, red as the skin of a ripe plum. The next thing I saw was the perfect harmony of everything else: the green of the trees fitted into the red of the sky, and the red of the sky fitted into the rise and fall of my chest, until the green was the red and the red was the rise and fall and everything was everything.
I walked among the trees, following the silver-red water. I walked far out, my feet crunching over leaves and twigs that snapped. And the sound became the birdsong, and the birdsong became the rustling of the wind, and the rustling of the wind became the gurgle of the water.
I knew I’d found it even before I could inspect the depth and shape of the water. The trees suddenly grew closer together, as though they knew cover would be needed. The water was friendlier, too. It captured the red of the sky and the green of the trees and the songs of the birds and the whisper of the wind, and then became a kaleidoscope, reflecting each of these things with such emotional incandescence that my head felt as light as a feather.
I stripped and slowly waded into the water, farther and farther until the surface of it flirted with my mouth, lapping at me, begging to fill me inside and out. I could feel each kaleidoscope triangle on my body: the green trees, the red sky, the birdsong, and the whisper of the wind. I could feel the cold currents and the warm currents, even the undecided currents and the indifferent currents, each in isolation, and then together in one unending caress.
I closed my eyes and closed myself, part by part: toes, calves, thighs, torso, arms, face, fingers, and hair. I spread my skin and made myself one with the kaleidoscope. I opened my mind and let the water drown my thoughts.
There was a tiny sliver of a moon above me, and the sky was the gentle blue hue of a gas flame. A sky full of stars like a million pairs of glistening eyes, stared down at me. I got out of the water and dressed.
Mama phoned me. “Listen here, Lulu. You get on the next bus to Nairobi. You hear me? Why did you just leave like that? Am I supposed to stay with Chinika alone in the house? What am I supposed to discuss with her?”
“Mama, I’ll be on the next bus.”
“Oh, daughter of mine, what is it? Did you knock a rock in your search for your friend? Did you find graves instead?”
“Mama, please put your shoulder on the bus and send it to me. I need to cry on it.”
“Cry into the river so the fishes can swim. Don’t waste your tears on the ground.”
“Muchai should have gone for a blood transplant, Mama. He should have gotten rid of his Kikuyu blood and gotten a pint of new Luo blood. Maybe they would have spared his life then.”
I walked up the hill once again, to the place where the Njokas’ rural home used to be. I found someone sitting on the rubble, his head buried in his hands. He looked up at my approaching footsteps.
“Lulu?” It was Muchai.
[Thirteen]
“I'VE BEEN HERE FOR HOURS, waiting. I thought you’d gone back to Nairobi by now.”
“Muchai?” I whispered in disbelief. “They told me you were dead.”
“They didn’t know who you were. You could have been sent by the attackers to finish us off.” Muchai skipped over the rubble.
“I really believed them,” I said, and my voice shook in the tears floating in my throat. “Why didn’t you go back home?”
<
br /> “Look at this place, Lulu. Mom didn’t want to leave it, and I couldn’t leave her. She’s sourcing for funds to rebuild.”
“What happened?” I croaked.
“They almost got us. They threw petrol bombs through the windows. The house started burning. Mom and I escaped only with the clothes on our backs. We snuck out through the back and hid in the fields until dark. The men you saw earlier used to work for us as farmhands. They hid us in their house for weeks.”
“Come, come here.” I held my arms out.
“Shh! Don’t cry.” Muchai pulled me into an embrace. He kissed my forehead, brought his lips to mine. “Didn’t I tell you I’d see you again?”
We walked down the hill hand in hand.
“There’s this poem, Muchai, by Housman:
The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the marketplace;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.
Today, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.”
Muchai put his arm around me.
“Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.”
Glossary
Alaa: an exclamation of surprise
Asi: an exclamation of annoyance
Barbie: a pampered child
Bodaboda: motorcycle or bicycle
Buibui: a loose, floor-length gown and head covering favoured by Muslim women
Daktari: doctor
Dhania: coriander leaves
Githeri: a mixture of maize and beans
Jiko: brazier
Kienyeji: traditional
Kikuyu: a member of a people of central and southern Kenya
Kumbe: (in speech) it turned out that; (as exclamation) so!
Lesso: a rectangle of pure cotton cloth with a border all around it, printed in bold designs and bright colours (also known as kanga)
Luo: a member of a people living chiefly east of Lake Victoria in Kenya
Mandazi: an East African fried bread quite similar to doughnuts
Mahamri: a spiced fried bread found at the coast of East Africa
Mawee: an exclamation of surprise
Mbuzi: coconut grater
Mchicha: spinach
Mchongoano: ridicule
Misala: mats for prayers
Mugithi: a traditional Kikuyu song danced to in a forward-moving queue
Mwiko: cooking stick
Ndee: idle or in an idle manner
Nyawawa: zombie
Nywee: onomatopoeic expression emphasising how smoothly something went
Panga: machete
Puh: an exclamation of annoyance
Shamba: farm
Sturungi: strong tea
Sufuria: cooking pan
Tch: an exclamation of surprise
Uji: porridge
Unga: flour
Uuwi: an exclamation for screaming
Walahi: I swear
Acknowledgements
My friends, for they—rather kindly—took me back when the solitary fits wore off. My family, for tolerating me when I couldn’t even tolerate myself. And, finally, CAN-DO! for their patience, which I often stretched until it was threadbare and pitiful.
About the Author
Claudette Oduor was born in Nairobi, Kenya. She studied law in university and recently moved to Garissa in northeastern Kenya, where she is involved in humanitarian activities. The Dream Chasers is her first novel, written in 2010, during her last year of law school.
Master Publishing
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© 2011 by Claudette Oduor
A. E. Housman, To an Athlete Dying Young, lines 1-12
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FIRST DIGITAL EDITION
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The Dream Chasers Page 6