Mombasa Road Retravelled

by KJ Griffin

  ***

  A few days pass and then, before we know it, a couple of weeks, mostly filled with helping Luxmi organise Football Kenya business over in Parklands or setting up Njeri and Beatrice in their new home.

  Fingers has found care and lodging for them both in the home of Mary Kainuk, a battle-scarred lady with one cloudy eye and an iron-willed determination that nothing will get past her good one. Mary's a seasoned veteran of NGO work among the refugee camps that straddle both the Sudanese and Somali borders and she is confident she can help Njeri and Beatrice settle down and find their feet in life, for a monthly fee I negotiate between her and Fingers.

  This is an aid-agency solution to the problem of Njeri and Beatrice and one that sits uneasily with me. My overriding motive in coming to Kenya was to loosen attachments and foster independence, especially between me and Little Stevie, but here I am adding another big dependency, while Little Stevie remains as reliant on me as he ever has been. In football parlance, I'm assembling a team of misfits that stands no chance of surviving the sudden departure of its manager.

  To add to my misgivings, Little Stevie and I have suffered a loss of form with two draws and a sickening defeat in our last three games, and Luxmi's office in Parklands has resembled GCHQ in Cheltenham, from which we send out barrages of texts reassuring all the members of Football Kenya, now running into several hundreds, that temporary setbacks will occur and that Football Kenya will soon get back to winning ways.

  So nearly a month into our time in Kenya, today's Friday fixture meeting between me and Little Stevie has become more pressurised than I can ever remember, and we're no longer alone either, for Fingers and Kevin have taken to attending these rituals, and now Kiwi John too, recently returned from hauling lorry-loads of relief supplies up to Lodwar.

  Little Stevie is hunched over his laptop while I pour over fixture lists printed off from the internet. We need a home banker that will be sufficiently well priced for everyone to recoup the loss we suffered last week at the hands of my bogey team Getafe in the Spanish Primera Liga.

  Little Stevie is chanting out home win prediction percentages in a lugubrious monotone, while Fingers fiddles with his baseball cap, turning it round and round his head. Kevin cracks his knuckles to the annoyance of Kiwi John, who is helping Laila make coffee for all of us. Thankfully Laila has softened considerably towards us now that Kiwi John is back and Njeri and Beatrice are out of her kitchen and in Mary Kainuk's care.

  'Have you heard from Dismas yet?' Kiwi John asks, interrupting my deliberations.

  'No. Luxmi has called his secretary many times over the last few weeks but we've always just missed him. Each time, the Minister has either gone upcountry, is busy in a meeting, or has even returned to Mombasa. Evidently Dismas is one hell of a busy man and has risen to greater things than me and Little Stevie.'

  'Bastard!' Kiwi John hisses. 'There was a time when you couldn't get that goofy Maasai to shut the fuck up! His boffin brain was so full of land rights crap he could have spawned a thousand whingeing UN seminars and conferences.'

  'You're right there, mate,' I grin. 'Let's just hope, for my sake, that Dismas remembers some of his old pontificating when I need him to and that he didn't bury all his radical thinking in that bloody crack-brained Safari City scheme.'

  'Shit, Brian, Safari City!' Kiwi John chuckles to himself. 'Just wait till you see what's left of that wreckage! Tell you what, mates,' he winks at Fingers and Kevin, 'Wouldn't want to be anywhere in the immediate vicinity when Brian takes Little Stevie down the Mombasa road past the entrance to Safari City. He'll go ape he sees what a mess they've made next to Amboseli National Park.'

  'Tell you what, you short-arsed bastard,' I laugh, scooping up all my papers from the table in a sudden act of decision-making. 'Why don't you stuff Safari City up your arse, while we lump on Wolfsburg to beat Hertha Berlin at home tomorrow in the Bundesliga. And instead of winding me up about Safari Bloody Wankerworld, you can put yourself to good use by checking the scores on the internet and texting me with updates. And to wash down the Green Wolves at home to Hertha, we'll also take Aston Villa to beat Newcastle in the big Sunday afternoon game live on Sky. You can watch your money in action live at Annie Oakley's, Fingers and Kevin, while I'm chewing miraa up in Meru.'

  Kiwi John and I keep up the banter for a while longer much to the delight of Fingers and Kevin, who can't believe two guys can be so abusive to each other and always remain the closest of mates. Little Stevie won't be into any of this mutual piss-taking, so I get him to recheck the Betfair prices for our games instead and text Luxmi with the selection details.

  By the time he's done this I've changed into my leathers and am ready for the long trip out of town to Meru. We won't be camping on this one, so the load is light and we're soon ready. Kiwi John looks on and grunts appreciatively as Little Stevie checks the bike over. Almas and Lulu are both at school, but sadly these days, Little Stevie's disappearance would not have elicited much interest from them anyway.

  Fingers and Kevin work through some complex rastaman handshaking ritual they've got Little Stevie into, so all three are grinning at each other and laughing heartily by the time I kick the Africa Twin into life, and we're off on a good vibe, eager to wash some headwind across our faces, for it's stuffy sitting in helmets and leathers in this glorious morning sun.

  I've decided to take a very scenic and cross country route to Meru, avoiding the obvious Thika road, which, Kiwi John tells me, is likely to be clogged with consumptive lorries heading upcountry and some of the most dangerous matatus in Kenya slaloming all over the dual carriageway sections at vertiginous speeds.

  Instead, we're back on the Magadi road again. On the close-cropped tarmac of Ongata Rongai, the same goats, sheep and cattle are still grazing in pretty much the same places we left them last time, meaning that even on a bike it's hard to find large enough gaps in between pedestrians and animals to forge a path forwards.

  While we're waiting for that to happen a couple of rowdy teenagers bang Little Stevie's helmet and shout at us. Of course, there are plenty of taunts of Wazungu in among their invective but I'm not at all resentful of their angry tirade, just hopeful that their anger can soon be re-focused in the right direction, or maybe they'll get really lucky and someone will sign them up into Football Kenya.

  At last a gap in between the animals does appear, so I open up the African Twin's throttle and we escape, overtaking lorries and matatus all the way to Kiserian at the foot of the Ngong Hills. Kiserian is less manic than Ongata Rongai and we're even helped here by a couple of residents who point out for us the dirt track that Kiwi John mentioned, which will take us round the Ngong Hills and into the Rift Valley, heading for Naivasha.

  It's a stunning ride, but the loose stones pinging up at our boots and at the chassis make it hard, hard riding. Little Stevie is bouncing wildly behind me and he loves this rodeo ride, for his laughter increases with each enormous bump, but I have to drop the speed in case we bust a shock absorber or are catapulted headfirst over the handlebars. What's more, the front forks are murder to control and my forearms are soon aching so much we have to take frequent breaks, staring out across the sparsely vegetated Rift Valley at the arid, isolated peaks of the dormant volcanoes Suswa and Longonot. Little Stevie wants to climb one of them; what's worse, he reckons we could 'do running' most of the way up.

  We're dusty, hot and thirsty by the time we've reached the tarmac that skirts Lake Naivasha and I hold my nose up against the stench of globalisation that wafts all around, emanating from the proliferation of new flower-exporting plantations, which have sprouted up on both sides of the road. The fabled wealth these export projects are supposed to have garnered from the ?4-99 bunch of Tesco flowers has evidently not been spread very evenly among the denizens of Naivasha town. Here, we're hustled and mobbed constantly, but all the hawking is done in an in-your-face, confrontational manner I don't remember encountering in Kenya before. One group of young guys in particular gets ve
ry vocal when we turn down offers to buy the umpteenth batik of lions, elephants and grass huts or the umpteenth-but-one, sandstone, safari-animal chess set.

  'Come on man, we need money to buy food,' an athletic young man pleads.

  'Well, if it's money you need, mate, that can be arranged,' I smile. 'Come and have a soda with me and my son in the caf? over there and I'll tell you how you can get some.'

  I've no desire to be mobbed all afternoon sitting here by the Lakeside Matatu Stand, so I get this aggressive young chap, Jonas, to pick five of his mates, who duly follow me across the road to the shade of a nearby caf?, while a sixth stays behind with the prospect of making an extortionate packet to guard the bike.

  Jonas remains sullenly disappointed when I proselytize the benefits of Football Kenya to him, and he was evidently hoping for more immediately obtainable cash, but it's take-it-or-leave-it, and in the end they embrace Football Kenya with all the enthusiasm of a bunch of medieval heretics who have converted to Christianity at the point of a broadsword.

  It's time to eat, and I order food for Jonas and his mates as well. At first, they're reluctant diners, calling the caf? fare 'tourist food', but this doesn't stop them devouring their steak and chips in such a feeding frenzy that I'm soon forced to re-order. Their speed of demolition has an effect on Little Stevie; he watches Jonas and his mates attentively and must be comparing their greedy gobfuls to the cautious tiptoeing-through-a-minefield approach he always takes with his own chicken and chips after I've prised the meat from the bones. One of Jonas' friends, Kariuki, eyes these bones that are lying on a side plate so as not to pollute the rest of Little Stevie's lunch and he picks them clean too.

  Jonas and his friends keep quizzing me all the time about how they will actually obtain the cash after wins on the football field and then have the cheek to complain about the cost of the bus fare to get to Nairobi and collect their winnings! It's tempting to tell them to get stuffed, but I'm calmer than that these days and with all the patience bringing up Little Stevie has taught me, I explain to them all over again how our system works.

  Back on the street Little Stevie does his checks on chain and tyres and I pay the lad guarding the bike an enormous tip, but I scrunch the notes up small and stuff them discreetly into his palm, closing his hand around them so that Jonas and the boys can't see what he has made.

  When Little Stevie is done and the bike is revving we turn to say goodbye. Jonas stares back at us severely, still clutching a pile of gaudy batiks over one arm.

  'Listen out for the results tomorrow and Sunday,' I call back. 'Remember, it's Wolfsburg in Germany tomorrow, then Aston Villa in England on Sunday.'

  Jonas just nods back coldly, accentuating the thick muscles in his chubby neck. Football evidently doesn't sit high on Jonas's list of priorities, and I suspect that if Wayne Rooney himself arrived in Naivasha right now, Jonas would really like to stuff the whole wad of batiks up Wayne's arse and ask him what the score was now.

  We cruise up the hill out of Naivasha town and turn left onto the main road heading further upcountry into the Rift Valley towards Nakuru.

  There are regular taps on my shoulder as Little Stevie spots herds of zebra, impala and Grant's gazelle. For me the sightseeing is more depressing. What I'm noticing is yet more evidence of a familiar theme: huts, dukas, roadside stops and shacks of every description have mushroomed all along this stretch of the Nakuru road, all of which, as usual, seem to have fallen into semi-dereliction before completion. Further proof that Kenya is now a successful market economy waves at us in the form of semi-shredded plastic bags stretching their blue carcasses among the thorn bushes, while crushed Coca Cola cans reflect blinding flashes of early afternoon sunlight back in our eyes from their concealed lairs in the grey, roadside dust.

  We turn off this busy main road at the dustbowl town of Gilgil and start the long climb out of the Rift Valley and up the escarpment. The Africa Twin's torque is heavenly now and Little Stevie is giggling behind me every time I give it some extra throttle and we effortlessly glide past a packed matatu bus or a growling lorry.

  The frequent footsloggers we pass are wrapped warmer already, despite the heavy bundles and burdens on their heads, but for Little Stevie and me, the plummeting air temperature comes as a relief. I keep an eye on a bank of cloud already darkening the sky ahead of us. From some of the bends we catch a last glimpse of the shimmering lakes, Naivasha and Elementeita, already distant pools of light far below.

  Ahead, the road passes through patchy woodlands that grow thicker and longer before levelling out into open plateaus of intense cultivation and dense population. Every hundred yards or so a clump of banana trees partially conceals another tin roof, while roadside stalls teem with onions, potatoes, tomatoes and cassava, all carefully crafted into intricate pyramids.

  And then from here all the way to Nyahururu, Kenya's highest town, the dark clouds break and we're suddenly struggling against the rain, the spray and the high-altitude chill. At Nyahururu we take tea, cup after cup of it, hot, milky and sugar-saturated, the Kenyan way, and this starts to revive us.

  There is a thermos of hot water for refills on the table, but our fingers and knuckles remain obstinately white, wrapped tightly around the cups.

  'Lots of green around here,' I say to Little Stevie, pointing out the green trousers and jackets worn by the waiters in this caf?. There's a gold stripe down the sides too, like the livery worn by the staff of some grand old railway company. Wolfsburg play in green; this should keep Little Stevie's spirits up.

  'Dad?' he asks in that curiously flat pitch that always heralds a really big question, like whether the form ratings we give to club performances from within their own leagues are directly comparable when it comes to Champions League or Europa League games, or which constellation will provide the next supernova explosion that will be close enough to Earth to be visible in the diurnal sky. But when it does come, Little Stevie's latest question is far odder than any of that:

  'Will there be a pool table where we're going?' he asks.

  'In Meru? I'm sure we can find one.'

  'And other people to play against?'

  I nod:

  'Without a shadow of doubt. But if there aren't any, I'll keep working on my own game.'

  Little Stevie is on his feet now and he's started to walk around our table. It's irritating, but you learn to put up with it. It's a sign something important is coming out. On his fifth circumambulation there's a near-miss with one of the Wolfsburg-friendly, railway-livery waiters and that does the trick:

  'I'm not going to marry Almas any more, Dad. She thinks I'm a fucking spaz and a weirdo too.'

  'Like they told you at school?' I ask, using Little Stevie's own expression.

  'Like they told me at school,' he confirms. 'I think I'm going to marry Janet instead.'

  Now I get where all the pool questions were leading. I swig more tea down while I take this in.

  'I'm sure Almas doesn't really think of you like they told you at school. But you're right, Stevie. Maybe she's not the one for you. Tell me about Janet: What exactly do you want from her? People don't play pool all day long when they're married, you know.'

  I think I've bombarded Little Stevie with too much information in one go, for he just clams up and starts pacing round the table again. So I just sit silently for some time while this goes on. Outside, the rain has eased, but it's cold on this verandah and I'm shivering inside my sodden leather jacket. Finally I break the silence:

  'Stevie, do you want to be with Janet like I was with the woman in Italy and with Samantha?

  'Yes, Dad. I want to have sex with Janet like you did in Italy and with Samantha.'

  'Ok,' I nod, taking this sudden revelation in with the wariness it deserves. 'That's perfectly natural, Stevie. Especially at your age. But people don't always need to get married to have sex, you know. It can just happen. All you have to do is find out if the woman wants you in the same way you want her. That bit is very imp
ortant, mind.'

  Little Stevie has stopped pacing and finally sits down beside me:

  'That's what I'll do, Dad. When we get back to Nairobi, I'll ask Janet if she wants to have sex with me like I do with her.'

  I can't resist a little chuckle to myself, despite the sombre look on Little Stevie's face:

  'Well, in Janet's case, son, I'm sure she won't mind you being so direct. In fact, I know for certain she'll be thrilled. But normally, Stevie, men don't ask women so directly about sex; in fact, usually they don't mention anything about sex at all. Normally you have to work towards having sex by taking lots of small steps, almost pretend that you don't really want sex.'

  Little Stevie is looking directly at me now. And he's looking very confused.

  'Why is Janet different then, Dad? Why isn't she normal? Is she like me?'

  I'm shivering uncontrollably now. This is delicate stuff and how I wish this conversation could have waited till Meru, where at least we'd be warmer. I take a deep breath:

  'Well, Stevie, many of the girls you meet here in Kenya in bars and similar places, they're not just looking to have sex with men they fancy. Often they may be looking for money too.'

  'Whores do sex for money, don't they, Dad? That's stupid. They should do football betting instead like we do if they want money.'

  I shake my head:

  'Those kids at school must have taught you some good stuff, son! Whore, prostitute, hooker, those are just names, Stevie, like the boys at school called you different names because of your condition. But one thing I'm sure of, though, is that Janet really does like you and thinks you're very handsome. I've picked that up for certain from her, you know, the way normal people like me can spot these things. Trust me, Stevie. It's easy to see.'

  'And Janet likes you too, Dad. She told me when we were playing pool. She said you were sexy and she had plans for you. Sex plans, I think.'

  I'm uncharacteristically embarrassed by this and shrug my shoulders:

  'Well, maybe she did, but I'm too old and tired for all that now, Stevie. What I'm trying to tell you, son, is that Janet would be very happy to go to bed with you, and if you really think you want to try out all the sex business with Janet, then that's fine. But you should remember that Janet probably comes from a poor background. She might not ask you directly for any money, or me, but it would be wrong of us not to think about her needs. So if you and she do decide you want to do this, then I will give you money to give her afterwards. But give it to her like a present, not like you're paying someone in a shop. Tell her it's a little something for a taxi home. And you'll have to remember all the stuff I've told you about condoms as well.'

  Little Stevie goes silent now and he doesn't want to talk about Janet any longer. This is perfectly normal for him, however, and it doesn't mean he's been put off. More likely he's been distracted by something equally important, like a mental list of all the teams other than Wolfsburg that play in green.

  We pay for the tea and leave. Outside, the sky is grey, the air fresh and there are now hordes of pedestrians sidestepping giant brown puddles as we cruise down the main street and stop at the Caltex garage to fill up. I know that Nyahururu was an old white settler town and have read about the perverse elation those old colonials took in finding Scotland on the equator, but I'm sick of this cold and can't wait to get the hell out.

  It's a long ride from Nyahururu to Nanyuki, through miles of conifer plantations and an almost unbroken single file of locals bent double under loads of firewood. It's hard gripping the handlebars now, for my fingers are numb and we've no gloves. Behind me, Little Stevie is edging ever tighter into my back to escape the wind-chill.

  It's already four by the time we reach Nanyuki but we don't stop there, for I'm anxious to make Meru before dusk. In any case, I've been to Nanyuki before and all we're missing out on is the chance of being mistaken for British Army squaddies and either solicited or verbally abused - there's a British Army training camp just outside town.

  So we continue on the Meru road and I tell Little Stevie that Mount Kenya must lie to our right. He acknowledges this with a tap of frozen fingers on my shoulder, but the mountain is veiled by thick grey cloud, so he can only take my word for it as he does about everything else.

  The soil has become deep red again round these parts and every conceivable square inch is cultivated, right up to the tarmac. If they allowed the potholes to eat even further into the tarmac, I bet these would soon be cultivated and sprouting maze stalks too.

  I push up the speed right around the northern edge of Mount Kenya and we climb to a crescendo of strength-sapping cold. But the sky is clearer now and suddenly I ease the throttle almost slack, for straight ahead there is a panoramic view stretching out vast and unbroken in front of us, for this is where the uplands surrender sumptuously to the arid semi-desert that is northern Kenya, and what wouldn't we give right now for a quick, five-minute roasting in some of its heat-blackened scrub?

  Despite near frost-bitten hands, Little Stevie manages two pats on my right shoulder to let me know he's seen and appreciated all this; my spirits instantly soar.

  We've made it now, for from here on the road to Meru descends sharply as it starts to unwind. With every bend we defrost by a fraction of a degree, so that soon Little Stevie is sitting back on his end of the saddle again, which makes a double-relief for me.

  The turnaround in scenery is equally dramatic: we've swapped Scotland for the Congo, and the wisps of mist curling around the lush jungle are warm and inviting. We have truly arrived in the Land of the Lotus Eaters and plantations of the lotus, more normally called miraa, cut into the jungle all around. I plan to do my fair share of chewing once we have settled in, and as we finally arrive just before dusk in Meru town, I can't get those lines of Homer's Odyssey out of my mind: 'Any who ate the honey-sweet fruit of the lotus wanted to stay there with the lotus-eating people, feeding on lotus and forgetting the way home.' That sounds like what I have in mind. And with a buzz of elation I shout back at Little Stevie:

  'We're treating ourselves tonight, son. No expense spared. I'm checking us into the best hotel in town, the White Star Hotel, with piping hot showers.'

  The hot showers are indeed euphoric and soon after we have immense appetites to satisfy, which even Little Stevie owns up to. I take him to a nyama choma place they told me about at reception, where nyama mbuzi - goat meat barbecued the Kenyan way - and ugali, the maize meal porridge, await me, while the obligatory roast chicken and chips can be rustled up for Little Stevie.

  But when the steaming plate of meat arrives at our table and is sliced from the bone right in front of us by a serious-faced old fellow in a starched white jacket, the unbelievable happens: Far from puckering up his face as he usually does when confronted by the sight and smell of freshly cut meat, Little Stevie reaches straight for the mound of goat meat, selects a cube, any cube - which in itself is amazing - and puts it straight into his mouth without sniffing it, poking it, or looking squinty-eyed at it from a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree-angle.

  For a few minutes, I'm so ravenous I can't stop myself from tearing the meat down without registering Little Stevie's interest. And that's just as well, for in my silence, another cube goes down, then another, and yet another still, until we're eating at the same voracious pace like two lions around the kill.

  Little Stevie is not stopping there though, for he follows my cue and tucks into the ugali too, and now in one night he has not only eaten his first meat other than fried chicken but has followed it up with his first-ever chunks of carbohydrate other than chips or toast.

  Our massive appetites slated, I hang on afterwards for a couple of Tuskers, and Little Stevie makes it a third first in a row by joining me for a few tentative slugs at a Tusker bottle, even though he soon pronounces it 'disgusting'.

  The tiredness is delicious. I can hardly stand after all that wind-rush and cold mountain air and now the beer too. We lock arms around shoulders and stagger back this way lik
e a couple of rolling drunks, back to the clean sheets of the White Star.