Mombasa Road Retravelled

by KJ Griffin

  Chapter 9

  Little Stevie is awake as early as usual the next morning and eager for a run. I duly oblige and we attract a lot more attention up here in our running gear than we do in Nairobi. With no local knowledge between us, we're forced to run by the edge of the road and have to weave between livestock and handheld mkokoteni carts till we're clear of the town and heading along the Embu road.

  The forest is lush on either side of the road. Fast-flowing streams swirl downwards from the mountain washing red silt in their reductive rush. Little Stevie is surging ahead and has to drop pace frequently to allow me to catch up, occasionally stopping to jog on the spot and put in sets of press ups just as I've taught him. In the distance, I see him wait up yet again just the other side of a narrow bridge, while a matatu screams past and toots frantically at us. This is all perfectly normal and readily expected. But what happens next isn't. Without warning, in a flash of searing pain, the sickness returns from nowhere.

  It's gripping my guts and twisting them in opposite directions. The earth gives way underneath my feet and I collapse, writhing helplessly on the tarmac, thrashing my legs up and down in the air like I've been snared in a trap. Behind me, I hear a car brake, swerve and then toot. By now my insides feel like they've had the plastic lid pierced and pulled back and have just done four minutes in the microwave. I'm trying to puke, but nothing comes out, just a watery mess that dribbles from the side of my mouth.

  Little Stevie sprints back towards me, shouting 'Dad! Dad!' I feel his arms lock around my chest and he scoops me up from the tarmac and hauls me onto a narrow strip of long grass by the edge of a shamba.

  'It's all right,' I say, 'It will go soon.'

  But then another wave of pain hits harder than the first and I'm doubled-up once more on the ground. When you're as sick as this you there's something profoundly comforting about the close contact between human and Mother Earth. I'm back to my roots, suckling on the nipples of the great Earth Mother, and my fingers frantically rake through the grass and the damp red earth clawing for comfort at the ancestral bosom.

  Little Stevie is sitting beside me now and I feel his fingers stroking my hair, just as I used to soothe him to sleep every night till the age of eleven back in our yurt, trying to induce a sleep that would rarely come before midnight. He's stressed, though, and I can hear him start up in an urgent monotone:

  'Europa League Group Stage, Second Round: Anderlecht 3, Partizan Belgrade 2; Ajax 1, Slavia Prague 0; Braga 1, CSKA Moscow 2?'

  The sound of Little Stevie's voice brings silent tears, sly at first, then heavier and harder, till my cheeks are swiftly overwhelmed and deluged. It's as if the turmoil going on in my guts has transported me to a higher dimension and I can suddenly feel all the pain of the world, and though it hangs in heavy immensity upon me, I duly take it all in and find it a home. I'm panting profusely and I keep my belly tight against the ground.

  I stay this way for some time, then reach a plateau where I can feel a modicum of strength return to my bones. The Sadness of the World starts to dissipate with this change of fortune and the sorrow is gradually replaced by rage. My fingers grab at the earth more frantically than ever and from somewhere deeply primeval my diseased veins fill with defiance. This sickness is not going to take me now. Not here. Not yet. I pull myself up to a sitting position and rest my head against Little Stevie's with one arm tight around his neck.

  Then I start to talk to him from inside my head, as I often do in our secret language that needs no words and I know he can hear everything that is in my heart: My dear, dear son, I tell him, I refuse to abandon you so soon. Not yet will you be left chanting last-season's Europa League scores to yourself at the mercy of a world that could let two-year-old Beatrice wander naked and starving with a glue bottle stuck to her lips around a stinking Nairobi rubbish heap.

  There's a small crowd round us by the time I finally make it to my feet. They stare at me in that silent blank way African villagers have of training themselves up in case one day they can afford a TV set and do some proper gawping. But eventually, out of the crowd steps a chap wheeling a bicycle and he helps Little Stevie to pull me to my feet.

  'Pole, Mzungu,' he mutters, and this simple refrain is reprised by the rest of the small crowd.

  I smile gingerly at the man with the bike and thank all the crowd, before propping myself against Little Stevie's shoulder so that I can haul myself step by step back in the direction of town. Every few yards I have to wait up while a wave of nausea or unproductive vomiting overtakes me and I'm sweating heavily despite the cool morning air.

  This is all far too much for Little Stevie. He keeps a vice-like grip round my waist with his free hand, but he has been seriously freaked at seeing me this way, and this is signalled by a switch from last year's Europa League scores to star facts from the constellation of Orion. You know it, it's Big Distress Mode.

  I continue to rest up every few yards; at this rate I don't see how we will ever make it back to the hotel. The spasms of pain have subsided but I'm left in utter exhaustion and stumble like a drunk:

  'What's wrong, man?' 'Hey, Mzungu, what's your problem?' by-passers shout.

  Meanwhile Little Stevie's drone is getting dangerously loud and at my next stop, he slumps to the ground beside me and starts swaying to and fro with his head in his hands.

  'It's all right, Little Stevie,' I say, hugging him tight. 'I'll be fine again once I've had some rest back at the hotel. Promise. We'll be back to normal in no time.'

  There's a thickening crowd around us once again, but this time there are no comments from the audience, just good old-fashioned, African stand-and-stare, for what are they supposed to say when they see two mzungus dressed in nothing more than dirty running shorts and vests hugging each other in the dust by the side of the road?

  I don't know how long this audience goes on for - certainly we're well into the stars of Serpens Caput - before a man with a battered trilby hat shouts, 'Taxi?' rather speculatively at us, like he's worried about interrupting something important. I could kiss his feet but people might think us a little odd if I do, so instead I summon my last reserves of strength together and haul first myself, then Little Stevie, to our feet. Blinking into the strong sunshine, we stagger after the taxi driver through the gap he cuts in the crowd.

  Back in the White Star I keep going long enough to rummage through our backpack for a handful of the pills I should have been taking daily and swallow enough of these in one go for half the days I've missed since coming to Kenya. That's all I can manage, though, and still in my filthy running kit I collapse on the newly made bed. Little Stevie has dug his comfort books out and sits cross-legged on the floor next to me by the bed, while his steady mantra of star data soon sends me into a deep sleep.

  It's past three in the afternoon when I finally wake and it takes a few seconds to register what happened this morning. Then I look down and see Little Stevie sitting catatonically right there on the floor where I left him hours ago. He's not reciting anymore, just staring blankly across the room, which makes me feel far, far worse.

  'Hey, I'm fine now,' I say, squeezing his shoulder, and it really feels like it too. So I climb out of bed and stand next to Little Stevie, deliriously happy that what I would have told him anyway almost feels like it's true.

  'Come on, Stevie, I'm starving. Let's go and eat some more of that delicious nyama choma. And afterwards we can check out that internet caf? and watch the scores on the Wolfsburg game. How long till kick-off?'

  There's no answer at first and I have to repeat the question several times, finally crouching to my knees in front of him before Little Stevie mutters almost inaudibly:

  'Don't know.'

  This is an all-too-painful first. Never before has Little Stevie failed to set his alarm countdown to kick-off.

  'Well you'd better get that sorted, Stevie Boy,' I tell him in my perkiest tone. 'It's 5:30 Kenya time when Hertha get fed to our green-shirted Wolves!'

  Stil
l no answer, so I have to pull him up off the floor. Face to face in front of me, he stands impassively, looking right through me. I try to hug him, but I'm hugging a statue, a statue that finally says:

  'I don't like that weird stuff you did this morning, Dad. It was all horrible, like when you got sick last year and had to go to hospital for a whole week and I had to stay with Auntie Bella and she hates football and doesn't even have a computer in the house and wants to keep her house really clean all the time and says you and me are no better than a pair of pikies because we don't even live in a house. Promise me all that won't happen again, Dad. I hate it when you're sick.'

  Finally I'm looking into Little Stevie's eyes and I clench his shoulders:

  'I can't?'

  No, I'm not going to say that to him. Not now. Not yet. The show must go on. So I puff out my chest and stand straighter than I feel:

  'You know, your dad's a mean bastard, Little Stevie, you heard Kiwi John say that, didn't you?'

  He nods. Any response is encouraging:

  'Well mean bastards like me don't get knocked down by any stupid sickness for long, do they, Stevie?'

  Little Stevie looks blankly back at me, but I can sense I'm pulling him round; it's the confidence in my tone, not the words themselves that is probably doing the trick.

  'No, Dad.'

  'So, OK, I might need to rest a little in bed over the next few days and you might have to do running by yourself for a little while, but you can be sure of one thing, Stevie Boy: I'll be running as strong as I ever do in a few days' time and don't start thinking just because I'm taking things easy for a short time that you stand any chance of beating me in a press up competition, 'cos you won't!'

  That does it.

  'Challenge!' he shrieks, and all too quickly he's down on the floor in the press up position. But he would go straight into Big Distress Mode if I accepted the challenge and show him just how little strength is left inside me now, so I put him off:

  'Not yet,' I growl. 'First, we eat. Build up our strength. Tell you what, if you keep eating nyama choma with me, one day you'll get enough strength in those young arms of yours to give your dad a real press up test!'

  In no time it's like this morning never happened. We wash and change for a late, late lunch and Little Stevie sets his watch for kick-off countdown. I'm light-headed and drained by the time we get to the nyama choma joint, but I'm sure as hell not going to show Little Stevie any of that. Of course, it will be a long wait till our goat meat arrives steaming before us, for it's Saturday afternoon and every roomy parasol on the patio is crammed with leisurely lunch parties.

  The smell of roast meat all around makes me nauseous with hunger and I'm in danger of signalling that to Little Stevie before I'm rescued by the appearance of our own food. Now it's the opposite problem, and I have to set about the meat very gingerly in case my stomach suddenly revolts again and we're back to the misery of the morning.

  At least Little Stevie is no dab hand at this either. I'm still impressed and overjoyed to see him eating what I'm eating, but he has to concentrate hard on his own game and fails to spot how slowly I take pieces from the communal plate and the little winces I must be making as a residue of acidic bile deep in the pit of my stomach mingles with the new food and emits a steady succession of dry, painful belches.

  It's a long, silent slog for both of us through the roast goat leg and ugali, but by the end of it I'm a little stronger than I was:

  'Tell you what, let's go and buy a chess set, Stevie. What do you say to a game of chess while we wait for kick-off?'

  He's happy at this idea, so we head towards the market place, which is full of Saturday afternoon bustle. It's hot now and the heat and the walking are making me woozy again. I can't do too much more of this or I'll be struggling to mask my discomfort from Little Stevie. Annoyingly, in a nation of sandstone chess set sellers, a sandstone chess set seller is nowhere to be seen, so we end up buying a cheap, plastic children's set from an Asian duka.

  My last purchase is from the miraa sellers and there are plenty of them to choose from in this home of qat. I select a kilo of the thinner and more potent variety called giza, and the young seller pokes his grimy fingers all over the thin stems of the catha edulis plant to show me just how fresh his offering is. His used-car-salesman spiel is quite unnecessary: my only concern is how my stomach will bear up to an afternoon of lotus chewing.

  It does. Well. In fact both the qat and the chess are so heavenly together back in the White Star's reception that I regret having mentioned the internet caf? when Little Stevie's kick-off alarm chimes, but I've never yet phoned in sick on a work day and this isn't going to be the first, so we put the chess away and take to the street.

  The stalls are shutting and the hurly burly of customers has largely disappeared as we re-cross the market place in search of the Meru Internet Caf?. Donkeys are braying vociferous complaints across the emptying stalls about the weight of the carts their owners have tied them to, while a crowd of young men tests the strength of a Peugeot pick up truck's leaf springs, heaping gunia bags crammed with potatoes, sweetcorn and cassava till the rear end sags towards the tarmac. They are all chewing qat, and shout bawdy encouragements my way when they spy the tell-tale banana leaf that's wrapped tight around my bundles of giza.

  In reality the Meru Internet Caf? is just the side annexe to a bar. It's rowdy as hell inside the bar but a zany waiter points us to a 'garden' of sorts out the back, which is just large enough to accommodate the pair of us and our chess set: thank God we only bought a small plastic one!

  'Wait here, bwana,' he commands. 'I will come and find you when a computer is free.'

  The miraa has really started to kick in and I finally start to feel alive again for the first time since this morning's run. Soon I'm cracking jokes with the waiter and Little Stevie loves all the fooling around. There's a sign on the door leading back to the bar which says, 'No miraa is chewable here.'

  The waiter just shrugs and says:

  'Mzungus like you can chew, bwana. Miraa is no problem for me. You can enjoy.'

  So I slip the fellow a large tip and all too soon he reappears with news of a vacant machine. So I smuggle my leaves inside the internet caf? too, and we're not disappointed. Wolfsburg don't muck around: they're two up inside the first twelve minutes. Little Stevie doesn't have his laptop with him, so he's frantically scribbling notes in a new exercise book, which will all get copied up later, I suppose.

  By the time Wolfsburg's Brazilian striker has bagged his hat-trick, there's a text on my mobile from Luxmi's office. This is a new information service I've got Dixon, the assistant Luxmi and I hired for her Parklands office, to provide instant score flashes for all the members of Football Kenya on match days.

  I'm smiling to myself now as I visualize all those mobiles pinging the joyous news to every corner of Kenya - wouldn't it be great to see all their faces right now? There must be - well, I know that there are - hundreds of young Kenyans dotted all over the country who will be cheering and singing at this very moment in time, and how I wish Little Stevie and I were there with each one to savour their joy. Is that Peter Crouch look-alike from Daudi's school in Magadi dancing around his mobile? What about whingey old Jonas and the sour-faced batik sellers of Nakuru town? Have the Wolfsburg boys cheered those miserable bastards up? And Fingers and his mates? I bet they're holed up in a shantytown bar right now whooping with delight and hitting the bottles while many a bulging pocket in downtown Nairobi remains unpicked! And in fact, I don't have to speculate for much longer because an incoming call from Fingers confirms just that:

  'Those Germans, bwana!' he shouts down the phone. 'They are so strong! Five goals and only one against: we are rolling again, bwana! When are you and Little Stevie coming back to Nairobi to celebrate with us? Don't get lost with those miraa boys from Meru.'

  'At the moment, that's quite a temptation, Fingers,' I sigh contentedly.

  In fact, the qat has made me feel so much
better after this morning's scare, I'm not sure I want to leave any time soon. But Fingers has other plans:

  'Maybe this can bring you home, bwana: we've got all the information you wanted about your coastal bibi from Annie Oakleys.'

  'Yasmiin?'

  Damn, I'm not sure this is what I want to hear right now, but one part of me is going to make certain I hear the rest, whether it's the right thing to do or not.

  'I'm listening,' I tell Fingers.

  'That's right, she's only been seen in Nairobi a few weeks now. We will find out her name soon enough, I think. I have already texted her picture to my mokora friends at the coast. One of the waiters at Annie Oakley's says she comes to the bar early afternoon every Wednesday and chews qat on the terrace outside, drinks a couple of sodas and plays pool with two Swahili guys from the coast like her. About six, Miss Yasmiin leaves with the Swahili boys then comes back at nine, this time by herself. She drinks a couple more sodas then meets your American friend.'

  'And they leave together, Yasmiin and the Yank?'

  'They go to the disco at the Carnivore. So come back before Wednesday, Mr Brian, and you can see your kichuna again.'

  But Fingers' latest on Yasmiin doesn't make me want to hurry back to Nairobi. Anything but. Bloody Yanks! They don't even play the right kind of football!

  Days pass. Christmas comes and goes, and in a town polarised fifty-fifty between Christians and Muslims, we back the Muslims for that one and stay well out of its reach.

  I hire a young Boran lad the receptionist recommends to me to take Little Stevie on his morning runs, and soon Little Stevie and Farah are gone for hours of serious running early every morning. I can't imagine the conversation flows too smoothly on these long forays into the jungles of Meru, for Farah is hardly any more talkative than Little Stevie, but I buy Farah some decent running shoes and soon he takes to joining us for our lunchtime scoff of nyama choma after the morning run.

  From lunchtime on, every day consists of qat chewing for me and interminable games of chess for the both of us in the White Star's small, leafy garden. We find a bar we like for the live games on matchdays, and there's even a pool table there on which Little Stevie trounces all comers and their friends, until his invincibility is universally acknowledged around Meru town. Either despite or because of the miraa, or maybe because of the pills I've remembered to keep taking, my strength grows and I start to move more freely. Eventually I even attempt a few forays to a gym and push weights while Little Stevie and Farah are out running.

  Oh yes, we've found our Island of Oblivion here in Meru town! And while we stay in Meru, it seems that we can't put a betting foot wrong either. The wins stack up still higher when the European leagues restart after their winter breaks and the only pressure comes from a stressed out Luxmi, who regularly gives me a good old ear-bending after matchdays.

  'We've got so many members now, Brian,' she pleads over the phone, 'that I'm finding it difficult to get all that money matched on Betfair before a game. Unless you stick to the biggest markets with the largest capitalisation, we've just grown too big.'

  Luckily I'd thought of that before we arrived in Kenya and I put her on to some accounts I have with the big, regular bookmakers. We can't get the same odds here, but at least we can lump on as much as we like.

  But the cash payouts are also causing Luxmi major logistical problems, and the swelling crowds gathering outside her Parklands house to tap into their winnings after matchdays are more normally seen outside the Emirates half an hour before kick-off. I tell Luxmi to hire more office help and more security guards out of the profits, but I sense that she needs a little more support than I'm giving her and reluctantly tell Little Stevie that we'll have to return to Nairobi, at least for a while.

  'Can Farah come with us, Dad?' he asks. 'We want to do running every day now together.'

  I look at Farah and he nods vigorously. Of course he would! Which young Kenyan amateur athlete wouldn't on the money I'm paying him plus all the other perks?

  'Ok, but he'll have to come on the bus. Unless you two want to run all the way back to Nairobi while I ride alone on the bike?'

  It's a rare lapse of concentration on my part and the protestations to Little Stevie that I was only joking and, no, he can't run a couple of hundred miles back to Nairobi are getting irksome when the mobile rings and the caller I've been waiting months to hear from is finally on the other end:

  'Brian, it's been a long, long time, bwana!'

  'Are you referring to all the years since I was last in Kenya or to the three months plus it has taken you to return my calls, Dismas?'

  There's silence on the other end for a few seconds, then Dismas's deep chuckle grows longer and louder.

  But I continue attacking while I'm ahead:

  'There was a time when you popped out from behind any thornbush I pissed on all over Kenya, Dismas. Now you can't be contacted for month after month. Is it the government work that's keeping you so busy, mate, or all the real estate deals you've got your fingers into since you swallowed all your principles and joined the Safari City fiasco?'

  There's a long sigh, but the voice that follows is at once more friendly and more familiar:

  'Safari City was a big mistake, Brian. But I guess you know that already. Look, I'm sorry I haven't called you sooner and no, I wasn't avoiding you and I hadn't forgotten about you. Well, how could I? Rumours have reached my ears that thousands of ordinary wananchi all over Kenya are getting rich from betting on football matches. And all this free money comes from the British on the Big Motorbike, and from the Quiet One, his son. Or so they say.'

  I shouldn't be, but I am taken aback to hear Dismas talk this way. If the word is spreading that much, then maybe I'm in business:

  'Well don't think I'll be giving you any free money, mate! I bet you've thieved plenty of your own since gaining office!'

  Dismas laughs, but he's not a clever lawyer for nothing:

  'So why did you contact me then, Brian, if you have nothing to offer? Was it just to abuse me for joining the Safari City developers? You could have done that by e-mail.'

  The tables have turned now and this time it's me who's on the back foot:

  'Actually, I have got an offer of sorts for you, Dismas. But before I tell you about it, I need to know if you still believe all that shit you told me about belonging to the land, not owning it, all those years ago around the campfire in Magadi. Or has being a minister and becoming mixed up in that Safari City land-grab changed you for good?'

  Dismas sighs again:

  'We are not different, you and me, Brian. But it's like I told you before you left Kenya last time and you called me all those names. I decided back then to go inside the enemy camp and take the fight to them from there. You, I think, Brian, have always preferred to stay on the outside, hurling stones from the wasteland. It's a difference of styles, not ideology.'

  'Sounds like what a lawyer and a politician might say! But anyway, by going inside, have you managed to change anything, Dismas?'

  There's another long exhalation of breath:

  'It's not so easy from this side either, Brian. To change things you first need power. In politics ideals are easy, power is everything.'

  'Power, eh?' As ever Dismas is right on the money now. 'Well, that's exactly where I think I can help you, Dismas: getting power.'

  Dismas is silent for some time, but when he does reply I can tell he's interested:

  'I don't know how you and your football teams are going to help, Brian, but I'm interested to find out.'

  'It's complicated and I can't tell you over the phone. We need to meet.'

  'I'll be staying in Mombasa still for the next ten days. After that I can come back to Nairobi.'

  'We'll come to Mombasa,' I tell him. And we arrange a date for a week tomorrow. With all there will be to do in Nairobi too, there's no time to waste. Sadly we must leave the Island of Oblivion. Right away.