Mombasa Road Retravelled

by KJ Griffin

  Chapter 24

  The next day breaks in spotless splendour with canopies of pungent purple jacaranda blossom luxuriating in the dry warmth that succours these late-October Nairobi days, when the heat builds ahead of the November grass rains and the air hangs heavy with clouds of baked red dust, seasoned with twists of red bougainvillea scent.

  I know all this because I've hardly slept a wink since I returned red-eyed and raw in the stomach to find Kiwi John, Julius and Yasmiin keeping an anxious vigil for me in front of interminable CNN bulletins, while Little Stevie had profited from the extra-late bedtime to run a marathon session on the football websites.

  I'm in a lot of pain too, and I accidentally wake Little Stevie by rustling around for painkillers in the bottom of our rucksack. He rubs his eyes, sits up in bed, yawns loudly and stretches, then for the first time I can ever remember, rolls over again and pulls the blanket over his shoulders once again, and soon I can even hear the smooth breathing of his second sleep. This is momentous in itself, but if he's not careful, there's a far more spectacular revolution due today that could pass him by.

  With nothing to do but wait, I lie feverishly on a sun lounger by the pool, twisting this way and that in the vain hope of finding a comfortable position. The sun's warmth is welcome, for there's a chill setting in now deep down in my bones and the mouthful of painkillers has had little effect.

  Julius and Njeri's house wakes one by one in readiness for the big day, like we're all getting ready for a wedding or something. First Kiwi John joins me outside, slurping coffee and scratching a stubbly chin. Julius is already brushing out a blue suit when he finds us outside, but his white shirt has a large, wavy collar and there's no tie.

  'Are you sure you will be OK to come with me today?' Julius asks, looking me sceptically up and down.

  Kiwi John answers for me, patting my bare arm and nearly dousing me in coffee:

  'We'll be just fine, mate. I'll be with Brian every step of the way.'

  Which is so corny I'm forced to smile, and we both start to chuckle.

  Julius looks from me to Kiwi John and back again, unconvinced, then from the front of the house we hear the doorbell ring. I'm expecting Fingers and the boys, but after an interminable wait we are joined not by the Kibera boys but by Farah, already dressed in shorts, vest and trainers.

  'Steevee!' I shout, being helped off the sun lounger and stepping inside, 'Steevee, are you up?'

  He joins us a few minutes later by the patio door in his running gear, blinking hard against the powerful sunlight.

  Farah smiles and offers Little Stevie his hand, which is shaken catatonically like my son has never met his former running partner before, and Farah is all long, bony legs, a spindly chest and white, gappy teeth that flash intermittently from a coal-dark face.

  'Stevie, do you want to run with Farah or see the big mass of people in town?' I ask.

  I knew it would be a mismatch, and he has already agreed enthusiastically to the run before I realize how I've rigged a simple choice in the way I presented it. But I'm glad Little Stevie has taken the bait. As long as the outward leg of their run takes them away from the centre of town, I reckon my son will be much safer out with Farah than he would be with me and Kiwi John seeing if General Ochieng stays true to his word, or whether the Football Kenya dream gets shot down in a hail of police bullets.

  So by the time Little Stevie is ready for his run, Kiwi John and I are good to go too, for Julius is getting impatient now, pacing incessantly round the edge of the pool and making one call after another from his mobile.

  Of course, Little Stevie doesn't get why my voice is more than a little emotionally charged when I say goodbye, so he pushes me away when I try to hug him extra tight and repeat instructions over and over again to Farah about where to go and how long to run for.

  'Don't worry, Brian, I'll look after your boy when the runners get back,' Njeri smiles, and I'm almost jealous of how readily Little Stevie accepts a hug from her and not me.

  But it's only when Kiwi John, Julius and I have said goodbye to all the family that I realize Yasmiin is missing.

  Immediately, Nancy is sent to knock on Yasmiin's door but swiftly returns with a puzzled shrug, so Njeri herself goes to check. We hear Njeri calling and calling inside but shortly she too reappears with a baffled frown:

  'Yasmiin is not here, Brian. Didn't anybody hear her leave?'

  We all look at each other, shaking our heads and sharing a heady sense of confusion, but Julius is checking his watch and soon his mobile goes off yet again.

  'We should leave,' I sigh, giving Little Stevie one last attempted hug, but again I'm pushed away and instead he starts jogging on the spot.

  'Yes, let's go,' Julius agrees, so Kiwi John thrusts an arm round my shoulder like he's escorting a staggering drunk to a detox clinic, and we walk over to Julius's Land Cruiser, which stands dark and resplendent next to Kiwi John's dust-coloured half truck that served me so well last night.

  With windows down we retrace the route I took last night back towards Kileleshwa Police Station. The rush of air inside the cabin is welcome, but the general lack of traffic and the near-total absence of pedestrians heading into town are causes for concern.

  'They told me in the office that it was quiet in town,' Julius mutters reproachfully. 'Far too quiet.'

  Then,

  'Here, you will need these.'

  And he hands each of us a CNN press badge.

  'We have hired rooms overlooking Kenyatta Avenue in the New Stanley Hotel, where we expect the marchers to gather as they move up from Tom Mboya Street towards Parliament and even State House. That is, if anyone turns up at all!'

  'They'll come,' Kiwi John grunts through gritted teeth and he helps me pin the press badge onto my leather jacket, for my fingers are cold despite the morning heat.

  Just before we turn onto Waiyaki Way we meet our first roadblock and we all exchange anxious glances seeing the khaki uniforms of the GSU still equally interspersed among the blue of their police cousins.

  And it's a couple of GSU soldiers who flag us down:

  'ID,' a sergeant shouts, peering in Julius's window with noticeably bad breath.

  Julius produces his own ID card and hands it to the sergeant, followed by a raft of official-looking paperwork, which has the CNN logo scrawled heftily all over, before launching into a long spiel in Swahili that merely makes the sergeant's eyes narrow with suspicion. And when Julius points at me and Kiwi John, I can make out enough of Julius's talk to hear us described as 'Americans'. The GSU men must have asked to see our own papers, and it's evident that Julius is doing his level best to avoid this.

  A couple of blue uniforms stroll over from the shade of a eucalyptus and the ensuing argument gathers pace. But just when we think our game is up and we will have to reveal our identities, the GSU sergeant hands Julius back his papers and switches to English:

  'OK, you can go,' he sneers contemptuously, 'but you are wasting your time, my friends. Nothing is happening today in Nairobi. Nothing at all. Put that on your news bulletin and say that Sergeant Aloisi Waiswa told you!'

  We nod vacuously at this show of defiance, and before Sergeant Waiswa and his friends pull the tyre traps out of the way, we watch the policemen and GSU soldiers sharing out the hundred shilling notes that Julius must have hidden inside his papers. And when we pass through the blockade a GSU soldier who looks all of sixteen gives me a mock salute, then draws a finger slowly across his throat with a long, accentuated grimace which almost makes his eyeballs pop out, and this draws a cackle of laughter from the delighted policemen on either side of the road.

  'Arsehole,' Kiwi John mutters under his breath. But none of this has helped our mood.

  The main roundabout at Westlands, which would normally take half an hour to negotiate, is totally empty, the dukas all boarded up and there's not a hawker in sight. Here we double back on ourselves and drive downhill towards the city centre. Nairobi looks beautiful in this seasonal h
eat and light. Villas bordered by lush verdure line both sides of the highway and everywhere purple jacaranda and rich orange flame blossom intermingle to carpet the ground in a floral tribute, as if we're heading to a Bombay wedding reception.

  But it's long lines of protesters that we came to admire, not flame trees and frangipani, and the total absence of the former, combined with the increasing monotony of the roadblocks, all still disturbingly manned by equal numbers of police and GSU, combine to make this more of a drive into the heart of darkness than a nature ramble.

  'What time did your General say he was pulling the GSU back to barracks?' Kiwi John asks ruefully.

  '0930,' Julius and I answer simultaneously.

  Kiwi John's sceptical poke at his watch speaks for us all:

  'Well, I suppose that does leave forty minutes,' he mulls doubtfully. 'Maybe there's still time for your General mate to come good.'

  None of us cares to speculate otherwise, especially Julius:

  'General Ochieng will be good to his word, just you wait and see,' but for once it's said without Julius's usual conviction, and Kiwi John picks up on this and rolls his eyes at me.

  So by the time we arrive in the New Stanley's underground car park a firmer sense of foreboding has gripped the three of us, and even Julius's habitual pitter-patter of garrulous chatter has dried to the faintest trickle.

  Only the proliferation of other news crews from around the world, all mustered amid mounds of recording equipment and computer gadgetry inside the New Stanley's lobby, indicate that something worthy of the world's watching eyes is supposed to be going down in Nairobi today.

  Waiters dodge nervously between the myriad competing media factions balancing trays of coffee, Coca Cola and mineral water, while the bright logos daubed in large lettering over all their boxes of equipment lay claim to discrete pockets of the lobby, like demarcations of tribal ranges; and at the heart of virtually every cluster, a seasoned reporter paces to and fro, engaged in earnest conversation on a satellite phone.

  We follow Julius across the plush red carpet and into an elevator. A concerned concierge spots Kiwi John propping me up with an arm around my waist and hurries over to ask if I need a doctor.

  'It's too late for that,' I grin, forcing a pained smile from both Julius and Kiwi John.

  'Then maybe a Coca Cola, sir?' the waiter asks hopefully.

  'Now that kind of poison would definitely finish me off!' I chuckle, and the ping of the lift's arrival is in perfect synchronicity with the bemused expression on the poor fellow's face.

  We climb only two floors, where Julius leads the way to a suite branching off the main corridor to our right.

  Behind the door the suite has been laid out like a newsroom. A central hub of desks sprouting TV monitors, computers and all sorts of complicated recording equipment dominates the middle of the floor, around which buzzes a staff of nearly a dozen CNN crew, whose hands we duly shake in turn, and it's immediately evident that we have been much anticipated:

  'My God, so you're the guy who sparked this whole revolution off?' a middle aged blonde American lady says with a firm grip on my hand and a probing look into my eyes that makes me think she doesn't really care for or approve of me, or the events she has come to cover. Then, almost threateningly:

  'Would you like to do an interview now you're with us, Mr Wood?'

  But mercifully Julius intervenes:

  'No, I'm sorry, Virginia, Brian and his friend are here as my special guests. They have come only to observe.'

  'Observe what?' Kiwi John asks morosely as Julius leads the way to two balcony seats overlooking the whole of Kenyatta Avenue, Nairobi's original central boulevard.

  'All I can see is a bloody great police checkpoint blocking off the corner of Kenyatta and Moi Avenue,' he continues. 'Doesn't look like those boys in blue are going anywhere in a hurry.'

  But Julius ignores such pessimism; I can see he is in business mode now and despite the lack of subject matter, he's ready to report. From here on, he'll have little time for us:

  'Order whatever you like, you two,' he smiles hurriedly. 'It's all on the house. Brian, will you be OK if I leave you here for a while? I'm going out on the streets with a camera crew. Anytime you want to, feel free to go inside and watch the live feed coming through. Don't worry, you won't be in the way; our boss says she is honoured to have you here with us.'

  Which I find hard to believe. But nevertheless, I sit down next to Kiwi John, enjoying the sumptuous luxuries laid out in front of us on the balcony of one of Nairobi's finest hotels, and all this unaccustomed opulence fits perfectly in its bizarre inappropriateness with what is certainly not yet happening outside.

  Soon Kiwi John has finished his third coffee and he gets to his feet, angrily pacing by the railing as he checks his watch:

  'Nine forty-five,' he scowls.

  It's so quiet in the street below that we both hear the rasp of the diesel engine screeching up the road below us, droning away from the city centre and heading out of town towards Uhuru Highway.

  'Truck full of GSU,' Kiwi John mutters, like that has nothing to do with what we're both hoping to see.

  I join him at the rail. The lorry he has just pointed out comes to stop at the police checkpoint. Shouts are exchanged between the GSU soldiers packed into the rear and the blue-uniformed policemen who throng the checkpoint armed with riot shields, batons and rifles. Eventually a couple of policemen saunter into the middle of the carriageway and create a passageway through the tyre traps. Next, more shouting, this time from the GSU men in the lorry, before the diesel engine roars again and growls off, seemingly making a dash to escape downtown Nairobi.

  Then another truck, followed by another, then another still. Now a whole convoy of the dark green troop transporters, each one stuffed full of the feared GSU uniforms.

  'Now that's more like it!' Kiwi John mutters to himself sotto voce.

  We count forty-two in total from first to last, and by this time we are joined on the balcony by a camera crew and an excited quartet of CNN staff:

  'They're all making for the Mombasa road,' one of the local staff either knows or speculates.

  'Which means they could well be taking the ring road back to their barracks,' Kiwi John adds, with a first hint of hope.

  And soon the silence beneath us in Kenyatta Avenue is total, even deeper than before, punctuated only at scattered intervals by a couple of police vehicles, which circle up and down, patrolling the lower reaches of the street. At other times an intermittent shout or the cackling of a walky-talky from among the policemen on the checkpoint sounds eerily sinister, and these disturbances only serve to amplify the greater hush that has smothered all Nairobi.

  The shutters have been down on the shops opposite us all morning; there's not even a shoe-shine stand, a paper seller or a taxi in business - all must have fled long before daybreak, like seabirds before the arrival of the hurricane.

  Kiwi John and I stare at each other intently and my old mate checks his watch. Again. And again.

  Now more urgent shouts can be heard from down on the police barricade. They are evidently calling out to several squads of reinforcements behind them, which arrive at the double from the direction of Nyayo House and the Parliament buildings.

  These new arrivals fan out to cover the breadth of Kenyatta Avenue in ranks of light blue that soon swell to three or four deep, with a row of interlocking shields at the front forming a seemingly impenetrable wall.

  Up on the balcony we are all too nervous to speak, almost to breathe, lest our noise should betray our location. My guts have started to ache uncontrollably now, but I daren't sit down in case even the noise of an inadvertently scraped chair is overheard from the street, so I hang on grimly to the edge of the balcony and I'm surely not the only person in Nairobi with butterflies in the tummy right now, though in my case, the cause is more medically excusable.

  And then they start to come! In amorphous groups first of all, circling in shuffling
wheels at the junction of Moi and Kenyatta, wheels that gradually inflate then coalesce into muscular python coils of insurrection.

  They hover that way, swelling in number all the time, keeping their distance about three hundred yards from our balcony window, awesome and ominous in their sustained and brooding silence.

  Peering in their direction, I notice a continual upsurge behind the early comers; ripples in the ranks rise up and eddy spasmodically towards the front row as the sheer weight of numbers behind sends a series of shockwaves from the deep to the shimmering surface.

  It stays this way for five to ten minutes, while a camera crew takes up position next to us on the balcony and trains its lens to focus in close-up detail on the quivering front line. Other excited CNN staff leave for the street, and even Kiwi John jumps inside to get a better sense of what is unfolding below us from the ring of live feed television monitors inside.

  At last the silence is broken by a staccato burst of shots from the rear of the police cordon behind us to our left. Instinctively we all crouch down behind the tiled lip of the balcony then creep up slowly, poking our heads above the parapet in time to see seven or eight plumes of smoke soar up pell-mell among the first lines of our FC Kenya faithful.

  For a while the FC Kenya lines push backwards, as if they are being sucked against their will into a vortex. Shouting erupts here and there in different sections, then suddenly, these intermittent cries of alarm find one voice and one identity. The concomitant roar which emerges from the communal, primeval lung is more deafening than the tumbling hooves and the flaring trumpets of the horsemen of the apocalypse.

  The surge is spontaneous. The tidal bore that is unleashed from the depths of downtown Nairobi is so swift and so powerful that it bludgeons the first rank of police shields with a reverberating thud almost before any of us are aware, and the shock of the onslaught is so total that large gaps appear immediately in three sections of the police lines. Through these, the surge just muscles its way on, borne inexorably onwards by its own momentum, till the whole line of police shields collapses and scatters in its wake.

  For a few seconds we see pockets of police blue sprinting away from the centre of the tsunami, but these are almost immediately swept up in the greater flood, and in no time the police uniforms just appear as individual dots, which are mysteriously swallowed up one by one, till nothing but a continuous stream of quasi-uniform, Football Kenya t-shirts cascades up the avenue towards Nyayo House and Uhuru Highway.

  Kiwi John has gripped the top of my right arm so hard now that my biceps is starting to ache more painfully than my guts. He looks at me like a wild-eyed sea dog replete with stubbly beard, suntan and greasy pony tail, and we fix a crazy gaze on each other for what seems an age before the soap bubble of hyper-reality suddenly bursts, and we fall on each other, shrieking out loud, jumping up and down and filling our lungs with the victory paean, like blood-crazed warriors who have just emerged from an orgy of hand-to-hand combat with freshly sliced enemy livers in our hands.

  And when we've calmed down we take to hanging over the balcony once again and wait for the waters to subside. But they don't. For below us the tide has lost nothing of its mass and momentum, only the rate of flow has slowed.

  Now we can see individual faces, pick out slogans, see the FC Kenya t-shirts stream by one-by-one in glorious Betfair grey with Dismas's portrait emblazoned on nearly every back. They are whistling now and shouting out all sorts of things I don't catch in a torrent of noise that has replaced the sepulchral hush of the standoff. Separate sections have their own chants, either in Swahili or Kikuyu, and I ask Kiwi John if he knows what they are saying, but he just shrugs:

  'Do we need to mate? I think we can guess!'

  Of course, he's right.

  Which makes me look again.

  To my left, the front of the column has disappeared so far from view that it must have reached Uhuru Highway, almost half a mile beyond. But still the procession gushes onwards without any loss of energy, and it seems like it's going to do just that for some time to come, flowing with its own remorseless will in a steady pulse from our left to our right.

  'Come on, mate,' says Kiwi John, pulling my arm less deliriously now and making for the interior. 'Let's get the bigger picture on those monitors inside.'

  We pause at the first, watching an excited American reporter who is positioned outside the Parliament building almost a mile away. The front of the column must have long swept past her, but her voice has lost no sense of urgency:

  'No sign of police, no sign of the army,' she comments, 'just a steady procession of humanity walking into, around and straight through Parliament, as if the buildings were meant to hold hundreds of thousands instead of just hundreds of MPs.'

  Kiwi John winks at me at this point, and I don't have to force a smile. Encouraged, we scan several more screens that give a street-level view of the massive tide but offer little more specific detail, before the feed from a cameraman who must be positioned just outside State House catches my eye.

  The presidential palace is under siege. A good mile and a half uphill from us, it has taken little more than twenty minutes for the vanguard of the FC Kenya column to stampede this far since the tear gas was first fired and the assault began, and the astonishment at such vertiginous progress is evident in the tone of the CNN lady's voice:

  'The flag is flying and the barriers are down, she tells us in a startled southern drawl, which we understand to mean that the President is inside. But as the first faces of the protesters start to come into view, it's not yet clear whether they will be opposed, or who is left to guard the President. Just in front of me here I can see small pockets of policemen and army regulars still manning the barriers outside State House, but there are also strong, though as yet unconfirmed, reports that many of the normal security contingent guarding the palace have simply disappeared or even joined the protesters.'

  'We'll be back to check with you shortly, Michelle,' an excited editorial voice cuts in, which I recognize as belonging to Virginia, who sounded less than lukewarm about the prospect of FC Kenya revolution less than half an hour ago but now seems grateful for the drama:

  'Right now, we are cutting to Julius Chege, who is with another branch of this incredible and unstoppable human torrent.'

  'Thank you, Virginia. I'm standing outside Nairobi Central Police Station, where one branch of the rally has encircled downtown Nairobi's main police post for nearly half an hour now. At first the standoff was non-confrontational and at various times over the last few minutes groups of blue-uniformed policemen ten to fifteen strong have emerged from the compound to join the protesters, which they symbolized by removing their shirts, helmets and jackets and tossing them into the crowd.'

  'Every time this has happened, the defectors were greeted with a large cheer, but now, as you can see, it's over five minutes since the last policemen switched sides.'

  'Since then, there has been sporadic gunfire aimed at the FC Kenya supporters from inside the compound and the mood has turned considerably uglier. It seems that there is a hardcore remnant of police left inside Nairobi Central and the crowd is determined to winkle them out.'

  The camera leaves Julius now and pans around the ringleaders at the front of the huge FC Kenya tide, some of whom are busily engaged in overturning vehicles, creating a crude circumvallation all around the perimeter of the police station.

  'Look at that!' I shout to Kiwi John. 'It's Big Evans Majengwa!'

  'Shit, you're right, mate,' he whistles, and we both admire the ex-boxer's swagger as he rolls over a white Peugeot pick-up, apparently unaided, then smashes at the petrol cap with a police rungu baton.

  'That must be Kevin in the jeans jacket and I reckon the bloke just behind him is Fingers, you see the guy wearing the white baseball cap,' Kiwi John adds, pointing out two figures who are standing slightly behind the busy front-rankers but seem to be controlling operations with scarves raised to the their noses and long hands pointin
g out orders.

  'The FC Kenya supporters are bringing over containers of petrol now,' Julius adds excitedly, 'and I can see fires springing up from at least three sides of the police station.'

  Events overtake Julius quickly though, and the next phase of his story is told without words via the flashes of a barrage of Molotov cocktails crashing into and all around the police station. The camera swivels this way and that at each new impact, then Julius adds:

  'The police station itself is now on fire in several areas both to the front and to the rear of the building.'

  Kiwi John and I can hear the crowd beginning to bay and whistle, first of all in a disjointed cacophony, then crescendoing to a single, sustained caterwaul of jeering and shrieking.

  So we watch on in silence as tongues of fire curl upwards and inwards on either side of the police building, uniting their plumes in a ball of fire that rages up from the roof.

  I swallow hard and clench Kiwi John's shoulder, remembering all the horror of my time inside that terrible place.

  And now the figure of Big Evans Majengwa is unmissable on camera as he hurls himself towards the flames, charging at the main entrance in an act of impetuous madness or bold heroism, and he is instantly followed by a succession of acolytes, who peel off from the main rump in twos and threes to dive into the flames after the boxing champion.

  As soon as the last of Big Evans Majengwa's group has plunged into the inferno, the CNN cameras switch over and our attention is refocused on the sudden breakout attempt of a police Land Rover, which charges directly at the main mass of the FC Kenya ring but can't find a way through the cordon of overturned cars. Like a trapped animal it hurtles this way and that around the inside of the barricade, probing for a gap that doesn't unfold, till in desperation it tries to ram its way out. Forward. Crash. Reverse. Again. And again. And a fourth time. But all this effort has achieved nothing: it has hardly managed to shunt the white Peugeot pick-up any distance at all. One final lunge. Then it stops. If the engine could pant, you could almost hear it through the live feed.

  And then the missiles start. First bricks and slabs of concrete, soon followed by a succession of Molotov cocktails, which rain down remorselessly on the Land Rover, engulfing first the windshield, then both front tyres in fire, and then the passenger's door. Goaded beyond endurance, the Land Rover lurches forward at a crawl, pathetically nudging into the overturned Peugeot one last time, whereupon it spectacularly explodes in a fury of flame.

  Julius is silent now, and once again the camera lingers on the blazing Land Rover, flames ripping through the length of the vehicle from bonnet to bumper.

  Now the passenger door opens and a figure staggers out, writhing and twisting in flame-fed contortions, his whole body dancing in funnels of fire. And even before the camera goes close-up, affronting our eyes with gruesome detail, the sheer size of the figure unmasks the certain identity of the burning man: it can only be Wamunyu.

  The Chief Superintendent staggers a pace or two forwards towards the barricades before he is struck first by one, then by a second petrol bomb thrown from either side of the barricades. Giant hands shoot up above his head, wave and flap wildly, then wither as his colossal bulk crashes onto the tarmac to an audible cheer from the mob behind the barricades. No one moves to help Wamunyu; he just lies there and burns, till his frying flab fans out thick coils of black smoke and the CNN camera reverts to Julius.

  'So much for that bastard,' I hiss to Kiwi John, my voice inexplicably reduced to a whisper, 'but I do hope Big Evans Majengwa gets out unharmed.'

  Sadly, we won't know the answer to that question immediately, for the feed is cut and instead we are back with Michelle outside State House. The faded southern belle looks very animated as she delivers the news that there has been an important development inside State House.

  Word of which must have reached and filtered through the immense human sea of FC Kenya supporters that has swallowed every inch of tarmac, every blade of burnt grass and every rough patch of red earth all along State House Road. CNN now have a helicopter up and the aerial shot the chopper transmits to our screen starts to do justice to the enormity of what is happening down below.

  Michelle's cameraman now takes us back to the thousands who are thronging in an ever-thicker mass around the fringes of State House. A mood change has occurred up here by the President's front door, and far from torching vehicles, every face in the crowd greets the camera with the same beaming smile. Uplifted hands of all shades of black and brown 'flash the football' at every sweep of camera, until a crescendo of cheering wells up in guttural pulses from deep inside this human nebula to burst in a hullabaloo of applause all around the wire fence and the white barriers of State House.

  'Behind me,' Michelle tells the camera excitedly, 'the police and army units have not actually abandoned their posts as you might guess from all the commotion. No, the hysterical applause you can hear behind me is because they have laid down their weapons and are busy building a makeshift gantry. The precise purpose of this makeshift platform is not yet clear, but we have been told to expect an important announcement from State House within the next half hour.'

  And just as Michelle is joined by a bobbing sea of brown hands, all energetically 'flashing the football', the camera turns backwards, behind Michelle, to shots of the busy policemen. And it's true, some of them have swapped their blue uniforms for the Betfair-grey logos of FC Kenya t-shirts, and these guys are cheered every time they lift a pole or plank, which encourages them to wave back in acknowledgement of the crowd, and their efforts raise a succession of reciprocal cheers.

  Soon the policemen have been joined by what must be other civilian staff from inside State House, and this collection of men and women simply can't get enough. They shout and wave at the crowd and a few pull out mobiles to take pictures of the occasion for personal souvenirs. A large scrum of camera crews from all over the world has now arrived, and the rival teams are jostling around Michelle to get prime position in front of this makeshift platform. Behind the workers we catch sly glimpses of the splendid white fa?ade of State House itself, largely sequestered from view by a screen of eucalyptus and cypress.

  Soon however, the joyous wait of the masses becomes too humdrum for live TV, so the CNN main camera cuts back to Julius, and as we rejoin Kenya's own media star we are astonished to see the beaming and smoke-blackened face of a sweaty and dirty, but otherwise unscathed, Big Evans Majengwa.

  'This man standing next to me now,' Julius shouts triumphantly, reaching up to pat the bare side of a Big Evans Majengwa shoulder, where it erupts in rippling solid muscle from a smoke-stained white vest, 'will be honoured as one of the heroes of the New Kenya! He has boxed for Kenya in the ring before now, but that will count as nothing compared to what he has just done inside the police station!'

  And the camera leaves Big Evans Majengwa to linger on the blazing wreck that was Nairobi Central.

  Never suffering from shyness at the best of times, Big Evans Majengwa raises clenched fists in the air and shouts 'Yaaaaaaaaaa', at the camera, making the enormous veins in his walrus neck stand out and ripple like swollen hosepipes feeding a drought-stricken lawn.

  'This man here,' Julius continues, stepping forward to grab hold of one of those enormous fists, 'realized as soon as he saw the flames rising up above our main police station in downtown Nairobi that dozens of innocent (Julius chuckles at the camera now) or let us say, potentially innocent men, who were locked up in the cells inside, ran the risk of being burnt alive. But rather than leave suspected criminals to an indescribable fate, he disregarded all concern for his own life and dived into the flames on a daredevil rescue mission. Can you please tell us in your own words, Mr Majengwa, the story of this dramatic rescue?'

  Which Big Evans Majengwa does, panting heavily and punctuating his narrative with lots of grunts and additional bouts of fist waving, till the camera settles on the faces of the former detainees, who are sitting in the dirt by a cypress hedge, surrounde
d by a group of FC Kenya supporters waving rungu clubs and police shields at them.

  The prisoners' faces tell of their plight with silent and anxious stares, which seem to acknowledge that although they may have escaped a roasting inside Nairobi Central, their ultimate fate still lies in the balance in the hands of this unwieldy mob. And they know that Kenyan mobs are notoriously fond of a public lynching.

  But just as the prospect of a grizzly end to this heroic rescue mission looms larger in the collective subconscious, we see Fingers and Kevin striding over to the group. Fingers stoops and guides the first former detainee to his feet, a gaunt fellow with a ripped orange vest several sizes too big and a mish-mash of bald patches in his hair that expose pink slices of scarred scalp. The look on this fellow's face is sheer fear, but in one crisp gesture, Fingers raises the man's hand aloft, clasped tightly in his own.

  Which brings an enormous cheer from the assembled mob, and the emaciated prisoner has the presence of mind to 'flash the football' all around, which in turn provokes a sustained burst of cheering and hysteria.

  So, one by one, we watch first Kevin, then what must be the rest of the vanguard of the Kibera crew, step forward and parade the former prisoners to the crowd. And when each prisoner feels his arm ceremoniously released, he has the good sense to beat a hasty retreat and sneak off to the side of the column before the crowd changes its fickle mind and swaps a magnanimous gesture of national rebirth and reconciliation for a good old-fashioned tarring and feathering.

  'As you can see,' Julius comments with some pride, 'we are witnessing Kenya's very own Arab Spring unfolding before our eyes, and in a new spirit of national unity, these petty criminals, who could only have expected summary justice at the hands of such a crowd in days gone by, have been pardoned one by one and set free.'

  Looking on at this great theatre I can't help feeling a flush of pride at what I've seen, which I share with a wink at Kiwi John. And now I'm looking forward to hearing more of Big Evans Majengwa's 'ooohs' and 'aaahs' and maybe, if we're lucky, even a few words from the unseen puppeteer, Fingers himself, but the CNN focus suddenly reverts to Michelle outside State House and God, isn't there a cacophonic din erupting all around her!

  Immediately we see why.

  From inside the grounds of State House first one, then a second and soon a third black Mercedes starts to crawl towards the gates at the pace of a funeral cortege. If the police and Army have absconded en masse from the rest of Nairobi, they must be manning a rear-guard action here at the President's house, for the driveway is well guarded by both blue uniforms and the khaki of army regulars. Alongside the cars jogs an escort of what must be some plainclothes police in suits and standard-issue, gold-rimmed sunglasses.

  The first white barrier is raised, followed in quick succession by the outer one, and soon the Mercedes draws up alongside the hastily constructed gantry.

  We watch as two security guards open the rear passenger's side door and out steps?

  Dismas!

  To absolute mayhem.

  For as soon as they catch sight of his balding lanky head and thin shoulders emerging in a suit to match the dark sheen of the Mercedes, the crowd hits the sort of frenzy you might expect on a freezing January night at Walsall in the eighty-eighth minute of a featureless 0-0 bore draw against a dour Halifax Town outfit that has kept ten stolid men behind the ball all night, and now the home manager decides to make a last-gasp, do-or-die double substitution. But instead of bringing on Wayne Snodgrass and Phil Bardsley, replete with frozen flecks of gob granulating the corners of their mouths and shaven heads sporting cranial tattoos, a completely surprise reshuffle of his pack produces Beyonc? and Shakira in skimpy bikinis, who then rush out onto the pitch, boot the ball out down the tunnel and launch straight into a lascivious, mega-bass dance routine right there on the centre circle.

  Well, that's the gist of it. But for image, of course, Dismas is none of those things. We're lucky enough he's got a suit the fits in all the right places, but at least he is wearing a tie that is all ministerial stripes rather than Oxfam-shop orange.

  And the FC Kenya presidential hopeful looks even more bashful than I've ever seen him in the midst of such overwhelming hysteria. He pauses for a minute, as if searching for his lines, then simply 'flashes the football', which is far, far better than anything he could have said, and the crowd responds by jumping so high that their heads will soon be denting the under-sections of some of that prime Nairobi aerial real estate, which Dismas will soon be dishing out to the disadvantaged.

  Next, from the second Mercedes, the President emerges in a dark suit and light blue tie. Instantly, the noise level dips and the cheers putrefy to jeers.

  Such a dangerous anticlimax helps Dismas to regain his composure and he takes the initiative straight away. Gesticulating to a nearby high-ranking policeman, our would-be President commandeers a bullhorn and motions to the current incumbent to climb with him up the bare metal steps to the top of the makeshift platform six feet above. And as soon as the pair of them are standing on high, the crowd falls oddly silent, doubtless confused by the double presence on stage of the hero-of-the-hour and the villain-of-the-past.

  The media crews have largely succeeded in squirming to the front of the queue past hundreds of thousands of the more deserving, and a forest of microphones is on hand to capture Dismas's words as he begins his oration with a poise and a confidence I have never seen in him before:

  'Citizens of Kenya,' he shouts. 'The President invited me to State House at eleven o'clock this morning to discuss the formation of a Government of National Unity between the ruling KANU party and Forum for Change Kenya.'

  After a caterwauling of boos at the mention of KANU a huge cheer erupts at the mere mention of FC Kenya, christened first by the lucky section at the front of the crowd that can actually hear Dismas's words, then related in a series of chain reaction shockwaves all the way down State House Road, eventually echoing almost a couple of miles further on, as far as the pell-mell groups of less determined loiterers who are lingering with shifty, opportunistic eyes rather than revolutionary zeal in front of the boarded shops below us on Kenyatta Avenue.

  With his gap-toothed smile replaced by a steely stare and his monk's halo six feet too high for the cameras to explore, Dismas is able to enjoy his moment, waiting with prolonged rhetorical anticipation before a modicum of calm returns to the front ranks and he can continue:

  'And, as leader of Forum for Change Kenya, I have accepted that offer. From midday today we will work together to facilitate an open and transparent election, which I know will bring a new start for the people of Kenya, a new future for Africa, and a new model for the underprivileged in every corner of the world!'

  So, with the noise of thunderous applause echoing from every television monitor and reverberating in a series of back eddies all the way from the gates of State House to the pavement below us, I can finally grab Kiwi John's hand, feebly shake it and say:

  'It's finished now, mate. We can go.'

  'How?' he asks.

  'In one of them,' I tell him, pointing to a pair of old white taxis now parked up in the bays at the corner of Moi Avenue. 'They know it's all over too. That's why they're starting to come back.'

  'So this really is game over, then?' Kiwi John repeats with a lump in his throat, and I don't catch his eyes, for I have instinctively picked up on the double-take in his voice: he'd never forgive me for catching him in tears.