Yellow Room

by Shelan Rodger

  ‘Look, C…’ His nickname stilled something in her. ‘I think it’s probably better if we don’t try and do this on the phone. Is there an Internet café there?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said slowly. ‘I think so.’

  ‘Well, then let’s keep it to emails for the time being, OK?’

  ‘Of course, … if you prefer that, of course.’

  ‘OK, speak soon then. I mean email soon.’

  She looked deep into her beer after he had gone. They sounded like strangers and she hated herself for it. Would they be in the same place now if Bruce hadn’t happened? If Philip hadn’t died? Her stomach felt like a dangerous lake.

  ‘Can I join you?’ She jumped. It was Mick. A white Kenyan who made his living on cableway transport systems for the flower farms in the Rift Valley. He also chaired the Rotary Club that met every Wednesday, and had introduced himself briefly to her before the last meeting. Mick was probably in his early forties. After a lifetime of high-altitude sunshine, he had that weathered look of so many of the white Kenyans here, but he was attractive.

  The memory of Bruce’s hands flashed through her mind and she felt the underwater pull of the lake inside her.

  ‘No strings, don’t worry!’ Mick had seen her discomfort. ‘Tusker?’

  She felt her redness deepen and cursed herself. ‘Sure.’ And, in the pause that followed, she added, ‘Would you like one?’

  ‘Yes, please.’ He was mocking her English formality and she looked for a subject to take the focus off her.

  ‘Tell me about the refuge project. She knew some of the boys at the shelter had come from the project run by the Rotary Club so she jumped on this. ‘What exactly does it do?’

  He lit a cigarette and sat back in his chair, still looking at her with mischief in his eyes. ‘It’s basically a holding institution for abused children. You wouldn’t believe the state of some of them when we take them in. It’s a bit like looking after maltreated dogs. We nurse them back to some form of physical health and do our best to provide a supportive environment, but it’s only temporary and then we have to rehome them. Some of your guys have come from there.’

  ‘And how do they come to you in the first place?’

  ‘The police often pick them up and bring them to us. But how about the shelter? How are you doing up there? Winnie says you’re doing a great job.’

  ‘I love it.’ She felt herself start to redden again and he cut in.

  ‘And outside the shelter, how’s your social life?’

  ‘Winnie’s been very kind and I’ve been to her place a few times, but I’m happy to keep myself to myself, to be honest.’ She felt lame.

  ‘That’s no excuse, girl. We need to get you out. A friend of mine, Tom, is having a party on Saturday. Why don’t you come to that? Get a taste of Naivasha.’

  ‘Thank you. That’s very kind of you.’ Oh God, a party.

  ‘Good. That’s settled then. Well,’ he stood up and took her hand theatrically, ‘my meeting beckons. I’ll sort out a lift for you on Saturday.’ And he kissed her hand and withdrew, just as Winnie stepped onto the veranda.

  ‘You want to watch him,’ she said, deliberately loud enough for Mick to hear.

  CHAPTER 20

  She knew something was wrong as soon as she saw Mwangi’s face. The boys were in the classrooms, but the teachers were closeted in their tiny staff room, heads down and talking in low voices. Mwangi smiled at Chala as she entered the room and found a space to sit, but the smile was weak.

  ‘Where’s Fred?’ He was one of the resident staff, teacher-cum- matron, the one who welcomed her with a cup of milky tea in the morning. She found it hard to follow Mwangi’s answer, as if it hurt him to say it.

  ‘They came in last night, looking for money. When they couldn’t find any, they beat Fred badly.’

  ‘They? Who are they? Is he all right? Does Winnie know?’

  ‘Winnie took him to hospital this morning. We think it was a couple of boys from a gang in town. Maybe they had too much pombe. Maybe they had to do this nonsense so that the boss could let them into the gang.’

  ‘But what about the askari?’ On-site security consisted of one old night-watchman who did a bit of gardening during the day, too.

  ‘He’s OK. They tied him up and we found him still there this morning.’

  The notion that a shelter for street kids could be targeted by petty criminals was shocking.

  ‘Are the boys OK?’

  ‘Yeah, they are OK. The little ones got a bit scared, but they are OK.’ Many had seen worse. Violence played close to the surface of their lives.

  Winnie came later to report on Fred’s progress. They had slashed his arm with a panga, the machete blade seen all over Kenya. He had lost a lot of blood and had seventeen stitches, but he would be fine. He was thankful they hadn’t touched his face.

  Winnie told Mwangi not to worry. She would contract a security company to arrange proper armed security at night, at least for the next few weeks. Her voice was so firm, so full of certainty. Chala saw the lines relax on Mwangi’s face. He had his own family and three children, and yet he carried the burden of these fifty street boys as if they, too, were his.

  Later, at the hotel, Winnie sighed deep into her beer.

  ‘You see why the website is important, Chala, why we need it to help raise money.’ She looked vulnerable all of a sudden. ‘We can’t afford to pay for the security company for long. We need more money for things like this.’

  Chala knew the boys only ate fresh meat once a week and the teachers’ salaries seemed shockingly low to her, but they were the lucky ones. Migrant hopefuls flocked from all over upcountry Kenya to Naivasha, looking for work on the flower farms around the lake. One of the larger flower farms would employ around 5,000 people. That meant, with dependents, they were directly supporting a community of 30,000.

  Chala had ridden out around the lake on her moped last Sunday. She had steered her way past donkeys and cows in the middle of the road, through a small rubbish-drenched town on South Lake Road with sprawling tin shacks and everything from vegetables to buckets and T-shirts laid out for sale in rows on plastic sheets in the dirt. A huge concrete church with a turquoise tin roof loomed over the makeshift housing around it, and gospel clapping boomed inside it. Late arrivals still crowded in: women dressed in shiny suits of red and gold, children dressed like dolls, little girls in frilly, pristine, white dresses with puffed sleeves and large bows around their waists. The power of the church was not just supernatural, Chala realised. It was also social.

  She had gone past one flower farm after another. Endless lines of plastic greenhouses, hedged off by barbed wire draped in bougainvillea; long rows of concrete terraced housing with lines of coloured washing hanging in the bare yards in front of them. Most farms had their own community infrastructure – housing, schools, nurseries, clinics, football pitches, security. How little we know when we buy flowers at a supermarket in England, she thought, resolving to fill their house in Sussex with a regular supply of flowers from Kenya. She caught the pronoun again in her thoughts.

  And then the road had climbed and Lake Naivasha spread out below her. Signs read ‘Hatari! Danger hippos at night’ and ‘Game corridor – animals have the right of way’. Chala had stopped to gaze at a herd of impala just beside the road and almost missed the giraffe on the other side, chewing at a thorn tree. A large warthog marched off into the distance, followed by half a dozen tiny babies, all with their tails in the air. She had stopped again to let a zebra cross the road and laughed at the nuance of a zebra crossing and thought of Philip. Perhaps she would come back here with his ashes. Something in her still resisted letting them go, and yet it seemed wrong to keep them trapped in a box at the sidelines of her existence.

  Winnie’s voice brought her back to the present.

  ‘What do you think?’ She was asking about how to make the website work.

  Chala focused intensely for a moment and then it hit her.

&nbs
p; ‘Do we need permission to publish an individual profile, with a picture, of every single boy on the website?’ She felt breathless.

  Winnie laughed. ‘Your world is different. No, we don’t need permission. We are the guardians anyway.’

  Chala was still a bit intimidated by Winnie, but the idea was bursting from her now. ‘Then I think that’s the way we can reach people. Make the boys real. Make people feel they’re giving money to benefit individual human beings with a past and a future, rather than just a cause in a vacuum.’ Winnie was smiling, and Chala didn’t know whether it was at her naivety or her enthusiasm, but she continued.

  ‘We’d have to build in an online payment facility, and we’d have to promote the site properly, of course, but this is the way we could make it different – the ability to sponsor an individual child, a bit like you can adopt an individual elephant through The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust.’

  ‘But everyone will want to adopt Humphrey.’ He was the youngest, the little three-year-old mascot found abandoned at a police station, the one who was always put in the front row to welcome visitors.

  ‘We can manage that through the website. There can be a quota for each boy, and people will have to choose from a menu of available children to sponsor, and the menu can be updated as quotas fill.’ Chala was excited now. ‘We could give individual updates about what happens to each boy. Sponsors would know that their money was contributing directly to carpentry training for Simon or driving lessons for Kamau.’

  ‘But things go wrong. These are street boys, their stories don’t all have happy endings, you know.’

  ‘Life goes wrong. That’s part of the reality of it. People aren’t buying a book about someone else’s life, they’re affecting that life, directly, with all the risks that go with th…’ Chala paused to look at Winnie’s face. She was smiling again.

  ‘I think we need to get you to Nairobi next week to meet Ken.’ He worked for a national Internet provider and had recently married a cousin of Winnie’s. He had agreed to build the website free of charge. ‘Now, I think we both deserve another beer.’

  Chala remembered the rush of joy she had felt as a child when Louise had finally wanted to play on her side in the netball team.

  CHAPTER 21

  Saturday came and Chala half hoped the lift from Mick wouldn’t materialise, but it did.

  ‘Thought you might need a bit of moral support for the first time!’ he said to her with mischief in his face.

  ‘Oh God, is it going to be that bad?’ Chala joked, relieved that she didn’t need to walk into the party alone. ‘I’m not very good at parties. I don’t really like them very much.’

  ‘Few drinks inside you, you’ll be fine! Just watch the KCs!’ ‘What’s a KC?’ Chala asked.

  Mick laughed from his stomach, but told her nothing. ‘You’ll find out soon enough.’

  It all looked quite formal when they arrived – people standing around a drinks table in a garden – but as she walked into its fray she was quick to register how it differed from an English summer garden party. The garden was much larger than any she had been to in England, with papyrus and acacia trees and banks of cactus and bright orange lilies. There were women wearing flowing skirts and sandals, with matching pashmina shawls for the Kenyan winter. And men – a good number of them anyway – stubbornly sporting sandals and short white shorts, oblivious to the evening chill in the air. As she approached the drinks table, Chala noticed that the ‘bar fridge’ was a two-metre black plastic water tank cut in half and brimming with beers on ice.

  ‘Hey, Mick, where have you been?’ A woman in cowboy boots approached them, completely ignoring Chala.

  ‘Meet Chala.’ Mick answered, and she warmed to him then. ‘Chala, this is Donna.’

  ‘Hi, how are you?’ Donna gazed at Chala for a second as if she was her best friend and then cut her out completely, turning her attention wholly to Mick.

  Chala stepped out of her comfort zone to approach the bar on her own and accepted the first beer that was put in her hand.

  ‘You’re new round here,’ said the person who had put it there. He, too, was wearing sandals and shorts, she noticed. ‘What do you think of us, then?’ He couldn’t have asked a more difficult question. She slugged back her beer and fired a question back in return. To her surprise, he responded immediate… and talked and talked. Chala’s thoughts drifted to Paul. She missed him. Already. The way he would cheerfully crash into her space and her moments of reverie, the way he would sweep her out of them. But his anger – the dark lines on his face when he sank – no, it was a relief to get away from that. What would this ‘space’ be doing to him? Would it soften the anger? How was he?

  She made an effort to tune in to what the man beside her was saying – something about a rhino charge.

  ‘No, no, it’s a car rally!’ He laughed when she put her foot in it. ‘It happens every year in an undisclosed location. You have to work out how to get from A to B in as little time as possible and over the shortest distance you can. That’s why you need a car that can go off road.’

  ‘And what’s the point of it?’ It was an honest question.

  ‘What’s the point? Man, it’s serious fun for a start! Best beer you’ll ever have is the one at the finish line.’

  Chala wondered in an abstract sort of way what it would be like to be in a relationship with someone like this. She felt a rush of appreciation for Paul.

  ‘And you raise money, too.’

  ‘Oh, what does the money go on?’

  ‘Re-fencing the Aberdares mostly, to keep the elephants inside the park. They need to keep the elephants on the mountains, I can tell you – last time I was there, I remember—’

  ‘So, is this man behaving himself?’ It was Mick.

  He laughed back, ‘What are you – her keeper?’

  As the evening progressed, alcohol flowed and large ceramic pots with charcoal were lit to keep everyone warm. Trays of ‘bitings’ were carried round: samosas and spring rolls and cheese and olives. Laughter grew louder and some people started dancing. Chala was approached by a man with a laugh like Father Christmas who pinched her bottom but was so gentlemanly about it, it seemed churlish to react. She talked to a lady in her eighties with a cigarette in her hand and a couple of teenage girls whose mother and grandmother were also at the party. She met a Dutch vet, who had been here for two years and laughed gently at the vague bewilderment Chala shared with her. More and more people seemed to be drunk, and yet no one showed any signs of slowing down or leaving the party.

  ‘Yeah, it goes like this,’ said Femke. ‘If you stay too long, the ones that are left will start taking their clothes off!’

  ‘You’re joking, aren’t you? How are you getting back?’

  She offered to drop Chala off on her way home and Chala was grateful. ‘It’s best not to do goodbyes to everyone. They will just make you stay. We can just slide away.’

  ‘I feel like I’m starting to slide away already!’ Chala wasn’t used to drinking so much. ‘Let me just go to the loo and I’ll be with you.’

  She sat on the loo feeling slightly dizzy and tried to focus on the postcards and photos plastered all around her. Immediately opposite her was a poster entitled, ‘KCs, a lesser-known tribe of Kenya’. Aha, there it was again – KC. She forced herself to read on:

  ‘They wear tight shorts, hand-knitted jumpers and frayed collars.

  They’d rather die than be thought of as scholars.

  You find them in small towns, muttering about tractor spares,

  Or roaming the country to fulfil one another’s dares.

  They’re allergic to political correctness and shoes,

  But not shooting or hunting or fishing or booze.

  You won’t find the rights of women debated,

  But you will find that nearly all are related.

  They know everything to know about Kenyan genealogy,

  And quite a lot about canine and female biology.

&
nbsp; They love weddings and fun,

  And will travel miles and miles just to go to one.

  They don’t do toy dogs, small cars or camp men,

  But they do a lot of stories that start with “I remember wh…”

  Their English is stuck in the Sixties and so are some of their ideals. Their favourite foods are all in Mother’s homemade meals.

  They are good organisers and fair with their workers.

  It’s a matter of pride not to be thought of as shirkers.

  You may think they do not deserve the rights that they keep,

  But you cannot deny that their love for their country runs deep.’

  … KC – and then it hit her and she was still giggling when she came out of the loo and bumped straight into Mick.

  ‘Done something funny in there, have you?’

  ‘I know what you are,’ she laughed. ‘A Kenya Cowboy!’

  CHAPTER 22

  Her mind wandered beyond the breath, in awe of where she was. She let herself open her eyes for a moment to take in again the reality that swept away from them: an expanse of water, still as sand between mountains, shining in the light of early morning. Another of Kenya’s amazing lakes. There was something infinitely serene about this one, a sense of space and oblivion.

  After the two-and-a-half hour drive north from Naivasha, the short boat ride to the island with warm wind in their hair as they cut through the brown water had been exhilarating. There were crocodiles in the lake – they had seen one on the bank when they boarded the boat – and yet it didn’t feel like a lake with secrets, not like Lake Chala all those years ago. They had spent the rest of the first day just relaxing and taking in the beauty of their surroundings, from their bandas – thatched bedrooms with no walls – which opened over the lake; from the infinity pool which seemed to merge with the lake, divided only by the turquoise colour of its own water; from the comfort of sofas in the shade of trees. An owl watched sleepily from a branch near the pool, as if on a mission to protect this small group of women.