We meet at their local bar, which has a shady beer garden and is a short walk from their place. It’s on the other side of town, and a bit of a mission to get to, especially in Nairobi traffic. Peter gives me a ride – Alice and Fiona have taken Walt to a doctor’s appointment, and Marguerite has arranged to play bridge with a friend nearby, so nobody needs a driver for the morning.
Apart from the drive from the airport, this is my first time venturing much further than the Smyths’ environs. Beyond the high walls and security fences of the top end of town, I’m reminded that Nairobi is a modern and vibrant city, suffused with optimism despite being weighed down by poverty. It’s a place of traffic jams and beggars and celebrity gossip, of stand-up comedy and fashion shows and shoe-shiners. Street hawkers from the slums flog phone chargers and counterfeit DVDs to commuters in air-conditioned luxury cars. Kenya’s capital is full of banal and beautiful scenes that will never be on the cover of Lonely Planet.
Peter narrates the route for me as we go, seemingly keen to help me find my bearings. ‘This is Limuru Road. Limuru. That’s the Aga Khan Hospital, where Bwana Smyth sees the doctor. That’s City Park, where we go to the markets for fruit.’
We pass a rugby union team training on a well-kept field, while families picnic at the sidelines. The radio plays a news bulletin telling of raids on suspected Al-Shabaab militants in Eastleigh, of police shooting ‘thugs’ dead in the midst of a robbery in Nakuru, of the Wheat Farmers Association urging the government to raise the price of their crop, and of Kenyan runners winning gold medals in international marathons.
‘Do you know Eastleigh?’ Peter asks me.
‘No, where’s that?’
‘It is the suburb where all the Somalis live, next to downtown. It is very-very dangerous! You must never go there,’ he wags a finger at me. ‘They have AK-47s everywhere – I have seen them! It is not safe.’ Then shaking his head in disapproval. ‘Mm-mmm.’
Later, I read up on Eastleigh – or ‘Little Mogadishu’, as it’s sometimes known. It’s where most Somali immigrants end up settling in Nairobi, including a great number of the undocumented refugees who spill over from the border to the north. This entrepreneurial community supports its own thriving economy, and I get the sense that this, combined with ethnic divisions, is a source of tension and envy for less-fortunate Kenyans. In more recent years, the Kenyan police have taken to harassing Eastleigh residents they suspect of harbouring terrorists, but so far no convincing cases have been made.
We nose our way through the congestion around Westlands and turn onto Waiyaki Way, one of the city’s main arterial roads. Casinos and hotels and corporate head offices fly by, as Peter expertly avoids the matatus that pull on and off the road without warning. Matatus – Kenya’s infuriating and indispensable minivans – are ubiquitous throughout the country and especially within Nairobi, operating as a semi-formal public transport system relied upon by 70 per cent of the population. Peter explains to me how the fourteen-seater Toyotas are privately owned but follow set routes determined by the government, with drivers paid by the number of trips they make – an incentive for reckless driving. Matatus don’t so much own the road as indecently assault it and everyone else on it. They ignore lane markings and traffic lights, mount kerbs and drive along footpaths and veer into oncoming traffic to push ahead in traffic jams. They’re a menace, but without them the city would shut down. (The word matatu, originating from the Kikuyu language’s word for the original thirty-cent fare, mirongo itatu, is fittingly close to the Swahili word for ‘problem’, matata.)
Peter weaves his way through the roadworks and Chinese labourers who have recently come to Nairobi – thousands of men in silver conical hats building super highways and flyovers, climbing the scaffolding of the new hotels and office towers that are flapping with wraps of green shade-cloth and fronted with project signs bearing the name of Chinese developers in English and hànzì characters. The newspapers and TV news programs show pictures of politicians and Asian businessmen shaking hands with wide smiles and captions full of dollar signs, but ordinary Kenyans seem less sure about their new business partners.
We drive past a building site where three Chinese men are shovelling hot mix and gravel in the sun, dressed in business suits and ties. ‘They are very strange, these people,’ Peter says, pointing them out. I must admit, I’m as perplexed by their choice of attire as he is.
On the radio, a talkback program is discussing the social tension caused by the growing Chinese presence. Many callers are aggrieved that contracts and jobs are being awarded to foreigners when so many unemployed Kenyans could do with the work. Others argue that the expediency is justified, saying the country desperately needs to have infrastructure built quickly if it is to lift itself out of poverty and can’t do it without outside help. The hosts start ranting about local businesses that aren’t up to scratch – Peter leans forward to turn the volume down. ‘Ach, they have the same fight every day!’ he says. ‘Is the radio in Australia like this too?’
‘Yeah, pretty much!’ I laugh, thinking of the radio shock jocks back home, and the similar anxieties people have there over the next wave of immigration. I feel sorry for the Chinese men we drive past. Like the convicts sent from England to Australia, they aren’t really here by choice. Many are rumoured to be prisoners on forced labour programs – at the very least, they’re an impoverished underclass who have moved here out of pure economic necessity. Imagine being a dirt-poor Chinese villager, flown to the other side of the world to build roads for people who are openly hostile to your presence and speak no common language. Will these people even want to stay once their contracts are up, I wonder. And if so, where will they fit into the melting pot of modern-day Kenya – a country of over forty different ethnic groups, each with its own language, beliefs and customs – where the daily fight for existence is already tough enough?
Peter drops me in the car park outside the bar and shows me where to find a private taxi to get home again. ‘Don’t get one from the street,’ he says. ‘They are not safe.’
I make my way through the friendly crowd of middle-class professionals filling the place with laughter and good cheer. Younger and older people of all races mix readily – the only hint of colonialism is the cricket and rugby playing on TV screens at the sports bar. It’s a world away from the Club.
Sarah and Jack are waiting for me at a table in the courtyard, with a round of icy-cold Tusker beers. God, it’s good to see familiar faces from home.
Sarah grins. ‘Hey, bitch.’
‘What’s up, Pig?’ says Jack, giving me a big hug.
‘Lots,’ I say, taking a seat and a big swig of beer. ‘What a crazy way to meet up, hey? Let’s eat, I’m starving.’
The menu offers hearty barbecue pub grub with an East African bent: nyama choma, masala fries, tilapia with a side of ugali.
‘You gotta get the nyama choma,’ Jack says. ‘It’s basically the Kenyan equivalent of a chicken schnitty.’
‘It’s not crumbed chicken, it’s roast meat,’ Sarah clarifies. ‘All kinds – beef and lamb, but usually goat.’
‘And get the masala fries ’cos they’re the bomb,’ Jack adds, ‘but also you should get some ugali, just to try it.’
‘What’s that?’ I ask.
‘It’s this stodgy dough stuff, kind of like thick mashed potato. But made of maize flour.’
‘It’s the staple diet here,’ Sarah explains. ‘Like rice is in Asia. Kenyans eat it with pretty much everything.’
I remember my parents talking about the equivalent in Rhodesia, but there they called it sadza. Mum and Dad always thought it was horribly bland, but my sisters and I loved it when we tried it on our family trip to Zimbabwe. I’m keen to see how it is here, and to try some authentic Kenyan food. So I take Jack’s advice on what to order. I don’t regret it. The meat is delicious.
Over the rest of the afternoon, I fill my friends in on the old man and his wife and daughter, the dead lion and the Club, the ca
meras and the bed alarm and the pills. They both – quite rightly – think it’s all ludicrous.
‘Piggy, what the fuck?’ says Sarah. ‘How did you get into this?’
‘Alice … She got me the job.’
Sarah knows Alice from school. ‘Of course she did. Well, you are totally fucking insane for agreeing to any of it.’
‘Look, yes, having heard myself say it all out loud, it does sound a bit mental, I’ll admit.’
‘Hey,’ says Sarah, ‘if you ever need to get away from the asylum, you can come and stay at ours. We’ve got plenty of room. Stay tonight, if you like?’
I’d love to, but I can’t. I have to get back to take over from Millicent for the night shift. Instead, I make a plan to spend a night at Sarah and Jack’s apartment next time I have a weekend evening off.
I spend the taxi ride home staring out the window giggling to myself, thanks to the tipsy haze that brings the absurdity of this whole scenario into sharp relief. Though maybe I’m more than tipsy … Millicent brings me a Nescafé but says nothing when I get back. I appreciate her discretion.
At bedtime, as I walk Walt down the hallway to his room, we pass her kneeling on the floor beside her bed, saying an evening prayer. He stops and gawks, incredulous. I drag him onward before he can interrupt her.
‘We’ve got a very pious houseguest, I see,’ he says, closing his eyes and holding his hands together in a pretend prayer as I close the door behind us.
‘Yes, Walt, that’s Millicent – she’s very devout,’ I whisper. Then in the cheery way Fiona has shown us, ‘Now come on, let’s clean those chompers of yours!’
‘As long as she’s atoning for all our sins!’ he says back, with a camp air-slap and guilty giggle. He thinks we’re being very naughty. I’m glad he’s in a good mood – that makes it easier for me to convince him to brush his teeth.
Then I’m not so glad. It also, evidently, makes him randy. He begs me for a goodnight kiss and tries to drag me into bed with him when I tuck him in. I manage to escape with just a pinched arse.
On the upside, having him go to sleep laughing means there are no major interruptions in the night – the bed alarm only goes off once, around two o’clock. On the night-vision screen, I groggily watch him do a wee, then wander around the room aimlessly for a few minutes before he puts himself back to bed. A pinched arse, I figure, is a small price to pay for a good night’s sleep.
By morning it’s overcast, and Walt is grizzly. Fiona says the weather can have a huge influence on his mood, that grey sky makes him sulk. I’m not sure what any of us can ever hope to do about that, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she has some kind of strategy for keeping the clouds out of his sight.
We’ve only just sat down to breakfast when the phone rings. I’m sitting closest so I answer, but before I have a chance to say ‘hello’ a frantic voice is warbling at me through the handset. It’s a woman with a strong German accent. ‘Yes, I was thinking, how is it if I come around this morning for tea? You will be home, yes?’
‘Sorry, hello?’ I say.
‘Oh yes, hello, hello, yes hello. It is I, Magda. Magda.’
It’s Magda, I mouth to the table.
‘Ooooh! Magda!’ Marguerite squeals, causing Walt to jump. Fiona sighs and folds her arms.
Magda continues monologuing in my ear, leaving no space for me to respond to any of her queries. ‘You are one of the Australian girls? Yes, yes, I can hear it in your accent. Which one are you? Never mind, we will meet today I suppose. Juma has made some wonderful cakes, I will bring them for us to eat with tea. Is Marguerite there? I heard she was back from UK. John Sterling said he saw them at the Club. And Walt?’
‘Ah, yes, they’re both here –’ I manage to squeeze in.
‘Oh, hello, Marguerite – yes, it’s me!’ Magda is now hollering from the other side of the table.
I hold the receiver up so the women can talk across the room.
‘Yes, do come around, Magda, that will be lovely,’ Marguerite bellows. ‘Won’t that be lovely, darling?’ she asks her husband.
‘Who’s that?’ asks Walt.
‘It’s Magda!’ says Marguerite.
‘Helllooooo!’ Magda shouts into the phone. ‘It’s me, Walt! Hellllooooooo!’
‘Oh Magda,’ he says. ‘Yes, super.’
‘Very good, I will come at ten.’ Click. Flat tone. Fiona, noting my bewilderment, says, ‘Magda’s a bit different.’ Everyone here’s a bit ‘different’, I think.
We’ve only just managed to get Walt’s teeth brushed and have him settled into his patio chair for morning tea when we hear Magda’s car pull into the drive. The sound of the engine brings him straight back to his feet. ‘Now, whose car is that?’ he mutters, heading off for the driveway with Fiona chasing after him.
‘Bugger,’ she says on her way past. ‘We should have told Magda to park down the road a bit. Cars always set him off.’
‘Well, that’s just ridiculous,’ says Marguerite, as soon as Fiona’s out of earshot. ‘We can’t ask visitors to park down the bloody road and walk to the house. And what about our cars? There are three between us, and we’ll all have to be coming and going if we want to do our own thing, won’t we?’
Magda, I soon learn, was a journalist. She came to Kenya in the 1960s on a short-term assignment and never left. She’s a decades-long friend of both Walt and Marguerite, and as she lives in the next suburb over is one of their more regular visitors. Magda wears only purple and green, loves books and art, and doesn’t seem to understand jokes but laughs at them all the same.
I quickly come to love her – she isn’t a typical colonial. She’s interested in the world around her in a way that most whites her age in Nairobi don’t seem to be, and is excited when she discovers I’m a journalist too.
‘And will you do some writing while you are here?’ Magda asks, as Esther brings our morning tea out to the patio.
‘Oh maybe,’ I say. ‘Yes, I hope so, if there’s time.’ Although, when I think about it, I’m not sure I want to do much more than just take things in for the time being.
‘Oh, you must!’ she exclaims with a mouthful of cake. ‘There are so many wonderful stories here! Not these stories,’ she waves dismissively at the newspapers laid out on the table, ‘good stories! Stories people don’t expect from Africa.’
‘Are you trying to convince foreigners of the natives’ hidden talents again, Magda?’ Walt teases.
‘But what do you mean, Walt?’ Magda says, missing the goading in his question. ‘Why would they hide their talents?’ Magda, I take it, doesn’t conceive of herself as a superior being.
‘Our European friend here has always been a do-gooder,’ he says to me.
Magda ignores him. ‘Anyway, I do think you should do some stories. And you must travel, too.’
‘Oh yes!’ says Marguerite. ‘You really must see more of Keen-ya while you’re here. We’ll make sure you go to the coast, and do a safari, of course.’ As long as they make sure I’m paid and we can arrange the time off, that shouldn’t be a problem.
‘I’m really hoping to do an overland trip at some point,’ I say. ‘To Rwanda, to see the mountain gorillas.’
‘Ohhhh the gorillas, yes, yes yes!’ says Magda. ‘They are magical. I went many years ago. But have you applied for your visa yet? Because you know I hear they can take a long time to approve. You have to take your passport into the embassy. I will take you now, if you like? It is not far. And I am wanting to see the flower man on that road anyway. They have some lovely tulips at the moment.’
‘Ummm …. Sure?’ I say, looking at Fiona to get the okay. She nods. I race inside to grab my passport, leaving Alice to distract Walt from the sound of the car engine starting up again as we leave.
Magda interrogates me as she drives. ‘And how is Walt, as you see it?’ she asks, peering at me intently instead of watching the road. Magda blinks a lot, chews her bottom lip and twitches her nose. She makes me think of a concerned squirrel.
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‘He’s doing okay,’ I say. ‘He’s obviously very forgetful, but I think his physical health is actually improving.’ I suddenly realise that part of my responsibility as Walt’s carer is to make judgements and assessments about his condition: whether he’s getting better or worse, how ‘happy’ or otherwise he seems. I stress to Magda that I have no nursing or medical qualifications whatsoever – that I’ve not even been here two weeks yet.
‘Yes, yes,’ says Magda, ‘but we all could see, he has been like this for a long time! It is strange that only now Fiona seems to notice. She has really not had anything to do with Walt for twenty years. And now she just comes here and takes over! We all here think she is being very unfair to Marguerite.’
‘Oh?’ Who’s ‘we all’? I think. Does the whole of Nairobi know what’s going on in this house?
‘Yes, well, we are all – Walt’s friends, that is – wanting to be what is best for him, of course,’ says Magda. ‘And we must remember – Marguerite, she is old too! She can be forgetful also – yes, I know this, she does need help too, but she is very good to Walt. I have known them for so many years. He would not want to be without her. Fiona shouldn’t tell her to leave!’
‘She’s telling her to leave?’ That’s news to me.
‘Yes! Marguerite tells me Fiona says she is to go back to England and leave Walt here with his carers.’
Well, this is not quite how Fiona has put it to me. I stand in line at the Rwandan High Commission feeling very confused, as though I can’t fully trust Marguerite or Fiona. Or what they tell me about each other. But what Magda’s told me about Fiona’s previous lack of interest in her father has sparked a theory in my own mind about what’s going on here: I reckon Fiona saw Walt lying in that London hospital bed, knocking at death’s door, and got the guilts. Confronted with his mortality she’s now pulling out all the stops to make up for the years she’d neglected him and blaming Marguerite for not doing more to halt his decline – or worse, for causing it. And hearing an outsider like Magda tell me that Marguerite and Walt had a good relationship makes Fiona’s allegations of neglect seem more dubious. But then … even Magda thinks Marguerite needs help looking after Walt.
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