by Peter Kimani
Someone else came from the kitchen with several plates. "Wazi Jobo," he complimented Jobo, who received the gratitude with a wave of his own hands.
They ate ravenously, none of them speaking. For a long time, only the chewing and cracking of bones could be heard. It was as if Jobo did not exist.
There were five men in total. The tallest of the lot—the one who had opened the gate for him—was called Bryo. Only his mother called him by his proper name, Brian, and only when she was angry at him—which was most of the time by the way. Bryo was fifteen years old and until recently was in form two at the local secondary school.
Next to him was Max. At twenty-five, Max was the oldest. He was short and dark, and both sides of his face were lined with sideburns most likely shaped at Sams Kinyozi, the barber shop near Grao that everyone went to. Max didn't speak much, but when he did you knew why—he had a pronounced stutter.
Next to Max was Boi. Boi really hated being called that, and always insisted, sometimes using his fist, that his real name was Danson. But everyone called him Boi for as long as anyone could remember. It was one of those pet childhood names that stuck. He was slightly plump, unlike the others who were all lean. Over the course of the week Jobo had heard a lot of taunts about the "man boobs" that protruded from Boi's chest.
Roba was tall and thin, just like Jobo. People always confused them, especially because they wore the same hairstyle—cropped short. Most people said that the two brothers had their mother's sharp and fierce eyes, and eyebrows that seemed to curve inward, accentuating their fierce looks. Once, someone had suggested that they shave differently to avoid the confusion. But the suggestion died a natural death because neither of them was willing to change his hairstyle.
"Mzae, pass me the salt," someone said.
Jobo looked up and saw Max wearing a murderous look on his face.
"Mzae ni wewe," Max shot back. "You are the old man."
Jobo smiled. He had been told that the previous day, Max had used the fact that he was older than everyone else in the house to win an argument, and now they were using this as an insult.
"Hmmm!" Kim, the guy with one missing tooth, said. "Your mum is a very good cook."
"I will pass her the compliment," Jobo replied. His mum would be very happy to hear it.
Kim continued: "At least this week I can sleep in peace. Last week was something else."
There were a few guffaws from around the table.
"What happened last week?" Jobo asked nonchalantly. He only wanted to make conversation; otherwise it didn't really matter to him.
"The kind of food we were eating, hmm!" Kim answered, "you wouldn't know what it was until you ate it. And at night you couldn't sleep because of thinking, If I die now, what will have killed me?"
"Kwenda huko!" another man dismissed him. "Don't talk like that about my mum's cooking. We all know your mother doesn't know how to cook, and during her week she had to buy it . . ."
"Ah, that's better," Kim shot back. "Better than to cook mashakura."
The room erupted into laughter. Mashakura was an increasingly popular yet ridiculed mixture of all imaginable dishes, served in one large plate.
Bryo and Kim picked up the dishes and went to the kitchen. Jobo remembered that the previous day, it was Max and Boi who had cleaned up. Roba wiped the table with a very white cloth.
"You guys have fascinating lives here," Jobo said. "Out there, you are all macho. It's hard to imagine the lot of you washing dishes and cleaning up."
"Life happens," Boi said. "Having to choose between washing dishes and being in a six-by-six hole, I'd rather wash the dishes over and over again." Then he stood and headed into the bedroom.
Jobo walked to the sitting room, where a collage of photos was pasted on a faded notice board. Some of the photos had come off, leaving patches where they had been pinned.
"Why do you always look at that photo?" Roba asked him.
"I don't know. It just makes me wonder. Why did this man carry his things? These photos must hold a lot of memories for the owner of the house."
The owner of the house—and Jobo only guessed it because he was the common feature in most of the photos—was stout with a balding head.
"Maybe we will never know," Roba speculated. "It is said he moved with only a suitcase to his up-country home. Anyway, how is the tournament going?"
"We are playing our first game today," Jobo told him, then added, "That is, if we can find enough players. Kocha was looking for more players today."
"Kocha is so dedicated. Perhaps too dedicated. It might disappoint him. And if it does, it will destroy him. Football is all he has."
"Let's hope we succeed," Jobo said. "If this time we make it further up the league, who knows what would happen? You know, they are scouting for talent for the national team."
Roba nodded. "There was a fight here yesterday," he said out of the blue.
"What? Why?"
"People ganged up against Boi."
"Why would they do that?"
"Boi is not one of us. Everyone hates him and he knows it."
"What do you mean one of you? Aren't you all here for the same reason? To stay safe and alive?"
"Yes we are, but all of us are here for the wrong reason."
Jobo wanted to react, but stopped when he noticed that his brother was going to say something more.
"The rest of us are victims of mistaken identity, Jobo. But he is a mgondi."
"He's a gangster?"
"Yes. Remember the petrol station that was robbed in Westlands a few months ago, where four attendants were shot dead? He was involved."
"Wow. Do the mothers know?"
"They do. He is only here because his mother is from Dando and a member of Mama Bora, otherwise we'd have thrown him out of the Andaki."
Jobo looked away. "You don't throw people out of the Andaki. That is why it's called Andaki. It's a safe house."
Roba turned his head down.
For a long time in Jobo's life, he had seen Roba as the big brother—the dependable bully, the one who harassed him all the time but also defended him from other bullies in school, the one his mother always trusted to take care of him. Now, to see him broken, cloistered up at the Andaki, was something nobody wished to behold.
* * *
Jobo removed the headphones from the machine. Another Kalamashaka song was playing:
Nakumbuka saa mbili usiku nikiona
ule mzee akishikwa koo,
balaa! Nashindwa, nikimbilie nani,
jambazi, hapana!
Polisi, hapana!
Watanitia pingu hata bila sababu.
I remember at eight o'clock seeing a man being mugged.
I wondered who to run to,
the thugs? No!
the police? No!
They would put me in cuffs even if I was innocent.
The three men were silent.
"These musicians were always ahead of their time," Max said.
Everyone nodded in agreement.
"But they lived in better times," Bryo added as he walked to a water dispenser beside the dining table. "At least those days all you feared from the police was being handcuffed. Nowadays, if they come for you, ni kukang'wa." He flashed his forefinger across his neck to gesture slitting.
"So what do you guys do every day, holed up here?"
"Nothing much," Kim said. "We play games, sleep, watch movies, and sleep some more. I know you are about to say that we must be living the life, doing all those things that our mothers would be haranguing us about at home, but nothing is further from the truth. There is nothing worse than being holed up here."
Max came in at that moment and jumped in: "There is a dartboard outside that we can't play lest passersby hear us. It is a prison without the wardens—"
"You boys need to stop whining," Boi's voice cut in. He was standing in the doorway, arms akimbo. "Would you rather be dead?" The silence was enough to answer him. "Because that is what awaits you outside,
beyond the gate."
Nobody spoke.
"Yes," he was now emboldened, "you should be on your knees, thanking God for everything, and praying for more miracles—like for the owner of this house not to decide to bring it down and build apartments like the rest are doing. You need to pray for the women of Mama Bora to be more united and for them to continue to make more money to pay for the rent and food. Otherwise you will all be felled like houseflies."
When he was agitated, his "man boobs" shook even more. Jobo would have smiled were it not for the gravity of the situation.
When he saw that his words had hit home, Boi exclaimed, "Haiya! Why are you not on your knees?" This relaxed the air, and a few people smiled.
"I didn't know you to be religious," Roba said.
"I am not religious," the young man responded. "I mean, not in the way other people are. But I have seen things that have shaken my entire belief system. How come, out of all my friends, I was the only one spared? Why me?"
"Someone said that everyone has a day written down when he will go," Kim said. "That was perhaps not your day."
"Or there is this thing about purpose," Jobo said. "They say everyone has a purpose—maybe you have not achieved yours."
Boi looked at each one of them with his piercing eyes. "Why did Kisii spare me? Why didn't he shoot me like he shot the rest, yet all of us were lying down waiting for the bullets to splatter our brains away?"
Jobo noticed that everyone looked toward the door. The mention of the name Kisii had a drastic effect on everyone in Dandora.
Jobo had never met Kisii. Not many people had seen him. It is said that the only people who had seen him did not live to tell others what he looked like.
That is why those who have been through the other end of Kisii's gun and lived to tell the story were treated specially here, as if they had just returned from the world of the dead.
Kisii was loved by few and hated by many. His reign of terror over Dandora and other Eastlands estates had spanned more than ten years. Jobo started hearing about him when he was still in lower primary school. If a child misbehaved, the mother would threaten to call the policeman Kisii and the kid would behave instantly.
Eastlands had been, for a long time, home to many vigilante groups; from the 42 Brothers to, lately, the Mungiki. The latter was a semireligious outfit that had, in the early days, aims of taking the people back to their traditional culture. But it is said that the group, known for their dreadlocks, morphed from cultural-religious to a political outfit. And when the politicians were tired of them—or achieved what they wanted—they turned their backs on them. Now its members had to go underground because the police came at them with guns blazing.
For some, Mungiki was evil incarnate—they controlled everything from shops to the public transportation system. Before you brought your matatu (public service van) to any route, you had to give them protection money. And each day one had to pay money to their agents, failure to which your matatu would be burned to ashes. For others, Mungiki was the savior—in an area unpoliced by the government, thugs had reigned supreme. The Mungiki as a vigilante group was said to reduce petty crime in the estates. And it was said that none of its members went home hungry—they would ensure that those who could drive got skuodi: a short round-trip assignment to a vehicle while the official bus driver took a lunch break.
Jobo remembered hearing the clip of a government minister on TV declaring a shoot-to-kill order against the Mungiki, which had grown so huge that it even distributed electricity stolen from the national grid. "We will wipe them out. I cannot tell you today where those who have been arrested are. What you will be hearing is that there is a burial tomorrow. If you use a gun to kill, you are also required to be executed."
Perhaps Jobo was too young, then, to understand the gravity of the statement—he only heard about it from his schoolteacher. But he was not too young to experience the impact of it. Kisii was born out of it. For a lot of young people in Dandora, it was a case of when, not if, Kisii and his people would come for you.
So the Mungiki went underground. They no longer paraded around with their trademark dreadlocks and snuff-sniffing ways.
When they came for Roba, Jobo was in school, so he was spared the trauma. Apparently, one of Roba's friends had been implicated in a mugging. What Roba told Jobo later was that his friend Jack had bought a secondhand phone, and it turned out that the phone had been stolen, so the police tracked it. When they arrested Jack, they made him name his best friends, just before killing him. And Roba's name was saved in the stolen phone.
Jobo was told that it was his mother's cries that stopped the policeman from shooting his brother. At the last moment, Kisii had decided against killing Roba. "Get out of here. Rudi ocha. Go back to your ancestral home. If I see you here again, I will shoot you. You hear?"
It is said that a petrified Roba nodded desperately, and then remembered something, "Lakini afande, sina ocha . . . I don't have an ancestral home, I was born here and my mother was born here as—"
This infuriated the policeman so much that he cocked his gun and aimed at Roba's head, which elicited another anguished cry from the mother.
"Wait! Don't shoot! I will take him. I will take him back home."
People in Dandora still speak today of Jobo's mother's bravery. Who would dare grab Kisii's pistol?
And that is how Roba found himself in Andaki.
Bryo had a different story. He met an uncle of his on the way to school. The uncle, who seemed to be in a crazy rush, gave him a bundle to keep in his school bag. "I will come for it later," the uncle said before running off. Bryo was to learn later, when the police came to pick him up at school, that underneath the banana leaves and wrapping paper was a gun, and that they had shot his uncle dead.
Bryo wasn't on the list of people the police were eyeing. Still, he had to leave because he had been entered into Kisii's notebook.
Very few people knew about Andaki. If Roba had not been taken to the safe house, neither he nor Jobo would have been aware of its existence.
Jobo knew that Mama Bora was a group drawn from the women of Dandora. What he did not know was that each month they contributed toward rent for Andaki. It served the people who had no up-country home to go to when ordered so by the police. And each week, one of the women whose sons were at the safe house provided food for all the occupants.
Bullets hu-fly
babies hu-die
mothers hu-cry
na siku zina pass by.
Bullets fly,
babies die
mothers cry
as days pass by.
"Hey! I got to go now!" Jobo said, standing up suddenly as if the song were a wake-up call. "The game awaits."
"All right, Roba," Kim replied. He walked into the kitchen and brought out the bag of dishes.
"As always, we are very thankful," Bryo said as he stretched out his hand for a fist bump.
The bag was lighter.
Joba glanced at Roba as he prepared to leave. His brother stood as well and led him out.
"All the best," Roba said. "Perhaps you will get your big break soon. And get us out of this estate once and for all."
Jobo nodded. "Kocha told us that you never know who is watching the tournament games. It could be one of those scouts."
Roba opened the gate and ushered Jobo out. But a rush of footsteps made them pause.
Before they could react, there was a blur of fast movement and the gate swung open wider. Roba immediately fell to the ground. There was another flash of movement and Jobo felt a gush of wind as a blow connected with his stomach.
"Stupid! Lala chini! Get on the ground!" came a rough order.
Jobo looked up, still grimacing in pain. There were six or so men—he was not sure—standing over the two boys, each holding machine guns at the ready.
He did not need to be told who they were.
"Lie down with your hands on your head!"
The boys quickly obeyed.
From the corner of his eye, Jobo saw the men move into the house. But then they disappeared from his line of vision. He was about to raise his head to see what was happening when the sole of a shoe rammed into his skull.
"Stupid!" someone yelled above him.
He actually felt his brain move even as a thousand stars flew inside his head. He shut his eyes tightly to ward off the pain.
"Wacha ujinga!" he heard Roba's urgent whisper. Stop being stupid.
In another minute Jobo heard a series of loud crashes and shouts from the house. Someone screamed.
And then suddenly a gunshot split through the air. Jobo pushed his face deeper into the concrete.
Orders were barked.
"Lala chini!" Lie down!
"Toka nje!" Get out!
"Where are the others?"
Jobo felt several bodies falling next to him, and heard their groans as they hit the ground
"Here is the last of the lot," someone said a moment before another body hit the ground. "Stupid fool, hiding in the ceiling. What kind of low-life criminal are you?"
They were ordered to lie on their stomachs but with their hands on their heads.
Jobo could not resist it anymore. He opened his eyes slowly. They were surrounded.
"Vijana!" Young men! "Leo mtajua cha mtema kuni."
They had said that when you see Kisii, you will know it. From the way the rest of the officers looked at him, it was obvious that the man who had just spoken was the squad leader.
Kisii.
He was middle-aged with a slight build. On his head was a red cap. He wore a leather jacket a size too big, blue jeans, and Sahara shoes.
"Did you think you would hide here forever?" he spat. "Haven't you ever heard of the long arm of the law? Well, today you will know. You better start saying your last prayers."
He cocked his gun.
"Afande," Roba spoke up, his voice shaking, "please spare my brother here . . . he was just bringing us food . . ."
Kisii folded his hands. "Bringing you food, eh? Bringing food to a bunch of criminals is the same as being a criminal. He will go the same way as all of you."