by Meja Mwangi
KILL ME QUICK
by
Meja Mwangi
HM BOOKS
Published by HM Books
Copyright © 1972 by Meja Mwangi
All rights reserved
First HM Edition 2017
ISBN 978 - 0 - 9820126-1-1
Cover photo by George Hallet
Contact: [email protected]
www.mejamwangi.com
HM BOOKS
For the Mejas and Mainas waiting and hoping.
Chapter One
Meja sat with his shoes swinging over the sewage water that dripped from a hole in the back wall of the supermarket and flowed under the culvert he was sitting on. He was tall and lean, with short and neatly combed hair, and wore an oversize black suit, a tie, and a pair of oversize black shoes that his father had lent him.
He saw a beggar walking up the road peeking inside dumpsters and talking to an invisible companion. A man in a grey suit rushed past with his hand over his nose, and a woman in high shoes hurried in the opposite direction covering her nose against the stench. A woman with a baby on her back talked and laughed as she sifted in the rubbish around the dumpsters. More people passed by, some rushing and others not.
Meja saw them, as he sat in his ill-fitting suit with the stench of the backstreet in his nose, and worried. He had had been in the city three days. He was yet to find something that did not scare him. The busy people, the heavy traffic, and the tall buildings, filled him with awe. He had landed in a strange world where everyone was an adversary, every vehicle a dangerous beast and every building a dark dungeon. It was not what they had said he would find in the city. This was not the place of his dreams. How would he survive it?
Maina hopped out of the dumpster with a paper bag in each hand and joined him.
“Food,” he said, dropping the bags at their feet.
Maina was shorter than Meja, but he was just as lean and as hard, and his hair was a dusty, twisted bush on his head. He wore tattered overalls black with oil from the discarded oilcans and old bottles that he collected from the garbage bins for recycling.
He sat down and started sorting the bags. One bag had fruit; squashed bananas, mouldy oranges, and a pawpaw that was just a mushy mess at the bottom. In the other bag were a dry loaf of bread, chocolate that looked like shoe polish and some hard scones.
Maina broke the bread and gave Meja a piece. Meja had not eaten for some days, but the look of the food left him with no desire to eat. Maina went ahead to crunch on his piece, looking over his shoulder now and then.
“A year ago, I would not touch it either,” he said. “ I thought I would get a job and live like those people.”
Meja avoided looking them in the eyes in case one of them recognised him.
“Don’t worry,” said Maina. “They do not see us. “Only policemen and city askari see you.”
There were no police officers or city askari in sight. Maina tossed away the rotten half and ate the rest of his orange. Then he found something dark and mushy at the bottom of the bag. He scooped it with two fingers, regarded it uncertainly.
“I don’t know what this is,” he said.
He tasted it, thought about it, tasted again, and nodded. He offered it to Meja.
“What is it?” Meja asked.
“It tastes good, “ he said.
Meja shook his head.
“You are not hungry,” Said Maina.
He wrapped it in plastic and set it aside for later. Then he crunched on his bread.
“I tried to get a job,” he said, his mouth full. “Any kind of job. I went from office to office knocking on doors, and from shop to shop begging them to hire me. What qualifications? They asked. I gave them my school certificate. Experience? I told them I had just finished schooling. It was the same wherever I went. They got angry with me for wasting their time.”
Meja watched him break a scone with a rock, all the time talking and glancing over his shoulder.
“Everywhere I went, Hakuna Kazi. No vacancy. Every place I looked was hakuna kazi. There was no work.”
He tasted the chocolate, thought about it, and decided it was safe to eat. He offered it to Meja. Meja shook his head.
“It takes time,” he said. “It is hard, not impossible.”
He had arrived in the city with several of his friends, fresh from high school and, like Meja full of dreams. They lived well for a while on the little money they brought from home. Tea and bread, and sometimes a fried egg, for breakfast, ugali na sukuma in the evening. They had lived as they thought city people lived. Their money had run out before they got jobs.
He broke something in two and offered half to Meja. Meja again shook his head.
“Try an orange,” he said.
The smell aside, the orange was not too bad. Meja could eat some of it by holding his breath when he took a bite.
“Our job-seeking gang broke up, when we ran out of money,” Maina said. “Some went back home upcountry. Others ventured into Main Street to join the bag-snatchers and the pickpockets. A few took up robbery and mugging. They are all in prison, or dead.”
Maina had chosen the backstreets and the side streets, where the pace was slower and life less violent.
“The choice is yours,” he said.
“We read all those books for nothing?” Meja asked.
He could hear his peers, those who did not go to school, laugh at his plight.
“Look at him now,” he could hear them say. “He thought he was better than us. Look at him now.”
It scared him more than the police and the city askari.
Maina shrugged. He too had believed the lie, told by parents and teachers, that going to school was the way to escape the yoke. They had said it was the only way to avoid ending up as a farm ox like his father, like his uncles, and like everyone he knew. He had read every book they gave him, carried a book everywhere he went, even to the toilet, and spent every moment he had turning the pages and absorbing their content. He had studied things he did not have to, and ended up yoked to books.
Now he was through with books, with ploughs and with anything to do with farming. Sometimes, when the nights were so cold in the dumpster that he could not fall asleep, he swore he would never return home unless he got a job.
“There are two ways,” he said to Meja. “The main street and the backstreet. Then there is the way home to the jembe. I will die before I pick up another jembe.”
“Where are the jobs they said we would find in the city?” Meja asked.
Maina pointed at two mkokoteni men, their bare backs shining with sweat, unloading sacks of potatoes and carrying them inside the supermarket.
The thought of having to settle for that kind of work was terrifying. So was the prospect of going home without the job he came to find. What would he tell his people? That he had failed them and could not find work in the city like other young men his age? That they had wasted their money sending him to school? He would find a job equal to his education or die trying.
“Do that,” Maina said. “It is a waste of time, but do it.”
Meja rose to go resume his job-search. His shoes, which just that morning had cost him to polish, were covered with dust. They were getting loose on his feet too. He sat down and stuffed more newspapers in them. Then he was ready.
“We meet here for dinner,” Maina said. “Then we go find a place to sleep.”
Job seekers did not sleep at the same place two nights in a row. Sometimes the police and the city askari went around arresting homeless and unemployed people and locking them up. In three days Meja had slept in an empty dumpster, in an abandoned car in the alley, and in front of an all-night bar. Looking at the overflowing dumpsters, he wondered where it would be next.
>
“I will show you,” Maina said.
He picked up his sack. He too had arrived in the city wearing his father’s oversize suit. In less than two weeks, had sold it for food.
“You will get rid of yours too,” he said.
A suit would attract attention from policemen and askari believing it to be stolen. Beggars would think he had money, and pickpockets and mugger would target him for the same reason. Only office managers were unimpressed by job seekers’ attempt to look smart.
“ When they say to get out,” Maina said, “do not hesitate. And stay away from Main Street.”
Meja spent the afternoon going from street to street, and from office to office, climbing stairs, and knocking on doors. He talked to anyone who saw him, asked messengers if they knew of a job, and pleaded with security guards and gatekeepers to let him inside to talk to the managers. He begged secretaries to allow him to the bosses. Few asked to know his qualifications. He told them all anyway, and, in his desperation, told them again, and again, repeating himself until he could not think of what else to say.
Late in the afternoon, having bribed a security guard to let him in, he entered an office with a bad-tempered manager behind the desk.
“You are late,” the man yelled, without looking up. “I can’t interview you now. Come back tomorrow.”
Meja stood hesitated. The man looked up.
“Your brother told me you were desperate for a job,” he said. “Come back at nine, or don’t come at all. This town is full of young men who can keep time. Get out.”
Sensing Meja’s confusion, the man squinted at him.
“You are not Oliver?”
Meja shook his head.
“Who let you in?”
“The door was open.”
“Out!”
A secretary poked her head round the door.
“Oliver will not be coming,” she reported. “He says he found a real job.”
The manager threw his pen at her. She ducked and closed the door. Meja started to leave.
“Can you sell insurance?” the manager asked him.
“Insurance?”
“Mary,” he yelled. “Show this fool the door.”
The secretary handed Meja to the guard he had bribed to be allowed inside.
“I told you,” the guard said.
Meja ended up by the entrance and the sign that said, No Vacancy! Hakuna Kazi! His desperation rose, as the day wore on. He went into shops and restaurants asking to sweep the floors, and dust the tables. Any sort of work.
“Ati kazi?” said a shop assistant. “You want work here? Come with me.”
Meja had missed the No Vacancy sign by the entrance.
“You see this notice?” the man said. “It was put there when I started working here as at your age. Since then there has been no vacancy here.”
Meja gave up on the main streets after that. He turned down a side alley that led him back to the backstreets. He walked along, without caring where he went, his mind in a storm of rising despair. He passed a man urinating on a wall.
“What are you looking at?” the man yelled at him.
Meja looked away and hurried along. He tried not to look at the man searching in the trash around an overflowing dumpster. The man was collecting cans and bottles and tossing them in a sack. He found a chapatti, smelt, and dusted it. He was about to taste it when he turned and saw Meja about to pass by.
“Any luck?” he asked.
It was his friend Maina in a ragged wig. He laughed at the look on Meja’s face and took off the wig.
“I found it there,” he said.
They stepped aside for a rubbish truck to pass.
“Chapati?”
He offered the one he had just found. Meja shook his head. He pointed at a steel back gate.
“The best restaurant in the backstreets. Sometimes they throw away whole ones.”
The smell of food was overwhelming. From the smoke rising over the wall and the smells and the sounds that came through the back door, it was a busy restaurant. The sort of place that might have a job for him. Seeing the look on his face, Maina laughed.
“They do not hire school leavers,” he said, picking up his sack. “But go try your luck.”
Meja approached the steel gate, stopped uncertainly. The thought of another rejection weighed down on him. Two could handle it better than one.
“Come with me,” he said.
“They know me too well,” Maina said. “They call me chokora, the dustbin boy. They will not let us in, if we are together.”
Whether in Main Street or backstreet, Meja was alone. To try or give up, to go or stay were all up to him. Maina had fought his battles and settled for the backstreets. Meja would not give up so easily. He would never resign himself to recycling cans and bottles. He would sweep floors, shine shoes, and push a handcart if he had to.
He stepped up to the steel gate and knocked. The door made such a loud noise he stepped back startled. Maina nodded encouragingly.
“Again,” he said. “Harder.”
Meja pounded on the gate. Someone yelled from the other side. They heard footsteps approach.
“The gateman,” Maina said quickly. “Tell him you have an appointment with the manager. Better be kicked out by the manager. His name is Kaka.”
He ducked out of sight behind the dumpster. The gateman opened the door a crack.
“What?” he asked.
“I want to see the manager,” Meja said.
The man looked at Meja, looked up and down the street and again at Meja.
“I want to see Mister Kaka,” said Meja.
“Why?”
“I have an appointment.”
The man regarded him uncertainly. He had heard voices as he opened the door. Then he saw the large envelope in Meja’s hand and opened the door a little wider.
Meja squeezed through into a busy backyard clattered with sacks of charcoal, piles of firewood and smoking blazers. At one end was a man peeling potatoes and tossing them in a bathtub. Next to him was a pile of sacks of potatoes waiting to be peeled, but the man seemed to be in no hurry. Another man was washing dishes, another fanning a jiko, and three cooks were stirring pots and serving.
Meja had reason to hope. There was work at the restaurant, and the manager did not deny it.
“I have work,” he said, “but can you do it?”
Meja assured him he could.
“What can you do for me? What have you got that I can use here?”
“I have a first in chemistry,” said Meja.
“Food chemistry? Can you cook?”
“Cook?”
“Pilau, for example?” said the manager.
Meja had no idea what it was. He shook his head.
“Can you cook at all?”
Cooking was something Meja had never thought of as a job. His father did not cook and his grandfather had never cooked and they did not teach that in high school.
“I can clean,” he said.
He had to learn that in boarding school.
“Everyone here cleans,” the manager informed him.
“I have physics,” Meja pleaded.
“Gitau, my security guard, has a diploma in computer science,” said the manager. “Athumani, the potato peeler, has a degree in culinary science. Do you know what that is?”
Meja had never heard of it.
“How to feed ten customers on one potato. Athumani makes bhajia out of thin air and chapati out of potatoes. You need to do such things to work here. All my waiters have diplomas in waiting.”
Nothing Meja had studied in school had anything to do with food.
“What I need are young people who can do things with their hands and feet, and not just their heads. I will show you what I mean.”
He took Meja by the shoulder and led him out of the office to the kitchen. The kitchen was a chaotic busy place with cooks, assistant cooks and waiters rushing about and yelling at one another.
“All
these people have been to school,” he said.
He pointed at a big man in patched trousers and a greasy apron sweating over a table full of rolled chapati, with his face, and arms covered with flour.
“That is Makau,” he said. “Makau is a graduate of the University of Puna. He studied something I cannot even pronounce, and, before he came here, he tarmacked for two years looking for a job. Fortunately, his Indian girlfriend had taught him how to make chapati. Now he rolls chapati better than an Indian woman. Makau!”
The man smiled and waved.
“What did your girlfriend teach you?” the manager asked Meja.
The question took Meja by surprise. He had never thought having a girlfriend could be an advantage in looking for employment. On the contrary, he had been made to believe that a girlfriend was unnecessary distraction on a young man’s journey to the future. But he could not remember anything he learned in school that could be useful here.
“I can sweep and clean,” he said.
“That is the Gitau’s job,” said the manager. “The gateman did not go to school, so he does anything the others will not do.”
He ushered Meja out of the kitchen and back to the yard.
“Come back when you have a skill,” he said.”
“I will clean the toilets,” said Meja.
“Gitau does that too.”
“I can peel potatoes.”
The potato peeler heard and waved his knife at him.
“I can cook ugali,” Meja said.
“So can Gitau, but we do not let him do that.”
Her started to leave. Meja held his coat.
“Give me a chance,” he begged. “I will show you what I can do.”
The manager tried to shake him loose. Meja knew he was violating Maina’s first rule of survival, but he hung on. He did not want to go back to the dumpsters.
“Gitau,” the manager called at the gateman.
Meja was still begging for a chance, when he landed back in the alley with one shoe in his hand. Maina was leaning on the wall waiting. He waited until Meja finished lacing his shoes.
“I told you not to insist,” he said. “See now what they have done to your suit.”
