Echoes From a Distant Land

by Frank Coates

  Seventy miles away from Cook’s farm at Fort Hall, he climbed aboard a freight car and hid in a consignment of timber bound for Nairobi.

  He awoke next morning feeling there was something wrong. He lay in his half-awake state within the timber stacks and realised the train had stopped rocking.

  He peeped out of his hiding hole and gawped at the town beyond the railway siding. It bustled like a beehive.

  He scampered across the tracks and joined the throng. There were people of many tribes and nationalities. He saw an Indian man driving a donkey loaded with bundles of silks with his many black-veiled wives trotting behind. There was a pair of spear-carrying Maasai warriors who gave him a curious glance as they passed. And two small boys were pushing and pulling a large white woman in a wheeled carriage. There were stores large and small. Some sold fragrant spices. Others had fresh meat hidden in swarms of flies, and still others sold tools and shiny cooking implements. He passed a bakery and the aroma of fresh bread made his stomach churn. He’d not eaten for thirty hours.

  He wandered the streets until he found the market, where he tried to find work in exchange for food. No one was prepared to offer him a chance.

  In desperation, he collected some spoiled fruit and vegetable leaves from the sweepings; and he spent his first night in Nairobi with a pain in his stomach, sleeping under a couple of burlap sacks among a pile of fruit crates.

  He had never been so alone.

  After a month of near-starvation, when Jelani had to beg to survive, he finally had some luck.

  While scavenging among the refuse in the foul-smelling town dump, he found a discarded boot-cleaning kit. He’d seen the boys earning tips by cleaning shoes outside the hotels and business houses. He saw it as a sign of a change of luck, and searched nearby and found a wooden stool. He took the kit away with him. Now all he needed was shoe polish to get started in what he hoped would be his lifeline.

  He had no idea where he could buy shoe polish and wandered the streets in search of a store that sold it. He found a pile of shoe polish tins — black, tan and brown — in an Indian duka off River Road. The proprietor was a large Sikh — a people respected by all for their aggression, and who for that reason were often employed as guards. He already had his eye on Jelani when he entered the store, but Jelani had by that time calculated the head start he’d need to outpace the heavily built Indian.

  He strolled around the store looking with interest at a number of items, avoiding the shoe polish and touching nothing. The Sikh hovered.

  A prospective customer entered and the Sikh’s attention was momentarily diverted. Jelani leaped into action. Grabbing three tins, he bolted for the door, but the Sikh was more nimble than Jelani had imagined. In an instant he planted his considerable bulk across the doorway, legs asunder.

  Jelani made a dive through his open legs and, before the big man could turn, had regained his feet and dashed away with the Sikh’s enraged insults following him down River Road.

  With his stool, shoeshine box, new tins of polish and some cotton cloths salvaged from a tailor’s shop, Jelani set up outside the New Stanley Hotel and waited for customers.

  Around lunch time a well-dressed man in a wide felt hat came around the corner from Standard Street and stopped beside his box.

  ‘How much for the shine, boy?’ It was English, but he had a strange accent.

  Jelani hadn’t considered the question of price. Now he was so excited to get a customer, he couldn’t speak. The only word that came to mind was brown — the colour of the shoes.

  ‘Well, speak up kid. What’s your price for this here pair?’

  Jelani continued to stare at the shoes. Even he could see they were of good quality leather. Finally he spluttered, ‘A-a-as you wish, sir.’

  ‘Hmm …’ the man said. ‘Can’t argue with that.’

  The customer took a seat and pulled his trouser leg up to reveal not shoes, but boots that reached his knees.

  The man laughed at Jelani’s expression.

  ‘Lucky you didn’t fix a price on these babies,’ he said. ‘I figure you’d have come out at a loss.’

  Jelani tried to smile, but he was awed by the boots. Even in his ignorance of shoes, boots and leather, he could appreciate their beauty. In their unbuffed state they had a depth of colour, almost a translucency.

  With an intake of breath, Jelani set to work. He peeled the top off the brown can of polish. It was wrong. It couldn’t do justice to the colour of the boots. They had a lighter tone. He was afraid to start in case his polish changed the highlights in the leather. He levered the top off the tan polish. It was too light.

  He’d never considered the possibility that his three different colours wouldn’t be sufficient for all leathers. Perhaps if his first customer hadn’t been the boot-wearing white man with the strange accent, he might have gained confidence in his new craft.

  Why couldn’t his first customer be a dusty settler-farmer, with scratched and bruised black work shoes such that anything done to them would be an improvement?

  Maybe any brown polish would suffice for any brown shoe, but he didn’t know if that were true. And now this man, wearing this pair of beautiful boots, would be his means of discovery. Jelani sighed. Why couldn’t they at least be black?

  Aware that he was taking far too long to start, he scooped up a dab of brown polish on his finger, and smeared it on the leather. He was right, it was too dark.

  Without hesitation, he then dipped his finger into the tan and added it beside the other.

  He could feel the owner’s eyes on him. Without considering the consequences, he mixed the two colours and smeared them all over the first boot. The result was a ghastly mess, but he continued to spread and mix the colours, here and there adding a touch more of one then the other.

  He massaged the polish into the leather, and then rubbed the boots with a cotton pad as if his life depended on it. The first cloth became clogged with polish, and he took another. After five minutes the high part of the first boot was cleaned of its excess coating and he buffed it until it was a deep, burnished brown. He worked downwards to the ankle, the toe caps, then repeated the performance on the other boot. Finally, he scrubbed the soles and heels.

  When he sat back on his haunches, the sweat trickling down his cheeks, he studied the result of his efforts. The boots had a rich lustre and depth of colour beyond imagining.

  The customer shook his head in wonder. ‘Wow,’ he said. ‘Ain’t that the goddamnedest shine you ever did see?’

  Jelani smiled; he became aware of a small group of passers-by who had stopped to watch the boots’ transformation.

  The man stood and took something from his pocket.

  ‘Here you go, son,’ he said. ‘That’s about the best shoeshine I ever did see, anywhere.’ He dropped a coin into Jelani’s hand.

  It was a shilling! A fortune! A brand-new shilling shining as brightly as the boots.

  Jelani won more customers from the group who saw him work on the American’s boots and his clientele grew steadily over the following days and weeks.

  One morning, a Kamba man arrived with his own shoeshining tools and said the New Stanley was his territory and that Jelani must move on.

  ‘Where have you been all this time?’ Jelani demanded, not prepared to start again somewhere else. ‘There was no one working here when I started.’

  ‘Never mind that,’ he said. ‘I’m here now, white face, and you better go before I smash you and your shoe box.’

  Jelani stiffened at the taunt and sized up the man. He was tall, solidly built, and in his eye there was the look of a man accustomed to getting his own way, using his size to bully others out of what was theirs.

  Jelani retired, angry with the loss of his prized position and at the Kamba man for his thuggish manner, but infuriated by the reference to his appearance.

  Jelani’s new place of business, outside the entrance to the market in Stewart Street, was very busy, with shoppers swarming past
his shoeshine box every moment of the day. But business was very slow.

  When he abandoned his position outside the New Stanley to the big Kamba ruffian, he felt confident he could start afresh elsewhere without difficulty, but before the first day had ended, he realised it wasn’t the quantity of people passing him that was important, but the quality of their footwear. Most people attending the market wore cheap sandals or no shoes at all.

  Now he regretted his cowardly retreat from outside the hotel. There his strategy to allow his customers to set their price had worked handsomely, and they gave him good tips.

  It was also the principle of the matter. He had worked hard to secure a loyal set of clients. He had managed to earn a better return on his skills because of his diligence so why should someone else profit from it?

  As he sat on his stool mulling over these thoughts, he didn’t notice a pair of fine leather shoes that stood before him until a voice drew his attention to them.

  ‘Can you do something to these old brogues for me?’

  Jelani whipped the stool from under him and slid it towards the customer.

  ‘Certainly, bwana,’ he said, diving into his box of rags and polishes.

  ‘You can call me Sam if you wish,’ he said.

  The accent had deceived him. It was the Kikuyu man who had visited Kobogi. Jelani remembered him because he’d done what he’d promised to do — returning to the village with bags of maize to help the village survive the drought. Jelani also suspected he’d spoken to the chief to allow the initiation ceremony to go ahead.

  Sam took his seat on the stool, and nothing was said as Jelani smeared polish on the well-worn but fine quality shoes.

  ‘Weren’t you working outside the New Stanley?’ he asked.

  Jelani nodded. ‘Yes. I was.’

  ‘I thought so. Now there’s a Kamba in your place. Why is that?’

  Jelani buffed the shoes vigorously. ‘He said it was his place before I came there.’

  ‘Do you believe him?’

  He paused. ‘No.’

  The man said no more as Jelani worked the polish into the leather while again stewing about the Kamba.

  When he stood, Sam asked, ‘Did you complete your initiation?’

  ‘Of course I did,’ Jelani said, miffed by the inference that he was not yet a man.

  ‘It’s not only in Kikuyuland that you must go to battle. In the city there are also good causes for which to fight.’ He paid Jelani. ‘Stand up for what you believe is right.’

  Jelani returned to the New Stanley early the next day, determined to regain his position, but the Kamba man was already there.

  Jelani put his stool down beside the Kamba. ‘Go,’ he said.

  The Kamba laughed at him.

  Without further preliminaries, Jelani lifted his wooden stool, and struck the other man on the head.

  The Kamba fell to the ground and, as Jelani stood over him with his stool raised ready to strike again, the bigger man crawled away to safety, holding his hand to his bleeding head.

  Jelani carefully set out his equipment, and awaited his first customer.

  After he finished one customer’s shoes and collected payment, Jelani raised his eyes to the next man standing in line. It was the Sikh from River Road!

  Sitting on his stool beneath the towering Indian, Jelani knew he had no chance of escape. He would be crushed like a dudu — an insect — at any moment.

  The Sikh looked down at him, nodded, and walked away, leaving Jelani stunned by his good fortune.

  The incident played on his mind for the rest of the day. In a world that had generally dealt him more than his fair share of bad luck, the Sikh’s actions made no sense.

  That afternoon, Jelani went to River Road. The Sikh nodded as he entered his duka.

  ‘Why did you do it?’ Jelani asked.

  ‘What did I do?’ He shrugged. ‘I saw you working on the street. I walked away.’

  ‘You remembered me. Why didn’t you call the askaris?’

  ‘Poosh. What would the askaris do?’

  ‘Then why didn’t you do something? I stole from you.’

  ‘Why did you steal from me?’

  Jelani thought the answer was so self-evident it was hardly worth the response. ‘Because I needed the polish,’ he replied.

  ‘Yes. Polish. I knew you were waiting until I turned my back to steal something, but I didn’t know what it was until you ran away. Polish. You had no shoes. What would you want with polish? I asked myself.’

  Jelani shrugged. ‘I needed the polish to do my shoeshines.’

  ‘You needed polish to shine shoes. Exactly. But I wasn’t sure. That is why I went to all the places I thought a boy like you might sit to shine shoes. And there you were. Doing honest business. I like that. You started as a thief and finished as a businessman.’

  Jelani smiled. ‘If I pay you for the loan of three tins of polish, am I still a thief, or just a businessman?’

  ‘Come,’ the Sikh said. ‘Show me your money, and I will give you a discount — one businessman to another.’

  CHAPTER 35

  1947

  ‘How long have you been shining my shoes, Jelani?’ Mr Singh, the stationmaster, asked.

  Jelani kept buffing the heavy black shoes as he considered the question. ‘I think nine months; maybe a year.’

  ‘That was how I am thinking,’ Singh said, nodding. ‘And you know, my wife still knows when I’ve been to see you during my lunch break.’

  Jelani smiled. ‘Of course. Because she can see her face in your shoes.’

  Singh, one of Jelani’s best customers, was a friend of the Sikh duka-owner in River Road. His black uniform with epaulets and brass buttons was always spotless and he was a striking figure with his huge white turban and white beard. Jelani enjoyed shining the footwear of well-dressed people. It somehow made him feel part of their success.

  ‘You are perfectly correct, my young friend,’ Singh replied. ‘And that is a compliment to your fine shoeshining.’

  Jelani’s puzzled expression caused Singh to elaborate.

  ‘After one year, you have not slackened in your energy. Same hard work. Same good shiny shoes. I have seen many in your position, Jelani. Oh, yes. After a while, they let a little bit go. Maybe a little slower. Maybe not so much polish-polish, busy-busy. But you, you are the same.’

  Jelani was embarrassed by the praise, and mumbled his thanks.

  ‘So you must come and work for the railways,’ Singh said, with a decisive nod of his turbaned head.

  Jelani looked up from his work.

  ‘Shining shoes?’

  ‘Ach, of course not shining shoes. Cleaning carriages. Cleaning station. There is plenty to do without shining shoes.’ He waved his hand at the collection of cloths and polishes. ‘You can throw all that away.’

  Jelani looked from Singh to his kit and back again.

  ‘I know you have nowhere to sleep,’ Singh continued. ‘You’ve been making do in a market stall on Stewart Street, or somewhere in Jeevanjee Gardens. No, that is not good. You work for railways, you get bungalow. Well … maybe a small room, but it has a door that closes and a roof that keeps off rain.’ He nodded again for emphasis. ‘So, you come to my office and we talk about pay, all right?’

  Jelani thought about it for just a moment. He didn’t know how he knew, but Singh was right. Although he’d been earning enough from shining shoes to feed and clothe himself, he couldn’t afford to rent a place to sleep. More than once he awoke to find rats crawling over his body; and on another occasion he had to fight off someone trying to steal his shoes.

  ‘I think I would like to finish with the shoeshine business,’ he said.

  ‘Very good. Now come, we talk.’

  Jelani looked down at his stool and equipment. He wouldn’t need it any more.

  As he turned to leave, Singh said. ‘Better bring little bit polish. My wife, she will not like me to go home with dirty shoes after all this time.’

&
nbsp; Jelani’s concrete box in the East African Harbours and Railways compound was, as the stationmaster had warned him, small, but it was the first place he could call home since leaving Cook’s farm over a year before.

  For most of the next year, he cleaned the carriages, station, and station outhouses for a few shillings a month.

  When the Nairobi Points Inspector’s offsider went missing, Singh nominated Jelani for the promotion. He was the only candidate and joined Harry Johnstone out on the tracks. Harry had been with the Uganda Railway for nearly fifty years — the last thirty-nine of which had been as a points inspector.

  One day they were sitting in the shade under the signals box. It was tea break time — an occasion of almost religious significance for Harry.

  ‘Yah, been here so long they’ve forgotten I’m past retirin’ age,’ he told Jelani as he dived into his Gladstone bag for his tea paraphernalia. ‘And I hope they never twig to it, either. What am I gonna do if I retire? Eh? If I hang up me oil can I reckon I’ll just roll over and die.’

  He lit a roll-your-own and parked it in the corner of his mouth.

  ‘Yes, I was a boy even younger than you, Jelani,’ he said. ‘Age of fifteen years I was when I joined the platelayer’s crew at mile 325 …’ His eyes were almost screwed shut to avoid the sting of tobacco smoke. ‘… In the place that is now called … the city of Nairobi.’

  Jelani had heard the story several times before, but he hadn’t the heart to stop Harry in any of his repeated renditions. He enjoyed hearing them almost as much as Harry enjoyed telling them.

  Harry nodded. ‘Been with the railways, man and boy, for nearly fifty years.’ Pleased with himself, he returned to preparing his cup of tea.

  They had been working together for over a year. Harry had obviously decided to take Jelani under his wing, as he had done with all his young charges over the years. Jelani had to reconsider his animosity to all white men now that he’d met at least one who treated him as a human being.

  Harry poured tea from a Thermos flask that might have been as old as the man himself. He could make a real ritual out of drinking a cup of hot tea. First, he would blow on it for a few minutes — little thoughtful puffs from his pursed lips as he curled the cup between both hands. Then he’d commence drinking it. But because it was still too hot, he’d whistle it up into his mouth with such a loud slurping sound that it reminded Jelani of a mule trying to pull its hoof out of one of Nairobi’s notorious black-cotton bogs.