by Unknown
‘Well, there’s one here outside my house and it looks just like yours. It’s a green Mercedes, and it has a sticker on the window – an AIDS Aware one, you know? – and one from the Ornithological Society too. I’ve got the registration number here – NHI 572.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Mbikwa. That is my car. It was stolen last weekend.’
‘Yes, I wondered if that might be the case. Such things seem to happen so often in Nairobi these days. What would you like me to do?’
Mr Malik thought fast.
‘I think it would be best if I came and got it. I have a spare key. Perhaps if you could tell me where I might find it?’
Rose gave Mr Malik her address and went to run her bath. She had not noticed that AIDS sticker on Mr Malik’s car before, though on thinking about it such a thing seemed perfectly in keeping. By the time she had finished her bath and got dressed for the day ahead, the old green Mercedes with the back window stickers was gone. That was strange. She had thought he would have called in.
Back in his chair on the veranda of his house in Garden Lane and over a second cup of Nescafé (an unusual event – he had not drunk more than one cup of Nescafé at breakfast since that dreadful day his wife died), Mr Malik took stock of the situation. He had his car back, though despite searching every crack, corner and crevice he had not found the missing notebook. There was another problem. The rules of the competition were clear; there was to be no contact with Rose Mbikwa – personal, telephonic or epistolary, nor through any third person nor by any other means. He hadn’t meant to, but Mr Malik had broken that rule. It had not been him who had called, though, it had been her. He could hardly have slammed down the phone on hearing her voice. Oh well, he’d just have to wait and see what the Committee would say. At least he had been able to retrieve the car without actually seeing her.
But ah, the sound of her voice. The words of an old song came back to him, one he hadn’t heard since leaving London in the 1960s – had it been Dusty Springfield? ‘I’m in meltdown, I have no choice. Meltdown when I hear your voice.’ That was just how Rose Mbikwa’s low contralto on the other end of the line had made him feel. It was how he still felt. Could it be that he might actually win this strange competition? Was it possible that Rose Mbikwa would accept his invitation to the Hunt Club Ball? Was it possible, could it be that he would dance with her, and once more hear her soft voice speak his name?
Birds. He needed more birds. Mr Malik sighed a long sigh, followed by another so loud that Benjamin, who had by this time finished sweeping round the house and driveway and was halfway across the lawn, looked up.
‘Ah, Benjamin.’
Was Mr Malik at last going to say something about the arboretum?
‘Benjamin, how long have you worked for me now?’
‘For five months and a half, sir. Since the end of the little rains.’
‘Yes, good. Five months, eh? And on your days off, do you ever go home?’
‘No, sir. Not yet, sir. Perhaps soon, when I have saved enough money.’
What with the price of bonbons and Coca-Cola (not to mention having to replace one complete set of clothes – including shoes) Benjamin had been finding it harder than he’d thought to save money in the big city.
‘On the bus, how long would it take you?’
‘Four hours, sir. That is if there is one puncture. If there are more punctures, perhaps longer.’
‘What if there were no punctures?’
‘Then not so long, sir.’
What had the boy said about seeing more birds in his village than in Nairobi?
‘Benjamin,’ said Mr Malik. ‘I think it’s time you had a holiday.’
Heading out of Nairobi down to the plains and the wide rift valley you can take either the high road or the low road. The high road is newer and better, but being newer and better it takes the most traffic. The low road is narrower and bendier, but you are slightly less likely to encounter an overloaded truck coming at you on the wrong side of the road, or fifty people standing round a bus watching the driver fix that morning’s first puncture. Mr Malik chose to take the low road and reached Naivasha just two hours after leaving Number 12 Garden Lane.
It was dry down on the plains, and hot. The long rains had not been good and the short rains were not due for many months. In the fields the maize grew stunted and brown. Nor was there any greenness left in what little coarse grass still stood uneaten by sheep and goats, while the animals themselves stood thin and listless in the sparse shade of the thorn trees. Perhaps it had not been such a good idea to come here. This was no place for birds.
After one more hour of driving north, just after a large sign assuring him that Omo still washes whiter, Mr Malik found himself being directed by an excited Benjamin on to an unmarked dirt road. When they slowed down to allow a scrawny cow and her even scrawnier calf to move aside, the cloud of brown dust that they created behind them caught up with the car. It was some minutes before Mr Malik could see far enough ahead to drive on.
‘That is my uncle’s cow, sir. When I left here she had no calf. It is good that she has a calf.’
Mr Malik supposed that it was.
‘How far now?’ he said.
‘We are nearly at the school, sir,’ said Benjamin. ‘After the school, just three miles.’
Eritima Primary School proved to be a one-roomed wooden building just off the road. Behind it was a much smaller building, presumably the schoolmaster’s house. To one side was a soccer pitch, only distinguishable from the rest of the bare earth that stretched out all around it by the presence of two crooked wooden goals. Some children seemed to be running a race between them. None of them seemed to be wearing shoes.
‘That is my school, sir. That is where I did my learning. It is a very good school. They are practising for sports day.’
‘Ah, I see. But why is the school not in the village? Why is it so far away?’
‘The electricity, sir. Here there is electricity, but not in the village, not yet.’
Mr Malik could see that the thin power line that they had been following since the turn-off did indeed end at the schoolmaster’s house.
They were now heading towards some low hills, bare and brown as the country all around. The road began to climb and got rougher. Mr Malik slowed down, guiding the old Mercedes between boulders and wash-outs.
‘There, sir. There is my village.’ They had reached the crest of the hill and Benjamin was pointing down into the small valley below. ‘That is where I was born. That is where my father and mother live. It is a very good village.’
Mr Malik had been expecting to see a collection of huts surrounded by bare earth and brown dust, like the school back there. But it was not bare and it was not brown. He stopped the car.
Most of the buildings appeared to be along one main street, and behind each was a patch of bright green. More fields of green stretched out down the valley. Some kind of crop must be growing. In countless square miles of arid brown, the little village was a green oasis.
A few minutes later and they were in the village street, surrounded by a crowd of smiles. It seemed to Mr Malik that he was introduced to every man, woman and young child in the village, and that every one of them was Benjamin’s father, mother, aunt, uncle, or cousin. He had expected to see a stream or river running through the village – how else to explain the gardens of beans and tomatoes and the crops of maize and sorghum? There was indeed a river, but its course was marked not with rippling water but sand and dry stones.
‘The water, Benjamin, where does it come from?’
‘From the spring, sir. From the spring beneath the mountain. It is a very good spring. Come, I will show you. That is where we will see the birds.’
32
The single-engined Cessna 207 Skywagon made a low circle of the small town before touching down at Kakamega airstrip just before nine o’clock. Its appearance over the town had been a signal to the Kakamega’s only taxi driver. The plane’s three passengers had
no more than minutes to wait until a Peugeot 504 – of slightly more recent vintage than Rose Mbikwa’s but of similar appearance – arrived to take them to the guesthouse. Built in the 1930s by the local sawmill owner in the shade of one of the few Elgon olive trees he had not yet cut down, cut up and sold, the Kakamega Guesthouse not only does a fine breakfast but is an excellent place to see birds that you will see nowhere else in Kenya – including the strangely named Turner’s eremomela.
Ever since 1735 when the Swedish naturalist Carl von Linné published his great Systema Naturae, each species of plant and animal has been known to science by a unique binomen, a combination of two words that apply to it and it alone. I, for instance, am a member of the species Homo sapiens. You probably are too. The lion is Panthern leo, the lamb a junior member of the species Ovis aries. Birds are not exempt from Linnaean nomenclature. The black kite, which you may remember meeting at the start of the narrative, is known to ornithology as Milvus migrans. The cinnamon-chested bee-eater rejoices in the alter nomen of Merops oreobates. Which has all made life a lot easier for ornithologists, who can be absolutely sure that when they are talking to each other about a bird they are talking about the same bird.
Among English-speaking birdwatchers – and a recent UK survey suggests that 87.4% of the birdwatchers worldwide use English as their first language (with a worrying 85.1% using English as their first and only language) – there have been concerted efforts over the years to do the same kind of thing with the common names of birds. In the brave new ornithological world thus envisioned, each of the world’s 10,000 or so bird species will be given an English common name and only one common name. What might once have been called a merle in Scotland and a blackbird in England will now be officially known as the common blackbird. Philomel and stormcock are out, common nightingale and mistle thrush are in. Going further afield, people in the US have been calling the red-breasted Turdus migratorius a robin for several hundred years while people in England have been calling a different bird by the same name for considerably longer without anyone being too worried about it. From now on the former is to be known as the American robin, to distinguish it from the (unfortunately unrelated, but you can’t have everything) bird which has prior claim on the name, the European robin. Whether we can expect Americans to give up ‘chickadee’ and adopt the older English word – ‘tit’ – I am not so sure.
But what about the 60% or so of bird species not fortunate enough to live in an English-speaking country? Take, for example, the small sprightly greyish bird with white throat, a black band across its chest and a patch of chestnut brown on its forehead that goes by the scientific name of Eremomela turneri (a combination of the latinized forms of the Greek ερνμoμεΛ or ‘desert songster’ and the name of its European discoverer, the eccentric English naturalist and epicure Henry ‘Mad Harry’ Turner). What shall we call it – Turner’s desert songster? The trouble with this is that although most members of the genus Eremomela are indeed found in deserts, this particular species is known only from rainforest. The chestnut-fronted black-banded white-throat? Getting a little clumsy, I think you will agree. When presented with birds of this type – and especially, for some reason, if they are small – those in charge of such matters usually settle for an anglicized version of the scientific name and leave it at that. Cisticola hunteri has thus become Hunter’s cisticola; Apalis ruddi is known to all serious birdwatchers as Rudd’s apalis; our little friend Eremomela turneri is now described in popular guides to the birds of East Africa as Turner’s eremomela. And the only place where it is found, as you may remember George telling Harry Khan recently at the Nairobi Hilton, is Kakamega Forest in western Kenya.
‘Did you see that ostrich again when we were taking off?’
Harry spooned the last piece of orange flesh from a slice of pawpaw. Now, should he go for the scrambled eggs or the poached?
‘Ostrich?’ said George. ‘No. Anyway we’ve seen ostriches – right, Davo? Is there any bacon?’
‘Behind the sausages.’ The three of them were sitting at one of the tables on the veranda. ‘What are they made of, do you think, Kenyan sausages?’
‘I was once taken round a sausage factory in Toronto,’ said Harry. ‘Whatever’s in these ones it can’t be any worse. What’s the plan?’
‘The plan is… hang on a minute.’ David put down his fork and grabbed his binoculars. ‘Blimey O’Reilly. Look over there – George, Harry.’
‘Where?’ Harry pointed his own binoculars up into the dense tree canopy where something large was crashing about among the foliage. ‘Oh yeah, I can see it.’ He lowered the binoculars and rubbed his eyes. He raised them again. ‘I can see it but I’ve never seen anything like it. What the hell is it?’
‘That,’ said David, consulting his guidebook, ‘is Corythaeola cristata, your genuine large-as-life, one-and-only, great blue turaco.’
Ah yes, the great blue turaco. When the prizes are given out for the most unlikely bird, the great blue turaco will be lining up among the best of them. Take a chicken. Give it a large yellow beak with a red tip. Now give it a nice long tail. What colour shall we make it? A bit of red underneath perhaps, and its breast a nice apple green. We’ll make most of the rest of it bright blue – blue head, blue neck, blue wings, blue back – though what about a bit more yellow under the tail and a smart black bar at the end? So far it’s looking good but I can’t help thinking there’s something missing. I know. To set off that black band on the tail what we really need is a large black fan-shaped crest, right on the top of its head. There, what do you think? Is that an unlikely-looking bird or is that an unlikely-looking bird?
‘It’s wonderful,’ said Harry.
‘It’s amazing,’ said George.
‘It’s astounding,’ said David, helping himself to some more bacon.
The turaco, which had settled down in full view at the end of a dead branch to preen its spectacular plumage, was now joined by another.
‘Tok,’ said the first bird.
‘Tok. Tok. Tok,’ said the second.
‘Tok. Tok. Tok. Tok. Tok. Tok,’ replied the first, which seemed to be some sort of turaco in-joke because both birds began a loud wheezy chuckle.
‘That,’ said Harry, ‘is definitely one for the list.’
‘Mmm,’ said David. ‘Hang on – what happened to all the sausages?’
33
At the club Mr Patel was transcribing the names of the birds that Harry Khan had seen that day. Though Turner’s eremomela was notable on the list only by its absence (it is a very small bird, and it is rather drab) the Kakamega list was impressive. Below the great blue turaco were no fewer than twenty-six other new species, most of which the trio had spotted coming down to drink at the bird bath which the thoughtful and aviphilic guesthouse owners had set up in the garden.
‘Twenty-seven today,’ said Patel with a smile. ‘Pretty good going, Khan. That makes one hundred and ninety-nine in total.’
But on catching Mr Gopez’s eye he turned down the corners of his mouth and raised his eyebrows in worried apprehension. Harry Khan was now more than sixty ahead. What chance did Malik have now? And where was Malik anyway?
The Tiger too had noticed the hands of the club clock were only minutes from the hour. A small knot of members were clustered around outside the main door scanning the entrance driveway.
Mr Malik had in fact left Benjamin’s village in plenty of time to return to Nairobi by eight o’clock. It had taken them two and a half hours to get to the village. He calculated that if he left by four o’clock – no, make that three o’clock to allow for unforeseen hold-ups – he would make it to the club well before the evening count. But some hold-ups are more unforeseen than others – especially if they involve the use of one or more Kalashnikov AK47 assault rifles.
Of the approximately 70 million of these rugged and reliable firearms that have been manufactured since 1947 in a variety of locations, a not inconsiderable number have found their way to Kenya. N
o one knows exactly how many, for the guns are seldom in official hands but rather in the hands of criminals, bandits, gangsters, cattle rustlers and others of nefarious intent. Which is a pretty accurate job description of the two men who, as Mr Malik and Benjamin were driving away from the village and had almost reached the main highway, stepped out from behind a large advertising hoarding (remember Omo washes whiter?), AK47s cradled casually in their arms.
Two schools of opinion exist in Kenya on what to do when confronted by this kind of situation. Some say you should put your foot down and hope for the best. The other view is that you should on no account risk your life by so foolhardy an action. The correct thing to do is to stop, get out of the car with your hands up, and only then hope for the best. Mr Malik, you will remember from the recent incident in City Park, is of the latter persuasion. Under pretty much any imaginable conditions life is more important than property. Material things can be foregone or replaced. A life, once taken, cannot. On seeing the men with guns, this was Mr Malik’s first thought. But even as he was thinking it a second thought occurred to him. If these men were to take his car he would never get back to the club in time for the count. If he did not get back in time he would lose the competition, and so lose the chance to take Rose Mbikwa – whose lovely voice that very morning had spoken his name on the telephone and still echoed in his ears – to the Hunt Club Ball. A third thought occurred to him. If he drove away it would not be just his life he would be risking. He had a passenger, and that passenger was not only an innocent boy but had just helped him see so many of the bird species of Kenya that he could still be in with a chance to take the woman of his dreams to the Hunt Club Ball. The thoughts were not sequential but simultaneous, as was his decision. He must stop the car. At that moment his passenger spoke.
‘Go, Mr Malik! Go!’
And his right foot, which had been about to move from the accelerator pedal to the brake, slammed down hard. The car was in second gear. The rear wheels, instead of powering the car forward, lost their grip on the dry dusty road and started to spin. Mr Malik had but a glimpse of the startled faces of the men with guns before he and they were enveloped in a thick cloud of dust.
