Softly Calls the Serengeti

by Frank Coates

  Charlotte felt relief wash over her. ‘That’s good to hear. And the timing couldn’t be better. I’m ready too.’

  ‘When do we leave?’

  ‘Well, I was thinking about what Dr Gilanga advised.’

  ‘Which is…?’

  ‘To take a short break before getting into the real work. He’s suggested we do a few game parks. Even the Serengeti.’

  ‘How would that fit in with what we have planned?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve worked out a possible itinerary.’ She hunted inside her backpack and opened her diary. ‘Our first stop could be Lake Nakuru National Park. Then through the Great Rift Valley, picking up the first of your Maasai reservation sites on the way. Then through the Masai Mara to the Serengeti.’ She checked to see how he was receiving the idea before continuing. ‘On the way back I can visit Kisumu and other places in the Luo country.’ She looked at him. ‘How’s that sound to you?’

  ‘Sounds good,’ he said.

  ‘And I think I have a guide for us.’

  ‘A guide?’

  ‘Dr Gilanga says it’s pretty important to have a local translator. Someone who knows the area. I’ve met a Luo boy—I’d say he’s about eighteen or so—who speaks a number of languages fluently. And even better, he was born and raised near the Serengeti. I think he might be interested, for a small fee.’

  Charlotte filled him in on the details.

  ‘A street kid?’ Mark said.

  ‘He lives in Kibera. But he seems quite well-behaved.’

  Joshua gathered the thirty or so young men around him in the centre of the football pitch. It was Sunday morning. He had sent a group text message calling his team-mates, reserve players and the handful who acted as sundry helpers on game days to an important team meeting. They had won their game the previous day and so the turnout was better than usual. Everyone was in good spirits.

  Joshua spent some time recalling the high points of their victory the day before, and by the time he’d finished there was a buzz of enthusiastic camaraderie among the group. It was exactly as he’d planned, for he had matters other than football in mind.

  He held up his hands for silence, and, like an orchestra leader, waited until there was complete hush before he began.

  ‘Sawasawa. All right. It was a good win. A good victory. We Luos showed the others how to play football. Si ndiyo?’

  ‘Ndiyo!’ they chorused.

  He let the self-congratulatory clamour run its course.

  ‘Yes, we played well. We tried hard and we can be satisfied with our victory. But there is more to do. And I am not talking about football now.’ He ran his eyes around the group. ‘It is not enough that we Luos can prove ourselves on the football pitch. There is much more to do. We must find a man who will stand for us in the high places. We need someone to speak for us in the government—a Luo man. How many Luos do you know who have money?’

  The group exchanged glances. Many shrugged.

  ‘That’s right. Not many. But what about the Kikuyu? Who runs most of the stalls in Toi Market? Who owns the biggest businesses in Nairobi? And who has the biggest farms in the Rift Valley?’

  Joshua had no real knowledge of these matters, but it was Koske’s words he used. And they seemed to be working. The young men were grumbling among themselves.

  ‘How many times have you seen a job come and each time it is a Kikuyu who gets it?’

  The rumblings of discontent grew.

  ‘Are you happy with this?’

  ‘No!’ they chimed.

  ‘That is why we—all of us—must take action!’

  The group was animated now, crowing in support of Joshua’s every suggestion.

  ‘We will make changes happen in Kibera. More work for the Luos. More prosperity for our people. More money for our people!’

  The young men hooted in agreement.

  ‘To do this we must see that a Luo is our leader, not only in Kibera but for all of Kenya. Raila Odinga is our man. Our Luo leader. We must help him beat the Kikuyu Kibaki. We will go and talk to everyone here in Kibera. We will tell everyone that our only hope is with Raila.’ He ran his eye over the group. They were excited.

  ‘Raila for president!’ Joshua said, raising his fist.

  ‘Raila for president!’ they said.

  ‘Raila for president!’ he repeated, punching the air.

  ‘Raila for president!’ they yelled, and a host of fists punched the air.

  Joshua was at the head of his Siafu team-mates. Their name came from the fiery ants that overpowered their quarry by sheer weight of numbers. It was Saturday and the press of shoppers in the tight pathways between the tiny iron-clad stalls of busy Toi Market made for slow going until they began their chanting.

  ‘No Raila—No Peace…No Raila—No Peace…’ they sang.

  People pressed back out of their path.

  ‘No Raila—No Peace…’

  Many of the stall-holders were intimidated by the show of strength, but a few told the young men to be off. They said there was no need for politics in the Toi Market.

  Koske had prepared Joshua for such an outcome.

  ‘You Kikuyus have taken too much from us. No more!’ he yelled. ‘No Raila—No Peace!’ And he immediately charged to the nearest stall and upended its entire stack of fruit.

  His Siafu friends whooped in joy and joined him, tipping racks of clothes and shoes into the mud. Many of the stall-owners resisted, but with little effect. Soon there was a mêlée, with the young footballers beating up the Kikuyu and tearing down their displays.

  A whistle blast pierced the clamour of voices. Joshua noticed the Maasai security guards forming in numbers among the stalls surrounding them and called to his Siafu team members to retreat. More stalls were upset in the chase through the market that followed. The Maasai askaris shouted threats and waved their heavy wooden rungus in the air, but they could not catch the Siafu boys.

  Back in Kisumu Ndogo, the young men joked with great bravado about their adventure. Joshua was delighted with the exercise. Koske would hear of it and be pleased. In time, the Siafu would be offered more interesting assignments and receive more rewarding payments than a few pairs of cheap Chinese football boots.

  CHAPTER 15

  Simon sighed as he lowered himself to the broken cement block that his friend’s customers sat on while awaiting their shoe repairs. Behind Dede, the cobbler, was a sheet-iron wall holding racks of decrepit shoes. Above him, but not high enough so he could stand under it, was another sheet of corrugated iron to shelter him from the rain or scorching sun. The duka was no more than three metres by two and filled with the tangy-sweet smell of leather and glue.

  ‘Habari yako?’ Dede asked around a mouthful of tacks.

  ‘Mzuri,’ Simon replied desultorily while rubbing the knuckles of his right hand; the old break still gave him trouble after all these years.

  The cobbler looked up from his work. ‘Hmm…You sound like you are carrying a stone on your shoulders.’

  Dede had been Simon’s friend for years. He had the typical Luo build, only his was generally described as long, rather than tall, as there were few who had seen him unfurled from his crouch over somebody else’s shoes. Dede was his nickname, derived from the grasshopper he resembled while squatting over his last, the knees of his long legs around his ears.

  ‘What can I say?’ Simon replied. ‘Would you hear a long story about a stupid man who has chased his son from his house?’

  Dede spat the tacks into his hand. ‘Joshua?’

  Simon turned his hands up in a gesture of acquiescence.

  ‘He’s always been a strong-minded boy.’

  When Joshua was seven and Charity five, Nellie had been born. Patience, Simon’s wife, had decided she needed to earn money so they could find a larger place. She had begun to collect discarded items from among the comfortable houses of Kileleshwa and Lavington estates and, with Joshua’s help, sold them outside the markets or at the side of the road. Faith had arr
ived two years later and Joshua, at age nine, having ignored his two sisters to that time, suddenly assumed the role of protector of all three. He fussed over them and scolded them if they didn’t take care. When out with their mother, it was he who kept them in sight and shepherded them along like a sheepdog with three little lambs. The neighbourhood never referred to the Otieng children by name. Because they always seemed to be together, they became known collectively as ‘Joshua and the girls’.

  ‘But a good boy,’ Dede continued. ‘Didn’t he organise a harambee for the football team? And that was when he was just a toto. The money he raised bought beautiful football boots.’

  ‘Tee-shirts.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He raised money for football tee-shirts. So the team would look more professional in their competition games.’

  ‘Yes! I remember. A good boy, I tell you.’

  Simon’s silence made Dede shake his head. He dropped the spit-coated tacks from his hand into an old tobacco tin. ‘What troubles the boy?’ he asked.

  ‘The same troubles. We share the same terrible memories.’

  ‘But you know more about those things than the boy does, Simon. You must try to explain things to him.’

  Simon looked into his friend’s grave eyes. They were bloodshot from many years of fine work in poor light.

  ‘I’ve resisted telling him for so long. Now, when I realised my error and tried to tell him, he wouldn’t listen.’ Simon absent-mindedly pulled at strands of his hair as if he were plucking a chicken. ‘He ran off in the middle of the night.’

  ‘Then you must find him and speak your mind. Where is he?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Where have you looked?’

  ‘Kisumu Ndogo, of course. This morning I didn’t go looking for work; instead, I went to Mashimoni on the other side of Kibera. I don’t know why. People there are not talking to strangers. Now that the elections are starting, there’s so much suspicion about people from our side.’

  ‘He’ll be around somewhere,’ Dede offered in encouragement.

  ‘He’s around, yes. People have seen him. But no one knows where he sleeps.’

  ‘Maybe he stays with a friend? Someone will know.’

  Simon shook his head in despair.

  ‘Mama Hamza,’ Dede said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Mama Hamza will know. She knows Kibera. She’ll know where your boy is.’

  ‘Who is this Mama Hamza?’

  ‘A Nubian, of course. And she knows every woman in Kibera.’

  At Simon’s look of incredulity, Dede added, ‘Well, she knows many. And if you want to know what’s going on in Kibera, you must ask the women. Does any man doubt how much they can talk?’ The cobbler nodded his head by way of emphasis. ‘Mama Hamza, I tell you. She listens to the women. She knows everything about Kibera.’

  Simon had met many people in Kibera whom he’d assumed to be old but had later been surprised to learn their true age. Years of poor hygiene, inadequate food, misfortune and escalating hardships showed in the skin of most residents of the slum: it became grey and lustreless and deep lines appeared, like crevasses on a water-worn hillside. Eyes clouded and hair became lank. Those who had no spirit to continue the daily battle succumbed.

  Mama Hamza was old in years, but she was far from beaten. When Simon introduced himself, her agile eyes searched his face and then his soul as she probed him with questions. They seemed to be more about Simon himself than his missing son, but his concern about Joshua encouraged him to press on.

  He answered quickly—too quickly, it seemed to him—but in his search for her he’d heard so much of her work helping others that he worried that she might have little time to spare for him, a person with such trivial problems.

  There was no doubt that Mama Hamza was a Nubian. Her shining jet-black skin, her silver loop earrings and colourful headscarf, her bold-patterned white dress with the big red rose motif—all these were the colourful trademarks of her people. Her age showed in the gaps between the few large teeth that still adorned her generous mouth.

  The Nubians were the original landholders of the area now known as Kibera. After the Great War, the Nubian soldiers were demobbed in what was to become the colony of Kenya. They reminded their British leaders that they had faithfully served the mother country against the Germans in Africa and elsewhere, and would it not be reasonable to expect a stipend in the form of some land where they could settle? They were, after all, British servants and, under the colonists’ own definitions, ‘landless natives’. The administrators were forced to agree.

  To the south-west of Nairobi, where the railway tracks first rose from the swamplands surrounding the new township, was a forest. It was land totally unsuited for farming and therefore of no use to the settlers the British hoped to attract to the colony. The Nubian soldiers were told they could have the forest—the kibra as it was called in Nubian. However, no title was issued to formalise the bequest and the Nubians never thought to ask. Fifty years later, the colony of Kenya gained its independence and the kibra became Kibera—a desirable piece of land on the very edge of the burgeoning capital. But still there was no title and all two and a half square kilometres of the area remained without administration and largely unmanageable.

  Those with connections to the new positions of power began gradually to acquire control over Kibera. The Nubians were warriors before they became foot soldiers for the British; they had never been businessmen and didn’t realise the value of their estates. They preferred to exchange their surplus land for more useful things like money or goods. Soon they were reduced to tenants on an ever-diminishing portion of their original forested inheritance.

  ‘Why have you come to me?’ Mama Hamza asked after Simon had finished telling her about his runaway son. ‘What would you say to him if you found him?’

  ‘There is so much…’

  ‘What would you say?’ she persisted.

  ‘I would tell him the truth.’

  The old woman’s eyes twinkled. ‘What is the truth?’

  He began to explain what had happened in 2002, but she waved her hand at him.

  ‘We all have our idea of what is the truth,’ she said. ‘I know this much. There was madness in Kibera that night. Rape. Looting and burning. You would do well to remember that madness before you ask your son to understand what you call the truth. Do you know what happened that night, Simon?’

  He had thought he knew exactly what had happened, but the way she posed the question made him wonder if in fact he did. Perhaps his memory had caused him to misinterpret the events of that unforgettable night. Even now, after five painful years, his recollections were too horrible to relive. He was old enough to know that time could distort the truth, particularly if the memory was painful. Surely, he couldn’t be mistaken, but there could always be doubt.

  ‘I think so,’ he said at last.

  ‘Then you should find your son and tell him what you believe to be the truth.’

  ‘Do you know where I can find him?’

  ‘Kibera is still a very large forest. A forest of people. Who can say where one boy can hide if he chooses to remain hidden? There are more places to hide than leaves on the trees.’ Her wrinkled eyes creased, revealing the many smile lines. ‘But I will ask the women for you.’

  Mama Hamza followed Kibera Drive as far as she could before entering into the maze of narrow, unpaved alleys that snaked among the slab huts, lean-tos and shacks that comprised the majority of housing in the slum settlement.

  Kibera Drive was a useful pedestrian highway, but the people whom Mama Hamza needed to talk to were not to be found there. They were in the alleys where the brief greeting became a chat that almost always led on to more weighty matters. Was it true that the police had rounded up dozens of Odinga supporters? Had she heard about the carpenter with seven children who had been shot during a demonstration in Makina? Courtesy decreed that none of the gossip was treated as trivial.

&nb
sp; Occasionally she met folk who gave her more useful information—like Jared, a short-order chef at a local hotel, who had bought buckets, squeegees and sponges for a group of local youths to form a car-wash service on Ngong Road. Like many within the slum, Jared was a good-hearted person who did what he could for the community. He had noticed that a few of the local boys were getting into mischief, and worse, and had decided to do something about it. Although struggling to raise his own young family, he took no share of the boys’ income; instead, he distributed it among them, keeping a small portion for future improvements. Mama Hamza had been helping Jared to get council approval for a power outlet so the young men could operate a steam carpet-cleaner to improve their services. As usual, the council were less than helpful. Jared was loath to use the youths’ hard-earned cash on a bribe, but that appeared to be the only way to go. Mama Hamza had promised to speak to someone on his behalf. She gave Jared an account of her meetings, which appeared to be achieving some positive results, and hurried on.

  There was more talk as she went, much of it about the forthcoming elections. Would the counting be conducted fairly this time? What did Mama Hamza think of this or that candidate? She tried to keep her replies non-committal. It paid to be discreet in such matters. Her community consisted of women from all tribes and political leanings.

  The underlying concern was whether the election process could be completed without the violence of 2002. Mama Hamza was careful to be reassuring, but her true thoughts were not so confident. The broad network that extended from her own Kibera Women’s Association to the larger Kibera population formed a barometer of local public sentiment. In 2002, the women had expected violence during the election campaign and polling. When it was so, they were shocked but not surprised. Now, it seemed history may be about to repeat itself. Last week, Mama Hamza had heard that a duka used by a Kikuyu man to sell second-hand clothing had been set alight during the night. Two days later, a Kisii hairdresser’s shack had been robbed before it too was burnt. It had begun again. She could only pray to Allah that the end results would not be the same this time.