Softly Calls the Serengeti

by Frank Coates

  ‘A treatment program. He’s getting better every week.’

  ‘Good. That’s good. But we can talk about this later. Where are you?’

  ‘At my sister’s house in Langata,’ she said. ‘I’ve been here since the trouble started. Are you safe?’

  ‘I’m at my father’s house. Stay there until tomorrow. Maybe it’ll be all calm by then. I’ll come for you and bring you home.’

  ‘The market’s safe. Why don’t I meet you at Toi Market?’

  ‘Yes. Toi Market. Tomorrow at nine. I’d better go, not much credit.’

  ‘Okay. I love you, Josh.’

  ‘Love you too. Kwaheri.’

  Inside again, Joshua checked his texts. He had a dozen incoming broadcast messages rallying the faithful for a raid into the Kikuyu stronghold of Laini Saba, and others denouncing the government and the electoral commission in extravagant prose. There were texts from friends and team-mates demanding to know why he was absent.

  He flicked through his various news feeds. There was one he’d set up while in the national park at Nakuru. He scanned the Nakuru headlines. An item caught his eye and he opened it:

  Thugs Attack Local Driver at Londiani Roadblock.

  A roadblock set up by outraged Odinga supporters stopped a local safari operator’s car. The lone occupant of the car, Mr Maina Gatoto, a Kikuyu employee of Kenya Allover Tours, was savagely beaten and left for dead. A Good Samaritan stopped to give assistance, but he was also set upon by the gang and luckily escaped.

  Mr Gatoto was dead on arrival at Nakuru General. He leaves behind a wife and four children.

  Joshua was in Nakuru Park again, watching the dawn bursting through the umbrella trees; the wildlife in numbers unimaginable. He recalled Maina’s fascinating stories of the Serengeti and its even greater wonders.

  ‘The soft sounds of the Serengeti,’ he whispered, just to hear Maina’s words again.

  Charlotte looked up at him. ‘You must miss it,’ she said.

  He stared at her for a long time before answering. ‘I have never been there.’

  ‘What?’ Charlotte looked confused.

  ‘I’m sorry. I lied to you. All I know about the Serengeti is what a boy can learn from a poster in a travel agent’s window. But I wanted so much to go. I was hoping to find work there so I could take Mayasa to live there.’

  ‘I see. Mayasa’s the girl we saw you with on Ngong Road?’

  He nodded.

  ‘But would you leave Kibera and take that risk?’

  ‘I have no choice. We must leave Kibera. It will never be safe for us now that Mr Koske is angry. I know it.’

  ‘Can’t you go to the police if you’re in danger?’ she asked, then added, ‘No, I guess not,’ when she saw his expression.

  He told her about Mayasa and her father’s HIV, and how at first it had been a problem but now was not. He told her about their plans for the future. If they could get away…somewhere.

  ‘Don’t you have family in Luoland, near the lake?’ she asked.

  Joshua avoided glancing in the direction of his father. ‘Yes. But I don’t know them.’

  Charlotte nodded thoughtfully. ‘Even if you could get to the Serengeti National Park, or wherever else you might find work, how would you survive until you found a job?’

  He said that Mayasa had family in Musoma, which was on Lake Victoria and quite near the Serengeti, but she said they were so poor she didn’t think they could help them.

  ‘Mayasa says there are few jobs in Musoma,’ he added. ‘I could try Kisumu. Maybe that’s all I can do to feed us.’ He smiled and fidgeted with his hands. ‘To get a job in the Serengeti…well, it’s just a dream.’

  ‘It’s okay to dream, Joshua,’ she said. ‘I might have an idea.’

  ‘What is it?’ he asked with interest.

  ‘I can’t say just now. But maybe…’

  Simon sat quietly as Joshua and Charlotte talked. It was painful to know his son could reveal his hopes to a mzungu woman and not to his own father. He’d had no idea of Joshua’s dream about the Serengeti. How could a son of his have such strange and unachievable notions?

  Then Simon remembered he’d also had dreams at Joshua’s age, and even younger. But he’d also learnt how disastrous it could be to pursue impossible goals. When Joshua started to show an interest in his Luo background, Simon had refused to share Luo customs with his son, afraid he would ultimately be disillusioned. There was no place for traditions and culture in an urban slum.

  But Joshua had been a determined boy and when his father refused to indulge him with the stories from the past, he had found others who would. Simon, who had learnt Luo lore at his grandfather’s knee—an elder enmeshed in the history and beliefs of the tribe—could see the flaws in Joshua’s second-hand knowledge. The stories he heard, largely from disillusioned young Luos in Kibera, were tainted by an overlay of inter-tribal hatred.

  Still Simon had remained obstinate, and by the time he’d realised that he and his son had erected barriers within their relationship, it was too late to change. The only chance he had now of breaking down those barriers was to tell his son the truth about 2002.

  Simon stood at the open door, his steaming mug of tea cupped between his hands, and smelt the air. It was the best time of the day to taste the air in Kibera as the pre-dawn moisture seemed to clean it of the odours of the previous day. But although the stars were faintly present, this morning the air was not good.

  Behind him, the kitchen light clicked on and his wife joined him at the door.

  ‘Still there is smoke,’ she said.

  He nodded, taking a sip of his tea. ‘You will be careful today,’ he said. It was a reminder of their conversation the night before. They’d talked about the present troubles and the need for her to take care.

  ‘I will,’ she said, laying her head against his chest. ‘When will this end?’

  ‘Soon. When the elections are finished.’

  They went inside and Patience closed the door on the acrid air.

  The two little ones were curled together like a pair of kittens; Nellie was tucked under Faith’s shoulder with a thumb stuck in the corner of her mouth. Charity lay on the fold-down, her head surrounded by long braids. Breathy gasps came from her slightly parted lips. The smoke was not good for her asthma. Simon struggled with feelings of helplessness and anger. Anger at his inability to improve his family’s life; the helplessness of a father who had done all he could for an ailing child.

  Joshua was asleep face down. At twelve, he had become a beanpole of a boy with long, spindly legs, large knees and broad feet, which he used to considerable effect on the football field. Simon had never been a keen supporter of the game, but he took vicarious pleasure each time his son slammed the ball into the back of an opponent’s net.

  ‘Are they with you today?’ he asked, referring to the children.

  ‘Yes. Except for Joshua, who is at football.’

  Simon nodded. ‘I will tell him to stay close to home today,’ he said. ‘He can run your errands and you can be with the girls.’

  ‘Just let him sleep,’ she said softly.

  ‘The boy has his responsibilities.’

  Patience was silent, but when Simon glanced at her, she had those eyes—the ones he simply couldn’t disregard.

  ‘He is a big boy now,’ he countered, although his wife had said nothing.

  ‘It is his only joy, Simon. Let him play football. I have few things that take me outside the house today.’

  He rolled his eyes, but let it be. Patience was right. There was little for an energetic boy to do in Kibera. At least dirt football kept Joshua away from those who preferred petty theft and the risk of a beating, or worse, if caught.

  Simon drained the dregs of his tea and put the mug on the table with a sigh. Moving quietly among the beds he kissed each of his children on the cheek.

  Patience waited for him at the door and slipped her arms around his waist.

  To her unask
ed question he said, ‘Eastleigh today.’

  ‘So far.’

  ‘It will mean money for the matatu, but they say there is work in the timber yard.’

  He kissed the top of her head and, with a final glance at his sleeping children, slipped into the smoke-sodden gloom.

  It was a little after dawn when Simon arrived at the timber yard. Four men were at the chain-wire gate ahead of him. Simon recognised one from his days in Mathare.

  ‘Habari,’ he said.

  The man, Nathaniel, replied, shaking hands in the African manner by clasping thumbs. They exchanged news.

  Nathaniel was a Kamba, but Simon knew him well enough to enquire how the current election problems affected him.

  ‘It is bad, bwana,’ he said. ‘Near my house, two boys beaten to death with sticks. Sixteen or seventeen years only.’ He shook his head.

  ‘Kwa nini?’ Simon asked.

  ‘Why? For nothing!’ Nathaniel said in outrage. ‘It is just this…this madness.’

  ‘Haki ya mungu,’ Simon muttered in sympathy. Then added, ‘How is it with you? Any work?’

  Nathaniel looked at the others standing with them at the gate, and drew Simon to one side. ‘Work is difficult, bwana. Very difficult. The Kikuyus, ah? These days they are hiring only their brothers.’

  Simon nodded.

  The gateman arrived, irritable from lack of sleep. Without a word he put his hand out and the four men at the gate with Simon put a grubby fifty-shilling note in it. When he came to Simon, he took his fifty and grunted that it was not enough.

  ‘More?’ Simon said in disbelief. ‘But from them you took fifty only.’

  ‘A hundred,’ the gateman said.

  Simon looked at the others. Nathaniel pointedly averted his eyes.

  The gateman was unmoved and, after waiting no more than a few seconds, turned his back on Simon while stuffing the notes in his pocket.

  ‘Wait,’ Simon said. ‘Is there work here for us?’

  Bribe money didn’t guarantee work. That decision came from the foreman.

  A shrug and nothing more from the gateman.

  Simon fished out his last note and, after a hesitation that threatened to have the gateman turn his back again, he quickly shoved the fifty into his hand.

  The gateman took a bundle of keys from his pocket and let himself in, putting a hand up to the others as they crowded close behind him. He snapped the padlock shut on the gate and ambled up to the site shed, scratching his backside. The men presumed they were in for a wait and squatted with their backs against the chain-wire gate.

  Simon put his head back against the fence and stared into the clear sky directly above him. Clouds gathered in the distance, but he thought they would amount to nothing. It’s too early for the short rains, he mused. A faint line of cloud in the middle distance stood in outline against the distant storm.

  But it was more than cloud. There was also a line of smoke in the south-west; over Kibera.

  Simon prayed he was wrong. Perhaps the smoke was from the more distant Ngong Hills. He stood and studied the line of misty grey, which was now joined by a filament of darker smoke. There could be no doubt. It was coming from Kibera.

  He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He knew his unease was because he and Patience had been discussing the crisis only last night. And it had been foremost in his thoughts for days. He was simply more conscious of the matter than previously.

  He turned to see if the gateman was returning, but he was nowhere in sight.

  Even if the smoke came from Kibera, it could be from the fires set the day before. He tried to convince himself that if it was from new fires in Kibera, they wouldn’t be in Kisumu Ndogo, but he failed.

  He turned again to see if the gateman and his money were returning, then hurriedly walked away from his chance of work and the certain loss of his hundred bob. Almost an hour later, he entered the maze of alleys, breathless.

  No matatu driver would agree to bring him from Eastleigh to home. It was popularly rumoured that most of these small minibuses were owned by Kikuyu politicians, and a driver daring to enter Kibera risked a bombardment of missiles. It had therefore taken Simon an hour to reach the city, and a further forty minutes to run the gauntlet of the rioting, pillaging mobs from Uhuru Park.

  During this time, the storm he’d first noticed at Eastleigh had gathered its undoubted energy above the city. Simon wished it onward as it was likely to be the only power able to disperse the crowds and stop the pillage and burning he’d witnessed on his homeward journey.

  ‘Haki wa; haki wa,’ a gang of youths shouted as they rushed up the alley towards Simon, who stood aside to let them pass. He’d heard their voices from a distance but felt no need to hide as he’d done on the other side of Kibera when a mob of Kikuyu youths had come rampaging along the road. Haki wa; haki wa had been the rallying Dho-Luo call for all Luos since the announcement of the election results. Our right; our right.

  Simon was disgusted with them. Violence was not the answer. Instead of voting along tribal lines, they should have chosen their candidates on their policies and performance. It was all over, it was too late to cry that the wrong party or candidate had won. But he had more on his mind right now than the ill-mannered louts or short-sighted electorate. He’d been unable to find Joshua at the place he played football with his friends. He prayed he was already at home, safe from the turmoil now clearly in evidence around him.

  His anxiety heightened as he neared Kisumu Ndogo. Instead of it being a relatively peaceful island in the middle of a stormy sea, there was a pall of smoke rising from its centre.

  He hurried on through increasingly familiar neighbourhoods. Don’t think it; don’t think it, he whispered to himself.

  He had tried to reassure Patience during their discussion the previous night that although she needed to be vigilant, there was no need for undue concern so long as she and the children stayed near the house. They were in the centre of the safest part of Kibera. Even the most foolhardy and aggressive gang would not dare invade Kisumu Ndogo, the Luo stronghold.

  The smoke ahead of him towered higher. Don’t think it; don’t think it. The Ongoros’ shack; the Oukos’. He was now in familiar territory. The Ogwan’gs’ the Onyangos’.

  Still the smoke loomed. He dared not imagine the unthinkable.

  The Okellos’.

  Radiant heat, hot on his face.

  The burning house. His house. Consumed by flames. The roof sagging, then collapsing inwards, sending a cloud of red ash into the air.

  A flash of lightning.

  He slid down the Okellos’ rusted corrugated-iron wall, a hand covering his mouth where a soundless scream had caught in his throat.

  The clap of thunder.

  Suddenly Joshua was beside him, staring at him through his tears, which streamed down his face. Simon could see his own pain in his son’s expression, but in addition he found confusion and loss and incomprehension.

  After friends and neighbours had carried away the blackened corpses that had been his wife and daughters, Simon held his sobbing son in his arms.

  He knew this tragedy was the result of a tribal war. He didn’t want to kill his son’s interest in his Luo legacy, but he had witnessed the unspeakable evil of tribal hatred that morning and he took an oath that his son would never be drawn into a similar situation because of a misguided notion of pride in tribe.

  CHAPTER 33

  Acrid smoke mixed with the morning mist as Charlotte followed Joshua through Kibera to the place on Kibera Road where she was to meet Riley.

  When she’d put on the ankle-length kanga and modest headscarf that Joshua had borrowed from a neighbour, he’d said she looked very much like a proper Muslim lady off to the mosque in Ngong Road.

  ‘But I look like a bag of laundry,’ she’d protested.

  ‘That is very good,’ he’d said. ‘When we meet Mr Mark, and you are far away in the Panafric Hotel, then you can look beautiful again.’

&
nbsp; Before they’d gone more than five minutes from Simon’s house, they passed burnt-out dukas, the smouldering remains of which were scattered about the bare earth. Other dukas, with words like No Raila—No Peace crudely painted on them, had been spared.

  Even though it was early, Charlotte thought it strange that the streets were almost deserted. When they had arrived the previous day, they had been buzzing with activity. Now, an eerie silence shrouded Kibera’s streets, paths and alleys, as if the settlement had been shocked by what had transpired during the night.

  Once over the rise near Kamukungi, they heard and then saw a large crowd of youths walking quickly towards them. Joshua led Charlotte into a side alley where they were hidden from the road. The gang passed uneventfully. After this, Joshua kept away from the wider thoroughfares; they picked their way through garbage-strewn alleys, avoiding the putrid water that meandered in rivulets or gathered in broad shallow pools in the eroded paths.

  A woman burst from a house ahead of them, screaming as a man lunged at her from the doorway. She struggled with him for a few moments before managing to shake him off. She dashed down the alley, her bare feet splashing slush and filth around her. The man uttered a grunt and caught sight of Charlotte and Joshua watching him. Joshua stepped in front of Charlotte as the man made a threatening move towards them. Two men ran past him and, after a moment’s hesitation, he followed. All three disappeared down another alley.

  Charlotte’s heart pounded and she clung to Joshua’s arm. For a moment, she was back in the dark Nakuru night, surrounded by grunts of savage fury and squeals of terror, as unseen creatures fought to establish dominance.

  Joshua took her hand, coaxing her forward, but she was reluctant to move. She was distressed by what she’d witnessed, but more than that, she was troubled that neither she nor Joshua had made a move to help the poor woman. It had happened so quickly, but was that her only excuse? And if they had assisted the woman, would they also have become victims of the anarchy that now surrounded them? She wanted to ask why the neighbours had not been alerted by the woman’s screams? Where was the sense of community she’d witnessed just the day before? Where were the police?