Mission

by Philip Spires

  Charles would smile at this point, as if he were condescendingly comforting a naive and innocent child in its ignorance and in passing say just one word to his father. Tax. For James, neither the watertight theory nor the lucrative practice compensated for the fact that his name had disappeared from the landscape, no longer seen painted on signs swinging in shop doorways or in letters a foot high on the side of a dust trailing bus.

  One thing James did accomplish which, more than any other single act, proved to be a source of both immediate and immense wealth, was to procure by means part fair and part foul an import-export licence. Charles saw this as a necessity and had pressed his father to act for some time before James finally cooperated. The shops they owned in Mombasa and Malindi had from the start concentrated on attracting tourist money. Stocked with trinkets, game trophies, both imitation and real, ornaments and clothes bought on the open market, the businesses made useful if not excessive profits. With a licence to import and export, Charles could more easily control the cost of that stock and therefore keep his prices down to undercut the many smaller-scale competitors who still had to purchase their goods internally. Soon, of course, Charles’s import business had become a wholesale clearing house and these one-time competitors began stocking their own shops from what he could offer. All the special, difficult to obtain or much in demand articles were earmarked, of course, for his own shops and those alone.

  The export side of the interest developed slowly but significantly. Charles had developed links with craftsmen living in bush areas so that he could secure a supply of wood carvings, jewellery and other craftwork for his tourist shops, and though the export of such things was never easy, it is through the efforts of men like Charles that a tourist hunting through the souvenir shops of the Bahamas can buy a wood carving for a dollar and find the words ‘Made in Kenya’ cut into its base.

  On paper then, this was a steady if not actually dependable interest. Paper accounts, however, could not be allowed to tell the full story. These same men in the bush who made the trinkets also hunted illegally, poached in the game parks in search of rhino horns, elephant tusks and crocodile skins. With no legal means of disposal available to them inside Kenya, the poachers needed to export their trophies. But they were common folk, usually uneducated and uncomfortable even in Nairobi, let alone Hong Kong or Singapore, where everyone knew the market lay. It is here where men like Charles Mulonzya Mwendwa joined the story, because it was they who possessed the means to accomplish the end. Satisfied with their pay and protection from prosecution, the poachers sold what they had and then, through a system of dealings designed to hinder future investigation, the commodities in question, usually described as ‘traditional art objects’, were passed from one company to another - hence Charles’s real need to split up his father’s empire - and finally left Mombasa by ship or Nairobi by air at the bottom of a crate of wood carvings or banana leaf baskets.

  Once out of the country the merchandise was safe, being legal trade in the country of destination. Payment of course found its way into a foreign bank account, necessitating frequent overseas trips by Charles. Though illegal, the chance of detection, Charles believed, was minimal and even if they were found out, the profit from one shipment was always more than enough to buy off any small-time official who would be given the job of pursuing the case. It had all grown horribly complicated, much too complicated for James, whose concept of success had never really surpassed that of his own father’s generation. He had been and remained a Mwingi man, proud to see his name on a board in his home town. All these dealings in dollars and yen, co-ownerships, part-ventures, shared-liabilities and meaningless impersonal names were quite above him and he soon decided to leave all such things entirely in his son’s capable hands.

  He would continue to offer support, continue to act as a figurehead, a non-executive chairman, as Charles described the role, as long as his son wished, but would no longer take any active role in the day-to-day running of the business. Charles, of course, had foreseen all of this some years before, when he first took over the management of the family firm. He knew from the beginning that he was very different from his father. Whereas his father had known lowly origins, he had not. The tailored suits, Mercedes-Benz and Parklands house that had been the heights to which his father had aspired, he himself merely took for granted. Charles knew that he aspired to heights that his father could never even comprehend, let alone actively pursue. His ambition would never be limited by unwritten assumptions learned amidst the poverty of Kitui District, a disassociation rendered complete by his decision to use and then formally adopt the name Mulonzya, his father’s name, for himself and any future family as if it were a European surname. Wealth and achievement, for him, would always be measured relative to that of the people whom he now regarded as his peers and, amongst that group, allegiance to a home area or that figment of the colonialists’ imagination, the tribe, took a poor second place behind that of an international ethic. Neither he nor any other Kenyan could aspire to the concrete and glass heights of the international companies who operated on a level no sane individual could ever hope to reach, but even these giants needed people to occupy the space beneath their umbrellas and the desire to move into that space to share the shade was both the goal and the ethic. Charles knew he was on the ladder and climbing, his eyes permanently focused on what he believed to be the top. (He would not fully realise the limitation of his vision for many years to come.) The fact that he neither noticed nor recognised the existence of a seething mass of millions clutching at his ankles for a pull onto the first rung is not surprising, for having never looked their way, he had never seen them.

  ***

  When James’s wife, the near forgotten Mbete, died in November 1974, neither he nor anyone else was either surprised or even saddened. The woman had been ill for some years and, though urged and prompted to do so by her husband during his still-frequent weekend visits, she consistently refused to seek any help from the hospitals and doctors in the city.

  She was a Mwingi woman. She was born there. She had lived her life there out of choice and, now that her time had come, she would die there. Though she sought and accepted palliatives from the town’s health centre as did most other Mwingi folk, she never once sought a cure, never once paid heed to any offered diagnosis of her illness. She had pains in her stomach and would not eat and that was enough to convince her that whatever a doctor might think, her time was finished, her life was near its end. Though this timid acceptance of fate troubled Mulonzya, personally, as much as on his wife’s behalf, he accepted and respected her wishes and over a period of years rather than months watched her body slowly wither to the skin and bone of death. Consequently this final blow was cushioned by a long period of preparation, both material and mental. Before she died, Mbete had already sited her grave and had already fixed the form of her funeral. On the day, again in compliance with her expressed wish, the church ceremony and burial were followed by an immense social gathering in the church grounds with food provided for anyone able to attend. James did not know whether he was correct in believing that this was specifically designed to hurt him and hurt him where it hurt most, in his wallet, but how could he deny his wife her dying wish? It could be that this was simply her way of thanking all her friends for the years of companionship they had given, or perhaps it was merely a final Christian gesture from a devoutly Christian woman. But nevertheless it cost James a great deal of money which in his eyes was offset only by the opportunity to canvas support from within the crowds. Mbete had been a good woman, however, and had lived a good life. Perhaps it was possible to be thankful that she had died relatively young?

  With his wife buried, her funeral festivities over and the rest of his family save for Charles back on the road to Nairobi, James Mulonzya and his son again turned to business. Charles had received letters from the recently appointed District Officer in Mwingi whom neither he nor his father had ever met. Mbete’s fu
neral had demanded their visit to Mwingi and both father and son agreed that this presented a good opportunity to meet the man. An introductory letter to him had received an instant reply bearing an invitation to dinner and an offer of accommodation for the night for both James and Charles. They had been pleased to accept and the appointed time had been fixed. Unknown either to father or son, this first meeting would prove to be an important landmark in the furtherance of their mutual cause, both personal and material.

  The new man, one John Mwangangi Musyoka who came from Migwani, the location bordering on Mwingi to the south, appeared to possess impeccable qualifications. Like Charles he had been privileged to receive an education and he had used the opportunity to good effect. Unlike Charles, his family had been poor and he had attended mission schools, not, like Charles, prestigious and expensive establishments in the capital. Mwangangi had eventually done well for himself, however, and, although he had taken much longer over the process than Mulonzya’s son, he had attained the still rare distinction of a place in an overseas university - London, in fact. This alone isolated Mwangangi in the eyes of both Mulonzya and his son as a man worthy of respect. Following the customary introductions the three men sat down to talk over a beer while Lesley, John Mwangangi’s wife went to the kitchen to prepare the meal.

  “So, Bwana Mwangangi, you have not yet had time to find yourself a cook?” Mulonzya’s words were no more than an introduction, an invitation to his host to introduce himself and offer some reactions to his posting to Mwingi. For people of such social stature, there is no such concept as small talk.

  Mwangangi smiled. “We do not intend to have servants,” he said. “Lesley likes to run her own house. Besides,” he continued after a mouthful of beer, “I don’t think that we could afford to pay a fair salary. I have a daughter, you know, and it seems that young children can be very demanding on one’s resources these days!”

  The knowing laugh which Mwangangi uttered at the end his statement completely fooled Mulonzya. He had not the slightest suspicion that Mwangangi was sounding him out, laying before him an opportunity to divulge the nature of his political standpoint. Mulonzya took a complete mouthful of the bait. “But surely, Mr Mwangangi...”

  “John,” interrupted the other.

  Mulonzya acknowledged the implied request with the merest nod and then sought confirmation of his newly granted right with a slight pause both before and after exercising it for the first time. “But surely, John, a cook would not cost you much. I might be out of date with the current rates around here, because as you know I spend most of my time in Nairobi now, but I am sure it is not more than three hundred shillings a month for someone to work part time.”

  “Ah but we don’t consider that to be a fair salary, Mr Mulonzya. It might be the official rate, but it’s certainly not fair. We are not really interested in what we can get away with paying. What we want to pay is a ‘fair’ wage and we think we can’t afford it on a public servant’s pay. Anyway, it is immaterial, since Lesley really doesn’t like having strangers about the house all the time.”

  Mulonzya was slightly taken aback. Not only was it unusual to disagree openly with a person who was clearly your superior so early in an acquaintance, but also he felt there was at least an implied criticism of his own views. His next sortie thus took on the posture of a counter-attack. “Do you not think though that to take such an attitude is to be rather selfish? After all three hundred a month might not be very much to someone such as you... or I, might not even be a fair salary as you put it, but for the family of the man you employ, it could be the difference between life and death, between having something or nothing to eat.”

  “You misunderstand me, Mr Mulonzya,” said John. “In the first place my wife wants to do her own work, so even if I could afford to pay a reasonable salary, I would still not want to employ a servant. The usefulness of three hundred shillings to some poor man and his family is indisputable, but then if one is really interested in welfare, both you and I and all like us could easily afford to give him the money anyway.”

  Mulonzya gave the slightest of scoffs as he replied without hesitation. “Ah but charity is not good for the soul. It can make people believe that they have a right to expect those things which only hard work should merit. If life is made easier for me today it will be harder for me tomorrow.”

  John gave a short, superior-sounding laugh that provoked Mulonzya to wonder whether he was being cross-examined by this young man. “I agree entirely, Mr Mulonzya.”

  “You see, Mr Mwangangi, if we are going to see our country develop, we have to encourage people to work productively by rewarding them...”

  “Hence we should make sure that we pay fair salaries, not slave rates,” interrupted John.

  “Well, yes... I suppose so.” Mulonzya was genuinely confused by John’s speed of thought. “So if people learn to expect charity then our nation will be poor for ever.”

  “That is probably all true, Mr Mulonzya...” John spoke as if he was ready to state the essence of his case. “...But please remember that we began by speaking about whether or not I should employ a cook at three hundred shillings a month. Now let us suppose that I do. It is doubtful that the man concerned will come from this town. It is far more likely that he will come from one of the out-lying bush areas, so to hold down a job he will have to rent a room in the town. That for a start will take care of half of his three hundred a month. Then what will he eat? He will be living away from home. He can’t expect his wife to come running along the road every mealtime with a plate of beans, so he has to buy food. He would probably eat better food than he would at home, but here in the town it would cost him money whereas at home, if he is at all lucky, it grows in the ground for nothing. After eating, out of his three hundred a month he might have fifty shillings left. An odd beer? Sometimes a visit to one of our town girls? He is living away from home after all... Surely the family would be lucky if it received more than twenty shillings of what I originally paid him. At that rate he would be better employed on his own farm making sure that he had no weevils in his granary.” John finished on a serious, but almost cynical note.

  Mulonzya, momentarily and uncharacteristically lost for words, could make only a pathetic and rather powerless gesture in reply. Charles, who up to now had remained silent save for a word of greeting, smiled. He still respected his father as a father, but privately enjoyed seeing his own low estimation of the man’s intellect confirmed in another’s trap. It was John Mwangangi who was first to speak again. “You see, Mr Mulonzya, I have not been here very long, but it has been long enough to realise that everything is very different from what it was when I left.”

  “How long did you spend out of this country?” asked Mulonzya rather sheepishly, hoping that he could direct the conversation to other matters.

  “About ten years. You see I remember this area bearing ample crops, receiving more than enough rain to grow all the grass our animals needed. I must tell you, Mr Mulonzya...”

  “James.”

  Mwangangi nodded. “I must tell you, James, that I hardly recognised this place when I arrived. It was certainly not because it had developed out of all recognition. There are more shops, and there’s the new road, of course, but apart from that the entire area, to me at least, seems poorer than I remember it. I have been here long enough now for that initial shock to have worn off, but it is still both obvious to see and saddening to realise that whatever you say about hard work, reward and profit, the possibilities for ordinary people to benefit from such things simply do not exist here. No matter how hard someone in this area tries to work, he can never improve his lot. First, the salaries he can get from what employment there is are just not enough, as I have just shown, to cover the inevitable expenses he must incur. Even if he goes to Kitui to dig trenches or load wood at the ginnery he will be lucky if he gets nine shillings a day. What use is that? Then secondly, if he devotes his time
to his farm, terracing, ploughing in fertilizer, harrowing the soil, he finishes with a bowl of dust, two exhausted cows that will probably die from the exertion, and still no profit or even food because there’s no rain. What can he do?”

  “He can go to the town to find work. There are many who do.”

  “But the same applies. The earnings are higher, but so are the costs. And what accommodation could he find?”

  Mulonzya began to shake his head and smile knowingly. He had obviously concluded that he was dealing with a naive idealist. As he continued the argument, Lesley appeared from the kitchen with a tray laden with food and John gestured an invitation to him and his son to take their seats at the table. “Nevertheless, John, we must be realistic. The employers are paying what they can afford. We are not lucky enough to live in a rich country. Our industries are young, and still struggling to establish themselves. That is why we are encouraged by our leaders to work together in sacrifice to see our country grow and our economy develop.”

  “Indeed,” said John, “but that still does not help fill our friend’s empty stomach. As for working together in a spirit of sacrifice, all I can say is that another shock which Kenya had in store for me when I returned - and a shock which I have still not managed to reconcile - was my first impression of Nairobi.”

  “In what way? Was it that there is so much squalor and so many beggars on the streets? The government is currently very concerned about the impression created by our capital city. Many of us feel it has deteriorated seriously over the past few years. There are more tourists now you see, who bring currency into our country. It is not good that they should be harassed by beggars on the street. It does no good for our nation.”

  “No, my reaction had nothing to do with any of those things,” said John, clearly trying to suppress a resigned laugh. “For ten years I lived in Great Britain. Now most people there own a car. I even owned one myself.”