Unbury Our Dead with Song

by Mukoma Wa Ngugi

  And then there was my brother Jack, a corporate lawyer for a major firm in the United States. He was wealthy, had two homes, one a condo in New York City and the other a mansion somewhere in Mombasa. We were more strangers than brothers; we lived in different worlds. He never failed to register his disappointment with my career path and me, especially when our parents were within earshot. And my parents never failed to talk about his accomplishments whenever we were both around, like how he had played rugby in high school, or how he was mistaken for the younger brother at family gatherings, or how he learned to save money from a young age and so on.

  There was something else. Rumours. I used to hear them often — whispered in bars around Nakuru — that my mother was at some point the dictator’s mistress. Someone would say that my beautiful, light-skinned mother had married a dark-skinned frog that did not turn into a prince. And when someone would point out that my father was better looking than the president and relatively leaner and fitter, a corrupted proverb about how a presidential fart by presidential fiat does not stink would be unleashed. It was not true, I liked to think, but figuratively, my mother was in bed with the dictator and, by extension, so were we all. But then again, so were thousands of other families. Far more wounding than that was seeing my parents prostrate themselves, not before God or an executioner, but before the dictator, another portly human being.

  ‘What I am doing here?’ I would repeat Miriam’s question.

  And then I would tell her how one weekend in 1982, my brother and I wandered out of the Intercontinental Hotel where we stayed whenever we accompanied my parents to Nairobi for one of those State House visits. We did not know what was happening exactly, but there was a lot of excitement out in the streets. Someone was shooting a movie. There were green branches from fig trees laid out on the streets, soldiers and kiosk women and men moaning in pain, some even pretending to be dead. It took us a minute to snap out of our childhood innocence and realise we were not on a movie set, and we ran all the way back to the hotel. My parents’ visit to the State House had just coincided with a military coup attempt, and they were hunkered in a bunker, plotting a way out for the dictator. How naïve and protected were we?

  ‘You are just a rich spoilt boy — the world is not a movie,’ she would reply, and I would wonder what it was that connected us.

  If it was guilt, I had plenty of it.

  And now here I was asking Miriam to be part of my story — to let me behind the counter and into her life. I explained how I would go to Ethiopia and follow The Diva, The Taliban Man and The Corporal around.

  ‘And then I will do you last, right here in Nairobi, at the ABC,’ I said to her.

  She smiled and pretended to poke me in the eyes.

  ‘Not that easy. There is one person I want you to talk to when you are over there — my cousin. She has some things of mine that I would like back. We will talk when you get back,’ she said, her voice breaking with emotion.

  ‘Can I ask you just one little question?’ I asked her. ‘The Tizita, where does it come from? Someone a long time ago told me the Tizita was first sung by wandering poet musicians, like griots.’ I thought back to the CRP.

  ‘Yes, there is that — but I think it comes from the Bible. When life is really hard and you sing the psalms, when you sing to God. You cannot scream at him. You kneel down and make yourself small, and then you pray your piece,’ she explained.

  ‘But I thought the Tizita is about love?’ I countered.

  ‘Love and God — they are the same thing, no?’ she asked. ‘Let me make it simple, okay? Do you know when God was born?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you have a birthday for love?’

  ‘No. I don’t understand. I need to understand.’ My brain was roiling.

  ‘You don’t understand the Tizita, you feel it. Go to Ethiopia, and then we shall talk,’ she said firmly.

  I stood up to leave.

  ‘Oh yeah, one other thing, babe. I have been invited to an Ethiopian-Kenyan wedding, a few weeks from now. If you want my story, you have to be my date,’ she said, coming back to her usual self.

  ‘Free food and booze and you? Sounds good to me.’ I grinned. ‘Why do you think the others came on stage?’ I asked her, ducking as she made a go at my ear.

  ‘Come back from Ethiopia, then we will talk,’ she repeated.

  I called a taxi and filed out with a small army of the slummers, gamblers and drunks, all of them singing one song or the other that had been awoken by the Tizita musicians.

  9

  ‘We like naked things…’

  I had been at the ABC all night. In the morning, still drunk in some ways and intoxicated in others, I entered The National Inquisitor offices and made my way to Alison’s office and closed the door behind me. Alison was the epitome of nondescript — one of the thousands of British women one bustles by in the streets of London, dressed in blue jeans tucked into kneehigh brown leather boots, a white sweater with a neckline low enough to reveal her blue bra straps, shoulder-length blonde/ brunette/red hair disciplined by a ponytail, phone in hand and so on.

  Alison used to work for a major British paper covering Africa (her title was Africa correspondent) before falling from grace. She, along with others, were caught red-handed bribing war victims for their stories. It was unfair; this was not brown-envelope journalism where a journalist gets paid by a politician. These were hungry, traumatised refugees who were telling the truth for a little bit of bread. I had done it too — a bodyguard who lives in a slum but has a story about his boss, an exploited secretary and so on. Ironically, a British tabloid broke the scandal. The owner had immediately headhunted her — entrapment perhaps? Maybe, maybe not. The point of it all was that she was not averse to a good story every now and then, but it had to conform to the tabloid genre. With slowing print tabloid sales in Britain, her boss had quickly seen what others had yet to see. The internet had yet to make its way into every home in Africa, and politics and sex and gossip about politics and sex are the only truly universal things in life. So Alison was dispatched to Kenya to start the Inquisitor. Word quickly spread that there was a tabloid looking for journalists to cover the wealthy sewers of Nairobi.

  I had just returned from Boston, written a few pieces on spec for the national papers, but that was not the reporting I wanted to do. I had access to the wealthy and powerful. I was covering their public faces, but I knew what they did behind closed doors — from being drug and weapons mules to exchanging suitcases of public money during weddings and parties. I knew about the old men with sexual fetishes involving young girls living in penthouses they rented for them, and the men who raped their maids, impregnating them and then sending them packing. With Fuck You money and Fuck You power, they did whatever they fancied. With my mother in the government, I had a dinner seat at the table of all things sordid in Nairobi. So I went, or rather ran, to Alison. All I had to do was tell her that my mother was a former chief of justice and I had a journalism degree from Boston University. She hired me on the spot.

  Alison and I occasionally slept together; a late night in the office working on a story and we would need a break. She did not ask me where I had been or why I had not called. I also did not ask her. Maximum freedom was our credo. The only thing that would matter was whether I had found a good story in the night. So I explained everything to Alison in one long drunken gush.

  ‘This all sounds good — for New African Magazine or Chimurenga or The Atlantic. But here we do hard, useful gossip: corruption, sex and drugs, spoilt political kids getting high on stolen cash — you know that,’ she said, opening the blinds.

  Like my mother and the dictator, I thought to myself and wondered when that story would come out. Or, more precisely, when she would discreetly assign it to one of the other journalists. I did not think she was mercenary; we lived in a world where the story came first.

  And the Tizita was the story I had to write. There was no way I was going to convey to her here, this
early in the morning, drunk and with no sleep, what the Tizita meant, but I had to try. And I had to try it in tabloid lingua franca.

  ‘Alison, this is going to be one hell of a story. Think about it. You remember shortly before Idi Amin invaded Tanzania? Nyerere challenged him to a boxing match to settle it like men. The Tizita competition—’

  ‘Just how fucked up are you?’ she interjected with a laugh. ‘Nyerere was like four feet tall, old and scrawny, and Idi Amin Dada was, well, his name tells it all. It was the other way around — Idi Amin wanted to box Nyerere.’

  ‘It’s the principle that counts, not the principals,’ I said, feeling witty. ‘Imagine if all the world’s problems were settled through music — you want my oil, sing better than me; you want my whatever…. At least there would be no war,’ I said. ‘And where there is music, there is sex and drugs, and a story,’ I added when she said nothing in reply.

  ‘Go home. Sleep. Sober up. And then give me a good reason.’ She helped me to my feet and pushed me to the door.

  I held on to the doorknob.

  ‘I might have something else,’ I half yelled, thinking I needed something that would speak to her English sensibilities, a vague sense of colonial guilt. Well, sometimes it’s just the way to get things done with her.

  ‘You don’t care because it’s African music. If I was talking about British musicians duking it out, you would care,’ I said.

  She laughed out loud. ‘Get serious or get the fuck out,’ she answered.

  ‘OK. I have heard something, something that our readers should know about — it’s like I have listened to a naked heart beating — I want to share that beat. We like naked things at The National Inquisitor; this is as naked as it gets. Shit, if it gets me the story, I will dig up some dirt on our stars, but this story has to be told,’ I said.

  ‘Tell me more about this naked heart of yours,’ she said.

  ‘Alison, you think you know me, but you don’t. There was this story I once read by Alice Walker, about Elvis singing Big Mama Thornton’s songs — you know, You ain’t nothing but a groundhog—’

  ‘Hound dog, you mean?’ she interrupted, trying not to laugh.

  ‘The point is that the greyhound song ended up becoming very popular, selling millions of records,’ I went on. ‘The Big MT gets nothing for it, but eventually, Elvis is so tortured by the singing of music he does not understand that he seeks her out. Of course, she does not tell him the secrets to her music. So, a tortured Elvis gets into drugs and eventually dies on his throne. Or some variation of the story — but you get the point. I have been moved by something — I don’t want to skim on its surface; I need to feel it. And why not share that story with our readers? And you will get some amazing stories, stories that would otherwise remain buried in the sweat and the blood and the money of an illegal boxing club. Shit, Alison, isn’t this what The National Inquisitor is all about?’ I said, knowing I sounded more desperate than convincing.

  ‘Why don’t we start with last night? Write that first. If it sells, you can have your story,’ she said, giving me an opening.

  10

  ‘Remember the model Naomi Campbell and Charles Taylor’s diamonds?’

  I got to writing when I got home — it was a war between my imagination, drunkenness and tiredness, and an intensity that wanted more than it could have. In my write-up, I lied. I had to lie in order to be able to tell the whole story:

  Sex, Drugs and Rock-and-Roll Tizita

  At the popular white-and-black bourgeoisie Norfolk Hotel, a secret competition was held away from the eyes of you, the common Kenyan. It started off as a simple affair, a competition to find out who amongst top Ethiopian musicians could give the best rendition of the Tizita, a popular song over there. But, according to our whistle-blower account, once soon-to-be named Kenyan tycoons got wind of it, they decided to open up the competition to all musicians, and what was supposed to be a story about trying to find the soul in music became one of corruption, sex and drugs….

  And it went on. The ‘secret’ competition was then opened up so as to find the best singer in the world. World-famous musicians, out of boredom and love of music, decided to join the competition. And because the winner would not be announced to the world, bragging rights alone were not a believable reward, and so I threw in ten million dollars.

  I added, Remember all the Western celebrities who like to hang out with corrupt fat cats? Who perform in the palaces and homes of the powerful? Remember the model Naomi Campbell and Charles Taylor’s diamonds?

  Into this mix I threw The Diva — she especially could lend herself well to the glamorous competition, and in my write-up I photoshopped her to perfection with my pen. The Taliban Man also came out well — a Tupac, the NIC of the Tizita. The Corporal had been marched into the competition by an entourage of several soldiers; while Miriam, the sleeper Tizita musician, turned out to be from a long line of Senegalese griots who found herself born in Ethiopia because her parents had dared question the wisdom of Leopold Senghor and were promptly exiled. I turned Mr. Selassie into a suave Don King of all things illicit who had finally found the love of his life in the Tizita, injecting a bit of myself in his story.

  And the judges? I hinted at a sleazy Saudi Prince who could not keep his hands off Alicia Keys. My Bill Clinton was with a young, blonde woman chewing on an unlit cigar that she would later that night stick up his ass. My Mo Ibrahim, the telecommunications guru who buys and finances presidencies, had a serious gambling problem.

  But the description of the Tizita was honest, same as I have already told you: the emotions welling up in the audience as Miriam took to the stage and all the other musicians coming out to support her and to be part of her magic.

  AND THE WINNER IS…. I ended the story with a cliff hanger.

  My story ran one week later. For the first time in its history, The National Inquisitor, like a sold-out bestseller, went into a second printing. By mid-afternoon, people were calling The National Inquisitor asking when the next competition was going to be and if we could run a profile of the musicians beforehand. Sister tabloids in Britain and the US picked up the story. The musicians from America I had named sent in their denials. Perfect. More credibility! The advertisers were tripping over themselves. By the end of the week, I had a plane ticket to Bole International Airport, Addis Ababa, and a company credit card. I was to file a profile each week and do the write-up for the next and final competition.

  There was one slight problem with my plan though — my Tizita musicians would read my story. And no talk about naked hearts and translation of the spirit would matter. I was ready. I would summon my inner Achebe and say, ‘There is no story that is not true.’ And hadn’t The Corporal said all songs are true? I believed in the story, and as long as they saw that, the lies making the story possible would not matter. We performed to tell the truth. We would carry on.

  ***

  On the evening before I left for Addis, Alison invited me to an expat party at an Ethiopian restaurant called The Nile-Not. By expat, I mean that it was like an Ethiopian restaurant in Boston — watered-down food for delicate white palates made by a white chef who had been a Peace Corps volunteer in Ethiopia, and served by white waiters. I admit to exaggerating a little bit for effect — the waiters were black. More often in American-Ethiopian restaurants, the waiters were white college students, the chef Ethiopian and the owner a white businessman who was never seen. Here in Nairobi, the waiters and the chefs and the dishwashers and the greeter and watchman at the door were all black. The Nile-Not white owner announced himself by the way he greeted everyone and the way he casually got a drink from the small bar and patted the black waiters on the back and backside.

  The doro wot was so watered down that I gladly insulted the chef by adding copious amounts of salt and black pepper. The injera was a cross between thinly sliced bread and a chapati, none of the tangy sponginess that soaked up the goodness of the sauce. Going to the bathroom, I was mistaken for a waiter… a
nd the indignities went on. You know how in America those in the know say there is no Chinese food in China? That Chinese food in the United States is not the Chinese food in China? But I still had booze. No worries, I told myself. What more could go wrong?

  A Tizita karaoke night! When I heard the sound of the krar, for a moment I thought there was a live performer, and I kissed Alison to say thank you. Then theatre lights came on, and for the first time, I saw the stage with a microphone and karaoke monitors. Young European bohemians by night and NGO workers by day, one after the other, took to the stage and sang nightmarish District 9 Tizita. Some simply mouthed the words they were reading on the monitor while others sang their own versions of the Tizita in English. Amusing, until one American dude went Janis Joplin on his English Tizita.

  ‘What the fuck are we doing here? Why did you bring me here?’ I asked Alison. She knew about the ABC and what I was trying to do — why this caricature of my work?

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked, smiling.

  I stood up to leave in meaningless protest. She was driving. I sat back down, my face saved by the arrival of my beer.

  ‘They too have stories. I wanted you to see that — a story can be in what you do not know, right?’ Alison said as she leaned in closer.

  She was right, of course, but their expat stories were not for my pen.

  We stayed for a while, went to my place all fucked up. She watched me pack, and then guiltily, or perhaps out of obligation, we had sex and slept.

  11

  The Diva