This blog champions for the African cause as well as forwarding my literature agenda. I am a strong believer in the potential that our continent has. I believe our development partners should give us fishing rods and not fish. My literature work is broadly in tandem with this vision. To sum up, I would like to quote an overused cliché and warn those whose intention is to stand in Africa’s way that’ There is nothing as dangerous as opposing an idea whose time has come’.
I am a young believer of the African dream. A graduate student at Egerton University and the next big name in the world of literature and humanitarian issues.
Once upon a time, there was a tree that was planted in the village of jamhuri. The tree was right in the middle of the path to uhuru. As the tree grew, it obstructed meaningful development in jamhuri. The villagers were not happy with the tree. The tree had been planted by the first chief of jamhuri amid protests from some of the village elders and villagers. Soon enough, the tree started producing fruits. The fruits were enjoyed by members of the chief’s family and his close friends. As it grew bigger, the fruits increased and the chief’s friends started to extend the delicacies to their friends too. The villagers started suffering as a result of this tree. Nobody was allowed to eat any fruit from the tree or use it for any other purpose without the direct permission from the chief himself. As time went by, those who were benefiting from the tree saw no need to work as the tree was taking care of all their needs. Their kids played on that tree all day while their pet parrots had their nests on the tree. The chief and his friends had constructed hammocks on the tree to relax on whenever their stomachs were full. They would rest on their hammocks enjoying the cool breeze from the tree and listen to the chirping of their pet parrots all day. They talked of how lucky they were to be enjoying the fruits of jamhuri. They were quick to congratulate the chief for planting such a sweet tree and restricting the number of people who could eat from it. The chief was a bit concerned with the villagers not being able to eat anything from the tree.
“These are our matunda ya jamhuri. Let them go collect matunda ya uhuru.”Quipped one of his friends and proceeded to sip wine made from the same fruits.
Uhuru was a big forest that neighboured the village of jamhuri. There was only one path that led into uhuru as the forest was surrounded by a crocodile infested river. The chief used to lead the villagers into the forest and they would gather matunda ya uhuru and take them back into the village for everyone to share. This was long before he had planted the injusticeae corrupta species. The villagers led by the chief would fight off any attack from wild animals. The fruits of uhuru were self sustaining and the villagers needed only to sustain the environment for the forest to provide them with plenty for eternity. The chief and his cronies however had other ideas. When the chief planted his tree in the middle of the path to uhuru, he had looked for a location where the tree would get adequate water from the river. Having settled for a spot near the bridge, he blocked the path and nobody could gain access to the forest. He also stopped leading his villagers to collect and enjoy the fruits of uhuru. They even allocated themselves some of the best fruit bearing trees of uhuru and dared any villager who wished to die to eat from the trees. Villagers were now left with only one option. Those who could dare swam across the crocodile infested river to get to uhuru and collect some of the sour fruits that the chief and his buddies had no use for. Many of those who took the risk were devoured by crocodiles while those who survived the river were not so lucky with the wild animals. Only a small number made it back with the sour fruits of uhuru and planted the seeds in their own shambas. Due to the risk involved, none dared share the seeds with the others. The majority of villagers toiled and ate dry cassava with bitter herbs. With time, they forgot the taste of matunda ya uhuru.
Injusticeae corrupra thrived and thrived. Its roots reached far and wide. Its leaves remained green in good weather and in bad weather. It bore fruits in high season and in low season. The chief and his cronies grew healthier from eating the fruits of jamhuri and with the satiation come arrogance. The villagers were bedazzled. It was fine with them if the chief had decided they were not worth of partaking matunda ya jamhuri but why on earth couldn’t they enjoy matunda ya uhuru? Matunda ya uhuru rightfully belonged to the people of jamhuri. Matunda ya uhuru were plenty and enough for all and sundry. Why had it been made so difficult to access matunda ya uhuru? Why was it necessary to close the path to uhuru yet there were so many other spots where the chief could have planted his injusticeae corrupta? The villagers wished they had answers to these questions yet the more they thought about them, the more they got confused.
There was one particular village elder who fell out with the chief completely because of the chief’s tree. He did not see why jamhuri needed a tree to specifically cater for the needs of the chief and his friends. He was of the idea that all able men should go to uhuru and return with the days requirements which should then be shared out equally to all villagers. The chief thought him crazy and kicked him out of the council of elders. To isolate him even more, the chief made it difficult for the elder’s region in the village to get vital resources. Before the quarrel, villagers from the western part of the village where the elder hailed from could cross the river and access the forest of uhuru. The river on that side was a quite narrow and was less infested with crocodiles. After the fight, the river banks were sank to widen it and crocodiles were bred on the western bank to prevent access to matunda ya uhuru.
Kenya boasts of more than a hundred political parties as it heads to its fourth multiparty elections. Good for us, democracy has gone full circle! One may be forgiven for thinking. With three parties for every tribe in Kenya, we had better burst the bubble and give democracy its true meaning. The ease with which these parties are being created leaves many questions unanswered. Back when I was in school, I was taught that political parties are formed by like-minded individuals subscribing to the same ideologies. Parties are guided by manifestos that are a promise to the electorate detailing what the party would or would not do should it get the mandate. This is not the case today; with a euphoric name, a war-like slogan and a couple of picayune officials, you have a political party. While in most democracies politicians are bound to a party by ideologies, this has not been the case with Africa in general and Kenya in particular. Many politicians consider everything else but ideologies when perambulating from one party to another. We have those who change parties when they fail to secure leadership in one party. Others ditch when they fail to secure a nomination while some of them just move to ride on the wave of the season. A majority of them change parties to be in line with their tribesmen. There is a unique class of mutant politicians who pledge allegiance to individuals instead of parties. The latter also go by the name sycophants and are the worst breed in the political zoo. Most of the decisions to switch parties are made injudiciously without the politician stopping to ask if (s)he concurs with the party’s manifesto. Instead of democracy, we have ended up with damn-all-crazy politicians who change parties with the frequency of diaper change on a new born.
There is something seriously wrong with political parties in Kenya and the registrar of societies is partly to blame. Before registering a political party, the registrar’s office should ensure that the party has a clear manifesto with objectives that are unique to the party. The belief that having many political parties expands the democratic space is claptrap and holds no water. In the same way splitter churches have become the fastest growing ‘get rich quick schemes’, political parties are threatening to get out of control. Before we know it, every clan in Kenya will be registering their own party. It is the duty of the registrar of societies to ensure that unscrupulous individuals do not register parties and auction them to the highest bidder the following week. Kenyans should also desist from supporting politicians who show no respect for party manifesto.
Let me set the record straight here, this country must never be allowed to go back to the dark days of monopartism. However, the way to go about it is not by creating a political party for each day of the year. This country needs not more than three serious political parties each with a clearly outlined manifesto. This would rid us of the tribal canopy that has threatened time and again to deny us our place in the sun. When parties have clear manifestos, we would be able to ask an aspirant who supports majimbo, for instance, why (s)he is in a party that is anti majimbo without risking a maternally-related insult. We would be able to hold politicians accountable for what they preach and drink. Until that happens, multiparty will remain one big joke. We have given the retired president the last laugh. He does not hesitate to remind us every time he mounts a dais that he warned us in 1991 that multiparty would usher in tribalism. And hasn’t it? We have leaders of political parties preaching hate and war right in the eyes of the country’s leadership. More than half of the registered political parties can hold NDCs using a common mother tongue.
The political landscape as we have it today is a mockery of democracy. The ninth parliament attests to this. It had no order thanks to a house that had neither respect for political parties nor debating principles. Bills were accepted or rejected based on the political mood of the day. In an ideal political dispensation, members would argue on bills vis a vis their party manifesto. Political parties should transform from being vehicles of power acquisition to blue prints of national development. All political parties should promote Kenyanism far above anything else. Those whose existence rests on tribal foundations should have no place in the future of the republic. They belong in annals at the museums. We are living in a global age where countries that refuse to shun tribalism and embrace nationalism will not be able to play effectively at the international arena. Africa is unfortunate to have myriads of such states. If politicians are going to deny us this global opportunity by using a host of parties to divide us along tribal lines, then by God above, all peace loving Kenyans should shout at the top of their lungs: WAS HIND WE!
The slum is notorious for producing half baked mothers. Girls who have barely grown breasts are initiated everyday into the magical world of motherhood. It is equally notorious for the host of problems slum mother’s experience. By the time a slum mother comes of age, the devil ensures she has three responsibilities cut out for her. If she is not tending for her chang’aaretarded husband and sons, she is raising her ungrateful children or worse still watching another generation in the name of grandchildren going to waste. The devil must have fallen in love with me. Of all miseries I ended up with the three burdens on my shoulders. A perfect hell on earth. The sprawling slum had been my humble domicile since birth. It had offered shelter to three generations of family before me. Hope got us out of bed every morning. Luck brought us home every night. With poverty threatening to drown us every single day, there was one known motto in the slum. Swim and hope that you make it to the shores alive. Agony. Despair. A slum dweller’s anguish. A mother’s anguish.
The man I had married was only good at two things: making me pregnant and drinking illicit liquor. If I was not in a clinic giving birth, I was out fending for the male buffoon and the little mongrels or worse still in bed with him trying to roll out more products. I was the only factory he seemed to be able to work in.
I ended up being the mother of six. Six daughters. He was not about to give up on his quest for a son. He wanted more sex every night. More sex meant a higher probability. He counted on serendipity. In vain. Frustration took toll on him. I become his punching bag. Now, any woman will tell you that feeding a man who does nothing is bad enough. Feeding a man who does nothing but beat you up is way too much.
I became the witch who could not sire him sons. I did not want his name to grow. All I could manage were useless daughter. Daughters who were outdoing each other to disgrace him. The insults. Fist fight. Who would inherit him? Inherit what? Cockroaches? King size rats? Slap…kick… inherit what? A square foot of dump yard? A pool of sewer? Exasperation…Head butt…jaw fist. Inherit what? What do you own that can be inherited? The male ego. I figured out. He wanted to pass on his ego. An ego that the slum man had perfected. A lion in the Serengeti slept all day and waited for the lionesses to bring him carcasses. So did the slum man. Drank all day. The lion in the Serengeti protected its family whenever the situation called for action. The slum man did not. He was the insecurity. The beating had to stop. I wanted peace. He wanted an heir. To inherit what?
He came home one Friday night all drenched up. Drenched up from the heavy downpour that had rained throughout the day and night and from the illicit poison he had been drinking all day. He had perambulated the whole slum in search of cheap liquor. He was attired in a worn out t-shirt and a lincolnian pair of trousers that had been soaked in mud and fecal matter. What he had on his feet was an insult to the shoe industry. He had not showered nor changed clothes since Sunday. His hair was coarse and dirty. Specks of gray multiplying at the speed of light. He could be sixty today and a hundred tomorrow. It all depended on where the rays struck. He coughed like a locomotive mounting Kilimanjaro. His chest was exposed. Pneumonia was yet to claim him. RAMBO. The faded writings on his t-shirt read. It was a free world. Man could dream whatever he willed. His eyes. There was something frightening and disgusting about his eyes. They were set deep inside the sockets. The socket bones more pronounced. Looking like two big marbles inside a cave. A harbinger of malnutrition. He was a specter.
He demanded for food. I was about to tell him that even when God provided manna, the people had to go out and collect it. I thought otherwise. It had to be a peaceful night. I served him the cold githeri that we had taken for lunch. I watched him as he ate with his bare oily hands. He was intoxicated beyond sustainable levels. The cheap cooking fat had solidified into a layer of yellow at the top. The consumer was oblivious of all this. It was his only meal of the day. Probably his last. The blows that life had dealt him were all written on his wrinkled face. Had I waited a day or two, natural death would have claimed him. He was one ghastly sight of hopelessness. The epitome of failure.
I played the role of a grieving widow perfectly. In the morning, I let out a shriek that would have awakened the neighbours on a radius of one kilometer. My beloved husband was dead. The father of my daughters was no more. Chang’aa vendors had killed my husband. My daughters joined me in the dirge. Some close neighbours also woke up and joined in the outburst. I was not fooled by their choreographed elegies. The poor women were putting up an act for a place in the funeral committee. If there was one thing they never taught in school and we slum dwellers had naturally acquired its art, it was scheming. A place in the funeral committee meant only one thing; you could take round a book for funeral collection and never return the proceeds to the bereaved. The struggle for a seat in a funeral committee was only rivaled by the Europeans scramble for Africa a century ago. The woman who arrived first at the widow’s home and made sure she never left the compound was sure to be made the committee chairlady. A post in the committee came with more opportunities of wealth. We hurriedly constituted a funeral committee and started the matanga. Mama Susan had wailed her lungs out the whole day and she was rewarded with the post of chairlady. I chose on her specifically because her husband was also on the death bed. This favour would make me a top contender for committee chairlady when her husband’s turn came. Quid pro quo. On bagging the coveted position, her tears disappeared. She could now afford to pay her merry go round debts.
That evening, on hearing of my husband’s untimely demise, mama Akinyi who was returning home from another corner of the slum dropped at my doorsteps and started wailing. She was rolling violently on the ground threatening to destroy our ear drums until mama Susan came to her and whispered that the committee had already been constituted. She dusted herself and called me aside. She wanted an explanation.
“It’s not my fault that you were not around.” I absolved myself from blame
“Wajuni! After all that I have done for you!” she concluded “Hakuna shida”
As she walked away, she added nonchalantly,
“The way I saw my mother today, she might not last another month.”
I changed tune.
“Mama Akinyi, si you know our friendship cannot be broken by this. Come to think of it, we could use an assistant secretary. Mama Kiroboto is the secretary and she can’t even write down her name.”
She said nothing. She put on a swagger and headed in the general direction of the shops. Probably to buy an exercise book and a pen.
Any seasoned slum dweller will tell you that matanga time is usually harvest time. People get to handle money they have never set their eyes on in the past during matanga. After we had collected good money, I surprised the committee and everyone else when I announced that my late husband’s family had taken and interred the body without my knowledge. It had ended at that. My act of innocence was indubitable. The widow was given the hefty amount to help in raising her six daughters. I was not about to let him ruin the only chance of happiness he had brought us in so many years. A funeral for him would be a waste of much needed resources. He was a picayune. Nobody was going to make a follow up on his fate. He had no real immediate family from his side and those who could have claimed to love him could not spare even a minute of soberness to question his whereabouts. Live like a dog; die like a dog was the motto of our neighbourhood. The city council would know what to do with the body.
On that fateful Friday night, nobody saw me add rat poison to his food. When the manufacturer of that product came up with it, who would have guessed it would end up killing more human than it did rats?
My action that silent and cold Friday night had been influenced by a sermon at our local church the previous Sunday. The preacher talked about the Lord coming to prune his vineyard and cutting off those branches that were not producing. This brought me into thinking. I knew of an unproductive branch alright but the Lord had taken too long to prune it out.
The father of my children had made it clear since day one whose business it was to put food on the table. Like every slum union, our marriage had started spontaneously after my mother sent me off with hot water. She had realized that I was pregnant. Again. In a spun of five months. The first time she had whisked me off to a back-street nurse and had the fetus flushed out. I had almost died from the experience and spent two weeks in bed unable to stand up or squat. Seeing this, my frightened mother promised me she would strangle me herself if I ever parted my legs again. It wasn’t long before I realized she had meant each and every word.
My husband had been a tout and I was in form two when we first met. I had boarded his matatu to school that morning and as he started collecting the fair, I could not locate mine where I had placed it in my school bag. By the time he reached my seat, I was sweating and frisking my bag like a lunatic. He smiled and moved on. When I reached my stop, I alighted with guilt written all over my face.
Coincidence should have it that as I waited to catch a bus home that evening, it was his matatu that pulled over. He still wore the same smile and warmth he had in the morning. I did not have to be a rocket scientist to realize that it meant a free ride home. As I alighted, he smiled and whispered,
“Tuonane kesho mrembo.” I said nothing. I was busy savouring what this meant.
“Touts were wolves whose favorite diet comprised school girls. They lure you with free rides and cheap gifts and before you know it, they are climbing all over you. Quid pro qua. They date more than one girl at a time and when they finally mess up your future, they call it quits and move on……….”
No. This is not what I was thinking. I was too smart to harbour this line of thought. Economically, this would be a turning point for me. What of the amount I would be able to save in terms of unpaid fares. The handouts he would provide for my lunch. With such savings I would be able to afford all those spaghettis and hip grabbing stretchers I so yearned for every month. I haven’t even budgeted for the amount he would provide for my upkeep. God! I would become the envy of every slum dweller within no time. Socially, my ratings would shoot up among slum beauties. Any girl who had a tout for a boyfriend was considered to be playing in a super league. And who could blame us? It was not like we had a whole spectrum of choices to pick from. We were just making lemonade from lemons. Those available to us were either glue sniffing retards or bhang smokers. The others spent the whole day in chang’aa dens bargaining for free samples. The lucky ones got jua kali artisans while the luckier got slum mechanics. Touts were considered out of our realm as slum girls unless of cause that girl was beautiful and getting herself secondary education. I was both.
That whole week, I found myself going to the bus stop and hanging around till his matatu arrived. At first I pretended it was pure coincidence that I happened to be at the stage but after some time I said what the heck. The guy was a tout, not a retard. He wore this stupendous smile every time I saw him. On the Friday of that week, as I alighted in the morning, I smiled back as I pushed my way out. He read consent from my smile. He grabbed my ass. I am sure he was staring as I walked away swinging my wares. A model on a catwalk. A tangy feeling ran through my nerve network. It was official. I had me a tout boyfriend.
The ass-grabbing scene must have sent the desired signal his way. That evening as I came from school, I found him at the bus stop. Without the matatu. He was wearing his now so usual and almost creepy smile. He was off duty for the afternoon and if I did not mind, he could show me where he lived. It was not far away from where we were. I tried to hesitate telling him that I had to get home in good time as my neighborhood was bound to be dangerous with the advent of darkness. He would escort me to our doorsteps if need be and of cause we would not take long. We were just going to see where he lived. ‘If you insist’ was what came to my mind. ‘I hope this only takes a moment’ was what came out of my mouth. After all, he had been so munificent to me that week. I did not want to seem rude on his first harmless request.
We walked along the road for sometime then we diverted and started entering the slum. I thought great!Another inter-slum transfer. I became uneasy when other girls stared at me with depreciatory gazes. Jealous. We could as well have made a rendition of Whitney and Deborah Cox’s duet. Same script different cast. I sighed with relief when we reached our destination. Though the building facing me looked older than fortJesus and the ruins of Ghedi combined, it was a lot better than the tin and carton shanties surrounding it. We went inside and made ourselves comfortable.
Chips … soda… ngumuu…more soda… laughter here… laughter there…drawn curtains to keep mosquitoes out… changing seats to get a better view of the black and white greatwall… and was it getting hot in there?...stripping to the boxers to cool off. It was too much. By the time we were through, I was confused. I was not sure whether I still felt like a model on the catwalk or a cat on the model walk.
It was nine o’clock when I was buttoning my school blouse. I had no regrets. What with a whole week’s savings, chips and two sodas, huh! It was the least I could do. Quid pro qua. Come to think of it, he was not the only one who enjoyed the act that evening. My mother did not have to know anything. She was soaked in chang’aa when I arrived at almost ten. When the next morning she suggested I had been out late, I told her I had been at Atieno’s watching the bold and the beautiful.
I was discussing the previous night with my closest friends at school that Saturday morning when I realized how fast things were moving. When asked for his name, it occurred to me that we had not even introduced ourselves. I knew exactly what to give him and what to get from him the next time we met. He was at the same spot wearing the same clothes and smile. He was off duty that afternoon too. We walked to his place and spent the whole afternoon together. There was less talking and more action. By the end of the day, his name was not the only thing I took home with me.
It was only after two weeks when my mother realized that I had been doing more than just watching the bold and the beautiful. The soap opera messed up with one’s morality for sure but the womb! Chang’aa can make you a retard. It can make you speak incoherently and lose self control. However, it does not prevent you from realizing that you are about to become a grandmama. That evening, she had closed her chang’aa business early and she must have drowned in all that had remained. The casts needed preparation. The stage was always set. The audience could always be counted on. In slums, parents don’t discuss with their children. They beat them into submission. When I heard her ask my younger sister where the prostitute was, I braved myself for a long noisy night.
“Kuja hapa Malaya hii!” she yelled from the part of the room designated as the kitchen.
“Hutanitusi. Usiniletee cham zako!” I yelled back from the bed where I had been the whole day. In the slum, kids answered back. The mood of the evening had been set. Neighbours within a radius of five hundred metres were pulling out their antennae to capture each and every word. The brawl would definitely make the nine o’clock slum bulleting and hit the headlines the next morning. Slum dwellers did not need electronic media to get entertained. Something always cropped up every evening. The previous night, it was mama and baba Kariuki. They had fought the whole night never mind the fact that mamaKariuki had been discharged from maternity the previous day. A rumour monger whose name we got to know from their shouting had told her that baba Kariuki had been entertaining a girl at their house since she went to hospital. Mama Kariuki got to use all her invective vocabulary on him. Baba Kariuki hid under the cover of masculine strength and gave her a beating that rivaled the labour pain she had gone through. Just like that, their little bundle of joy was initiated into the slums modus vivendi barely a week after it was born. Tonight it was our turn to offer entertainment and when the subject matter revolved around sex, our audience was sure not to get bored.
Being the only girl getting secondary education in a radius of one kilometer, I was the jewel in my mother’s eye (she had one) and the envy of every neighbour. My two elder sisters had become pregnant in class eight and were now wallowing in the miasma of poverty in other corners of our vast god forsaken heritage. Having come thus far, she had each and every reason to believe that I was the one to get us out of the misery. She had a palpable vision of me completing high school, maybe going to college, meeting a wealthy kikuyu with lots of property to offer and some love to get us through the church doors. She narrated this vision overtly to anyone who cared to listen. And here I was carrying the child of a matatu tout. Whatever happened to the dream of prosperity?
She started by telling me in so many words how much she had sacrificed to put me through school. How she had been forced to sell chang’aa to put me in secondary school. And didn’t I even have an iota of mercy on the way she suffered for my sake? It always started with an attempt to solicit pity. When that failed, she drew out her daggers. All this time she was yelling and saying incoherent things. Every time she made an allegation, I countered it with a louder yell. A stranger would have found it difficult to believe that it was a mother-daughter row. The slum was no place to raise a descent kid.
I told her that she was consuming and selling chang’aa even as I grew in her womb and the tale about selling it to put me through school could only be narrated to the birds. And was drinking chang’aa part of the suffering? Did she do it for my sake? Why was she demanding success from me where everybody else in the lineage had failed? Didn’t I reserve all the rights to screw up my life as I so deemed right?
“You ungrateful bitch!” she yelled and threw a sufuria at me. The physical confrontation had begun. How many girls my age were earning their own living right now and here she was wasting her hard earned cash on a prostitute.
“With three kids and more still on the way, they damn so well have to earn a living” I interjected. “And could you remind me what it is they sold again? I hardly see them carry any goods when they go to their trade places.” I was winning the verbal warfare. I sunk the wedge deeper. “I have never written to you asking you to use your chang’aa proceeds on me. I won’t die the next day if you stop using your money on me either.”
She yelled that she wished she had thrown me into the NairobiRiver when I was born. I told her that I could not remember sending an application asking her to conceive me.
“Bitch….” Came the yell accompanied by another sufurias. The sufuria was aimed at my head but I managed to shield myself with the arm. It is here that I gave a threat.
“Hakianani hunigongi tena!”
”Utadoo!’’ she hurled a bowl at me. It got me squarely on the tummy. I decided to put my threat to action. I went behind the curtains that separated the bedroom from the kitchen. I pulled out her reserve mtungi from where she hid it and emptied the contents on the floor then I threw it at her feet.
“There… go tell the police.”
“Oh my god!” She started to fumble. She was now hysteric “You’re going to pay dearly for each and every drop.” She took a mwiko and charged towards me. I pushed her aside and made for the door. I knew it was time to leave or else one of us would be charged with murder.
I went and stayed with my sister and after two days, my mother came. That’s when we decided that the fetus had chosen the wrong womb. She knew of this nurse who was good at the job and her rates were also affordable. I would be up and about in a few days. Nobody would suspect a thing. That’s how I earned my two weeks in bed and I was the talk of the slum for the entire period. Nobody knew for sure that I had been pregnant. We had not mentioned it during our fight but in the slum, no girl got to spend two weeks in bed for whatever reason… unless of course she had aborted.
When I healed, I took my bag and went back to school in full glamour. I was still the only girl getting secondary education north, south, east and west of our shanty, a radius of one kilometer. Cleaning of the womb had not been a first for the slum. It was a daily phenomenon. I did not lack a reason for my boyfriend when he asked me about my whereabouts for the past three weeks. He did not have to know a thing.
I continued seeing him but this time I took more precaution. I used some birth control pills that my sister had given me. Before long, we were going out to reggae clubs and intoxicating ourselves out of our minds. When drunk, high on drugs and madly in love, the last thing you remember before hoping into bed are pills or any other form of protection. Five months after my first encounter with the nurse, I was in the family way again. This time round, I went and confided in my sister. She advised me to discuss it with my boyfriend then ask him to marry me. I was to escape from home without my mother’s knowledge and let her learn from my sister where I had gone. The daughter of my grandmother was many things but a complete retard was not among them. She must have been a PhD. holder in early pregnancy detection. That evening, I got home and she was still serving customers in the other room where she sold chang’aa. Seeing it as an opportunity to sneak to bed, I told my younger sister who was boiling some water for ugali that I was not going to take supper. As I was about to undress, the door flung open and in staggered my mother with an axe in hand.
She asked me whether we were being taught how to be prostitutes in school. She said she was going to chop me into pieces and asked why girls of our days found it hard to keep their legs together. I retaliated by asking her if it had been the work of the holy spirit when she had conceived and given birth before she was eighteen. She had a glass house. Why on earth was she throwing boulders? By now my sister had grabbed the axe and ran out with it. From the other room, there were shouts and clapping from the drunkards who seemed to be enjoying themselves from our verbal fight. Her ego having been hurt by such a sarcastic remark, she reached for a cup and tossed some hot water at me. It landed on my back as I turned and I charged at her before she could make another scoop. I threw her on the ground and escaped. I pushed past slum mongers who had gathered to get the story first hand. The ever coveted slum spirit of being the first to know. I headed towards the road. It was then that I realized I wasn’t going back to my mother’s house. In that night, full of fear and uncertainty, a slum girl had come of age.
Tired, hungry and afraid of the reception I would receive, it was eleven at night when I knocked at my husband’s to be house. What I saw and heard next was enough to send me down with cardiac arrest. The door was answered by a tall, brown and dreadlocked man in his late twenties. A well fed mosquito could boast of more muscle. He wore nothing except for a pair of brown shorts that must have been white from the factory and made to fit a ten years old. I must have interrupted something as he had this huge hard on which was threatening to rip off his shorts. He apparently did not see the urgency of concealing it. As I occupied myself with the burden of introducing myself and explaining why I was visiting at such an ungodly hour, the guy found some disgusting ways to say he did not give a rat’s ass. He shifted his activities from the head, the chin to the armpit and down to the crotch scratching like one who had just been urinated on by a buffalo. He must have uprooted a kilo of hair from the four areas by the time he decided to talk to me. He informed me that my boyfriend did not live there. I pulled my head back and rolled my eyes. I was convinced that one of us was insane and it had better not be me. I insisted then on being shown where he lived and he kept refusing saying that it was quite a distance from his place. When I emphatically told him that I would stay in his house until he took me to him, he gave in and stepped inside to dress up. When he stepped out again I was surprised to see that he had only added on a vest with an obscene cartoon on the front and below it the words ‘why I don’t wear shorts.’ This made quite some humour juxtaposing the cartoon on the vest to the person wearing it then but the situation I was in couldn’t allow for a good laugh. It was evident that my acquaintance was not pleased. After locking the door he could only snap a coy ‘nifuate’. As if I could go in the other direction!
We went down the dark stairway and a few blocks away he stopped to knock on the door of a slum dwelling. I could not believe what I was seeing. He had better be seeking someone else there because if it was my boyfriend, I would strangle him with my bare hands.
The only consolation I had when running away from my mother’s shanty was the fact that I would have moved one rank up the social ladder. Never mind the fact that my boyfriend’s rental flat was right in the middle of another sprawling slum hence sharing in all the pains and tribulations of a slum. The texture and laying of the stones would have made archeologists conclude that the masons had been fleeing an epidemic when they made it. The rooms were also small and stuffy with a finishing that would make interior designers turn green with shame. Electric bulbs were only found in the rooms. You could get mugged by your neighbour on the stairway at night and still say hi to him the next morning. The toilet and bathroom were so narrow that a well bottomed woman would first have to make sure she fitted in before renting a room. Nevertheless, this would have been better than a million cartons woven to make a house. It was far greater than the collection of tins that stood before me then. I asked him if that was where he lived. He did not have to answer. The door opened after what seemed like an eternity and there he was with nothing on himself except a faded undersized pair of shorts. What was it with slum men and kids outfit?
So this was it? After months of patronage and lies about how he was planning to move to a more spacious flat and refurbish his room, my husband to be was nothing but a desolate slum dweller. How long did he think the lies would last anyway? Men are such whores.
‘Mgeni wako.’ My escort introduced and vanished into the dark night glad that the burden was now off his shoulders. After recovering from a minute of shock he murmured a welcome and I erupted with a bitch feat. That was it? Everything was sorted by a simple welcome? He did not have the courtesy to explain to me why all of a sudden he lived in a shanty instead of the medieval grotesque structure several feet away. Did he think I was that materialistic? That I could not love him for whom he really was? Like hell I couldn’t
‘Usiniletee pang’ang’o za ukuro hapa!’ came the terse reply in an angry whisper.
‘Hii ni time gani unataka kuweka muathara mtaa wa mine? Mbona ucome kunisaka magithaa ungodly kaa hizi?” he was whisper-shouting all this time. He finally gave me an ultimatum.
“Udecide kaa utaingia ama utaenda kusakanya magreener pastures. Mi niko zangu na usijaribu kunishikisha nare.” He stepped aside to let me in. For a split second I stood there puzzled. What had happened to the man I had known for the past six months? The man standing there reeking of chang’aa and giving me an ultimatum was a far cry from the ever smiling-all providing tout I had come to know and love. Had I a better option that night, I would have taken it. However, there were only two things on offer that night: I could get in, have a small talk and hope that a marriage would be born. The other option was to turn away in defiance and get gang raped in some dark alley by thugs whose faces would make policemen hang their boots with fear.
On getting in I wished I had taken the bitter option. My boyfriend slept on a wafer thin mattress dropped on the floor. As if that was not painful enough, another woman lay on it. She must have been a bloody actress for she pretended to exude all the comfort the world could afford. She curled herself up with her breasts bare and one thigh exposed as if she had been posing for one of the antique oil painters. I could swear she wasn’t asleep and had enacted the scene to pump up my adrenaline. She was in for a bloody fight.
“Nini hii?” I protested.
“Tutanego moro.” With that he hopped into bed, some bed huh! I knew better not to argue then. I grabbed a bedsheet and found myself a location on the muddy floor.
When I woke up the next morning the street pickup was nowhere to be seen. We spent the morning arguing and finally came to terms. We pronounced each other man and wife and started the long walk to hell. I had no doubt that this marriage was sitting on a quagmire. The best I could do was hope and pray. After all, this was the slum way of living. Modus vivendi. Hopelessness, crime and suffering. Every experience was a walk through the valley of the shadow of death.
I got to learn a great deal about my husband in the days that followed. He told me he had lost his touting job several days ago. That marked the end of his touting career for good and he turned to all sort of informal jobs like manning stages and selling scrap. The little he got was all spent on brew. It was up to me to put food on the table. I did multifarious chores to keep the family afloat. At first I did laundry for those who did not have time to do it in the neighbourhood. I later changed to green grocery which gave way to hawking mitumba. I was peripatetic. When all was not giving a stable income to support a retarded husband and an infant, I turned to family business. My mother had done it all her life and my grandmother before her. I started with one Jerican and several cups. My spouse was threatening to put me out of business by over drafting and refusing to pay when I decided that he would never have his drinks at my den.
As time went by, I was supposed to worry of not only what he was going to eat but also of his safety. Every now and then, I would be called from my business to go and bribe policemen on patrol before they took him to the police station. I found myself rescuing him from irate chang’aa vendors whenever he drunk and had no money to pay. He was degenerating into an infant. His needs were multiplying on a daily basis. He had formed a cartel with several neighbours. They would assemble very early in the morning as if they were reporting to an office. They would then go to the garbage heap and look for anything that could fetch them enough money for the day’s supply. With neither breakfast nor lunch, they would spend the rest of the day in chang’aa dens drinking and cursing the rich for not minding the poor. If by nightfall they were not too drunk to walk, they staggered home for their only meal of the day. They shared the night with serial killers and other hardcore criminal. Abject poverty was the sole reason they walked home alive amid the numerous dangers.
We became desperate housewives. We clung to anything that could mint into a shilling. We worked multiple jobs and joined any merry go round that came round. Unfortunately, our finances remained stationary and the only thing that seemed to round were our heads. We juggled money like fresh liver on the palms. The younger wives traded their bodies to earn the extra coins. We connived on how to get loans and default on them. We volunteered in funeral committees only to raise money and not submit it. We went through hell to ensure the well being of our families. The church became our spring where we renewed our strength. Every Sunday, we walked out of the church doors with greater hope for a better tomorrow. Enough courage to face another week. The pastors found an opportunity to harvest bountifully.
The lord see’yeth thee………
………..Cain gave the leftover……..
…….Abel gave the best……….
…….Our God is an expensive one……..
………The Lord returns measure for measure………
With this, the pastor remained with the better chunk of our week’s income. He worshipped an expensive God and it was up to us to appease Him every week. What had become of the poor old lady who had offered a nickel and got herself lauded as the biggest giver? Who had expurgated that verse from the modern bible? We gave in church. We volunteered. The pastors thrived and thrived. Nothing improved in our lives. Yet we gave even more the following Sunday. We went down on our knees beseeching the Spirit to reign on our husbands. They went down on their knees beseeching mama pima to refill their glasses. The more we gave, the more we suffered. Religion lost meaning. Life lost its purpose. Marriage became a sour taste in the mouth. Children were arriving with every turn of the calendar and poverty was getting in through every opening on our shanty. My husband remained non-committed and every penny he got was spent in chang’aa dens. I lost faith in him every instance.I lost hope in life everyday. When the pastor delivered the vineyard sermon that Sunday, I found my turning point. He was the big branch that was preventing other branches from being productive. Maybe cutting him off could have changed things for better. It didn’t.
After the dust settled, we sat down as a family to strategize on the best way forward. There was the all important issue of how we were going to use the matanga loot. My daughters were coming up with such bizarre ideas you’d think we had just won a jackpot. The only thing we all seemed to agree on unanimously was the fact that a mini feast was going to take place that night. The victims of that decision were two cockerels who would go down in history as the first to meet the knife in my household. My patched sufurias had never had the privilege of tasting chicken stew. Once in a while we got to cook other products from the animal kingdom whenever one of my daughters decided to surprise us with proceeds from her loins. Joan, my third born had been quiet most of the night and it was not until the next morning when we realized what had been going on in her mind.
The daughter of a bi…. no….. the bitch had taken off with half the amount. My head started pounding and a large lump on my throat was threatening to choke me. I became nauseated. I knew exactly what to do. I went to my den and swallowed a whole litre of chang’aa. If the brew did nothing to ease my pain, it really opened my mouth. Since Joan was not around to take the heat of my wrath, the sisters would take it on her behalf. As usual the slum dwellers did the analytical listening. I couldn’t have cared less.
By the time I got too tired to go on cursing I was livid with the whole of humanity. I was incensed with God. What had I done wrong to offend this omnipotent creator? My late husband’s soul had not even settled in hell and here was his little she devil swindling us from the only income he had earned us in all his life (actually he had earned it in death). Being a mother is difficult. Being a mother to daughters is very difficult. Being a mother to daughters with nothing between their ears is extremely difficult. Life was throwing doldrums at us front, back and sideways. There must have been calm and relative peace everywhere else in the world for the devil and his whole entourage had set camp in my shanty. The gods had gone deaf on my cry.
My first daughter Jane was a mother of three and had AIDS. She was barely twenty two but looking at her face, she couldn’t be younger than sixty. In her early stages of education, she had seemed bright. Exceptionally talented. Her grades however deteriorated as she went higher. She was in class seven when she arrived home one evening and announced that she was not going back to school ever. She stuck to her guns and no amount of beating could get her out of bed the following morning. Several weeks later, it turned out that she was pregnant. Rumours making rounds had it that her class teacher was the man responsible. By the time we had mobilized a gang to take him out he had already fled to his rural area.
She delivered a girl after nine months and within no time she turned to prostitution to earn the elusive shilling. She got married somewhere in the sprawling slum and left me with the duty of raising my granddaughter. Five months later she returned home pregnant and swore never to return to the bastard. A bastard we had never had the pleasure of meeting. Tom came screaming into the world four months after Jane’s return. She had achieved where her father had failed six times. I pleaded with her to stay home and help me run my chang’aa business but she thought commercial sex gave quick and better returns. It was then that she went and returned home with more than a child in her body.
She was sick on and off during her entire pregnancy. Always in throes. It was not until a nurse suggested to her that she should be tested when we realized that she could be going down with AIDS. She dismissed the nurse as crazy and went on fighting her ailments the best way she knew how. When her time came, she was all alone in the house and had mistaken labour pain with ordinary abdominal pain. She delivered her third child at home with the help of two neighbours. Mother and child exchanged intervals of sickness. After much persuasion Jane agreed to take her infant for testing. It was no news when she tested positive but Jane was all bitchy wanting to be told how the baby had contracted the virus. She argued that the baby was too small to have had sex. It was then that I realized the government was not doing its duty in schools.
By the time my husband sadly departed, the pairs health had deteriorated to alarming rates. I had asked my other daughters to come together and support their sister but the elder ones categorically put it to me that they were yet to take a course in nursing or community service. I had to bribe and occasionally beat up my last born into helping out. While I was wiping my weightless granddaughter’s bonny bum, my daughter Jill was wiping her elder sister’s. Both were bed ridden and everything under the sky had to be done for them. Jane was loosing her nerves everyday and as a way of helping, I promised her a glass of chang’aa to mitigate the situation everyday. A neighbour had suggested it saying that it would help take her mind off her predicaments and prolong her life. Like hell it did. She writhed in bed everyday, the virus gnawing at the little flesh left under her skin. Her daughter suffered from atrophy but her tremendous will to live was remarkable. She was all smiles and jolly whenever she was not too sick. Jane was paying the price of immoral living. The little girl was just a victim of circumstance.
Upon reaching class seven, my second born June decided that she had accumulated enough knowledge to last her two life times. Armed with a hand bag full of cheap cosmetics and tarty outfit she hit the streets lest she be left behind by this bandwagon that every other slum girl was boarding. Like every mother, I had the interest of my children at heart but every attempt I made to bring them back to their senses was countered with bitchy remarks that left me ashen. Once in an argument about the value of education she had told me to my face that she did not have to get to form two to realize that selling chang’aa was more lucrative than sitting in a classroom all day. I had slapped her so hard that I thought she would turn deaf. I cursed my mother for having shared my past with them. The failings of a mother should never be used as an excuse for a daughter to fail. In the slum, they were used as a weapon whenever a daughter wanted to justify her failings. My daughters’ armories were filled with such weapons and they never thought twice about using them.
When she got tired of hawking her natural resources, June fell into love and got married. I never met my son-in-law and neither did she visit for the entire duration she was married. I had learnt not to worry and had decided to allow any bird which thought it was old enough to fly away the right to do so. Two years later she had returned to the nest with nothing but a sack full of clothes and two granddaughters. Apparently, her husband had been shot down by what she preferred to call a stray bullet in a police shoot out. I could swear by Apollo that the bullet had left the comfort of the firearm with every intention of landing on him but why antagonize the prodigal daughter. I suggested in some not so direct words that the so called stray bullet did not burn down their home and there was no point of her abandoning it just because her husband was dead. The look in her eyes told me that it was a suggestion whose reply I would not like to hear.
Sleeping arrangements became quite tricky. We still lived in a single room partitioned with curtains into a bedroom and sitting room cum kitchen. The small room I had grabbed beside it was where I conducted my business. We had a matrimonial mattress and two other large ones where everyone else curved a niche. Everyone else including my succumbing daughter and her kids. In a normal African setup, expansion of a family was viewed as a blessing and a measure of prosperity. In the slum, it was a curse and a recipe for pandemonium.
Joan’s affinity for money could not allow her any decency in life. She was always fighting with her sisters over clothes they alleged she stole and sold. She always volunteered to stand in for me at the den only for the arithmetic not to tally. Patrons would even complain of their drinks being dilute. When I was called to her school for books she had allegedly stolen, her tainted academic life came to an end. She would then spend a week at her boyfriend’s place then come home. Severally, she came home high on stuff that was not alcohol. Once during a fight with June, she had threatened to stab her with a knife. I had to step in and offer her some money to cool her down. Without involving her, we had divided my husbands “pension” into two equal portions and hidden them in the last place a thief would think of looking. It must have been the first place she looked. On realizing that the money was gone I knew that was the last we had seen of her. After cursing her with all the slum vocabulary I had, I only wished she could put the money into good use and maybe surprise us after a few years. But being who she was, the last things she would think of investing in were shares in the stock markets.
I got into my chang’aa den and after drowning a considerable amount, I continued with my verbal monologue of insult and curses. Not even the sick ones were exempted. I drifted away for about two or three hours and when I regained control of my faculties, I suggested that we should use the remaining amount to expand our business and have those not in school helping in its operation. The idea was immediately vetoed by all and I was told that the money should be split six ways between me and the five remaining daughters. No amount of lobbying could bring them to my line of thought. After all I wasn’t a mother to any as far as they were concerned. I was just a selfish witch who in her indulgences of pleasure had given birth to them. And what mother raised six daughters and have them all board the whore bus? What mother killed the father of her kids to have them feast on chicken? The more I thought of what had become of my family, the more I hated the gods. When I finally gave in to their demand, I attempted to have it shared in ratios proportional to everyone’s responsibilities but this was also shot down. Jackie categorically put it to me that it would only take her half an hour to go out and get pregnant if kids are what it took to increase one’s share. When all negotiations failed, I agreed that the amount would be split equally except for Jane who would get some extra cash for her medication. Another argument ensued and an ultimatum was thus issued that the house would know no peace until the amount was simply divided six ways to the penny. Jane was being insulted and dismissed as if she wasn’t there at all. The girls speaking at me were a pack of monsters. There was not the slightest grain of love enclosed in their hearts.
It dawned on me how badly I had failed as a mother. Before this, I used to think that my family tree was bewitched. I now believed it.
The amount was split six ways but I appointed myself to be the custodian of Jackie’s, Judy’s and Jill’s shares since they were still in school. I was to release it to them as their needs arose.
Upon pocketing her share, June went and came back with ten eggs, fried and ate them all with her two kids under the sympathetic stare of Jane’s kids. She then changed clothes and took off. With a temper that threatened to bring down our makeshift roof, Jane gave Judy some money and told her to go and get her a tray of eggs and two loaves of bread. She had five eggs made for each kid and the rest were placed by her bedside.
On seeing this, Jill and Judy asked for a hundred shillings from their coffers. Jackie was asking for the whole amount of which I declined. The two went and came back with five eggs each and blocks of cake. They were fried and eaten as I sat on a stool. In total, thirty five eggs were fried in my house that evening as I sat on a stool and the closest I came to them was sight and smell. After years and years of putting food on their table single handedly, none of them had the courtesy of making an omelette for mama. Tears were trickling down my chicks as I decided to go to my den and drown my sorrow with a glass or two. I could as well swallow down the whole bloody amount if I wanted to. I owned the damn place.
Jackie was still bitching about her inheritance at the top of her voice when I closed the door behind me. She was threatening to burn the place down if she did not get every dime and swore never to set foot in a classroom ever. She should have told me something new and original for all I cared. I could care less if she were to go to Siberia and come back married to a Russian amputee. With nothing left to look forward to in life, the only sweet thing left to me was my brew. I was gulping it down like purified water. June’s kids were wailing when I poured my first glass. The rascals were screaming their lungs out when I lost count of my glasses.
June returned home three days later stoned to the eyes. For the entire period, her daughters had fed on nothing except for leftovers from their ailing aunt’s family. She gave harrowing tales of how she had been swindled off some money by her friends and the police had taken the rest in a night sweep. The moral of her narrative was that her innocent kids needed support and I was the one to offer it. I was not moved an inch. Life had hardened me and I had become a seasoned heart of rock. Whether she had donated her entire amount to the Save A Life Fund or thrown a heroine party for international hookers, I honestly didn’t give a damn. She could as well narrate her tale to the birds.
The two weeks that followed were trying for me as the head of the family. I had long since given in to Jackie’s demand for her entire inheritance. I had in fact given the other two all that belonged to them and washed my hands off any form of motherly obligation. No sooner had I done that than Jackie disappeared the whole afternoon only to reappear with a polythene bag full of mitumba outfits. So far this was the only bright idea from anyone in the family and it would have been even brighter if the clothes, shoes and cosmetics were meant for trade and not for personal use. I did not have a problem with her new found fashion as long as she could get hungry and feed on one of her outfit.
The day we had divided the money had marked the end of collective cooking in my household. Everyone fed off her pocket and competition was rife to see who could afford the nicer things in life. June had returned to her commercial sex stall when she realized her kids were going to starve in the midst of plenty.
A week after the cake was divided six ways, everyone had nibbled their share to the crumbs. The small oasis in the vast desert of poverty had quickly dried up. I had used my share to expand my business and this provided the police with a cash cow to milk everyday. A flying squad officer had also mysteriously made a stop one day and informed me that I was being investigated for peddling drugs in the slum. I was supposed to accompany him to their headquarters and record a statement. Rumours in the slum about these people was that anybody they picked never returned and it was with this at the back of my mind that I decided I wasn’t going to no darn headquarter. I told him it must have been a terrible mistake and he was kind enough to promise that he would go back and counter check his briefings. Before leaving however, he told me that chang’aa was also a serious commodity they investigated at this flying place. He also made it clear that flying came at a price unlike ordinary policing. The bottom line? I had to part with all my day’s sales.
Exactly three weeks after disappearing with our half pot of gold, Joan returned home a prodigal daughter. It was on a chilly Friday morning and it had been raining all night. We were still in bed when the door was knocked. When I opened it, she stood there. Still. All wet and shaking. Our eyes met and locked for a second. I read fear in hers. I knew mine craved for murder. Murder gave way to rage. Rage turned to sympathy. There and then, the parable of the prodigal kid was re-enacted.
Unlike the prodigal son who had the courtesy of asking for what was entitled to him, this prodigal daughter had actually stolen more than what she was entitled to. Both had nurtured the same idea of how they were going to spend it. Joan, I was to learn later had given the whole amount to her drug peddling boyfriend to expand business. What had followed were two weeks of splurge drinking, drugs and sex orgies. It was not until the police caught up with her boyfriend and she had narrowly escaped when she came back to her senses. On squandering his inheritance, the prodigal son thought it wise to find some informal job and support himself. My prodigal daughter came straight home.
She neither fell down on her knees nor asked me to make her a slave in my household. Devil knew I needed one at my chang’aa joint. Her eyes changed from fear to cold as she squeezed past me to get in. I almost erupted with hysteria. That was it! Not even a simple “I’m sorry mama. I never meant to hurt you. I never meant to make you cry………………………………….”?
The entire collection from my late husband’s matanga was now gone. The only opportunity we had of shaking ourselves from the ashes of poverty had slipped off our fingers. The slum dwellers had watched us live a joie de vivre lifestyle for a week and they were now going to sit back and watch us sink deeper and deeper into the quagmire of abject poverty. Families were known to benefit from deaths in the slum. There were many cases of people in the slum who had risen from poverty solely on matanga money. I had declined to inter my late husband to cut on the burial expenses only for my ne’er do well daughters to take the money and squander it. What would our neighbours think about us? What had we done to the gods? What had we not sacrificed? We deserved a better life. I worked as hard as any other woman I knew. I went to church regularly. I sung all the local praises at the top of my lungs. I prayed in tongues if need be. This was too much. The derisive laugher from neighbours. The hushed gossip. The ridicule. The slum would never forgive us for our lack of prescience. It was with this in mind that I made the impetuous decision.
I did not purchase any new stock. I sold out all what had remained the previous night. In the evening, I decided it was time to embrace the prodigal daughter. I announced amid jubilation that we were going to have a major feast that night. We would celebrate Joan’s safe return. The reunion of our family. A household that had almost been torn apart by rapacity. The return of love. Forgiveness. I took my shopping basket and went to the market. It would be a feast befitting the last supper. The role of the all loving mother would have won me an Oscar that night.
“Wa Jane umeachia nani chang’aa?”
Mind your own business you old hag. “Leo napikia watoto.” I said smiling. The old lady gave me a surprised look and walked away. I swung leisurely towards the butchery with my kiondo in hand. The cameras were on me. The lighting was perfect. I could see my director smiling. At this rate, I was going to earn him an Oscar for best director. The nosy vendors had rehearsed their lines well.
“Una wageni mama Jane?” the butcher never sold that quantity of meat unless one had visitors.
“Heee wa Juni, si uniitie chapati.”
Like hell I will. “kuja tupike wa Shikoo.” I said smiling.
“ndiraigwa Joan niaracokire? Na kai Ngai ni mwega i.”
Slum dwellers and their big mouths. “Ngai ni wa ciama nyina wa caro.” I said smiling. Perfect! I could hear my director whispering.
My kiondo was overflowing with goodies by the time I was done with shopping. The slum dwellers were left behind with enough gossip to last a decade. Had Joan landed a mzungu? Had she robbed a bank? Their mouths were dripping with curiosity. My imaginary director was already budgeting for his forthcoming academy award. It was going to be a blockbuster this home coming supper.
I returned home to find them arguing. Everyone was ganged up against Joan whom they accused of squandering a fortune. How could she return and entrench herself as the favourite daughter? The jealous sisters huh! Jackie who was the most cantankerous of them turned to me and asked if I was going nuts. Wow! At this rate, the best supporting actress Oscar was definitely hers. I told them they should take it as an opportunity to return to collective cooking. I must admit here. My daughters knew good sense when they heard one.
The cameras shifted to the kitchen area. Every one except Jane acquired a role there. The director was loving it. Tom was trying hard to win the best supporting actor award but the girls were not giving him a chance.
The day was in old age when we started cooking. The night was way past its youth by the time we were through. Everyone was in a jovial mood. It was the second time in less than a month that we were feasting like kings. Even Jane whom we kept thinking would die the following day had a glow on her face. They had no clue whatsoever. The thoroughness of the plot would definitely bag us the best script Oscar.
We did a bit of cleaning up before serving. It was eleven o’clock and my grandchildren were just the way they had been playing out. Their tattered clothes were covered in mud from the previous night’s downpour. Their mothers were dressed in skimpy outfit they used on Koinange. I had also not showered in two days and my wardrobe had not changed in five years. My tangled hair was concealed in a multicoloured nylon headscarf. The best costumes award was our costume designer’s for the taking.
I did all the serving. I handed them the plates steaming with delicacies with a big smile on my face. ‘HYPOCRATE’ they smiled back. The lighting director shone more light. After the meal, I took the juice that I had mixed and again served everyone with an even bigger smile. The scene had just won us the best movie academy. The director was farting all over with joy.
Full, tired and sleepy, they went to sleep one by one. I took out my bottle and glass to enjoy a night cap. The home coming supper shooting had just wrapped up. The immediate neighbourhood was calm at that time of the night. In the distance, the local bar was busting with life. Slum bigwigs who could afford bottled poison. Under age girls trying to give their grandfathers a coronary in exchange for beer. Waiters squirming with pleasure when spanked by old drunkards. Big bottomed women cursing and shouting for attention. Couples heading to their rented rooms after a spirited haggling. Kula Vitu Bar and Lodging was responsible for half the Aids cases in our slum. Occasionally, mama Awiti could be heard hurling insults at her chang’aa customers a few shanties away. My patrons had migrated to her place. It was evident from the way she was talking to them that they were not welcome their. I filtered out all the disturbances and directed my attention to my soul.
My thoughts lingered on the purpose of life. There was proof beyond doubt that my family tree was destined for doom. My grandmother’s husband had helped her sire eight children before fleeing to Uganda with a prostitute. The African woman had to be both mother and father to her kids and putting food on the table became a Herculean task. She had no permanent source of income and had to rely on all sorts of informal jobs to make ends meet. She eventually ventured into chang’aa to try and put them all in school. Fortunately for her, they all seemed to get enough education as soon as they learnt how to write down their names. As a result, I had ended up with aunts and uncles who engaged in illegal trade for a living. They were all scattered in the numerous slums the big city boasted of. They had all struggled the best way they knew how but nothing seemed to move them from the valley of the shadow of death. By the time I became a teenager, two of my uncles had fatally stopped the bullet while on the job. Two aunts had night stalls on Koinange Street while another had succumbed to Aids related complications.
My mother on her part had eloped with a chang’aa trader who drank more than he sold. When she went to live with him, she was barely eighteen and already pregnant with her first child. She had proceeded to sire four daughters and three sons. My father had died before our last born sister was born. When he met his death, he had long since drank his business to closure and was drinking in other dens. On the fateful evening, he was brought home by a neighbour. He had been drinking the whole day. He claimed that he could not see. We were not surprised. We put him to bed. He was dead the following morning. Ten other people had died in the slum from the drinking that night. Several had turned blind. With that, multiple of slum women had been turned into widows. The cycle continued.
Was life preordained?
Did the poor have a real chance of crossing over to join the rich?
How far were we below the poverty line?
I could not help thinking how the devil will have one hell of a hard time trying to torture slum women. Welcome to hell ha…ha…ha…ha.
Sounds like the same line I heard after birth.
This is real hell. Suffering. Agony. Tribulation…more suffering ha…ha…ha…ha.
Tell me something new.
At one, I decided it was time to act the finale to our movie. I had been drinking chang’aa for two hours none stop. I was bound to think irrationally. I took all the clothes we had in the house and spread them on top of my children and my grandchildren. I reached for the petrol from where I had sneaked it earlier. I gave a generous soaking on everyone. All the paraffin went into my mattress. I stopped for a moment to take a breath. This was for the good of humanity. Before me slept two generations destined for the same fate as mine. The girl child of the slum had failed miserably. The slum husband had directed all blood from their brains to the loin. Their thinking was impaired. The womenfolk of the slum were slaves.
‘A family of fourteen perishes in midnight fire.’ The headlines would read.
‘A family was yesterday burnt to ashes after their shanty was burnt to the ground in what reliable sources say is the worst fire to hit the slum in a long time.’ A reporter would narrate.
‘The mother was in a jovial mood as she shopped for supper.’
‘They had celebrated the return of their daughter and sister.’
‘The husband had died in his sleep a few weeks ago.’
‘The mother was a chang’aa seller.’
‘The firefighters were unable to get to the scene.’
The media would investigate. The people would be more than willing to talk. The government would not even open a file on us. It will just be another slum inferno. The city council would know what best to do with our charred bodies.
It had been a perfect set up. The reconciliation feast and all. Nobody had seen me add sleeping pills to the juice they had taken. There was absolutely no danger of any of them waking up anytime in the near future. And who could blame me? It had actually taken a lot of courage on my part to come to such a conclusion. If life had nothing good to offer us, then it was only wise to go and see what the next world had in store for us as a family. With match box in hand, I squeezed myself between my daughters and pulled my mattress over us. We were properly sand witched by a volcano about to erupt. Lighting the match stick from under there was no rocket science…
