The Chameleon Bush

PART I

PAMBAZUKO

(The morning light)

“I have seen the desperation and disorder of the powerless: how it twists the lives of children on the streets of… Nairobi.”

(Barack Obama, from: Dreams from my Father)

Chapter 1

Children play in foetid pools beside dead dogs. Rats scurry through cracks in walls. Chickens search garbage for maggots and goats eat plastic bags.

This is Nyumbani: a place where poverty prevails and resilience prospers; where necessity breeds enterprise, hardship spawns resolve, and humour tries to keep desperation at bay. AIDS is rampant, cholera prowls, and infant mortality is too frequent to merit comment, too alarming to appear on official statistics.

Nyumbani assails the senses. A place of noise: of barking dogs, wailing infants, raucous youths, strident women. A place of haggling, swearing, laughing, crying. Even the flickering candle of life is measured in sound: the panting of lovers, the cries of the newborn, the groans of the dying.

In the dry season, the smell of latrines mingles with the aroma of food on charcoal cooking-stoves. Together, these scents swirl into the air with the dust and the rubbish.

In the rains, dust becomes mud and maggots become flies.

Each morning, Nyumbani wakes with the sun, stirs and comes to life, and the cooks, clerks, cleaners, labourers, maids, mechanics, nurses, teachers, drivers, guards, con-men, prostitutes, loungers and scroungers stream into Nairobi to seek their livelihoods and sustain this flourishing international city.

Schoolgirls, in spotless white blouses and blue tunics, appear out of the squalor like newly-emerging butterflies, and walk to school.

The young and the old stay behind and search the rubbish.

Nairobi’s lifeblood flows back in the evening and Nyumbani goes to bed with the sun. People don’t go out at night – and certainly not alone.

Nyumbani brings out the best in people; it brings out the worst. It is kindness and deceit. It is laughter and misery. It is hope and despair. And it is home – whether the dwelling is a ramshackle hut, an abandoned car, or a cardboard shelter – home to a million Kenyans, one of whom is Ruth.

...

The one-roomed hut which Ruth rents from a Nairobi businessman is built of corrugated iron sheets, wooden planks and sun-baked clay. With its leaky roof and lack of amenities, there is little to distinguish it from countless similar huts set in the intimacy of poverty in one of the numerous alleyways which grope their way through Nyumbani. Ruth, though, has transformed the inside by painting the walls, hanging a family photo and pinning up her children’s drawings. This is the home she shares with her four-year-old son Juma, her seven-year-old daughter Patience, and her mother Njoki, who moved from her own home in Nyeri to help care for the children after their father died. The whispered verdict at the time – slim – lodged a thorn in Ruth’s heart.

Each morning, Ruth joins the Nairobi stream on her way to the hotel where she works as a maid, and Patience, her hair tightly braided, joins the butterflies going to school. Juma, whose sharp eyes are invaluable for threading beads, stays at home to help his grandmother make beadwork for the tourist trade.

Scavenging kites and other birds wheel overhead during the day and look down on Juma and Njoki, and on a garbage mountain teeming with people trying to glean subsistence from the waste of their fellow humans. By night, the birds and people sleep, and the mountain becomes the domain of dogs which roam in packs and thrive on the detritus of human misery.

Tension, though, is building in Nyumbani. The fabric of life is changing, crumbling, unravelling. Even the dogs sense it.

Tonight they run by, whimpering.

Chapter 2

Ruth sat up, instantly alert.

Squeezed in the bed beside her, Njoki snored, Patience stirred, Juma woke.

‘Mama, what is it?’

‘Sh.’ She put an arm round his shoulder and drew him close, feeling the tension in his body as he clung to her.

Footsteps in the alleyway.

She held her breath.

Muffled voices.

A bird fluttered in her chest.

The sounds drew nearer and… continued past the door and carried on. Ruth tried to control the bird’s beating wings. Shouting and screaming. Juma buried his face in her neck. Patience woke and whimpered. Ruth reached out comforting arms to shield her children from the sound of households being torn apart.

Njoki crept to the door to listen, cockroaches scuttling away from her feet.

The sounds faded but the ensuing silence – anxious, fragile, hesitant – was just as agonising.

Only when the footsteps returned and died away into the night, did Ruth relax.

‘Things are getting bad,’ muttered Njoki, shuffling back to bed.

Ruth settled the children to sleep but she lay awake. She hoped it wouldn’t happen, but deep down she knew it was inevitable; inevitable that the unrest which had been building since the election results were declared would spread to the cauldron of tribal tension that was Nyumbani.

Next morning she went to see what help she could give to those who’d been attacked: some maize meal, a few vegetables; sweets for the children and comfort for the traumatised.

For Ruth, there was no difference between Kikuyu and Luo, Kalenjin and Kamba; all were Kenyan whatever their tribal background. But others, who’d lived peaceably together for years, looked warily at neighbours whose political affiliations differed from their own – differences exploited by hothead agitators who fanned the dormant embers of tribe and language into flames of stealing, looting and settling of old scores.

Fear prowled the alleyways and encircled the huts. It seeped through shutters, crept through cracks in walls, slithered beneath locked doors. No one felt safe.

The pounding footsteps returned the next night.

The same routine: Ruth’s arms of comfort for Juma and Patience, Njoki listening at the door.

This time the footsteps did not continue on.

Whispering outside the door – the door with its feeble lock and flimsy bolts.

The crack of light filtering through the woodwork was blocked.

Juma whimpered. Ruth shushed him.

The whispering stopped. A rat gnawed at something in the roof. A man snored in the adjacent hut. A child called out nearby.

Njoki put her ear to the door.

Ruth and the children cowered on the bed against the wall.

Juma’s sharp nails dug into Ruth’s arm.

The gnawing rat was silent.

Someone tried the door handle.

‘Go away!’ shouted Njoki.

‘Where’s Olembo?’

‘He’s not here. Go away!’

More whispering.

‘Open the door.’

‘There’s no Olembo here.’

A dog barked.

‘Open the door.’

‘Olembo doesn’t live—’

A crash against the flimsy woodwork. The lock and bolts flew off. The door burst open hurling Njoki backwards. Her head struck the table. She lay still.

Shadowy figures stormed into the hut, ripped pictures off the wall, ransacked cupboards, smashed chairs, turned over the bed and kicked Njoki. No word spoken; their only sound, ragged breathing. When they failed to find Olembo, these silent raiders departed, leaving Ruth and her children frozen in terror. And Njoki lying in an ever-widening pool of blood.

Someone from a neighbouring hut shouted for quiet.

…

In the morning, Ruth will join the Nairobi stream on her way to the hotel where she works as a maid – but not tomorrow.

In the morning, Patience, her hair tightly braided, will join the butterflies going to school – but not tomorrow.

In the morning, Juma will stay at home to help Njoki make beadwork for the tourist trade – but not tomorrow.

Not tomorrow, because Njoki is dead.

Chapter 3

Juma slept fitfully. Every time he woke, he asked the same question: ‘Mama, who is Olembo?’

Every time, her anguished answer was the same: ‘I don’t know.’

He nestled against her and was conscious of warm tears. ‘Don’t cry, Mama.’ He put his arms round her and drifted in and out of sleep. Why did those bad people come? Who is Olembo? Why does Bibi lie on the floor? What will we…?

He woke next morning with the sun shining on his face through a crack in the wall. He clambered off the bed and peered through the open doorway. The alley was full of people. Some were wazungu – white people – and they were pointing cameras and talking into microphones. He’d seen people with cameras and microphones before when an important man in a suit came and talked to a crowd in Nyumbani. Mama said he was called a politician.

A mzungu lady was talking in a loud voice into a microphone but it was hard to understand what she was saying.

“I’m standing here in Nyumbani, Nairobi’s largest shantytown and the scene of some of the worst violence since accusations were made of vote-rigging in Kenya’s recent elections.”

The mzungu man beside her pointed his camera at the huts, at torn posters and at pied crows pecking a dead goat. He then swung his camera round, and there was Mama with Patience huddled against her. And what was that shape on the ground, under the blanket, with feet sticking out?

Juma ran outside. ‘Mama, what is it?’

“Viewers at home may find some of the images distressing, as tribalism once again rears its ugly head.”

The man turned his camera towards the shape on the ground.

‘Is that Bibi?’ asked Juma.

Ruth nodded.

‘Will she get better?’

‘Of course not! She’s dead,’ snapped Patience, and burst into tears.

Juma wondered whether he should start crying now the camera was pointing at him.

“When politics tears a nation apart, it is the poor who suffer.” The mzungu lady came towards them.

Juma cowered against his mama.

“I’ve come to interview Mary – not her real name – who with her children was caught up in last night’s violence.” She held out the microphone. “Will you tell us in your own words what happened?”

The man fiddled with the controls on his camera.

“Can you tell our viewers what it was like to have your home destroyed?”

Juma felt Mama silently sobbing.

“I believe your mother died in the attack on your house.” The woman smiled and waited. Then said: ‘Cut.’

‘Does anyone who was attacked speak English?’ shouted the man with the camera.

People shuffled their feet and looked away.

‘Damn,’ said the mzungu lady.

‘Fuck,’ muttered the cameraman.

‘Nothing more we can do here,’ said the lady. ‘Let’s go.’ She put a sweet in her mouth, a handkerchief to her nose and scraped her shoe against a stone to remove a dog mess.

Juma stared after the wazungu as they walked away with their cameras, their microphones and their dirty shoes. He looked at the sweet the woman had given him and threw it away.

Ruth bent down to him. ‘We have to go to Nyeri today,’ she said.

‘Why?’

‘Because that is where… where we are taking Bibi.’

‘Why?’

Ruth stifled a sob. ‘To bury her in her Kikuyu homeland.’

‘How will we go to that place?’

‘A truck is coming to take us.’

Juma waited all day but the truck didn’t come.

In the evening some men carried Bibi back into the hut.

Chapter 4

Juma woke after another restless night and lay peering at the shape on the floor. The shape covered by a blanket; the shape that was his grandmother, his bibi.

A rat was sniffing it.

He shouted and the rat ran off.

Ruth sat up and Patience woke beside her.

There was a knock on the door.

Juma scrambled off the bed. ‘Go away!’

‘Who is it?’ called Ruth.

‘Everything is arranged,’ said a man’s voice. ‘I got a message to your father in Nyeri.’

She moved the chair aside which kept the door shut, and Juma saw his friend, Kamau, who sold the beadwork he and Bibi made. He was waiting with two other men.

‘The truck is ready,’ said Kamau. ‘Can we take her?’

Ruth nodded.

The men came in, wrapped Bibi in the blanket and carried her to a pick-up truck waiting at the end of the alleyway.

‘Come, children,’ said Ruth.

Juma wore his faded Batman T-shirt and ragged shorts but no shoes because he didn’t have any. He clung to his mama’s hand. A number of weeping women followed. Most he recognised as neighbours. Some he didn’t know.

The pick-up had a big dent in one door and one of its headlights was broken. There were red ribbons tied to the wing mirrors. The driver was leaning against the cab smoking a cigarette. He tossed it aside as they approached and undid the tailgate. The men laid Bibi on the floor of the pick-up then climbed in and sat on the sides. Some of the women also climbed in and squeezed into the cramped space, followed by two more men.

The women were still crying and the men talked in gruff voices.

The driver closed the tailgate, then led Juma to the cab and lifted him in. Patience and Ruth sat beside him. There was a plastic dog with a nodding head on the dashboard.

The driver lit another cigarette, climbed into the cab and started the engine. Juma asked what the dog’s name was, but the driver didn't hear.

The crowd moved back as the pick-up set off. People called out words of sympathy. Some waved. Others wiped away tears.

Juma waved back and tried not to breathe in the driver’s smoke because he knew smoke was bad for people. He settled against his mama, watched the nodding dog and fell asleep.

…

A bang. A squeal of brakes. Bumping and bouncing. A shout from the driver. Juma woke and stared at thick bushes. The pick-up was off the road at the bottom of a slope.

‘What is it, Mama?’

‘The car has had an accident.’

‘Will we still go to Nyeri?’ asked Patience.

‘I don’t know, my child. Only God knows.’

The driver swore and said they should get out.

The nodding dog lay on the floor with its head off. Juma picked up the pieces and scrambled down after Ruth.

One of the men had fallen out of the back of the pick-up and lay on the ground moaning. His head was bleeding and he couldn’t stand up. Kamau and another man helped him to the shade of a tree. Ruth and the other women looked after him while the men studied the remains of a front tyre and sucked their teeth. The driver sat on a rock and lit another cigarette.

Juma inspected the tyre and tried to suck his teeth.

Kamau went and spoke to the driver and the two of them lifted Bibi out and placed her on the ground. The driver still had the cigarette in his mouth and some of the ash fell onto Bibi’s feet which were uncovered. Kamau put his jacket over them.

The driver pulled out a spare wheel and some tools from the pick-up. He and Kamau talked a bit and peered underneath. Kamau then organised the other men to collect rocks, while the driver took a machete and disappeared into the bush. Juma down put the pieces of the nodding dog and went to help. He lifted a rock and a scorpion scuttled out. Juma jumped back. One of the men stamped on the scorpion. Juma was sorry for the scorpion and didn’t help with any more rocks.

The driver returned from the bush carrying a long branch. He dumped it on the ground then loosened the nuts of the damaged wheel with one of the tools. Juma stood back as the men pushed rocks into place, levered up the vehicle with the branch, propped more rocks underneath, fitted the spare wheel, and settled the vehicle back on the ground. The women clapped and Juma joined in. The men grinned and wiped sweaty faces with dusty hands. They returned the useless wheel and the tools to the pick-up and lifted Bibi in. Kamau adjusted the blanket over her feet, and put his jacket back on.

Kamau called everyone to help with the pick-up. Then, with cries of: “Harambee – all together”, they pushed it up the slope back onto the road.

The man with the bleeding head still couldn’t stand properly, so Kamau and the driver helped him to the back of the pick-up where he lay on the floor beside Bibi. Everyone else scrambled back in.

The driver said the dog’s name was Nelson, and as it was broken Juma could keep it.

...

At the end of the morning, they reached the outskirts of Nyeri. Mama told the driver to stop at a workshop beside the road where some men were making wooden chairs and tables. Everyone got out. Mama and Kamau spoke to a man who was making a chair. The man fetched a long box and put it down beside the pick-up. He opened the top, and a green snake slithered out. The man leapt back and threw a stone, but missed. The snake wriggled off.

Kamau and another man put Bibi inside the box, but it was too small and Bibi’s feet stuck out. So the man went and found a bigger box. This one was the right size and didn’t have a snake in it. When Bibi was inside, with her feet covered and the lid on top, the men put the box in the pick-up beside the man with the bad head.

Everyone got back in the vehicle and, because there wasn’t much room, some people had to sit on the box.

The driver set off again and Mama told him where to go. He stopped when they came to a hut where many people were waiting. The men wore jackets which didn’t match their trousers. Most of the women were crying.

There were no other children.