Chai Tea Sunday (9 page)

“What are they saying?” I whispered to Mama Bu.

“They are saying, ‘White person! White person!' You will hear it often, I am sure.”

We passed three more shoeless children playing on the side of the road, three feet from the garbage ditch. They used twigs and rocks in some sort of game. One of them called out to me, saying in a thick Kenyan accent, “
Mzungu
, how are you?”

“I am well, thank you. How are you?” I smiled deeply at the child, her chocolate brown eyes warm and curious.

“Fine.”

“Are you playing a game?” I asked, wondering if the little girl would be in my classroom. She looked about eight.

“Fine,” she replied again.

“She doesn't speak English, Nicky. It is just the English words the children have come to know. They know to ask ‘how are you?' because you are white. And they will answer ‘fine' no matter what you say to them in return.” Mama Bu pulled at my hand and encouraged me to keep walking.

I followed my host mother, but looked behind me and waved at the little girl. She smiled, raising her own hand, and then turned back to her friends to continue their friendly game of sticks and stones.

The energy at the Ngong market was contagious. Crowded and colourful. Hectic rows of little stands filled with fruits and vegetables were flooded with Kenyans pushing up into each other, shaking hands or slapping each other on the back. Each person seemed to talk over the other, using Swahili expressions I didn't yet know.

Bright yellow bananas and mangoes were everywhere, with a few stalls offering shoppers unrefrigerated meats and eggs. Fire-engine red tomatoes were piled high into pyramid shapes, and oversized woven baskets were filled with the same bobby beans I had seen in Mama Bu's garden. Purple eggplant lay beside various greens of cabbage, limes and snow peas, and the smell of spices wafted from the food stalls offering nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon.

I paused to run my fingers along the silky skin of the eggplant, instantly transported to the first time Eric had cooked for me. We'd been out on two dates by that point — once for coffee and once to the movies. Eric's parents were out of town, taking a trip to the Bahamas — something about needing to reignite the flame. Too much information for a son to know, in my opinion, but Brian had always been overly descriptive with his children.

“Do you like veal parmagiana?” Eric had asked me when I arrived on his doorstep holding a cheesecake. It was cherry, and I'd purchased it at my mother's favourite bakery minutes before I had arrived. Eric was wearing jeans and a navy golf shirt. Flour handprints decorated his thighs.

“Er . . . well, I used to. But I, uh, I stopped eating meat in my first year of university.” I followed Eric into his parents' kitchen and was greeted by a chaotic array of dishes, pots and food. Veal parmagiana bubbled in hot oil on the stove, marking the countertop with polka-dot oil stains. I tried to mask my embarrassment. “I'm so sorry, I should have told you. But it's not a problem. I'll eat the veal. I'm sure it will be fine just this once. It smells delicious.”

Eric acted quickly, ignoring my offer to eat what he had prepared. He flicked the stove off, and handed me a beer from the fridge. “I'll be back in five minutes. Don't move a muscle.” Eric grabbed his keys from the counter and, true to his word, returned five minutes later with two bright purple eggplants he had purchased at the small grocery store down the street. An hour later, he chose to eat the eggplant parmigiana with me, telling me he wanted to save the veal he had made for his lunch the next day. The eggplant tasted like heaven, and I'll never forget him smiling at me from across the table, his blue eyes . . .

Laughing shoppers snapped me back to reality, passing shillings to vendors and thanking them for the exchange. They stuffed their purchases into personal potato sacks and carried bigger items away on their heads.

“How do you like it, Nicky?”

“It's . . . wonderful!” I replied quickly, trying to return to the present moment.

“It is busiest today, given that it is Saturday market. But each day is like this,” Mama Bu replied, taking my hand and guiding me to a food stall selling maize, bread and various grains. “Here, I want to introduce you to Moses, a friend of our family who sells at the market every day of the week.”

Upon seeing us, Moses threw his hands up in the air and stepped from behind his food stall. He shook my hand, smiling broadly at me, “
Karibu! Karibu!
I like meet you.” Concentration filled his eyes as he focused on trying to choose the right words in his choppy English sentence.

“Thank you, Moses. It's nice to meet you.”

“How are you?” Moses asked. I smiled, remembering what Mama Bu had told me about the common expression asked of white people.

“Fine,” I responded, choosing the word he knew.

“You eat? I have bread.” Moses took the largest loaf of bread from his stall, and gave it me. “This bread gift for you.”

I looked at Mama Bu, and took the bread after reading her expression, which silently communicated that I should take the offering.

“How do I say ‘thank you' in Swahili?” I asked.

“You say
ahsante
when you want to thank someone,” Mama Bu explained.

“Well,
ahsante
, Moses. This is very nice of you.” I repeated my new word over in my head a few times to commit it to memory.

“Here, here. I have banana.” Moses went behind his stall and retrieved two bananas, which he gave to Mama Bu and me.

“
Ahsante
,” I repeated, taking the banana. “You are very kind.”

Mama Bu and Moses chatted quickly in Swahili as I peeled my banana and took a big bite. I knew food with a peel was safe, and my rumbling stomach was grateful for something I could eat without worry.

The fruit's flavour took me by surprise; the taste was different from the bananas I picked up during my weekly grocery shop. It was sweeter. More bold. Like it was picked when it was actually ready, instead of having ripened on a transport truck driving along the highway.

“You like?” Moses asked me, noticing the smile on my face.

“Very much so. Thank you.
Ahsante
.”

Moses nodded, and then pointed to my neck. He started speaking quickly to Mama Bu, and looked concerned. I wondered what he was saying about me.

“Moses thinks you should remove the necklace from around your neck. I told him I was taking you to the slums, and he fears that it might make you a target for theft.” My fingers flew up to the cross necklace that Eric had given me. Despite all that had happened, I hadn't been able to part with it. With my wedding rings now gone, it was the only reminder I had of him. I couldn't bear to lose it.

“Do you agree?” I asked Mama Bu. When she nodded yes, I gently undid the clasp, and tucked it into the front pocket of my jeans.

“Now, come with me, Nicky. We will go and get you that cell phone so that you may call your worried parents.”

We waved goodbye to Moses and Mama Bu led me to the outskirts of the market and onto a dirt street filled with little shops. As we crossed the road,
matatu
drivers waved their arms out the window, screaming Swahili at us.

“What are they saying?”

“They are telling us to
get on their ride.
They want to drive us somewhere for a fare,” Mama Bu explained. We ignored them and the
matatu
drivers sped past us, leaving us to breathe in the red dust stirred up by their spinning wheels.

We walked past a row of little stores and restaurants and Mama Bu pointed to an open door. “That is where you can use the internet,” she explained. I peeked inside and saw six or seven computers. Locals typed furiously on the keyboards. Outside the internet café, two teenage boys about Petar's age sucked on cigarettes, staring at me. I had never felt so self-conscious about my pale skin.

We walked into a small store with a sign out front that read
foni
. Mama Bu explained that I needed a cell phone with a plan that would allow me to call home. The shop owner went to a back room behind the counter and, within ten minutes, I was the new owner of a Motorola flip phone. It wasn't a sexy smartphone with all the bells and whistles, but I had never even carried one of those before I left for Kenya. This wonderful device would connect me to my family. And that was all I cared about.

“How much is it to call home?” I asked. Mama Bu translated, then listened to the shop owner's Swahili answer.

“He says it is 140 shillings a minute to call during peak times. And calls within Kenya are free.” I did the easy conversion in my mind and realized it would take about $1.40 per minute to call home.

I nodded and dropped my new phone into the front pocket of my backpack. I'd call my parents later, when Mama Bu didn't have to wait for me. “So? What's next?”

“We head to the slum. It is not pretty, Nicky, but you should see it while you are here. You need to know where the children come from that you are teaching.”

I nodded again. I wanted to go, but I knew I wouldn't like what I was about to see.

“You can keep your backsack on your front if you want to, but there is no need to worry. The slum is a safe place during the sun hours because the slum crowds will protect you. If there are people out, no one will mug you. Snatch-and-run thieves have been known to be killed by a crowd. The people of the slum look after their own. And visitors too. But do not be forgetting what I told you about being out at night.”

“You got it, Mama Bu. I can promise you that it will never happen.” I followed her down the dirt road, which was growing more and more decrepit by the footstep.

When we approached a small river, which we needed to cross to get into the slum, I began to see slum dwellers everywhere. They were walking in all directions, or hanging out in small groups, “
Mzungu! Mzungu!”

“There are so many of them!” I said quietly in Mama Bu's ear. “I had no idea.”

“We are not even there yet, dolly. You just wait. The slum has thousands of people living in it,” Mama Bu looked directly forward as she answered me, not even glancing at me as she spoke. Her walk seemed to become more focused and purposeful.

The slum dwellers continued to stare as we passed. They cranked their heads to watch us, and some even started to follow; the more cautious sauntered sheepishly behind, while the more extroverted made no qualms about following directly in our footsteps.

“
Mzungu! Mzungu!
”

About five minutes outside of the slum, a little girl ran up beside me and took my hand. She appeared to be about six or seven, and wore a tattered blue baby doll dress with a frayed butterfly collar. Her head was shaved short and, like all the other children, her feet were bare. Snot ran down her face, and it was obvious her dress sleeves had been used as her Kleenex for many days. Yet, despite all of this, I wanted to do nothing more than whisk the little girl up into my arms. I looked down at her bright shining eyes and let her hold my hand. She held on tight. Beside us, I could sense that Mama Bu was smiling.

When we got to the slums, the entourage we had accumulated spanned about twenty people wide. Children flocked to us, “
Mzungu! Mzungu!
”

From the back of the crowd that had formed around us, a man who looked about seventy years old stepped forward and gave me the global sign for food, using a phantom fork and pretending to eat. Mama Bu acted more quickly than I could react and passed the elderly man the banana that Moses had given to her earlier that day. The man took the fruit from Mama Bu, nodding his head and expressing complete gratitude in a way that I would never forget.

Seeing the banana reminded me of the granola bar I had tucked away in my backpack. I retrieved it and gave it to the little girl in blue, whose hand I was still holding. She took it gratefully, smiling up at me and squinting in the sun. She opened the wrapper, then sniffed at the granola before eating the bar so quickly I was afraid she would choke. When finished, she picked my hand back up and squeezed.

A swarm of Kenyans closed in on us. Mama Bu shook her head, apologizing repeatedly in Swahili for having nothing more to give. The circle thinned as they realized we had no more food, and I began to see the inner slum through the holes in the crowd.

The main road that led us to the slum was wide, but the offshoots were narrow and filled with garbage, sewage and stink. Small vendor stalls lined the main road but, unlike the market Mama Bu and I had visited that morning, very few offered food. Instead, the majority of items were second-hand and dirty. And no one was buying them.

Undersized donkeys and stray dogs so thin you could see their rib cages nosed their way into the rubbish piles lining the street, looking for any piece of scrap food they could find. Unfortunately for them, the people of the slum had gotten to the garbage first and no scraps remained.

Flocks of people were everywhere around us and, despite Mama Bu's warnings, I was shocked to see living conditions that were more jam-packed than a five o'clock subway car headed towards Union Station.

Small homes made of corrugated tin were smacked up against each other and Mama Bu explained that more than one family lived in each of the one-room shacks. None of the steel huts had doors, although some had curtains hanging in the entrances to provide a sense of privacy. Through the entryways that remained open, I could see clothing hung on nails that had been pounded into the walls. None of the homes had running water or electricity.

Behind some of the dilapidated shacks were squat toilets shared by multiple families. In front of the huts, women were cooking pots of mush over charcoal campfires, oblivious to the paralyzing stench of rotting garbage and decomposing human waste that was all around them.

As we continued walking, we ran into the old man who had taken Mama Bu's banana when we had first gotten to the slums. He waved, and Mama Bu started to speak to him in Swahili.

“He says that he shares one room with his wife and eight grandchildren. The single room is used as their bedroom, kitchen and sitting room.”

I shook my head, fighting tears.

“His house is collapsing,” Mama Bu continued, translating as the man spoke. “And his family does not have space for a squat, so they have to share one paper bag and throw it out at night.”

The tears I had been fighting fell down my cheeks.

Mama Bu took both of the man's hands in her own. Together, they prayed, and Mama Bu asked God to give him more food and better days ahead.

“
Ashante kwa enu hisani
,” the man said. Thank you for your kindness. He turned and walked away, waving a skinny arm as he went.

Mama Bu and I kept walking.

Mile after mile of wreckage filled my eyes and hurt my heart. I wondered how human beings could actually
live
in such disgusting devastation. The pictures I had always seen on
TV
were nothing compared to the reality around me. The sick. The hungry. The unimaginable poverty.