It Happened on the Way to War (16 page)

Around and around we went. We were there nearly two hours. Finally I asked him about how he would target youth for the program. Jumba launched into a tangent about a group of youth who ran a program inside the Nairobi Dam.

“Inside the dam?” Nate interjected. We must have misheard him. Clogged by tall reeds of hyacinth, the Nairobi Dam was Kibera's cesspool. No one could run business inside that rancid, disease-infested swamp.

Jumba, however, didn't pick up on our surprised expressions. He went on talking about a youth group running businesses and a fitness club inside the dam. Exasperated, Nate pressed his palm to his forehead as Jumba carried on for another hour. We never saw the books or got to the bottom of the $400 mystery.

“He's full of more crap than the Nairobi Dam,” Nate concluded as we waited for a
matatu
minibus to take us back to the other side of Kibera. “At least we never have to meet him again.”

I had quoted Jumba in my honors thesis. I had trusted him. Jumba dressed modestly and lived in Kibera, or so I thought. I should have pressed to see his books much earlier, and I should have visited his home. Home visits always told me a lot about a person. It was another rookie mistake, and Nate was right. We couldn't keep investing time and energy in someone we didn't trust.

FEELING DOWN, WE returned to Fort Jesus for dinner to talk about Carolina Academy with Elizabeth. Oluoch was at his favorite bar, a tin pub called Garage. To that point, we hadn't spoken much with Elizabeth about details, such as costs and timelines. In the back of my mind, the school was the third priority. Although it would be the first Montessori nursery school in Kibera, it was the least innovative of the three projects, and I believed it was the easiest to complete. It was a one-time start-up investment. We simply needed to help Elizabeth build a school and then let her run it.

We had assumed Elizabeth would be ready as soon as she had the capital. We imagined she had a plan with the same depth and detail as the outline Dan had prepared in advance of meeting with me the previous summer. We were wrong. I was wrong. Elizabeth had nothing, and the only thing she seemed to have thought about was who to hire as the school's housemaid and cook. It was as if Elizabeth was still waiting to see if I was serious, and her reticence actually made sense when I thought about it.
Why bet on a college kid delivering on a promise to help?

While I tried to understand her perspective, I couldn't help but think about how Elizabeth watched television for two hours every night after dinner.
Why wouldn't she use this time to do something productive?
The question gnawed at me. I didn't consider that I was young, energetic, and in the middle of an adventure. I rarely felt the need for downtime. Elizabeth was old enough to be my mother and worked all day in the same routine she had followed for thirty years.

Brushing aside my frustrations, I proposed that the next step would be to make a timeline and a budget to spend $4,000 of CFK seed capital to build the Carolina Academy. Elizabeth smiled and started speaking affectionately about her vision to offer high-quality education to “the little ones.” I could feel her goodness and warmth as she spoke. Yet I couldn't help question if I had made a mistake with Elizabeth too.
Did she have what it took?

IT WOULD'VE BEEN good if Nate and I had spoken more after dinner that night. Instead we stepped off to return to Kibera. The slum's character changed with the sunset. By nine P.M., most residents locked themselves into their homes. By ten P.M., the thugs were out en masse, roving the alleyways for targets. It was nearly eleven.

We moved quickly and didn't speak, our hearts thumping inside our chests. I kept a hammer in my backpack with the zipper pulled down slightly so that I could remove it quickly.

Kash met us midway, near the Mugumeno Motherland Hotel. We exchanged
gotas
and he escorted Nate down the steep, slippery path toward his shack by the river. I dropped down a narrow alley and pounded on the thin sheet-metal door for Baba Chris to let me into the compound.

“Omosh hapa,”
I repeated until he rose from bed and unlocked the gate.

“Welcome, Omosh,” Baba Chris said with a smile and sleepy eyes. A wave of relief came over me. I was safe.

This sense of relief vanished as soon as I unlocked Dan's shack and thought about the day's events. I doubted Nate shared my frustration. He maintained a more realistic outlook of the probabilities that CFK could succeed. He had come to Kibera for many reasons: to make a difference, adventure, our new but strong friendship, and because he didn't have anything else lined up. He didn't know what he would do for full-time employment when he returned to the United States, and we didn't talk about it. I had no doubt that Nate would figure it out. He was one of the most perceptive friends I had. His gentle soul and big heart enabled him to connect with youth no matter how shy, tough, or afraid they might be. His presence lifted spirits.

I sat on Dan's hard bed with my head in my hands. The tin wall was thinner than a book cover. It shook with sound. Pressure mounted inside my head. Again, I craved silence and thought about slapping the flimsy wall and shouting at the crying baby next door.

Please, baby, please be quiet.

Everything was falling apart. KIYESA and Taib. Jumba. Probably even Elizabeth. They were all disappointments. I was a disappointment. I thought I was a good judge of character; I thought I knew enough about Kibera to identify the most promising programs and leaders. That, after all, was the entire premise of CFK. Find local leaders fighting problems and support them. Yet within two weeks our team had collapsed.

Why hadn't I seen through Jumba and Taib during my first summer? If I screwed up with them, how could we ever hope to find the great leaders in Kibera? Was it even possible?

Nate and I would never be a part of the community. We were young
wazungu
. Residents spoke to us through a kaleidoscope of hopes, dreams, fears, and motivations that we could never fully comprehend, no matter how long we “lived” in Kibera. A toxic thought entered my mind: Maybe we should just quit. We could spend the rest of the summer looking for one good community-based group, give them a chunk of money, and return home.

At one level, the idea of downsizing CFK's ambitions was liberating. It was also excruciating. We told a lot of people in the United States about the vision. Many of those people had invested in its promise as much as they had invested in me personally. I felt a commitment to our donors that was more powerful than I ever imagined given the relatively small amounts of money they had given. Yet their actions mattered more than the amounts.

I could hear Staff Sergeant Sweeney shouting in my face after I fell from the rope at OCS: “God hates a quitter.” Marines don't quit. I was ashamed I was even considering the idea. I thought about what my father might say. He would want to know the facts. He would ask me about our overall objectives. Then I suspected he would tell me to stick to it, if for no other reason than the fact that Nate and I still had two and a half months in Kenya.

The thought of my father prompted something more profound: At the core of our philosophy was the conviction that some of the poor have the solutions to the problems they faced. Many youth in Kibera were eager to seize opportunities and lead the fight against poverty and violence. In the end, it was their fight, not ours. But we could help. If we quit, we failed them and we failed the vision.

“Youth are the present and the future leaders.”

A Kenyan youth leader, someone I respected, had told me this. I shut my eyes and tried to remember who had said it. It bothered me that I couldn't remember who it was. It was someone I admired, someone with whom we needed to consult immediately. It was someone who could restore my faith in what was possible.

CHAPTER NINE

Messiahs

Nairobi, Kenya

JUNE 2001

“YOUTH ARE THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE LEADERS.”

It took me the entire night to remember that those words belonged to Salim Mohamed, the charming, gritty, engaging leader who ran the information and communication department at MYSA, the Mathare Youth Sports Association. Our contact had been sporadic since the previous summer. When I had mentioned KIYESA in e-mails months before returning to Kibera, Salim had rebuked me. “Oh, that politician thing. Not for me,” he had written. The subtext I had missed in his response was that KIYESA didn't exist for the youth. Young people in the slums quickly learned to size up the self-interest behind individual actions. It was a survival mechanism, a skill honed on instinct.

It had been two weeks and I hadn't yet reached out to Salim. I was worried that he might not be eager to meet. Although I still felt a bond from our first meeting when I had revealed that I was a Marine in training, I doubted Salim remembered me as anything more than another idealistic foreigner, a
mzungu
visiting MYSA to learn something more about the world and himself.

At eight A.M. I punched Salim's number into my cell phone as a hot cup of chai from the Mugumeno Motherland Hotel warmed my other hand.

“Hallo. Who's speaking?”

“It's Rye, Rye Barcott with Carolina for Kibera, but people call me Omosh.”

“Omosh, I've been waiting for your call.”

“Really?”

“Of course.”

“That's great! I'm here with my friend Nate, who goes by Otis. Can we meet up?”

“Omosh and Otis, that's a funny one. Sure, we can meet. When?”

“How about today?” I didn't expect it would work on such short notice, but Salim said that he would be in the city center. We could meet for afternoon chai.

I set up two more meetings in the city center to fill the day, then walked down to Kash's shack, handing out a few Creme Savers hard candies to kids along the way. A handful of residents shouted, “Omosh!” The recognition felt good, though I still wondered whether it enhanced or jeopardized our security.

Nate and I had many contrasts, including our sleep patterns. Nate preferred late nights and late mornings. The military had conditioned me to early nights and early mornings. I rarely needed an alarm clock. Unless I was completely exhausted or operating on less than three hours of sleep, I woke up at five A.M. or earlier. Our rhythm worked well. I enjoyed spending my early mornings in Dan's shack writing in my journal, making plans, and sending letters to friends, family, and donors. Nate preferred to stay up late and have important conversations with Kash and other youth. His late night conversations often provided the greatest insights into the lives of young people in Kibera. During one of these conversations, Kash told Nate about his dream to go to college. Kash said that after taking the SATs and scoring well with a 1090, a soccer coach at an American college had expressed interest in recruiting him with a full scholarship. Impressed by his initiative and SAT scores, Nate pledged to help Kash craft his college applications.

Nate's distinct, chain-saw snores reverberated through the tin roof as I approached Kash's shack. Kash opened the door looking well rested. “How can you sleep through that?” I asked, pointing to Nate conked out on top of the silky, pink comforter, mouth open.

“Hakuna matata.”
Kash shrugged. “No problem.”

Nate woke up and I told him the exciting news about Salim.

“Oh yeah, MYSA. Awesome.” He yawned, recalling MYSA from my thesis. When I turned to Kash, I saw a puzzled look come across his face.

“What's wrong, man?” I asked.

“Nothin'.” Kash shook his head. Before I could press him to tell us what was on his mind, Nate cracked a joke about cuddling with Kash the previous night. We laughed hard and swapped snoring stories. I shared a story about Marines sprinkling soap shavings into a snorer's mouth one night. The experience was so unpleasant that the snorer, a young Marine, allegedly never snored again. Kash wasn't impressed. He said in the Kenyan army they would have saved the soap and just beaten the snorer.

We got in a quick lift with Kash before heading downtown. Over the summer, Nate and I would have meetings with more than fifty people in search of allies among Nairobi's local elite, few of whom had ever ventured into the slums. Most of these meetings were dead ends. The three meetings that day, however, were consequential.

Our first meeting was with Ben Mshila, an executive at General Motors East Africa who had hosted Jennifer Coffman in Kenya when she was a study abroad student in 1989. Jennifer thought Ben could make a great board member, and she had made the connection. Nate and I were impressed by Ben's easygoing nature and his genuine interest in Kibera, which, unlike many affluent Kenyans, he had visited numerous times to assist other nonprofits. When Ben asked us how our programs were going, Nate responded, “Well, it's still early.”

Nate had something else to do in the city center, so I went alone to see Chris Tomlinson at the Associated Press. A colleague of Peter Whaley's, Chris was a war correspondent and looked the part. He wore a goatee, combat boots, and a safari shirt with half rolled sleeves. We immediately drew a military connection. Chris had served as a signals intelligence specialist in the U.S. Army and was impressed that the Marine Corps allowed one of its second lieutenants to live in a slum and launch a nonprofit. I clarified that I had taken unpaid leave and was recently commissioned.

“Doesn't matter,” Chris said. “You're still a Marine. You get kidnapped or killed, and it's the Corps' ass on the line. Good on 'em for taking the risk.”

Chris was sharing a story with me about Rwanda and his friendship with Philip Gourevitch when a call came in about a breaking story on Somalia and cut our meeting short. I handed him my business card and invited him to Kibera.

“Unfortunately I've only covered the bad news in Kibera,” Chris sighed, “If it bleeds it leads, you know? When you guys are ready for a piece, lemme know. We're always lookin' for good human-interest stories.”

NATE AND I linked back up before our meeting with Salim in Barclays Tower, a glassy skyscraper with an Internet café called E-world. E-world had the fastest connection we knew of in Nairobi, though it was still agonizingly slow. It froze all the time and took twenty seconds to load an e-mail. We ordered ginger sodas called Stoney Tangawizi and turned to the computers. I finished an e-mail to Tracy and felt a light tap on my shoulder.

“Hey, mista.”

There he was, Salim Mohamed. Short and slender, he wore a Muslim skullcap, jeans, sneakers, and an untucked Liverpool soccer jersey. His canvas satchel was similar to one that Nate carried.

“Nice man-purse,” Nate joked, comparing his satchel to Salim's.

Salim laughed. “This is a bag, mista.”

We caught up with some small talk before transitioning to CFK. We were brutally honest with Salim about our shortcomings. We told him about Taib and Jumba and what a flop the first focus-group discussion had been. Salim shook his head, as if to say,
And what did you guys expect?

Nevertheless, Salim was intrigued by what we were doing. It impressed him that I had actually come back after that first summer, and that Nate and I knew some Swahili, slept in Kibera, and tried to meet youth leaders directly.

Salim spoke passionately about the power of community-led organizations to create role models and support local solutions to problems. He was a natural leader, calm and confident. He spoke straight and had bona fides. I wanted to latch on and learn from him. Fortunately for us, he agreed to lead our next youth-representative meeting in Kibera. We offered to cover the cost of his transportation from Mathare.

“No thanks,” Salim replied, “I'm not doing this for that. But you agree we have this sort of contract. When I come to Kibera with you guys, we're going to do things my way, not yours. And it'll start with the soccer but end with the community.”

“You got it, man, that's what we need.” I extended my fist for a
gota
, the Kibera form of a contract.

“That guy's amazing,” Nate said as soon as we left the meeting. He had no reservations about Salim. I felt like perhaps my own judgment was being restored.

THE FOLLOWING EVENING Kash asked what happened at the meeting with “the Mathare guy.” I figured Nate could handle the debrief with Kash, and I left to get some pilau at the Mugumeno Motherland Hotel. As soon as I stepped out of Kash's room, the stench of rotting flesh hit me and extinguished my appetite. I decided to try to find a different route back to Dan's old room. Marine instructors at Mountain Warfare School during my sophomore summer taught us the importance of keeping multiple “avenues of approach.” The surest way to get wiped out in combat, they warned, was to telegraph your movements. I had been walking the same route from Kash's house to Dan's old shack every night. It was the main route, wide and busy during the day, dark and empty at night. Dozens of blind spots made for ideal ambush points. I needed to learn every twisting alleyway that could lead me to Dan's room, and the only way to do that was by trial and error.

The sun began to fall, casting a pink-orange light across the big sky. I was thoroughly lost by the time I spotted a woman buying
sukuma wiki
at one of Kibera's thousands of makeshift kiosks. The woman wore a chipped black leather coat that was at least two sizes too large. The sleeves of the coat draped over her hand such that I could only see her fingertips as she reached for a plastic bag of chopped collard greens.

She turned around and her jaw dropped. I didn't recognize her. “Omosh,” she gasped.

She took my hand and began speed-walking up the garbage-strewn path. It was unusual for women to walk at such a fast pace, and her purposeful stride jogged my memory.

“Tabitha?”

She looked over her shoulder with a faint smile.

It was Tabitha Festo, Jane's best friend, the nurse to whom I had given two thousand shillings, $26, to buy vegetables. I had handed her the money and a
kanga
the previous summer, a day before returning to the United States to begin OCS. I didn't know then if I would ever see her again.

Tabitha led me into a ramshackle compound with a square, dirt courtyard and three long corrugated-steel shacks. To our left, the compound's tin walls were painted in a cream color with something written in red paint, a sign of some sort. My eyes glanced over it.

Tabitha released my hand and pointed at the writing on the wall.

RYE MEDICAL CLINIC. SACRIFICING FOR SUCCESS.

I stood in stunned disbelief.

“You see, I told you I would do it.” She smiled, wide and full. She rarely smiled, but on the occasions when she did, it was like Jane's smile. It was amazing.

I was numb.

“I told you, Omosh. You, you didn't want to hear. But I told you, and then you gave me that money when I was at rock bottom, just holding on, and see.”

The building had six rooms separated by a narrow cement walkway. Tabitha rented two rooms, one for her family, the other for her clinic. It was one of the only clinics in Kibera open twenty-four hours a day.

“I keep it open because, you know, here we have to sacrifice. People, they don't stop getting sick when the night comes.” The clinic room was neatly organized, clean, and sparsely equipped with a wood table, a stool, and a cabinet with some generic medicine and bandages.

“I started this bare-handed.” She turned to me. “In fact I can say that it was with the bare of my hands. This place, it is meant to deal with people like me.”

Tabitha led me back to her room. It was chai time. I was still in shock.
Was this for real?

A baby boy named Ronnie played on the bed next to Tabitha's older daughter. When I tickled his feet, he laughed and bounced his little arms against the bed. I assumed he was a neighbor's son. Tabitha looked at Ronnie and explained that it had taken her six months of selling vegetables before she had enough savings to start her clinic. Shortly after she started, she had discovered a package wrapped in a
kanga
at her doorstep. At first she thought the package was a bundle of vegetables from a patient who could only pay in kind. Then the bundle moved. It was Ronnie.

“I picked him up and he was very cold,” Tabitha remembered. “He was outside for too long you see. I was worried about that other thing, too.” She leaned over, placing her hand on Ronnie's head.

“What thing?”

“HIV.” A sad look was in her eyes as she said the three letters.

“Is he positive?”

“I don't know. He has to be eighteen months. That's when the test can be reliable.” She turned to a chest of drawers, removed a tightly folded
kanga
, and read its beautiful Swahili aphorism:
“Mawingu ya dunia ufanika wajane.”
It was the
kanga
I had given her the previous summer. “The clouds of the earth cover the widows.”