It Happened on the Way to War (6 page)

Roused by the commotion, Oluoch stepped out of his room, belched, and walked through the courtyard bare-chested in a towel and flip-flops. “Hot water,” he barked at Jane.

“Mornin', Oluoch,” I said.

“Oh, you're up. Our meeting with the Ministry of Education is delayed a day. We'll go together tomorrow. But the boy will come by this morning to show you around.”

Oluoch continued to the bathroom as Jane heated a can of hot water for his shower. I assumed that Jane was not from the slum since Elizabeth had not mentioned her when we had spoken about my interest in meeting residents from Kibera. “Do you live near Fort Jesus?” I asked.

“Me, I'm from Kibera slums. That is my home, down there.” Pride resonated from her voice.

“Wow, you're the first person I'm meeting from Kibera. What's it like?”

“Let me tell you, I love Kibera. You know, life is hard. I can say it's not easy. But Kibera is home, and me, I love.”

Love
was the last word I was expecting to hear in reference to life in Kibera. “Well, I'd like to hear more about that. You know, I'm here to study in Kibera.”

“In Kibera?” Jane eyed me curiously. “But you're a
mzungu
[white guy].
Wazungu
[white guys] don't go to Kibera.”

“Why not? Is it dangerous?”

“I can say it's not so-so dangerous. We don't see many
wazungu
, though. You're welcome anyway, only at night it's not good.”

“Thanks, Jane. You mean to your place? Can I come see your home during the day?” After only a short time together, I felt that I could trust her.

“Aye, Omosh, you ask such funny questions.” She looked over her shoulder as if she were worried about someone overhearing. Elizabeth was in her bedroom and Oluoch was still making noises in the bathroom. Jane lowered her voice, “A
mzungu
has never been to my place. Maybe it can be possible.”

I was curious about Jane's apprehension to the suggestion of my visit, but before I could ask her another question, Dan showed up. Baby-faced and slender with small, square-framed glasses and a buttoned-up appearance, Dan looked nothing like Oluoch. Oluoch had referred to Dan as “the boy from Kibera.” Although
boy
was frequently used by old African men to refer to younger men, Dan could actually have passed for a boy. He certainly looked much younger than his twenty-two years.

“Habari. Mimi ni Omosh.”

Dan slapped his knee. “Omosh, you? No!”

He joined me for toast and chai and removed four pages of meticulously handwritten notes from his plastic briefcase. Dan had composed the notes after Oluoch gave him a copy of my research proposal. The top of the page read:

DANIEL OGOLA (DAN)

ETHNIC CONFLICT AND YOUTH IN KIBERA

I. YOUTH MOST PRESSING PROBLEMS

A// INADEQUATE FOOD

•  Partake of starvation diet, usually
sukuma wiki
and
ugali

•  Inconsistent meals

•  Effect: quarrels which provoke youths to violence or going on the street to panhandle

B// SHELTER

“And you live in Kibera?” I asked. The depth and organization of Dan's analysis easily matched my own skills.

“Of course. Kibera is my home. I can show you.”

WE FINISHED OUR breakfast and left Fort Jesus. It was still early in the morning. People poured out of the slum to go to work or search for jobs. There was a vibrant energy on the streets. Hawkers peddled goods from rows of roadside stands. Music blared.
Matatu
minibuses honked their horns to part the waves of people. Pedestrians stopped and stared at me as I wove through the foot traffic with Dan. Never before had I been so conscious of how different I looked. It wasn't simply the stark contrast of my skin color. I was larger than most of the men, and I was poorly dressed. My father would have said my six-pocket pants, dirty boots, and dark short-sleeve shirt looked “ratty” in comparison to the dress of so many of the men wearing suits. It was an uncomfortable, awkward feeling. While I would never blend in, the worst part was the sense that I was being judged by strangers in ways that I didn't understand.

Dan didn't seem to notice the attention we were attracting. He continued to walk swiftly, weaving through the waves of oncoming pedestrians while commenting on various topics as if he were a safari guide. On our left he pointed out a shack where I could “top up” on cell phone credit. To our right was the shoe shiner Dan used when Kibera became muddy. Up ahead was his church, a simple, unmarked tin shack that was a branch of Jehovah's Witnesses.

“Jambo,”
I greeted men staring at me as I passed. None of them responded.

“What's that all about?” I asked Dan.

“I don't know, but they probably don't like
jambo
.”

“Why?”

“You know,
jambo
is like what you say to little kids, or to foreigners. Actually, you never hear it here. Even the little ones in the slum speak Sheng.”

“Speak what?”

“Sheng, the language of the youth.”

“Do you speak it?”

“Yes, a little.” You had to know some Sheng to survive as a young man in Kibera.

“
Vipi,
Ogola?” a man greeted Dan.

“See, that's Sheng for ‘What's up?' ” Dan explained. “There are a lot of greetings like that among the youth. And that's my last name, Ogola. I'm a Luo, like you.”

“So what should I say in return?”

“
Poa
. It means ‘cool.' And sometimes they like to bump fists, like this.” Dan extended his fist. We tapped knuckles. “
Gota
[goat-tah].” He laughed. “They call that
gota
.”

We stepped onto a mud path, passed a dozen more stands, rounded a bend, and there it was. Kibera looked like a large brown salamander speckled with dots of silver and green. It dipped and rose, a sea of dirt and rust spotted by new roofs shimmering in the sun. Blue gum trees stood like flags above the frozen waves. The green-gold savanna of Nairobi National Park stretched far off in the distance. It was staggering to behold. The sheer density and size of Kibera was difficult to imagine even as I stood looking at it. Its population estimates ranged absurdly from two hundred thousand to more than one million. No one knew how many people lived in Kibera.

Railroad tracks separated us from the shanties. More than simply marking much of its northern boundary, the railroad connected Kibera to the heart of Kenya's colonial history. The Kenya-Uganda Railway, once the largest overseas engineering project in the British Empire, stretched hundreds of miles to connect Uganda to the port of Mombasa. Allegedly the British chose Nairobi as the capital because it was one of the only spots near the midway point of the railway line with a mild climate and access to water. I would have never guessed from their appearance that the tracks had played an important role in shaping the region's history, nor could I imagine that just prior to the railway construction this region had been sparsely inhabited. Strewn with trash and lined by foot-deep sumps of frothy sewage, the tracks doubled as a walkway for tens of thousands of residents who commuted by foot each day out of Kibera. Rickety stands offering all manner of commodities had been cobbled together within five feet of the steel rails. It was a wonder that even slow-moving trains could pass through Kibera without destroying things and killing people.

A mob of about fifty men had gathered around a dirt mound next to the tracks. “NDP! NDP!” the mob cheered, fists in the air.

“Politics,” Dan whispered. We were approaching the local pulpit for politicians and preachers, where a rally was being held for the largest opposition party to the government of President Moi. By mid-2000, after twenty-two years of rule, Moi's iron grip on power appeared to have permanently cracked. Nowhere was the African “big man” more detested than among the Luos in Kibera.

We crossed the tracks.

“
Mzungu
, you are welcome!” the speaker on the mound bellowed into his megaphone.

I swung around and was startled to see the mob looking at me. A few of the men flashed me a thumbs-up. I reciprocated, throwing my thumb up into the air. The mob exploded with applause and fist pumps. “NDP! NDP!” they shouted.

“What was that?” I asked Dan.

“Oh, good work.” He laughed. “You gave them the thumbs-up. That's the NDP sign. Now they know you're a Luo.” I was too stunned to realize that on my first walk into Kibera I had taken sides in the political posturing that threatened to rip the place apart.

The smell of garbage and excrement made me gag. It was everywhere, as was the commotion. Every tin shack along the main alleyway sold something: haircuts, water, used clothes, machetes, traditional medicine, manual labor, cassette tapes, charcoal, sex, rotting fish heads, and vegetables. Vendors shouted like auctioneers. Rap music and Congolese Lingala clanked out of squeaky speakers. Women wrapped in colorful
kanga
s sat quietly hawking vegetables. Babies cried.

A small girl beneath a jagged overhang of a tin roof pushed a toy wheel, a plastic cap connected to a piece of coat hanger. She drove her wheel around some bumps in the mud and into a sump, a moat of brown-black waste slugging toward Kibera's southern boundary, the Nairobi River.

Dan tapped the girl's head and guided the wheel out of the sewage. “Push it here, not there.”

“Mzungu, mzungu!”
The girl looked up and pointed at me with delight. “White person!”

I spotted a shack selling coffins. Among the simple plywood structures, there were miniature wood boxes. It took a moment for me to realize that they were baby coffins. My chest tightened. I had never thought about what it must be like to be a parent, or to lose a child. But at that moment, it was all I could think about.

Dan marched on, seemingly unaware of the effect that the slum was having on me.

A man named Baba Chris welcomed us to Dan's compound, a two-building “plot” with about sixty people in seventeen ten-by-tens. Baba Chris offered us chai in his shack. It was not good form to refuse such a gesture of hospitality, but I was too tired. I needed to lie down. “Thank you, but next time please.” I shook his hand and begged his pardon.

Dan's room was neat and furnished with a wood bed, sofa, small table, paraffin stove, and a cardboard box with some cookware. A handful of clothes hung from a piece of twine on the wall. The sun hammered the tin rooftop, creating a sauna inside. I stretched out on the bed as Dan left to purchase sodas. Shutting my eyes and relaxing my body, I took in the sounds. A boy shouted. A dog barked. A man coughed. A wood door slapped shut. Water splashed and a broom whisked across cement. Far off in the distance, pickaxes pinged like chimes. Music rattled off stereos, stretching for high notes out of reach. Then there was the breeze, that cool breeze that moved over the rippled rooftops with a soft whistle. My head was pounding. I wanted to capture the breeze and pour it into my face. I was exhausted, disgusted, and overwhelmed, and it was exhilarating.
This
was exactly what I wanted—to be pushed to my limits, to go somewhere and do something risky, important, and complicated. At last, I was where I needed to be.

Dan returned with sodas and began to tell me about his life. As he spoke, it dawned on me that while he might not look tough, Dan was stronger than I could imagine. Raised by a single mother who brewed moonshine out of her home in the rural Nyanza Province near Lake Victoria, Dan first arrived in Kibera as an eighteen-year-old high school graduate in search of opportunity. He rented a shack with his brother and held odd jobs in Nairobi's Industrial Area, to which he commuted by foot for two hours each day. Dan's eyes were severely burned in an accident at a chemical manufacturer, and the company refused to cover his medical expenses. With persistence, skill, and luck, he recovered and eventually met a businessman who helped him pay for an accounting course. After acing the course, Dan found work as an office assistant in Nairobi's city center. It was his first full-time job in the formal sector, though he had much larger ambitions. Dan wanted to be a surgeon. He viewed Kibera as a rung in his ladder of socioeconomic advancement.

“A surgeon? Have you ever met a surgeon from Kibera?” I asked.

“Not really, but that doesn't mean it can't happen.” His attitude was amazing. Later in our conversation he surprised me again by offering his house as a place to stay. I thanked Dan for his generous offer and told him that I'd appreciate crashing at his place as soon as I secured a research permit with Oluoch.

“What, do you think they'll arrest you?” Dan laughed.

“I don't know, perhaps.”

“No, the police, never. They never come down here. Closest they'll come is the railways. They're afraid, you know.”

“Afraid of what?”

“Afraid they'll get lost, and maybe even beat. You know, the community, we deal with it ourselves. Mob justice. A thief steals from you here, the community will respond. And if they catch that thief, it'll be the end of him. Beat him and burn him.”

I cringed.

“Here we have a saying,” Dan continued. “You would rather cross a thief than a policeman on the tracks. Why? Because the thief will just take your stuff. The police, they'll take your stuff
and
throw you into jail.”

“Dan, should I be concerned about thieves? I mean, would I be endangering you if I stayed at your place?”

“No, no Omosh. Me, I'm okay, and this is a good compound where we look after each other. We have a lot of good people here. But maybe don't tell a lot of people where you're staying. And keep doing that
gota
thing. The thugs, they like that.”

I laughed, thinking about how the universal fist bump might become my best defense. My ROTC commander Major Boothby would have enjoyed my exchange with Dan and referred to the information he provided as an example of “local intelligence.”