It Happened on the Way to War (8 page)

“Mmmm,” he groaned.

“I like weights. Maybe we can get a lift in later?”

“Mmmm.”

THIRTY YEARS OLD, Ali Khamis Alijab was the chairman of the Gange Youth Self-help Group. I befriended him, and days later he led me to a friend's gym to lift weights. The gym was a humble creation of welded bars and slabs of cement. Between sets I asked Ali about Gange. He told me that he had spent too many years causing trouble. He cofounded the self-help group to provide employment opportunities and improve his community after the birth of his daughter Khadija six years earlier. Ali and his two dozen friends pulled together funds for projects from dues of typically less than $4 per year. In this way, they self-funded the start-up costs of their car wash. Although Gange's second project, a community garden, didn't generate income, it had a special importance to Ali, who loved flowers and trees because they “reduced stress.”

After our workout, I joined Ali for strong tea in his ten-by-ten. A bumper sticker stuck to his door read ALLAH GIVES AND FORGIVES. MAN GETS AND FORGETS. His place was the most humble one I had come across in Kibera, where gradations of poverty could be measured by the presence of certain luxuries, such as a cement floor, electricity, a clean communal latrine, and space. Ali lived with none of these things. His caked, cracked mud shack contained a box-spring mattress, two chairs, and a chest of drawers. A drawer with a lock held Ali's most cherished possessions: the Koran, a 1993
Muscle & Fitness
magazine, and photographs of friends and family. He kept a friend's detached keyboard on top of his chest of drawers. Fascinated by the Internet, Ali viewed typing as the key to a mysterious new world of possibility. He practiced every evening by candlelight.

Three hundred yards from Ali's front door, Kibera's largest tree, a blue gum, towered above the shanties, with wide branches, evergreen leaves, and gnarled roots that wove heavy knots into the earth. The Kenya-Uganda Railway ran beneath the blue gum, demarcating Makina Village from the rest of the slum. This was Darajani Massive, the area named after the large bridge. Days earlier, Jane Atieno's best friend Tabitha had warned me that “hardcores” around here called me Van Damme and were “plotting” to ambush me. I didn't mention the threat to Ali.

As we strolled toward Darajani Massive, idle young men with serious faces nodded to Ali deferentially.
“Salaam alaikum,”
he greeted them as we passed. I nodded. If those men had been targeting me, they would have to think twice after seeing me with Ali.

Ali stopped at the base of the majestic blue gum tree and tilted his head toward its rustling leaves. “See, Omosh, no stress.” Even in such crushing, dense living conditions, one could find tranquility. As I stood silently with Ali beneath the tree, my mind drifted to a spiritual place.

ONE NIGHT I stayed at Ali's shack. I intended to stay for three evenings, but a burning itch engulfed my body. It was nearly as unbearable as the prickly heat I developed later in the Marines when I wore the same sweaty shirt squeezed under body armor for days at a time and felt as if an army of red ants were burrowing into my back. My eyelids swelled, my skin burned, and I began to sneeze uncontrollably.

“Ali,” I finally asked, sitting up on his box-spring mattress, “what's happening to me?”

“Ah, yes,” he said calmly, “
kiroboto
.”

Kiroboto
, the barely visible African bedbugs, bred in mud and filth. One of the few ways to cleanse a home of them was to burn all of the bedding. Ali never asked me for anything, though he once remarked that if he could save enough money, he would buy new bedding and rid his home of the maddening
kiroboto
.

I tried to stick to Ali's diet. Eating the same meals gave me a better sense of life in Kibera. Plus, I wanted to challenge myself to see if I could actually do it. I was self-conscious about having grown up comfortably and wanted to prove that I could defy the stereotype of the soft, pampered middle-class kid.

Ali drank a cup of strong tea in the morning and then went all day until his first and last meal, which generally consisted of
sukuma wiki
and
ugali
. It was as if Ali fasted all year. For the first time in my life, I experienced insatiable hunger. My stomach ached for food. The hunger was all-consuming, and I ashamedly gave up on Ali's diet after two days.

On another night, Ali's best friend and Gange cofounder, Kassim, joined us for dinner. Few people in Kibera were as tall as Kassim, and his black leather train conductor's cap added an inch to his appearance. Kassim walked with long, slow strides and exaggerated arm swings. His charisma was infectious, and he appeared to be both feared and admired by other young Nubian men. After dinner, I asked him about the ethnic clashes from 1995. Dozens of Nubians had fought in those clashes, and I had heard rumors that Kassim helped lead them into battle.

Kassim gave me my first full overview of the clashes. They began with the decapitation and castration of a Nubian teenager whose body was dumped early one morning near the blue gum tree at Darajani Massive. At the time, the Nubians, long allied with the ruling political party, posed one of many threats to the presidential ambitions of Raila Odinga, Kibera's incumbent member of Parliament. By Kenyan constitutional law, a candidate had to be an elected member of Parliament to run for president. According to Kassim, Odinga and his ethnic constituency, the Luos, felt threatened by the Nubians, many of whom served as landlords in Kibera's predominately Luo villages. Kassim explained, “In the ghetto, people act according to perceived strength and weakness. Nubians, we're weak in numbers. What would happen if the whole of Kibera turned on us? Probably that would be the end. That boy's death was like an act of war. Nubians, we own a lot of the houses that Luos live in. Since most of us don't have jobs, that rent collected is our life, and you see how we live. It's pathetic, but it's enough. What would happen if we did nothing? Some Luos might stop paying rent. They could try to challenge us on our rights to this land. I hate bloodshed. It's stupid. But we had to seek justice. We had to defend our community.”

Although it wasn't clear who threw the first stone, two days of bloody clashes ensued. Shanties burned. Dozens of young men were injured or killed. Eventually the Government Service Unit, President Moi's feared Special Forces, rolled into Kibera in fatigues and full riot gear. Like the president himself, the Government Service Unit was above the law. They quelled the rioting like a barbarian horde on a medieval battlefield.

The
kiroboto
bedbugs swarmed about Ali's ten-by-ten. I clawed at my hair in a futile attempt to rip them from my scalp. Seeing my discomfort, Ali led us outside to the frame of an abandoned sofa on a mound of dirt next to a
choo
, a pit latrine. Craning his head to the sky, Kassim pointed out constellations that he had learned as a boy on scouting trips in the Ngong Forest adjacent to Kibera. It was one of the few forests in the world that existed within a city's limits, and in it Kassim claimed he had once spotted a leopard. I looked out across Kibera. A half-moon cast a dull white glow off a thousand rooftops. The stench from the
choo
was awful.

“So are there any organizations for youth that are bringing Nubians and Luos together?” I asked. “I mean, you said it yourself, Kassim, the violence is stupid. It shouldn't happen.”

“Yes, that's right, Omosh, but organizations for youth in Kibera are not so many. We don't have something like MYSA.”

There it was again, the Mathare Youth Sports Association. “MYSA, I've heard a lot of youth here talk about it. Does it also bring ethnic groups together?”

“You know, Mathare slums are mostly Kikuyu,” Kassim said, referring to Kenya's largest of more than forty ethnic groups. “But MYSA is good because you know it creates role models, and in the slums, that's what we need.”

Ali appeared disengaged from our conversation. He sat with his legs crossed and his chin in the cup of his hand.

“What are ya thinkin' about, Ali?” I asked.

“He's meditating,” Kassim replied.

Slowly returning to the conversation, Ali responded in his baritone voice, “I'm just thinking, Omosh. Khadija, she always says, ‘Daddy, I'm going to Standard One [first grade] next year.' I can't let her down, Omosh. That's what I'm meditating about, that and this
choo
.”

We laughed, deep, long, and from the gut. Hard life can inure one to many things, but not the stale stench of an overfilled
choo
.

I NEEDED TO stay focused in Kibera, but MYSA had come up too many times. One day I caught a
matatu
minibus to Mathare to see the organization for myself. Although it was the only road into Mathare, where more than 150,000 people lived, I expected a less perilous ride. But Juja Road defined mayhem. Even Iraq's Route Ethan, one of the most dangerous, destroyed roads through downtown Fallujah, where I would be stationed years later, offered a smoother ride—provided a bomb didn't explode.

Juja Road had once been paved. Head-sized chunks of asphalt jutted out of the dirt like errant cobblestones. Yet vehicles blazed down the road as if they were ambulances en route to emergency rooms.

The gangsta rap inside my
matatu
masked a cacophony of horns outside as vehicles swerved to avoid head-on collisions and craters big enough to swallow small cars or slice tires from their axles. One crater was so immense locals joked that it could hide an elephant. Our driver threw on his wipers to clear a layer of grime from the windshield. All the while, a grandmother sat next to me, dozing.

I shouted, “MYSA,” twice to the driver, whose cheek was full of
khat
, a highly addictive stimulant that causes loss of appetite, sex drive, and sleep. I wasn't sure he heard me until he slammed on the brakes and pointed at the door.

An assortment of half-constructed cinder-block multistory buildings lined the roads. Up ahead the MYSA building stood out with its trademark forest green and yellow gates. As soon as I passed through the gates I felt as if I had entered a different world. A couple of youth wearing MYSA soccer jerseys practiced tricks with a soccer ball made of twine and plastic bags. A dozen girls were doing calisthenics in the main hall next to a wall that read GIVING YOUTH A SPORTING CHANCE. In another room a young man sang a Swahili verse while mopping the floor. As I walked around, a few young people greeted me but didn't stop what they were doing. It was a good sign. In Kibera, a lot of young people dropped what they were doing when a
mzungu
showed up.

I poked my head into an office. A slender man with a thin black goatee and a Muslim skullcap spoke with a boy in a soccer uniform. The man sat next to his desk with the boy's chair facing him. He glanced up for a second to see if he recognized me, then continued to give his full attention to the boy. The boy seemed to hang on his every word. When they both stood up, I realized the man was not much taller than the boy. Only then did the man look up at me and introduce himself as Salim Mohamed. He had light brown skin and close-cropped, black hair. I assumed he was Somali because of his Muslim name and angular features.

I handed the boy one of the Creme Savers hard candies from my pocket.

“That's interesting,” Salim commented.

“What?”

“You carry those candies.”

“Sorry, I usually keep them for kids.” I reached into my cargo pant pocket and pulled one out for him.

“No, no thanks, mista. I'm not a kid.” He laughed.

I took out a bottle of hand sanitizer and offered him a squirt.

“No thanks.” He grimaced. “You know, us, we find that a bit offensive, like why do you need to clean your hands every time you touch a kid.”

“Good point. I should have used it before I touched the kid. Obviously I'm the dirty one.”

Salim laughed, and I began what had become my typical spiel. I was Omondi, but people called me Omosh. I stayed in Kibera, in Gatwekera Village, near the river. “Do you know Kibera?”

“What kind of question is that? You know, when you're in the ghetto, you know all the slums. I can go to any slum in Nairobi and feel at home.” I instantly felt a connection to Salim because he pushed back. When I asked him if I could record our conversation with my tape recorder, he slapped his desk and laughed. “Mista, what are you gonna do with that?”

“It's for research. I'm an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina, the home of Michael Jordan. You know Jordan?”

“Of course I know Michael Jordan. I'm not a
mshamba
,” he said, using the pejorative that translates to “farmer.”

“A
mshamba
like me.” I pointed to my muddy boots and cargo pants.

“Yes, yes, that's it. That's a very funny outfit you're wearing, by the way.”

“It's good for me because it has a lot of pockets for my tapes and stuff.”

Salim's face grew suddenly serious. “You know, I also know research. People in Mathare, we're tired of research.” I admired the pride in his voice, and I was beginning to harbor misgivings about my role as a researcher. I would get a senior honors thesis out of it, but what would Kibera receive? I opened up and told Salim that I wanted to do more but didn't know where to begin. I didn't want to cause dependency. “Money can cause more problems,” I said.

“Okay, Omosh. What you're saying is actually what I believe, so you can record. But only if you send me what you write. I'd like to read it.”

We had a deal. I placed the silver machine on the table. As Salim took me through the background of MYSA and his role as a founding member, I tried to turn the conversation back to him. There was a natural flow because several of the most formative experiences of Salim's life paralleled the development of MYSA from a twenty-team soccer program to a world-renowned pioneer of youth development programs with a professional soccer team called Mathare United. However, when I asked questions that were too personal, such as how he spent part of his childhood with his grandmother on the streets, Salim stopped and asked me about my own upbringing.