In that neighbourhood, it was said, they could tell when someone was new. It’s like you had a tattoo or a stamp marked virgin or something to that effect. This is Congo, inside Kawangware. If you haven’t heard about Congo, that’s fine. We haven’t heard about you either.
I used to go to Congo because once, as a precarious callow bachelor, I despised cooking. Congo harboured many of the illegal immigrants who sell njugus and kaimatis , and other paraphernalia along Ngong Rd. I came to learn many of them are Burundians, and I can easily pick them out in a maandamano , what with their short stature and stout muscles and that accent marked by pasts full of physical displacement, frayed or severed connections, and the legacies of state violence, and who, nevertheless keep expanding the definition of family by taking each other in.
I frequented Congo for two reasons: the vibandaskis that offer culinary delights at a bei ya mwananchi and the shebeens that charge beer at factory price. Nobody questioned why beer was almost free here; nobody wanted answers to questions they didn’t ask. There is also another third more sinister reason, and that is the pretty girls that dotted every corner and got prettier with every swig of your Tusker baridi, but frankly, that’s neither here nor there. Nonetheless, if you weren’t a drunk, you weren’t in this place for the conversation either.
Let me not forget this—this is the best part. Congo is in Kawangware 56, which borders Kangemi and the wealthy Lavington suburb across Gitanga Road. This is important because there is another Kawangware—Kawangware 46 on Naivasha Rd, where most business happens with first Coop Bank, then NCBA, and now I&M all perching on a branch here. If you believe the media, Kawangware 56 inspires the term ‘hotbed of violence,’ and ‘rival gangs,’ and ‘informal settlements.’ Congo is along 56, and still a bit rough around the edges. Stay away from the hot spots and keep yourself to yourself: that was the rule.
Except in the ghetto, you are everyone’s business. There was ever a revival or a crusade or a church next door during the day. At night, the bars would clamour for the little sleep you had left. I thought it funny then, the clash of the spirits. Holy spirit by day, mzinga spirits by night.
The other day, my former caretaker, let’s call him Amakhunga because that’s his name, called me. He asked me why I am lost in the city, why I no longer call him, and can I send something small for ‘shemeji ’? We became friends since he used to tell me whenever there was a hot new girl in the plot, and if she was single, and even if she weren’t, and we would talk every other day, which is how I discovered he has a penchant for rosemary (the herb, not the girl). After what seemed like forever, he asked me in the usual mtu wa nyumbani way, if I had heard the news.
My people say a Bukusu can deny you food but he cannot deny you gossip. Amakhunga was snitching. Word travels quickly, I learned, when the word is ‘sex’. Blackie, my boda guy, has been caught cavorting with underage girls in Kawangware. Something everyone except me seemed to know about. Did I believe it? Sex? In the ghetto, sex was like the other national pastime. I guess I believed it as much as I believed the ‘GENUINE’ seal on the 150 bob Tusker beers.
Let me tell you: Blackie was the first boda guy I would trust with my life. He would pick me up at any time of the night, and I would pay him whenever I had money. He would also pick my ‘packages’ at the Myers stage in Kawangware and ferry them off the next day, discreetly, especially if the packages looked the way they wanted, and if you want the truth, most of the time, the package looked the way it wanted. If I were in a mafia movie, Blackie would be what is called a ‘cleaner’. No man reading this can pretend not to know what I am talking about.
The other day, I was joking with my shopkeeper that for every Uber driver, there is at least one intelligence officer.
They must not be very intelligent then if you can pick them out, he said. And we laughed, but the point stood: things are not what they seem.
There is a guy, not too far off from where I used to live, along Hatheru Rd in Lavington, who would, every Saturday morning, stand by the roadside for an hour or thereabouts. And big cars would stop, and he would say hi, and they would exchange a quick handshake.
Only recently did I find out he was a peddler, and not of the bicycle kind. This despite a police officer stationed just right ahead on Amboseli Rd. And I only found out this because my shorts’ plug told me, after he tried to sell me a new strain of joint. And that’s how I found out he also sells shorts. Side hustles, you know? Things indeed are not what they seem.
I thought about how Blackie’s life is about to change. I don’t think there is any coming back from that.
I am all for an expansive and exhaustive life: go out, have fun, experiment, make money, lose all your money, and start again. Which is fine for maybe until you are 28—but after that? No, hombre. Time to get in the grown-up businesses of growing up.
The good book says, “We are our choices,” but what has a person become when it’s assumed that said person is innately incapable of choice? I’ve been thinking about this all week: how a single action will make your life different, or perhaps, never the same again. I remember once, in a matatu, no less to Kawangware, a sticker: ‘Heri ukule karo ya shule, kuliko ukule Caro, mtoto wa shule.’
And while I desist from giving advice, men be wary: that girl, no matter how mature she looks, may just be underage. And if you have to ask for an ID, it’s too late. Things are not what they seem.
