Softly Calls the Serengeti (28 page)

 

Henry, the doorman, met Riley as he was parking the Land Rover and took the suitcases from him. ‘Would you like me to help you to your rooms with them, Mr Mark?'

‘Don't bother just now, Henry. Put them in the luggage room. I need a drink.'

The talk with the Circularian nuns had shaken him. He felt exhausted, but strangely relieved, as if a huge burden had been lifted from him.

He entered the bar and, when the waiter asked, ordered a whisky and soda. Then he changed his mind. ‘Better make it a coffee,' he said. It was a first, but Charlotte was right: he
was
drinking too much.

He took a newspaper to a table and flicked through the pages. A small headline on page five caught his eye:
UNICEF Hearings Off to a Shaky Start
.

The UNICEF committee meeting now in session at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre has heard that Kenya is neglecting her responsibilities under a UN agreement to protect the rights of children.

The chairman, Judge Hoffman, has requested a witness protection program to overcome the apparent reluctance of people to come forward with important information.

‘I have been given a number of first-hand accounts of matters clearly at odds with the UN's Convention on the Rights of the Child,' Judge Hoffman said today outside the KICC. ‘But most witnesses have refused to go public,' he added.

A spokesman for the Justice Department said that it was unlikely that a witness protection program could be set up before the hearings are due to end.

Meanwhile, the Chief Inspector of Police said that it would be most irregular to establish such a program for an international authority such as UNICEF. ‘Witness protection programs are seldom established, and when they occur are exclusively the prerogative of the Kenyan police force.'

Riley folded the paper and took a mouthful of coffee. If Judge Hoffman's committee could nail a few big names it would be the perfect vehicle to launch his article.

He called the committee's secretariat. Hoffman wasn't available but he left a message for him. Then he called Kazlana to fill her in on what he'd discovered about Koske's orphanage and his supposed success in placing orphans in Somalia. If she agreed to testify with him, together they could offer the committee information on Koske's links with the Circularians in Mombasa who collected orphaned children from its streets, his orphanage in Kibera and the supply line of children to Somalia. He was sure there was some link to the Nakuru medical facility as well; if that were so, then Kazlana's paper trail showing Koske had financed the delivery of medical supplies to Nakuru could be vital evidence.

But there was no answer on either Kazlana's office or mobile phones when he called. It worried him, and he decided to check that she was okay.

 

Riley had taken a taxi to avoid the need to find a parking space, but he needn't have bothered. Nairobi's central business district was quiet. In fact, he thought it abnormally quiet, even for a Sunday, and vaguely ominous.

Iron grilles barricaded most of the shopfronts and office buildings appeared deserted except for nervous security guards who peered from alcoves. He could not recall a time when he hadn't seen throngs of people crowding the footpaths and roadways. Even the ubiquitous traffic police were missing.

He took the elevator and made his way along the tenth-floor corridor, where not even the hum of the air-conditioning plant broke the silence.

The entrance door to Kazlana's office suite was unlocked.

‘Hello?' he called.

There was no response.

He slowly opened the door to Kazlana's office. The diffused light from the curtained window made it difficult to see, but the scent of fresh tobacco smoke hung in the air, and a moment later the red-hot tip of a cigarette glowed in the dimness. She was sitting on the sofa that occupied the best part of a wall.

‘Hello,' he said. ‘I was beginning to wonder if I had the right office.'

‘Would you care to join me?' she said, and indicated a bottle of whisky and a pitcher of melting ice. Condensation had left a puddle on the timber coffee table. He noticed a near-empty highball glass in her hand.

‘Thank you. And you?'

She held out the glass and he poured in a measure of whisky.

‘More,' she said.

Her voice was hard and he looked at her, but she was smiling.

‘Please,' she added.

He filled it. A drop of condensation fell from her glass onto her bare knee, but she ignored it.

He sat at the other end of the sofa and turned half-on to face her. ‘Cheers,' he said.

‘To love and glory,' she replied, and took a long pull on her drink. ‘Why are you here in Kenya, Mark?'

‘I think I've already told you. To find a boy I used to support through one of your local charities.'

‘Is that all?'

She was drunk, but her eyes were bright and acutely focused on him, and her voice was crisp and concise.

‘To find the boy and to do a little sightseeing,' he said.

‘Really?'

‘Kazlana,' he said, ‘I came here to tell you what I've learnt about the orphanage and the Circularians. It seems Koske may be smuggling kids into Somalia. God knows what happens to them there. Don't you want to hear about it?'

‘Oh, poor Mark,' she said, placing a hand on his thigh. ‘Of course I do. Please go on.'

Mercifully, as he started to relate the story of the Circularian sisters, and the religion's odd beliefs, she removed her electrifying hand to light a cigarette. She didn't appear to take any interest in what he was saying until his mention of the distant Kenyan town where many of the children were sent before crossing the border into Somalia.

‘Did you say Wajir?' she asked.

‘Yes. Apparently it's quite a frontier town.'

‘Outside the law,' she said, almost to herself. ‘Even for Kenya.'

She took a long pull on her drink, emptying the glass. She held it out for more. Riley filled it.

‘Aren't you interested in finding out more about the Wajir connection?' he asked.

She slowly shook her head. ‘Thank you for your help. I only wanted to find out why my father was murdered. And now I know.'

‘Tell me.'

‘No.'

‘Kazlana,' he said, trying to keep the exasperation from his voice, ‘this racket is a crime. Kids are involved. It needs to be exposed.'

She turned to face him, expressionless. It was as if having discovered the circumstances of her father's death, she had already put a distance between herself and the fact.

‘And I need to know what happened to the boy my wife and I sponsored,' he added. ‘It's…important. And personal.'

‘I don't know what happened to your boy,' she said at last. ‘But I can tell you what happened to my father. The rest is up to you.

‘Papa was lured to the desert beyond Wajir. He had found out something about Koske's racket, I suppose, but was keeping quiet about it until he knew the whole story—the story that you also want to know. He must have thought the meeting in the desert would give him what he needed. The problem was, he didn't know that the man behind the scheme already suspected him. It was Koske. That explains why Papa didn't immediately take off at the first sign of trouble—he
knew
the person who met him out there.'

‘I'm sorry about your father,' Riley said. ‘But what about the children?'

Kazlana looked quite composed now; far more peaceful than he'd ever seen her.

‘Maybe it would be better not to know about the children,' she said.

‘What do you mean? I must know. And UNICEF needs to know too.'

He told her about the UNICEF hearing and the call for more information to help prosecute those involved in the abuse of children. ‘If you tell the committee what you know about Koske's connection to the Nakuru operation, the police can do the rest,' he said.

She began to laugh. ‘The police? Mark, don't be so funny. Of course the police won't help. They were in Wajir to investigate my father's death and did nothing. Don't tell me about the police. Someone has been filling their pockets for years to keep this quiet.'

‘Then give me the papers you have. I'll take them to the UNICEF hearing.'

‘Antonio suggests I forget the whole matter,' she said, ignoring his request. ‘He says I should get on with my life.' She looked at him. ‘What do you think?'

‘I say he's wrong. We have a duty to the innocent to avenge their deaths.'

She didn't reply.

‘Don't you agree?' he asked.

She replaced her cigarette in the ashtray. ‘I do,' she said, and put a hand around the back of his neck, drawing him to her. She kissed him, lingering on his lips for a long moment. Her closeness and fragrance drove him mad. He took her in his arms and covered her mouth with his. Her tongue explored him and he tasted the delicious spicy flavour of her tobacco.

Then he moved away from her, breaking the embrace. ‘Kazlana, this is…I can't do this.'

She smiled. ‘You know me too well. I frighten you.'

‘Look, I only came here to get your agreement to testify—'

‘You will never catch Koske by any of these legal tricks,' she said. ‘He is too smart and has too many corrupt people in his pocket. The children are gone. They cannot come back from where they are.'

‘Maybe, but we can stop what Koske's doing and make him pay.'

‘There is only one way to make him pay.'

‘How?'

She rose unsteadily to her feet and went to a filing cabinet and unlocked it.

‘Here. Here are the papers you want.'

He took them. ‘Thank you,' he said. ‘Is this what you meant by the only way to make him pay?'

She smiled again. ‘No.'

He stood and put the papers in his pocket. He thought about saying something like,
Be careful. You know how dangerous Koske is
, but he knew he'd be wasting his breath. Kazlana Ramanova was incapable of being careful.

Joshua took Charlotte to a high point called Kamukungi to see the extent of Kibera. Surrounding her was two and a half square kilometres of bustling, dirty, crowded tangles of ugly buildings, smoking rubbish heaps and foul odours where Joshua said over a million people lived, most of them without toilets and running water. They loved, they laughed, they ate, squabbled, prayed and ultimately died there. Very few had experienced any other home.

On the western horizon the sun peeped from behind a fragment of cloud, sending piercing shafts of gold through the smoky atmosphere to highlight the vast fields of rusty iron roofs. She could see thousands of them, but knew there must be tens of thousands more in the squalid alleys and laneways, where children played in mountains of garbage or in foetid drains with odours of excrement and filth.

A few substantial buildings, like churches and a government centre, poked above the sprawling shacks. There was a radio mast and scores of power poles, some leaning at alarming angles. Telephone cables radiated from any high point, including trees and tall struts attached to roofs. In some places they hung in coils like dead snakes.

Charlotte was enthralled. Kibera had a vibrancy like no other place she'd ever been.

People stared at her, but there was no animosity in their glances. Far from being populated by indolent layabouts, Kibera was a hive of industry with most people too busy to gawp.

By mid-afternoon, Charlotte had spoken to a dozen people and was regretting having allocated so much time to her excursion. It was hot—too hot—and the afternoon too long.
She was debating whether to ring Mark and ask him to collect her early, when Joshua introduced her to Mama Hamza. The old lady's smiling eyes were piercing. Charlotte felt Mama Hamza could plumb the depths of her soul with those eyes, but she had a warm and welcoming manner.

Charlotte heard of Mama Hamza's work with the women in Kibera; how she had managed to transcend the tribal barriers to address the underlying problems that the women of the slums had to contend with daily. But she said she was not interested in wasting time talking of her achievements; she was more interested to hear why Charlotte was in Kibera.

‘I'm studying all aspects of Luo life,' Charlotte said. ‘Even in the slums.'

‘Do you believe that a Luo in Kibera can be the same as a Luo in Nyanza Province?'

‘I don't know. What do you think?'

‘All of my work has been with women. Women of all tribes. In Kibera, we are bound by common problems: poverty, domestic violence, drunken husbands, greedy and aggressive landlords. In this case it doesn't matter if you're a Luo or a Luhya or a Kikuyu. I try to tell my women we are all Kenyans, and if they must feel a part of a tribe, then we are members of the Kibera tribe.'

They discussed her community support group, one of the many, Charlotte discovered, that had been established by concerned Kibera residents and without outside funding or official support. Many, like Mama Hamza's Kibera Women's Association, became so successful that non-government organisations wanted to become aligned with her. The KWA provided family-planning information, health education, remedial classes for children who had dropped out of or been forgotten by the education system, and a range of microfinanced assistance packages.

‘So you see,' Mama Hamza concluded, ‘we help people in many, many small ways. We are small and we want to remain
small. I have seen too many people come into Kibera with briefcases. They have money, but do nothing.'

‘I'm only here to study. I have no briefcase and no money,' Charlotte said.

‘Why come to Kibera to do your research?' Mama Hamza asked. ‘Why not to Nyanza, the Luo homeland?'

‘I'm interested in speaking to Luos who have seen Luo life on both sides, Kibera and Nyanza. That's why Joshua is helping me. He's seen it from both sides.'

Mama Hamza looked curiously at Joshua, who turned away as his mobile phone bleated an incoming call. He took it, and his face fell as he listened.

‘What is it, Joshua?' Charlotte said.

‘It's…There's something happening at KICC.' He swung his head around as if searching for an immediate escape. ‘There is trouble coming. You must get out of Kibera!'

 

Henry snapped to attention and gave his usual friendly salute as Riley climbed out of the taxi. It was after four o'clock and he didn't want to be late to meet Charlotte in Kibera.

‘Good afternoon, Mr Riley,' Henry said as he swung the hotel doors wide.

‘G'day, Henry. Nice day.'

‘Yes, sir, it is.'

Instead of entering the hotel, Riley headed towards the hotel car park with a brisk step.

‘Mr Riley, sir!' Henry called after him. ‘Excuse me, sir, but may I ask where you're going?'

Riley smiled at Henry's odd question and worried look. ‘I'm just going out again for a bit. Why, what's up?'

‘I don't know if you've heard about it, Mr Riley, but there's some trouble in town.'

‘What kind of trouble?'

‘To do with the elections. The GSU is there.'

‘The GSU?'

‘The General Services Unit. If the GSU is there, it always means trouble. There may be rioting.'

‘Well, I'm not going into town, Henry, but thanks anyway.'

‘That's a relief, sir. If you stay away from town, you'll be fine. And Kibera, of course.'

Riley was almost to the garden when he caught his last words. ‘Kibera?' he said. ‘Did you say Kibera?'

‘Yes, sir. But that's not a place you'd be going. It's the slum area out on—'

‘Henry. What about Kibera?'

The doorman saw Riley's worried expression. ‘It's off Ngong Road, sir.'

‘I know where it is, Henry. Tell me what there is about Kibera that I need to know.'

‘W-well, if there's trouble anywhere in Kenya, it always flies to Kibera. Those people there, they—'

Riley dashed through the garden gate and sprinted to the Land Rover.

 

‘Hurry, Miss Charlotte,' Joshua said, leading her down one alley and into another.

‘What's going on?' she asked. ‘If the trouble is at the voting centre, why are we worried about it here?'

He wasn't sure why he was concerned. There was no sign of any problems yet. He only knew that Kibera could be a very changeable place and there was an all too familiar electricity in the foetid air. He remembered the atmosphere immediately following the last elections: the explosion of violence; the looting; the rapes. He wanted to take no chances. A
mzungu
in Kibera with him as her guide was one matter. A
mzungu
woman in Kibera during a riot was quite another.

‘What time was Mr Mark to meet you?' he asked.

‘Five. But he won't be there yet. It's only about four.'

Joshua frantically tried to come up with a plan. He needed a safe haven until five o'clock. His father's little house was the safest place in Kibera that he could think of.

 

Less than fifteen minutes later, they were standing outside a door made from a patchwork of various timbers with a strong slide bolt aligned against a sturdy timber upright.

‘This is my father's house,' Joshua said.

Charlotte nodded and waited.

‘He may not be home,' he added.

Still they waited. Joshua seemed reluctant to enter.

The door opened. A tall, lean man in a clean white shirt and long grey trousers stood there. His sad eyes saw only Joshua, and as he stared at him an awkward silence grew.

‘This is my father, Simon Otieng,' Joshua said to Charlotte.

Simon seemed startled to see her, but took her outstretched hand. She found his callused fingers quite gentle, holding her hand as he might a bird.

‘Father, this is Miss Charlotte.'

She said hello and Simon nodded, still looking bewildered by her appearance at his door. He spluttered an apology and invited her to enter.

The shack was dimly lit from a small, high window above a packing-case cupboard. There was just one chair. Simon brushed the seat and offered it to Charlotte, then sat on a box on the other side of a narrow bench that served as a table. Two thin, cotton curtains were strung on wires along the edge of the beds. A dog-eared poster of Michael Jackson hung from a nail above one of them. A TV with what looked like a fencing-wire antenna sat on a small fridge beside the cupboard. Joshua remained standing, leaning against the fridge, arms folded.

‘I'm pleased to meet you, Mr Otieng,' Charlotte said, wondering why she had never asked about Joshua's family.

The tension in the room was almost tangible. She stumbled on as best she could in a one-way conversation, but soon realised the tension was not due to her presence. It was clear that father and son were as strangers.

Eventually, Simon asked Charlotte if she would like to have tea. She said she would.

‘Miss Charlotte,' Joshua said, ‘can I leave you here with my father while I try to find out what is happening?'

‘Of course,' she answered.

He turned to leave.

Simon stopped him at the door. ‘Joshua,' he said. ‘My son, there is trouble coming.'

It was the first time Simon had addressed his son since they'd arrived.

Joshua looked at his father and nodded. ‘I know. That is why I must find a way to get Miss Charlotte out of here.'

 

When the afternoon sun lengthened the shadows in Kisumu Ndogo, Simon turned on the kitchen light, which flickered and finally glowed yellow.

‘They say it's the voltage,' he explained when Charlotte asked about the dull glow. ‘Not enough to make it white, as it should be.' He shrugged. ‘It's just like that.'

Charlotte said she understood and asked if Simon would mind telling her a little about his childhood. ‘I am doing a study on the Luo people,' she said.

He appeared reticent and asked what she'd like to know.

‘Anything. Everything. Why not start by telling me about the customs around your birth?'

‘Oh, we Luos don't worry about birthdays. But as far as I know, I was born in 1970.'

As he warmed to his subject, Charlotte pulled out her notebook and began to scribble down what he told her.

He described how, in the Luo way, a son was ‘the centre of the home'. It was an expression of love, but also of recognition that to the Jo-Luo a son ensured the family's cultural heritage and oral history would be carried on to the next generation. A boy's birth, especially that of a firstborn, was a most joyous occasion, invoking praise for the mother and congratulations for the father.

The first act after the birth was the burial of the placenta, which bound the child to his ancestral land. The new mother was treated to a special gruel made from finger millet, and fed the stewed meat of a goat or even a bull to rebuild her body. When the mother emerged from her confinement, she and her baby wore headdresses of woodpeckers' feathers so that the birds, whose calls were considered a bad omen for the child, would be kept at bay. The parents and the newborn were shaved to end the birthing cycle, then joined with their extended family in days of celebrations and self-congratulatory announcements to the wider community.

And so it was for Akoth Otieng and his wife, Ayira, when their son, Gero, was born. He was a lively baby, which didn't surprise many of their friends and family. What could the parents expect, the elders said, when they had tempted almighty Nyasaye with such a name? Gero meant ‘fierceness' and if the child were later to become a warrior, then all would be well. But if the British continued to uphold the peace by means of a gloved fist, a fierce boy among the warlike Luo could only lead to anger and confusion for the child. Fortuitously, according to those who predicted disaster, before the child reached the age where he must be formally named, Ayira had a dream, and in that dream her beloved and long-dead grandmother visited her.

Ayira's grandmother had been an important member of the Luo community and in the dream she cautioned against the name, saying that she saw a cloud over the child and it would be
wise for Ayira to choose another name. The old woman had been an early convert to the new Christian ideas spread by the eager missionaries and she suggested the parents turn to the New Testament for a more calming name. Akoth was not pleased but had to concede that it would be prudent to heed the voice of such a wise woman.

On the rolling hills outside their village, where the wind off Lake Victoria blew hot and strong in the weeks before the rains, the extended family gathered for the
juogi
or naming ceremony. There, Gero became Simon in the first of what would be many ceremonies that mark a Luo's life.

But, as Simon explained, that was not how it turned out for him.

 

Riley was at the top of Valley Road, at the end of a traffic jam that extended around the corner and beyond the roundabout. He spun the wheel and roared back the way he'd come. Ten minutes later he was bumping down a muddy, unmade suburban street, trying to get onto Ngong Road from another angle, and ran into another jam. He pulled out his phone.

‘Charlie, it's me.'

‘Mark. Are you all right?'

‘I'm fine. And you?'

‘Well, it's been kind of interesting.' She explained her situation.

‘So, I don't think I'll be going anywhere tonight,' she added.

‘I can't get through anyway,' he told her. ‘The police must have closed off the whole area.'

‘I'm okay at the moment. Joshua said it should be safe in the morning. Can I meet you on Ngong Road around eight?'

‘I'll get there somehow, even if I have to walk.'

‘Let's hope that's not necessary. I definitely wore the wrong shoes if we have to walk.'

‘Charlie…'

‘Yes?'

‘Please…I want you to take care of yourself.'

There was a pause. ‘I will, Mark.'