Wasted lives in rusty kiosks of Maringo Estate; once a gem

The morning air is chilly and brisk; a flock of crows fly back and forth over the deciduous yellow jacaranda trees, with its fallen foliage flowers making a good impression of a tattered yellow and brown carpet on the ground. A chorus of birds rises above matatu hoots, with conductors whistling and shouting ‘beba, beba tao’.

The trees are aligned in almost geometric precision and sandwich the main street that cuts through Maringo Shopping Centre. It’s a beautiful place except for the rusty kiosks known to residents as ‘Macawa’.

‘Macawa’ is actually an acronym for Maringo Car Wash, but going by the reputation of the place, the car washing trade - though probably a noble idea at its inception with a huge 10,000-litre redundant tank sticking out as a evidence of its glory days - is non-existent. A man known as ‘Prince Masale’ is the only embodiment of a one-man car-washing enterprise; ever-present with his buckets and rags.

Monotony of bars

Calling ‘Macawa’ a shopping centre would be a misnomer, as the whole centre lacks a single shop. It only boasts of a medical centre (Shepherds Medical Centre), with a lone butchery breaking the monotony of bars and lodgings, and even so, the two businesses are intertwined with the self-indulgent values of the place. Both businesses benefit from the drinking populace, the medical centre getting a profitable supply of injured patrons from fist fights and brawls and the butcher providing a semblance of nutrition to the merrymakers.

Macawa is reputed to make zombies out of men and women who, as if by an unyielding force of alcoholism, have become a permanent fixture in the shopping centre. Stories abound of how this shopping centre with a population of 15 bars and wines and spirits has sucked life out of formerly respectable family men and women.

Take Tony for instance. Having worked for over 40 years for a major car dealer, he had budgeted his Sh1.8m retirement package to the last penny. His intention was to establish a small-scale business for his wife and venture into farming in his rural Murang’a County, where he has a farm. As he sits down with his back on the ‘Macawa Tank’, he sucks in a lungful of smoke with his eyes closed and then exhales it with such elegance it makes smoking look a tad admirable.

Wasted lives

“You cannot imagine that I blew all that money just here, in this rugged looking place,” he says in eloquent English that seems out of place with his current station in life.

Then there is Ajim. Most people refer to him as Mr Anita, for he has a unique way of shouting the name of his former wife whenever he has had more than his normal quota of cheap liquor. Ajim’s stature, facial scars and stoop seems discordant with his former lifestyle; a former family man, amateur boxer and employee of the defunct Kenya Post and Telecommunication Corporation.

He also shares this fate with Tony. Ajim also blew his redundancy package here in Macawa and he now sustains his habit by playing  chokora. The pile of bottles in his base is testament to his enterprise. He has set up his all-weather base at the shopping centre, where he has his sleeping paraphernalia tucked at a corner of a verandah near one of the bars.

“I hope the recent court award to former employees of the defunct KPTC will rescue me from this decadence,” he says with a pitiful gaze of despair showing in his drunken eyes.

Amid this hedonism, a young lady seems determined to make the pubs around this place go out of business. Mercy Wanjiru is a trained addiction counsellor and is under no illusion of the difficult task ahead. “Actually, I have some significant others who are affected by addiction. It is sad seeing people you know and love losing themselves to addiction. They were my motivation for studying addiction so as to understand the disease and know how to help people restore their sobriety again.”

She captures her bold effort of opening a counselling centre, Badili Maisha Consultancy at Shepherds Medical Centre with Sir Francis bacon Quote: “If the mountain will not come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must go to the mountain.”

 She then illustrates her strategy. “My main objective of starting the centre that specialises in counseling, psycho-social therapy, group therapy, training and drug testing here in ‘Macawa’ is to offer pro bono treatment for willing addicts and also source for people or organisations willing to assist in instutionalisation of deserving cases who otherwise cannot afford the inpatient treatment.”