The road to Eldee

By Smitta Smitten

(This ‘spesho’ issue of ‘Scene@t’ is dedicated to our boy, Big Kev, who is recuperatin’ from surgery).

It is also dedikated to all those boys n gals who got results so bad in KCSE, it is as if they did the yuck-zams wit yams 4 brains (but the ‘toon sez it all, heh heh).

Na, weweee(alama ya mshangao!), evn a school calld Weiwei forced its way into tha top ten?! Imma sure if the premier, Raila, hadn’t put so much pressure recently on one Ongeri, Unko Sam woulda found a way (may-pee computer ‘glitch’) ta mek sure mo omogusii thn juzz Mokaya ‘clincheddy toppu tennny’ positionz). As predicted by FB babe, Phoebe Archie, achi ach ach!

Today, I juzz wanted to tell ya dat de other day, we waz at the UoN, celebratin’ one fifte years since Anton Chekhov’s birth by doin’ readings at the Lit Departski, alongside soma russkis. John Sibi-Okumu gave the finest lit readin’ I’ve ever heard in his mellifloral-barritone voice of Chekhov’s "The Lady with the Dog," n doggone it, dat readin’ waz wunnerful (esp. wit a bit o vodoski+sprite disguised as ‘mineral H2O’ to wash it down tha throat-front.)!

Afterwards, we all crowded aroun’ n congratulated the good n great professor, Chris Wanjala, 4 arrangin’ da ‘ooo-la-la’ afteski. Lakini I’sd small beef wit le good prof. In maybe playin’ at devo’s advocate, he’d sed we writers oughta andika more ‘picturesque Karen Blixen-ish’ novos, n less "PEV novellas dat gather duzt in book stores" (heey, easy boss, who toldcha ours are dust-gatherers, they clearin’ faaast off Books’ First, thanx to the Ann Randikis n Pat Mbithis).

Double reasons

But there’s two reasonz for leo’s lit piece here. First, it’s the two year honey-vasery of the Baks n Tings kiss-n-makin-up on ‘Rambee nyumba steps (thn, like a proper marriage, few months of ‘asali mwezi’ before da endless quarrelskis began).

Sekondly, Pulski is really on da ‘road to Eldee’ leo, on a big show trip.

So, here we go – The Road 2 Eldoret.

The scene from his hotel screen in Nakuru still feels his mind. Let’s call him M. He’s from Muranga, he still drives a Datsun 120 Y that he bought in 1972 when he was 22, and he’s got a family in the outskirts of Eldoret where his wife runs the family farm (cows and wheat) that he bought in 1982 from a white man fleeing the coup that "never happened" as he is fond of saying, "so I got the farm cheap".

That was 1982. M was a sharp hustler from Murang’a, now he’s grown into an old-ish respectable farmer, 57 years in age, a bit a sage and scrooge who inspite of his Sh3 million in cash at a mwananchi bank (savings, he takes no loans) still drives a Datsun 120Y, and why ,till last night, he had never stayed at a hotel. He did, now, in the fiery first days of 2008, at a place called Midlands Hotel; because he had heard the land wasn’t safe.

There was a television set in the hotel room with one of those fancy new satellites that one finds every where these days, even in tiny little bars in Murang’a where boys wear faded ‘Manchester United’ and ‘Arsenal’ T-shirts . In his days, excitement was exclusively reserved for the girls–not football.

M fell asleep drinking White Caps, which he has drunk since 1975,in his fancy little hotel room… and dreamt of the peaks of Mount Kenya.

When he woke up, that funny American station called Cables News Network (the only cables M knows so far are the troublesome ones that disconnect the carburetor in his 120Y) was showing a burnt kanisa, with fifty dead, somewhere near Eldoret.

"Elsewhere!" That’s how M always envisions those pichas – burnt churches in Rwanda, skeletons on the hard, sandy faces of Darfur, long endless ant-like lines of refugees in the D.R.C, and those other unpleasant images from inside Africa that Western media seems so very enamoured of.

Charred church

But the burnt church was in Kenya’s Rift Valley. The fifty or five dozen dead were Kenyans, there were no "Interhamwes" or "janjaweeds" or other exotically named murderers in this mix, it was our own majinis in a mad mix of murderous mayhem.

And M was on his feet, and out of the hotel, before one could say the words "balkanization" or "ethic tension" – and now, with the sun just coming up over the horizon, M is on his way to Eldoret to get his family and take them back to the safety of his house.

In the blur of the blue-purplish- golden light of dawn road ahead, M notices what he thinks is roadside bush and bracken. At first! Bushes do not grow on tarmac roads, bwana.

As he gets closer, he notices that the obstacles are actually stones- little rocks that prop up bushes, like ominous flowers in menacing vases. M does not stop to wonder why this is so, why anyone in their right minds would bother with this weird fauna and floral arrangement, in the middle of a road to nowhere.

Well, not ‘nowhere’ exactly – Eldoret!

Like the practical man, and farmer, that he is, Mr. M, 57, gets out of his old blue Datsun 120Y,looks up the sky, then gets to work – tossing aside the broken stones to clear the road.

And from behind the tall grass on either side of the road, columns of men emerge…somewhere between ten and twenty of them. Some are tall, some are short, some are rugged, some wear Western T-shirts with improbable messages like "Rainkonnen Rules", – and "Vote for Al Gore, 2000 A.D.". They look like refugees from a beer budget movie called ‘Old Sierra Leone’. And in their hands, Mr M notes, they carry elongated shadows.

No, not shadows! It is the silhouettes of machetes, and suddenly Mr. M insides turn to maji. Now he can see the faces of some of the men, hate contorted contours that appraise him savagely.

"Haka hakana chapa," one of the men, dark brown & snaggle – toothed snarls, and the mob looks at his old blue Datsun 120Y,and laughs. The laughs aren’t merry. They are blood-sodden. "Niko na pesa," Mr. M hears himself croak in a strange voice. "Twende kwa ATM …," He hopes they are highway robbers. He removes his wallet, ATM card, DL, I.D. …

Fateful

"Hapana!" one of the men screams, grabbing wallet, eyeing ID, raising the I.D. It falls to the ground. Another man in tarred red and white shirt snatches it up, dirty nails scrapping the grimy road to Eldoret. ‘Huyu ni mmoja wao waliiba kura," the man yells, and his companions close in on Mr. M, who realizes he has wet himself for the first time since 1955, when he was just five.

Elongated shadows! The road to Eldee is no El Dorado! In the middle of the murderous commotion, none notices when the driver’s side of the door of the 120 Y is slammed shut, in the montage of the mayhem; or the exact moment that Mr M becomes 1950-2008, R.I.P. The short rains are over. January will be hot and dry. And the rivers, for once, will run red and riot.