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Of all the mysteries that Kibera had known for decades, Field Marshall Wa Gathegi was the most astonishing. No one knew his exact age, but it was rumored that he was born at about when the country got independence. Slum conspiracy theorists argued that he must have been forty years old, and that he was the son of one of the Mau Mau freedom fighters. The details of his exact parentage remain as much a mystery as the hopes of the people of Kibera.
Field Marshall had no home, no family and no known place of origin. Twenty years ago, he had appeared in the slum and quickly became one of the most popular people there. In fact, no one knew where he slept in the night. He would often ‘disappear’ as soon as the sun started to set and reappear again the next morning.
His dreadlocks grew longer and denser by the year, but also dirtier. He had a pair of khaki pants and a long flowered shirt that he wore every day of his life. He walked with a swagger and talked with strength. It was never clear whether he ever took a bath, but no one ever saw him stink either.
Every day, Wa Gethegi would be seen walking around the slum and stopping at taverns for a drink. He was not a heavy drinker, but when he got tipsy, he became wise as a sage, regaling his comrades with mouthfuls of adventure escapades and knowledge.
He was more knowledgeable than anyone else in the slum. He would talk about the history of the country and argue against colonization with the wit and insight of an accomplished diplomat. Other times he would take on religion and philosophy, recounting theories from Plato and Aristotle and answering questions about the meaning of life and the world as asked by the slum dwellers.
The Field Marshall had the answers to your questions, all you had to do was to water the channels of knowledge with a glass of busaa.
‘All animals are equal, but mind you, some animals are more equal than others’, went the Field Marshall one evening at Mama Omondi’s Tavern. A dozen men were huddled around the sage attentively listening to what he had to say. ‘Do you know who said those words? No, you don’t. That was George Orwell. And why did he say them? I will tell you.’ He stopped with a loud hiccup, and took a long gulp from his mug.
‘Look across that wall over there. Look carefully, my people. Look’, he said, pointing at the high brick wall with an electric fence at the far Western part of the slum.
‘I see… I see houses.’ A voice in the audience offered. That was Kinuthia, a nineteen year old lad who had dropped out of form three the previous year.
‘Very well. What about on our side? Poverty and lack everywhere. That wall you see has separated two classes. The haves and the have nots. That is the system were born into. That is the society that we live in. You know, none of you here makes as much money in a year as the families on that other side spend on a single day’s lunch. We have been lied to.’ He stopped suddenly, as if he had forgotten something. Then took a large gulp of the booze in his hand. It spilled through the sides of his mouth and onto his big beard. The droplets hang there, glittering in the sun.
‘They tell us that we are all equal, that they care for us. Well, maybe we are: in theory. But the realities are different. Some of us were born to pull the carts and others to push the Mercs. It is our lot. We do not complain, we simply thank God for breath, love our women, raise our kids, and hope that they achieve what we couldn’t. Jah Jah bless.’ He signed off, lifting his mug towards the sky, then lowering it with a last gulp. Then he staggered away onto the street.
That was how Field Marshall did it. He would walk in on a group of idlers, surprise them with wisdom and then leave, tipsy as he always was.
One Saturday evening, Bella was sent by her mother to go fetch groceries at the farm. It was not really a farm in truth, but a section on the Nairobi River that ran at the back of the slum where people grew kales and tomatoes and chilies. Her mother, Hamza, had acquired a four meter square ‘plot’ on the farm where she grew her vegetables. Even getting a section at that place, which was considered the goldmine of the slum, was a testimony to the diligence of the woman. Afterall, Hamza Aiko Abando had the blood of the Dinka people of South Sudan coursing her veins, having fled the country as a refugee and settled in Dadaab for half a decade before relocating to Kibera on the back of an Army truck whose driver will never get to know that he carried a fugitive for over eight hundred kilometers in one of the most secured vehicles on that road.
Bella had been to the farm for so many times that she could walk there with her eyes blinded. So, she preferred to let her poems carry her down the meandering, murky path that descended into a sewer on the right, down the steep hill and into the valley below. Her mind was sharp and her step was quick as the gait of a mare on hot coals. After all she was Bellarine Kidzo. The smartest girl in Kibera as far as her sweet mom was concerned.
She folded the plastic bag into a ball in her fits and clung to it tightly, jumping here and there to evade the paddles of dirty water. Today it was to be Robert Frost.
‘Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both’,
She paced faster.
‘And be one traveler, long I stood,
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the ground’
A mother with a child strapped onto her back shoots a greeting, “Sasa Bella!”
‘Then took the other, as just as fair,’
The mother is a bit disappointed by the unreturned greeting. She walks away.
‘And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was greasy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there,’
Her favorite part. She deepens her voice and says it slowly,
‘Had worn them really about the same -
And both that morning equally lay’
She could now see the farm in the distance. Women, or really girls with babies, walked past her with sisal sawn baskets on their heads. Supper was going to be delicious today, they hoped.
The red orb was inches away from descending onto the sky crappers in the distance. Its gold rays beamed like the face of an ancient Egyptian goddess, hugging the rack shacks of the slum goodbye.
‘In leaves no step had trodden back,
Oh! I kept the first for another day,
Yet knowing how way leads onto way,’
She felt the wetness in her feet as she eased into the river. It had evolved over the years into a giant sewer, and the water which was once clear and delicate was now murky and slimy.
She said ‘hi’s to a group of girls getting their supplies ready and headed straight for her mother’s plot. She let the last stanza hold her steady as she plucked the leaves onto the plastic bag.
‘I shall be telling this with a sigh,
Somewhere ages and ages hence,’
She let the words flow out one after the other, with long pauses between each. Maybe she just liked the dramatic effect of such recitation, or she was afraid that the poem was about to end. She held onto it like a piece of bread on a hungry man’s hand.
She had plucked enough kale leaves for the family of six. She rose up and began the ascend back home.
‘Two – roads – diverged – in – a – wood, - and – I’
She let each word enjoy the taste of her mouth as she let it out. The sun finally sank into the skyline and it was shady dark. She pushed her legs faster up the hill through a beaten path. No one else was there, as if they had all conspired to leave her out.
‘I took the one less travelled by,’
The words came out faster than she thought. She was beginning to have cold shivers in her cheeks for she knew what lurked in the dark alleys of the slum. Dangerous men lay in the dark waiting to rob and mug anyone, even the poorest, humblest mama. Some were known in the slum but no one dared report them because they would live to regret it. The gangs owned the slum.
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