Softly Calls the Serengeti (2 page)

Simon Otieng sat at the simple bench he and his son used as a table, pushing the remains of his
irio
around a chipped plate. From its position on the shelf above the small refrigerator, the portable TV blathered on about sorghum prices in Voi.

‘There is food in the pot,' Simon said to Joshua as he ducked under the opening into the corrugated-iron-clad shack.

Joshua grunted a reply, went to the stove and spooned the greenish vegetable mash onto a plate.

‘You keep strange friends these days,' Simon said as his son sat opposite him to eat. ‘I saw you taking tea with Gideon Koske on Kibera Drive today.'

When Joshua didn't respond, he added, ‘Is he the kind of man you should be seen spending your time with?'

‘Mr Koske is a man who will stand up for people like us,' Joshua answered curtly.

Simon scoffed. ‘The only person Koske fights for is Koske himself. Or else he finds others to do his fighting. People like the thugs who come to collect his tea money.'

He pushed his plate aside and placed his hand on his son's shoulder. ‘Joshua, have nothing to do with that man. He can only bring you trouble.'

‘He gives me work. And he will pay me for it.'

‘You don't need money from people like Koske.'

‘Am I to continue to sell newspapers and stupid children's toys on the streets for the rest of my life? Am I a man or a boy?'

Simon removed his hand. ‘You are my son, and you will hear what I say.'

‘I am a man, and a Luo. I will follow the Luo ways.'

‘You know nothing of the Luo ways.'

‘And who is to blame for that? Isn't it a father's duty to pass on his culture and the old stories to his next in line? I know nothing of my family. Nothing of my tribe. I should know these things.'

Simon took his plate to the plastic bucket that served as a washing receptacle.

‘Now you have nothing to say,' Joshua said scornfully. ‘As always.'

‘There is nothing you can learn from me,' Simon replied. ‘Forget Luo ways. They will not support you here in Kibera.'

‘Mama told me about you when you lived in Kisumu. In Luoland.'

Simon's hand hesitated over his plate, but he made no comment and resumed scraping the scraps into the bucket.

‘She told me that you killed someone, and then you ran away.'

Simon took a piece of newspaper and carefully wiped the plate.

‘Who was it?' Joshua demanded. ‘Why did you do it?'

‘It was a long time ago. Those days are gone.'

‘Was it like before? In our history? Was it a tribal war?'

‘It was not a war. The old ways are dead. And good riddance. They brought nothing but hatred and death.'

‘There was honour in the old ways,' Joshua said angrily. ‘It is our heritage to follow them—Luo heritage.'

Simon wondered about honour and the old Luo customs. When he was a child, his grandfather had told him that the Luos' customs were very important. It was his grandfather who had taught him the dances and the Jo-Luo songs, and how to hunt and to throw a spear. And when Simon's father died and his father's brother inherited Simon's mother as another wife, as was Luo custom, it was his grandfather who had explained why Simon also had to leave his village and his friends and go to a new place.

His father's death hadn't been the last time that Luo customs had had a profound effect on Simon's life, but he recalled it was
the first time he had begun to question them. He knew he could not escape the consequences of that questioning in his own life, but he had no intention of also allowing his only son's life to be ruined by them.

Looking across the table at Joshua, he could see the same glint of defiance his grandfather might have seen in him all those years ago.

‘I will not have you fight for something that is so far in the past,' he sighed. ‘Anyway, there is no honour in violence.'

His son glared at him. ‘And is there honour in being a coward? Is there any honour in killing a man and then running away?'

Simon straightened as if his son had struck him in the face. His voice, when it came, was almost inaudible. ‘You know nothing of these matters, Joshua.'

‘There is nothing to know.' Joshua flung the words at him. ‘You were a coward then, and you are still a coward.'

He got up from the table in such haste that the chair fell backwards. He burst through the door, which clattered against the sheet-iron wall, and continued to swing back and forth on its worn leather hinges long after he'd gone.

Simon's shoulders remained tense with anger as he stared at the space Joshua had vacated. After a long moment he let his breath slowly escape and his shoulders slump. He began to massage his broken knuckles—three on his right hand and two on his left. They always seemed to ache more when he was upset. Koske probably couldn't remember the day it happened. He certainly wouldn't remember Simon. Still, the bitter taste of utter helplessness remained vividly in Simon's memory.

 

Since arriving in Kibera, Simon and his family had always been beholden to someone, be it for the roof over their heads, water, access to sewage facilities, school fees, or the many other daily
needs of a family. There was little left over from his small income so they had not been able to save more than a few shillings at a time.

Things improved when he found regular work at a new hotel site along Uhuru Highway. He was given a hard-hat and a half-hour break at midday.

Simon began to consider buying a plot to build a house of their own. For some time, he'd had his eye on a vacant site above the drain that ran through Kisumu Ndogo. It was a very small site, only enough for three rooms, but he knew it was all he could afford.

He made enquiries in the area and one day met the owner, a Nubian woman who claimed that her family had held the land all her life. Since there were no title deeds for Kibera land, Simon could only do so much to establish if the woman was speaking the truth and was indeed the owner. He consulted as widely as he was able, talking to friends, to people who knew people in the area, and to those who would be his neighbours. Of the ones who knew the situation, all agreed the woman could be trusted.

Buying the plot consumed all their money but, as he earned further funds on the Uhuru Highway site, Simon bought second-hand building materials. After work, he would hammer and saw until darkness made it impossible to continue.

One day a man arrived while Simon was up a ladder, putting a sheet of iron on the new roof structure.

‘What are you doing here, my friend?' the man asked cheerily.

Simon looked at him. He wasn't the usual onlooker passing the time with idle questions. He wore a suit and an open-necked shirt.

‘I am building my place. As you can see.'

‘I can see that you are building,' the man said, taking a large white handkerchief from his pocket to dab at his protuberant eyes. ‘But who gave you permission to build on this plot?'

‘I have bought the plot. It is mine.'

‘No, no. That is not possible.'

Simon, becoming agitated by the man's superior attitude, again looked down from his ladder. ‘And who are you to tell me what is possible and what is not?'

‘Because I am the owner of this plot.'

Simon came down the ladder on unsteady legs. The man was tall and had broad shoulders, but it was not merely his size that gave him his swagger.

‘I am Gideon Koske,' he said, as if the name alone would explain the situation.

It didn't, and Simon stared at the man with a growing sense of panic. He knew enough about life in the slums to understand that a man in a suit had power beyond anything that people like Simon could match, regardless of the legalities.

‘But considering you have invested so much in building materials, I am prepared to sell the plot to you on very favourable terms,' Koske said.

Simon began to laugh. He laughed until the sound grew hollow, and then stopped as suddenly as he'd started. The man's claim was just too frightful to contemplate.

‘Leave,' he said through clenched teeth.

Koske considered him coldly. ‘It is better that you take my offer, my friend.'

‘I am no friend of yours! I said, leave! Get away from my house! Do you hear me?'

Koske shrugged and walked away.

Two days later, three men arrived at dusk as Simon was packing his tools into the old Gladstone bag he used to carry them. One of them took the bag from him. When he protested, the other two grabbed him and flung him to the ground, standing on his forearms to keep him there.

The first man, who had a large silver ring in his ear, rummaged around in Simon's tool bag and pulled out the hammer. He hefted it in his hand and smiled down at Simon.

At the time, Simon had thought the pain unbearable, but long after the agony of his broken fingers had subsided, the pain of losing his only chance to own his own place in Kibera remained.

He thought it sadly ironic that long after Koske had changed the course of his own life, he had returned to threaten that of his son.

This Bus Runs on the Blood of Jesus!
said the sign on the rear of the lumbering, lopsided Mombasa–Nairobi bus. Mark Riley peered through the plumes of black diesel smoke billowing in its wake and dared to ease his Land Rover Defender out to check the road ahead. A truck approached crablike on displaced axles, horn blaring. Riley was hungover and in no mood to have his jangling nerves tested. He waited.

On the next attempt, the road was clear, but as he passed the bus it swerved to dodge an enormous pothole, causing the mountain of suitcases and string-tied bundles on its roof to lurch alarmingly in his direction. He planted his foot to the floor and the hulking Land Rover reluctantly responded.

When the bus was in his rear-view mirror, Riley rolled down the window to empty the fumes from the cabin and rubbed his red-rimmed eyes. It had been a busy twenty-four hours, culminating in one too many lime daiquiris at the bar of his hotel. He almost always drank whisky. Why daiquiris were suddenly in favour he put down to boredom.

He reached for his cigarettes, and hesitated a moment before succumbing.
I really must give them up
, he thought as he lit up, then sucked the smoke hungrily into his lungs.

The road ran straight through a scene that he'd been warned would be endlessly repeated during the long journey to Nairobi. Here and there were scattered huts of corrugated iron. Dusty children ran behind old tyres, using sticks to steer them. A donkey cart moved precariously close to the tarmac on wobbly wheels, its load of crated chickens, bagged charcoal and baskets of maize towering above the driver. Beyond the litter-strewn roadside, an occasional ancient baobab watched
over the flat, ungrateful land like an aloof and disapproving guardian.

Riley had originally planned to fly to Nairobi, but he was in no hurry and decided instead to visit two or three of the game parks between Mombasa and the capital. He was not the gawping-tourist-in-a-minibus type, and after discovering the hire costs for a four-wheel drive to be exorbitant, he'd found himself a second-hand Land Rover at a very attractive price. He had a soft spot for the old Defender as it had been the model he'd driven around rural Indonesia, which had been the setting for two of his three novels.

But he didn't want to think about his writing. Writing, or his recent inability to do so successfully, was one of the reasons he was now in Kenya. After two failures, his publisher had suggested he take a break. ‘Go somewhere exotic where you can rekindle your passion,' she'd said. ‘After all, it's not uncommon for a first-time author to have trouble with his next book.' She hadn't mentioned the statistics for a failure on the third.

He took the hint and decided to take a long sabbatical. He was a poor tourist and had chosen Kenya principally because it had been his wife's wish to visit the country at some stage. In the year before they married, Melissa had started supporting an orphaned Kenyan child in the care of a charity called the Circularians. Now, Melissa was dead, killed in a terrible accident. Riley wasn't sure why, but he somehow felt he owed it to her to visit the boy who had benefited from her kindness.

The Circularians were based in Mombasa and for that reason Riley had begun his visit there rather than in the capital, Nairobi. He had met with Horácio Domingues, the little Goan who ran the organisation, in a decaying stuccoed stone building on Mbarak Hinawy Road. The dark-skinned little man had brilliant blue eyes that darted about continuously as he attempted to inform Riley of the Circularian philosophy. Riley wasn't interested, and had finally convinced Domingues to simply check his files for the
details of where he might find Melissa's orphan, Jafari Su'ud. When he returned with the file, Domingues explained that the boy had been adopted, but the agency had requested the details remain confidential.

This had piqued Riley's interest. Melissa's monthly contributions were still being deducted from what had been their joint bank account. If the boy had been adopted, surely they should have been notified and the deductions have ceased?

He diverted Domingues with a request for some information on the Circularians and, while the man poked into various cupboards and filing cabinets, Riley took a peep into the file. He found an address in Nairobi and copied it into his notebook.

Another belching bus blocked his path.
Road Warrior—Death Before Dishonour
it proclaimed beneath its rear window. Riley edged out to peep around it. There was just enough room to pass it before an oncoming bus reached him. He gunned the Land Rover.

Too late, he saw the pothole—it was enormous. The old Defender shook as if struck by a wrecker's ball and Riley's head hit the roof. Dust filled the cabin and there was a sickening crunch as the Land Rover bounced off the side of the bus.

The oncoming truck filled the windscreen.

Riley yanked the wheel right and headed for the bush. The Land Rover left the tarmac and became airborne. It snapped a sapling at bumper-bar level and the foliage momentarily blinded him. When the windscreen cleared, a donkey cart loaded with charcoal bags blocked his path.

The last thing he recalled as he swung the wheel hard was the cart driver's terror-stricken eyes. The Defender went into a savage four-wheel drift, throwing Riley's head sideways into the unpadded door pillar.

 

Riley's head rocked from side to side, sending painful darts into his brain.

He risked squinting into the light. The brightness hurt and he closed his eyes but not before he registered a bizarre scene—a man in a red dress leading a pair of bullocks that were hauling his car across the barren landscape.

He gave in to the overwhelming fatigue and slipped back into darkness.

When he opened his eyes again, the intense light was gone and he was lying on a narrow bed. His head pounded and he felt slightly nauseous. A figure in a white short-sleeved shirt appeared above him. He was Indian in appearance and had dangling from his neck a stethoscope, which glinted in the light from the window.

‘Mr Riley. Welcome back.'

‘Thanks.' He gingerly turned his head to each side. ‘Where am I?'

The room was a small hut, like a motel room with a thatched roof.

‘You are at Twiga Lodge, on a nature reserve near Tsavo National Park. I'm Dr Dass. You've had a knock on the head.'

‘Thank God. I thought it was the lime daiquiris.'

The doctor looked perplexed and Riley abandoned the attempted joke.

‘The car…How did I get here?' he asked.

‘David here was herding cattle near the Mombasa road.' Dass indicated a tall black man standing near the door, bare-chested except for a short red toga draped over one shoulder. ‘He brought you in.'

Riley nodded, tried to smile in appreciation. His head still throbbed.

‘As for the car—a few bumps and bends, apparently. I found your passport and called the Australian High Commission in Nairobi. I was trying to find a next of kin,' the doctor explained. ‘Someone to notify of your predicament.'

‘I see,' Riley said.

‘The gentleman I spoke to said you were to contact the High Commission as a matter of urgency.'

‘Why?'

‘He didn't say. I hope it wasn't inappropriate for me to contact them?'

‘No probs,' Riley said.
How the hell am I going to get to Nairobi?
he wondered.

‘They took the car to Voi,' Dass said, inadvertently answering the question. ‘By the time you're ready to travel, it will have been repaired.'

‘Look, Doc, I appreciate the house call and all,' Riley said, ‘but I need to get on the road again.' He raised himself from the pillow to find his cigarettes, but the thumping in his head caused him to lower it again.

‘Mr Riley, you have an MTBI. It's not to be ignored.'

Riley gave him a quizzical look.

‘Mild traumatic brain injury. A concussion, if you prefer. You ignore it at your peril.'

‘Well, I'll get a bus, or find someone to drive me. It's no big deal. Can you pass me my cigarettes, they're on—'

‘I'm sorry, Mr Riley. I believe it
is
a big deal. In this matter I'm afraid I have the last word. And I would give up the cigarettes if I were you. They're not good for you in your condition. In fact, they're not good for you in any condition. You should quit.'

Riley didn't attempt to hide his pained expression.

‘I will inform the management you are under doctor's orders and are on no account allowed to leave before I see you again,' Dass finished.

Riley could see determination in the medico's eyes. ‘How long?' he groaned.

‘Let's give it a week and we'll see how you're progressing.'

‘A week! What the hell am I going to do for a week?'

Dass was packing his instruments into his small leather case. ‘Take it easy. Put your feet up. Take a break.'

Riley shook his head in dismay.

‘Or find a good book,' the doctor added as he and the Maasai left the
banda
.

 

Riley wanted nothing to do with books. They were a big reason he'd run away to Africa in the first place. Books, and his need to fill the places in his brain with something less painful than the memories that had taken residence there.

It was the time between the late breakfast served after the dawn game drive and lunch that Riley found most difficult to fill. Twiga Lodge's pool was warm and gave little relief from the mid-morning heat. He swam a few laps until his headache returned and then retired to the poolside shade, but a couple of noisy, freckled children jumped and ran and splashed each other, all the time emitting high-pitched, nerve-jangling squeals. The occasional ‘Now, now, boys' from their mother was ignored.

He decided to go for a walk around the grounds, and eventually arrived at the lodge's gift shop. In despair of ever relieving his boredom, he perused the library—a collection of dog-eared paperbacks dominated by Ruark, Hemingway and Wilbur Smith. He thought a biography would be safe, but there was none to be found. A book called
The Maasai—Their Land and Customs
caught his eye. The tall, colourfully dressed young Maasai guys who worked as doormen and safari guides at the lodge seemed to have an irresistible appeal for the women guests, who tended to gush when conversing with any one of them.

The summary on the back told him it was an account of the Maasai's battle against the British to retain their traditional land. Riley was a great fan of the historical novel, and hoped that Manning's Maasai history would be interesting. He signed for the book and took it to his
banda
.

Settling himself on a lounge chair in the tepid warmth outside his five-star tent, with the paradise flycatchers flitting among the acacia tree branches, he flicked open the cover. The first page held a biography and a picture of the author, Charlotte Manning. Short light-coloured hair hugged the nape of her neck and her full mouth was curled into a quietly confident smile that somehow said,
Yes, I know stuff
.

Charlotte Manning was an anthropologist, but Riley soon discovered she had a fiction writer's ability to draw her reader into the series of escalating ordeals, disasters and triumphs that made up recent Maasai history.

Throughout the saga, she painted a picture of the Maasai as a people proudly aware of their culture through their legends, or ‘oral history' as she labelled it. They had been for centuries the dominant power in the region, but the white invaders brought with them diseases that decimated their numbers. Smallpox killed more than half of the Maasai people and bovine diseases killed most of their cattle—their livelihood. The ascendancy the Maasai had enjoyed for centuries evaporated in a mere handful of years.

From this devastation arose a charismatic Maasai
moran
—Parsaloi Ole Gilisho—a warrior who took up the battle for his people. Because the Maasai's military power had been wiped out, he could not challenge the British as his predecessors would have done. Instead, he studied them closely and attempted to defeat them at their own game.

As he read, Riley's excitement soared. His novelist's imagination took him way beyond Charlotte Manning's historical text to the drama inherent in such a powerful story with a ready-made hero. He was convinced that he'd found his next novel—a historical blockbuster. And the most exciting aspect of this discovery was that he had come upon the idea exactly as he'd found the thread of his first novel—by accident.

Just at the time Riley had graduated from Sydney University and was trying to convert his BA Lit (Hons) into something that
could earn him a living, Eddie Mabo had begun his battle to claim ownership of his ancestral land. Riley had followed the native title court case with enthusiasm and it had led him to write his first novel—another story of the importance of the land to its indigenous owners.

Over the next few days Riley found he could not put Charlotte Manning's book down for long. The clash of cultures, the covert and overt pressure exerted on the indigenous Africans, was a very familiar story. Parsaloi Ole Gilisho was the African equivalent of Eddie Mabo; Manning had cast him as a fighter, possibly the last Maasai warrior to make a spirited stand against the all-conquering British. He was a perfect protagonist. And the story Charlotte Manning's book revealed—an amazing battle between ancient culture and modern power—shouted to be told.

Riley took a deep breath. Whether he was ready to write another book or not, here was a story he couldn't ignore. A story that would redeem his faltering writing career.