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accepted, because she knew she would get a seat. An hour or more later, after being squashed hard up against a jammed window on the sunny side of the bus, she wished she had refused, stayed outside and tried to beg a lift from a passing truck or Land Rover. Perhaps she might have been home by now.
    Mwingi market had been packed that day. The marketplace resembled a nest of human ants without the soldiers. People had brought their cows and goats. It seemed that everyone wanted to sell these days. People needed the cash to buy food to supplement what their shambas could not grow. Famine caused by the failure of the last rains was starting to bite and it was now very much a buyer’s market. So the hopeful had stood all day in the sun with their animals, repeatedly turning away the small but canny band of purchasers. By the end of the day, prices had fallen to rock bottom, and goats were being hurriedly sold for as little as twenty shillings, the thought of walking home to an empty cooking pot having got the better of many sellers. As businessmen brought around their lorries and pick-ups to load up the animals they had bought, animals whose meat would sell for ten shillings a kilo in a Nairobi butcher’s shop, those people who had rejected all offers began to untie their animals ready for the long walk home. Few had bought, but many had sold, and it was they who queued for the bus holding the half sacks of maize or, for the lucky ones who had sold a bull, sacks of beans to fill their families’ bellies until the next market day, when the entire scene would be repeated, repeated that is until all of the family’s animals had been sold. Then there was not much to do except find a suitable tree, sit, and wait for the next rain, not due for some months.
    The woman who shared the seat with Janet and Joseph Munyolo’s mother had sold two goats for fifty shillings and had bought a nearly full sack of maize. She entered the bus when already more than sixty others were crammed onto the seats. Noticing immediately that Janet was smaller and of slighter build than most, the woman made straight for the seat which, of course was only meant to accommodate two, and, finding an unoccupied corner onto which she could place a small percentage of her behind, she sat and lifted the sack of maize onto her lap, panting loudly, as rivers of sweat ran down between her ample breasts. She made a comment about the heat and fanned herself rapidly with a loosened corner of the wrapper she wore around her upper body, and gave out a long deep sigh. Over the next few minutes she carefully adjusted her position, each time nudging a per cent or two more of her buttocks onto the seat, using her significant weight to ease the other two occupants marginally closer to the window. By the time the bus reached Migwani, she had found enough space to have also planted the sack of maize on the seat beside her to ease the pressure on her thighs, leaving Janet so squashed against the window that her own behind was actually against the side of the bus, with only a small portion of one leg actually in contact with the seat. The woman would have been put off the bus back in Mwingi had Janet not paid her fare in a vain attempt to try to get the show on the road. Even Janet’s poor Kikamba was enough to follow what was said.
    â€œWhere to?”
    â€œKwa Siku.”
    â€œFour shillings and eighty cents,” ordered the conductor, beginning to write the ticket.
    â€œBut I have no money,” replied the woman with an air of total innocence.
    â€œEither you have the money or you get off,” said the young man, still commanding. He seemed to be very angry indeed, having already dealt with several people who were trying to get a free ride.
    â€œ Aiee ,” said the woman in feigned total surprise. She eyed the slightly built young man from within her enormous frame, peering over the top of the sack on her lap. She seemed to suggest that it