Read Online No Hurry in Africa by Brendan Clerkin - Free Book Online
Authors: Brendan Clerkin
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Kibera. They seemed to help each other. Maybe I just had not yet witnessed the sinister underbelly where crime was a way of life.
The next day I ventured into Mukuru, Nairobi’s slum of slums, with two local youths from Kevin’s centre as bodyguards. Neither spoke English, so communication was though Swahili and some hand signals. Mukuru is a much more recent slum than Kibera, and a good deal smaller. It is a crammed labyrinth of tiny never-ending passageways between simple corrugated iron shacks, requiring the inhabitants to jump over open sewers and dodge out of the way of the happy children who seem oblivious to their squalid surroundings.
Altogether, Mukuru is a very interesting place. At one point, I saw a man running past in the nip. I found this rather odd. Then another followed him with no clothes on either, and yet again another, a couple of minutes later. A few bystanders were laughing as all this happened. It turned out to be the lighter side to Nairobi crime. Evidently, they had turned a corner and were mugged of everything including all their clothes. With all this serial stripping going on, I was grateful I had my two bodyguards to make me feel a bit more secure. A definite hint of menace clung around Mukuru, though—more so than in Kibera.
Many Kenyans are overly friendly—the rural ones are usually genuine and try to give you stuff you do not even want; whereas the Nairobi people may be setting you up to be mugged. A generalisation, I know, but that was my experience. My favourite conman was a youthful one I encountered that weekend. His head was strangely rectangular; he had hunched shoulders, and he just exuded an aura of shiftiness at fifty paces. He operated on Nairobi’s Kenyatta Avenue, the city’s main street (named after the country’s first president). He sauntered past me furtively, and about three minutes later was briskly trying to keep up beside me, walking in the same direction. As if it was the most casual remark in the world, he asked me,
‘Gentleman, where are you from?’
As he cantered beside me, I just kept looking ahead and striding forward. But after he had asked me a few more times, I answered,
‘Ninatoka Kitui. Unaenda wapi bwana? ’ (I’m from Kitui, now where are you off to, sir?).
This momentarily stumped him. He pointed up the street, and I could sense the permutations of possibility running around his mind. Finally, he piped up,
‘But where are you from before Kitui?’
Continuing at a good pace, and knowing that I could usually handle these people on my travels, I told him,
‘Ireland.’
I imagined that, like the Akamba, he probably would not have a notion where it was. But he became animated.
‘Oh, really, I will be studying medicine at Trinity College in Dublin next year.’
Now it was my turn to be stumped. I asked him a few questions about Trinity, about Dublin, and about medicine courses, all the time looking ahead of me and trying to lose him as I ploughed straight through road crossings. Fair play to him though, he had his homework done and answered every one of them correctly. Then he became fed up with my interest in his supposed studies and he landed the punch line.
‘But I am a refugee from Sudan and I need money to go to Tanzania before I can go to Ireland.’
‘Sorry, but I have only fifty shillings left on me,’ I replied.
This was the truth, and I opened out my pockets to show him, while still galloping onwards to the top of the street.
He seemed to be again momentarily confused, but quickly reverted to what he must say to everyone else when they ignore him or refuse his request. It was an interesting change of tack.
‘But you don’t like to talk to Africans, you don’t like to give to needy Africans, you are a racist perhaps?’
‘I give to the people in Kitui. They need it more than you. I cannot give to everyone.’
‘And what about me? You are in my country, Kenya.’
‘Are you not a refugee from Sudan, sir?’
The two
The next day I ventured into Mukuru, Nairobi’s slum of slums, with two local youths from Kevin’s centre as bodyguards. Neither spoke English, so communication was though Swahili and some hand signals. Mukuru is a much more recent slum than Kibera, and a good deal smaller. It is a crammed labyrinth of tiny never-ending passageways between simple corrugated iron shacks, requiring the inhabitants to jump over open sewers and dodge out of the way of the happy children who seem oblivious to their squalid surroundings.
Altogether, Mukuru is a very interesting place. At one point, I saw a man running past in the nip. I found this rather odd. Then another followed him with no clothes on either, and yet again another, a couple of minutes later. A few bystanders were laughing as all this happened. It turned out to be the lighter side to Nairobi crime. Evidently, they had turned a corner and were mugged of everything including all their clothes. With all this serial stripping going on, I was grateful I had my two bodyguards to make me feel a bit more secure. A definite hint of menace clung around Mukuru, though—more so than in Kibera.
Many Kenyans are overly friendly—the rural ones are usually genuine and try to give you stuff you do not even want; whereas the Nairobi people may be setting you up to be mugged. A generalisation, I know, but that was my experience. My favourite conman was a youthful one I encountered that weekend. His head was strangely rectangular; he had hunched shoulders, and he just exuded an aura of shiftiness at fifty paces. He operated on Nairobi’s Kenyatta Avenue, the city’s main street (named after the country’s first president). He sauntered past me furtively, and about three minutes later was briskly trying to keep up beside me, walking in the same direction. As if it was the most casual remark in the world, he asked me,
‘Gentleman, where are you from?’
As he cantered beside me, I just kept looking ahead and striding forward. But after he had asked me a few more times, I answered,
‘Ninatoka Kitui. Unaenda wapi bwana? ’ (I’m from Kitui, now where are you off to, sir?).
This momentarily stumped him. He pointed up the street, and I could sense the permutations of possibility running around his mind. Finally, he piped up,
‘But where are you from before Kitui?’
Continuing at a good pace, and knowing that I could usually handle these people on my travels, I told him,
‘Ireland.’
I imagined that, like the Akamba, he probably would not have a notion where it was. But he became animated.
‘Oh, really, I will be studying medicine at Trinity College in Dublin next year.’
Now it was my turn to be stumped. I asked him a few questions about Trinity, about Dublin, and about medicine courses, all the time looking ahead of me and trying to lose him as I ploughed straight through road crossings. Fair play to him though, he had his homework done and answered every one of them correctly. Then he became fed up with my interest in his supposed studies and he landed the punch line.
‘But I am a refugee from Sudan and I need money to go to Tanzania before I can go to Ireland.’
‘Sorry, but I have only fifty shillings left on me,’ I replied.
This was the truth, and I opened out my pockets to show him, while still galloping onwards to the top of the street.
He seemed to be again momentarily confused, but quickly reverted to what he must say to everyone else when they ignore him or refuse his request. It was an interesting change of tack.
‘But you don’t like to talk to Africans, you don’t like to give to needy Africans, you are a racist perhaps?’
‘I give to the people in Kitui. They need it more than you. I cannot give to everyone.’
‘And what about me? You are in my country, Kenya.’
‘Are you not a refugee from Sudan, sir?’
The two
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