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Authors: Brendan Clerkin
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of us grinned widely at this skit into which our encounter had developed.
‘Just some shillings?’ he pleaded, as he held out his hand in front of me to try and slow my pace.
‘ Hapana, kwa heri bwana, ’ I countered.
Hapana is a great Swahili word that means ‘no, and that’s the very last word on the matter,’ while kwa heri when used in a certain tone is a firm but very polite way of saying ‘get lost and good riddance.’
Nearly every weekend that I was in Nairobi after that, I met him again on the main street. I would now be from France or Israel or some such place and he would be studying veterinary in Toulouse or reading theology in Jerusalem. Each time he needed a couple of shillings to go to Tanzania before he could fly to his university. This happened about eleven or twelve times in total, and he never seemed to remember me once.
Much later, Sr. MM told me that a male Irish friend of hers, who was over visiting, was arrested by ‘police’ for talking to ‘a known criminal.’
‘He was taken to a back room of some dingy building. The police were demanding thousands of euros for bail money. He was completely traumatised by the event, poor man. Of course, the “police” and “the known criminal” were all in it together. It was a set-up to scam money from a white person,’ she concluded.
Sr. MM began to describe the ‘known criminal’ towards the end of her tale—and he sounded uncannily like my friend, the Sudanese refugee!
‘Most Nairobi villains take a simple approach,’ said Kevin, after I told him my tale. ‘They threaten to throw their excrement in your face if you decide not to comply with the request to empty your pockets. It happened to me once, in fact, when I was in the back seat of a car stopped at a junction in broad daylight. For some reason, most people faced with this option pay up! To stay relatively safe in Nairobi,’ he continued, ‘you just have to stay close to crowds of people most of the time. Mob justice means the thief will be stoned or burned alive if he tries to mug you in a busy place. Otherwise, thieves go to crammed prisons that are like battery hen-houses—indefinitely—for stealing as little as the equivalent of three euros.’
As a rule in Nairobi, it is inadvisable to engage in conversation when queuing or waiting with others, lest the conmen get useful information from you on your movements. It is best to walk around with just a few hundred shillings and no phone or wristwatch—or even spectacles, which oddly seems to be a favourite of Nairobi’s thieves as well. Kiragu once recounted to me how, one time, he was flagging down a bus when a man just grabbed the glasses off his head and ran away. He knew lots of other people in Nairobi to whom this happened as well.
‘You can’t run after them when you can’t even see them,’ he chuckled.
I got the runs that weekend. By now, I was totally unused to the ‘richness’ of the normal food that I was eating with Kevin in Nairobi, after dining on the rather limited menu around Kitui. I took the opportunity to stock up on a few provisions that were not readily available near Nyumbani, such as toilet roll, a big bottle of drinking water, fruit, ‘nice & good shampoo,’ the Daily Nation, and, very importantly, batteries for my torch.
When I returned to Nyumbani after the bright lights of Nairobi that weekend, I began noticing how life revolves around light and darkness in Akamba society. Even the light of a full moon changes habits. For example, people may work at their crop or fetch water under a full moon. Moonlight—and there’s a lot more of it in Africa—extends the Akamba day in the same way as electricity does in Ireland. Many of their tribal ceremonies are guided by the phases of the moon.
Even slight changes in the weather become more noticeable around the phases of the moon. However, when there is no moon (or a ‘black moon’ as some of them refer to it), active life abruptly ceases.
‘Just some shillings?’ he pleaded, as he held out his hand in front of me to try and slow my pace.
‘ Hapana, kwa heri bwana, ’ I countered.
Hapana is a great Swahili word that means ‘no, and that’s the very last word on the matter,’ while kwa heri when used in a certain tone is a firm but very polite way of saying ‘get lost and good riddance.’
Nearly every weekend that I was in Nairobi after that, I met him again on the main street. I would now be from France or Israel or some such place and he would be studying veterinary in Toulouse or reading theology in Jerusalem. Each time he needed a couple of shillings to go to Tanzania before he could fly to his university. This happened about eleven or twelve times in total, and he never seemed to remember me once.
Much later, Sr. MM told me that a male Irish friend of hers, who was over visiting, was arrested by ‘police’ for talking to ‘a known criminal.’
‘He was taken to a back room of some dingy building. The police were demanding thousands of euros for bail money. He was completely traumatised by the event, poor man. Of course, the “police” and “the known criminal” were all in it together. It was a set-up to scam money from a white person,’ she concluded.
Sr. MM began to describe the ‘known criminal’ towards the end of her tale—and he sounded uncannily like my friend, the Sudanese refugee!
‘Most Nairobi villains take a simple approach,’ said Kevin, after I told him my tale. ‘They threaten to throw their excrement in your face if you decide not to comply with the request to empty your pockets. It happened to me once, in fact, when I was in the back seat of a car stopped at a junction in broad daylight. For some reason, most people faced with this option pay up! To stay relatively safe in Nairobi,’ he continued, ‘you just have to stay close to crowds of people most of the time. Mob justice means the thief will be stoned or burned alive if he tries to mug you in a busy place. Otherwise, thieves go to crammed prisons that are like battery hen-houses—indefinitely—for stealing as little as the equivalent of three euros.’
As a rule in Nairobi, it is inadvisable to engage in conversation when queuing or waiting with others, lest the conmen get useful information from you on your movements. It is best to walk around with just a few hundred shillings and no phone or wristwatch—or even spectacles, which oddly seems to be a favourite of Nairobi’s thieves as well. Kiragu once recounted to me how, one time, he was flagging down a bus when a man just grabbed the glasses off his head and ran away. He knew lots of other people in Nairobi to whom this happened as well.
‘You can’t run after them when you can’t even see them,’ he chuckled.
I got the runs that weekend. By now, I was totally unused to the ‘richness’ of the normal food that I was eating with Kevin in Nairobi, after dining on the rather limited menu around Kitui. I took the opportunity to stock up on a few provisions that were not readily available near Nyumbani, such as toilet roll, a big bottle of drinking water, fruit, ‘nice & good shampoo,’ the Daily Nation, and, very importantly, batteries for my torch.
When I returned to Nyumbani after the bright lights of Nairobi that weekend, I began noticing how life revolves around light and darkness in Akamba society. Even the light of a full moon changes habits. For example, people may work at their crop or fetch water under a full moon. Moonlight—and there’s a lot more of it in Africa—extends the Akamba day in the same way as electricity does in Ireland. Many of their tribal ceremonies are guided by the phases of the moon.
Even slight changes in the weather become more noticeable around the phases of the moon. However, when there is no moon (or a ‘black moon’ as some of them refer to it), active life abruptly ceases.
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