Black Star Nairobi (14 page)

O motioned for me to speak to the young men. I understood. His Luo-accented Kiswahili would only heighten the situation.

I lowered my Glock and walked toward them.

“I am an American.” Never before had those words sounded so hollow and devoid of meaning. I stupidly thought I might as well have also announced that we came in peace.

“And we are here to make burial arrangements for a friend,” I added.

There was some murmuring and then two young men stepped forward—one of them held a gleaming machete and the other an old hunting rifle. The one holding the machete spoke in Kikuyu, but it was not until the other one holding the musket started translating that I understood what was going on—the leader didn’t speak English and needed an interpreter.

“We have no quarrel with you, Mr. American. You can leave and greet Mr. Obama for us when you get back home. Eh, Mr. Obama, that Luo, he is very lucky to be American,” the leader said through the interpreter, pointing the machete at me.

“Can the others please identify themselves?” he asked.

“My name is Muddy and this is my home,” Muddy yelled from the back.

“This is not your home. You are our guest and we treat guests with respect. You too may pass,” the man replied.

“And the third person? Who are you?” the man asked, pointing at O.

“I am a Kenyan, just like you,” O shouted back. I saw them start but another growl from O held them back. We could not afford to draw first blood. However, we could remind them they had lives to lose.

“Identify yourselves!” O challenged them.

“We are the protectors of our land and wealth,” the leader said proudly. “Your people are killing our people and for that you have to pay,” he added, as a
matatu
came from the other side of the roadblock. The passengers were ordered out. I could make out flashlights going over identification cards. All the passengers climbed back in except for one man who was herded into the surrounding bushes as he pleaded for his life.

“Let the man go, just let him go—what has he done to you? Do you even know his name?” I asked the leader.

“Do you know what they are doing to our people in Kisumu? Did you hear about the church in the Rift Valley? Little children, women—screaming—burning to death?” the man asked me. The passion in his voice—this was not going to be easy.

“That man, he had nothing to do with it. Nothing at all—this is not justice, this is murder,” I said to him, thinking I could nudge the little flame of humanity I heard in his voice into empathy.

“Murder? Justice? You think I care? It is one less of them,” he screamed at me.

He yelled something in Kikuyu to his men. We heard loud screams and then silence except for the rustling as the murderers emerged from the bushes. The man was dead. There was nothing we could have done for him.

“Let me say something,” I said to the leader when his attention returned to us.

“Speak, Mr. Obama,” he gave me permission, sarcastically.

“The Norfolk bombing, most of the dead are Kenyans, there were some Kikuyus, Asians, Luos, and many others who died. We are the detectives working that case and I haven’t heard my friend say this justice is only for his people and not the others. You understand? He is working for Kenyan justice. And if you kill him, the murderers who planted the bomb will not be brought to justice. Your people will have died in vain,” I appealed to him.

“The dead are already dead. But we can make sure their children live without fear,” he said. “You, we have no quarrel with. You can go. But you will never save your friend.”

“Listen to me. My name is Odhiambo and I am here to bury my wife,” O shouted defiantly. With that, they knew who he was—their inter-ethnic marriage would have been fueling anger for years.

“Make your move,” he goaded them, letting out another roar.

This is it
, I thought to myself. Instinctively I raised my weapon to the man’s head. The translator shakily raised his musket to mine.

“The gun I’m holding is a Glock. You will be dead long before your man here has a chance to fire that thing—if it doesn’t jam,” I said to the leader, waiting tensely for the translation to register. “But look, even warriors have to eat.” I reached into my back pocket and came out with the rest of the money from the Range Rover.

The leader took it and slapped it against the machete. The translator lowered his musket and I lowered my weapon as well. I thought how ironic it was that Sahara’s money was buying our lives and those of the young men we would have taken with us.

“We need more—for that weed,” he said, pointing at O. “We
need more, or you leave him behind.” That was the last of the money—and the longer we stood bargaining, the more we were losing our advantage, the more the stalemate was receding, as they plotted and found weaknesses in our three-person defense. I had to make a move.

“Fuck off … I’m done here,” I said to him as I grabbed the musket and shot the translator in the head. I elbowed the leader in the face and he fell backwards, his machete clattering away from him. The young men started moving forward, but I was pointing my gun at the head of the now-kneeling leader. He looked behind him and waved at them to stop.

I stood him up and took the wad of cash from his pocket. He motioned to me that we could go. I yelled out to O to start the car and he slowly drove to where I was standing.

I hopped in, grabbing the leader by his shirt, and pulled him along so that he was running by the Land Rover. The young men moved away. We drove through the makeshift roadblock in complete silence, except for the yells of the leader, who was begging for us to stop. I released him as soon as we were in the clear.

“There was no saving him,” Muddy said, in reference to the man who had just been murdered. “I’ve seen this before. We should have killed the whole lot of them.”

“I could have made my move earlier—I could have made my move as soon as I walked up to him,” I said, before I leaned out the window and threw up. Did I execute the translator or was it an act of self-defense?

“No, you couldn’t have … you needed the time to make a plan. Your instincts … you were right not to shoot the leader, they would have overrun us,” O said.

I didn’t ask him why he had been goading them. It seemed like there was a part of him that wanted violence to break out, no
matter the consequences … to lose his grief in it. I knew that because I too wanted to square off with something, with someone, and here was the difference between us … someone deserving.

We turned on the radio to the BBC and that was when we realized the extent of it all. Our experience was just a taste of what everyone else was going through. We could hear alarm in the reporter’s voice—in the slums of Kibera and Mathare, violence had already broken out—ethnicity pitted against ethnicity.

In Kisumu, Kikuyus were being pulled out of their homes and cars and killed. The police had killed unarmed protestors from the opposition. Some of the opposition leaders had gone back to their constituents to organize them into militia. Abroad, different ethnicities were collecting money for their brethren. Some white tourists had been beaten up. The police deployed in the rural areas had broken along ethnic lines, and had gone on a killing rampage.

In less than an hour, the country had become unrecognizable. The violence that had been circling around us for so long, touching down every now and then, had descended on the whole country.

Mary’s father, Ngatia, opened the door. The kerosene lamp flickered back and forth and he beckoned us in before it gave out. We followed him into the sitting room, where we found Mary’s mother, Mumbi, sitting by a charcoal burner. They lived alone and, judging from the photographs with frames blackened by burning charcoal, Mary was their only child.

One photograph showed the father addressing young school kids—he used to be a headmaster. The mother was a teacher too—which explained why Mary had become a teacher. On a
long wooden table, there were trays full of bread with jam and butter and kettles of tea—for the mourners who had not yet arrived.

No one was going to come, not with the looming violence outside. They pointed us to the bread and tea and then shuffled along and brought three chairs to the fire. We did not sit down. I stretched my hands to warm them and noticed they were still shaking.

They were listening to the news and Ngatia was having a beer. Muddy quickly filled both of them in about the young men with machetes and explained that we had to move.

“I can only hope we have time to bury my daughter properly. When is the burial, Odhiambo?” Mumbi asked O in English.

“That is why I am here,” O said, and he explained what had happened with his relatives. By the time he was done Mumbi was crying. Muddy leaned closer to her and took her hands. The father hadn’t said a word, but now he looked at O.

“You have killed my daughter … and now you cannot even bury her,” Ngatia said in such a tired voice that I felt waves of pity going through me.

“Yes,” O said. “Because of me she is dead—but she was dead to you a long time ago. See what your hatred has brought home?” He pointed at the radio. “It is people like you and my mother who taught these young men to hate. What kind of a father disowns his daughter?”

“You want to know what kind of a father? I’ll show you,” Ngatia said, standing up to get his walking stick.

“Enough!” Mumbi yelled at both of them. “We were wrong—I always thought there would be a time when we would welcome her back. One cannot stop being a mother or a daughter. We were angry, we did not expect her to die,” she added more quietly.

It made sense—we get angry at the ones we love and, as long as they are alive, there is some hope of reconciliation. One never factors in death.

“Now he wants us to bury her? When a woman marries, she marries into the man’s family. We cannot bury her!” Ngatia said to Mumbi.

“Hey, I know we need to talk. But we have to go,” Muddy reminded us. The five or so minutes we had spent talking—that was already too long.

Just as we were getting ready to leave, there was urgent knocking at the door. Someone shouted something before running off.

“They are coming for you,” Ngatia translated.

We rushed to the door and cautiously opened it. No one was there but we could make out flashlights tearing into the darkness. Muddy and O rushed to the Land Rover and came back with their AK-47s, with O holding three vests and Muddy two flashlights.

“By now, they will have some regional cops with them,” O said as he gave one of the vests to Muddy, and the other two to Mary’s parents.

There wasn’t much time to debate over our three choices—drive through the mob, stay and fight, or escape through the fields. There was no way we were driving without risking an ambush. To stay and fight wasn’t an option either, sending us into the open would be easy—all they had to do was set the wooden house on fire.

Making our way through the surrounding tea plantation made the most sense. There was one disadvantage—with Mary’s parents in tow and in the Limuru darkness, we would be slow.

Ngatia swigged the last of the Tusker with an impish grin.

“I might as well die happy,” he said.

Mumbi wanted to pack a few things, but with only minutes to spare, we could allow her to take only a family portrait, with a toothless baby Mary smiling out of the black-and-white photograph.

“It is just a house,” she said to herself as we made for the door. She reached over to turn off the kerosene lamp. Muddy stopped her—we needed them to think that, with the light on and the car outside, we were still in the house.

Muddy made sure the curtains were drawn shut. She turned up the radio. More reports about ethnic violence erupting—we did not need telling, we were in the thick of it.

“Listen, O, you take the rear, Ishmael, I want you to take the right flank—I will take point. Mother, stay behind me. Ngatia, take the right,” Muddy instructed, and looked at O. He reached into his holster and reluctantly gave Ngatia his old .45.

“I hope you learned to use this when you were killing your own people,” O said with derision. Ngatia took the gun and removed the safety.

“I did what I thought was right then—and tonight I will do what I think is right again. Yes, I fought with the British against the freedom fighters. Today, I will fight whoever stands between me and my family,” Ngatia said as he weighed the .45 in his right hand. “My regrets are mine, not yours.”

I understood—he was an Uncle Tom, one of those who had picked up a gun against his own people in their struggle against the British. I had been called an Uncle Tom for joining the police force but I wasn’t like Ngatia. I hadn’t been out there hunting
black freedom fighters. I could feel tension building in our soon-to-be-besieged group.

“Let’s go! I know we need to talk—but let’s do it on the move!” Muddy ordered.

She had taken charge. Muddy’s military training, from her time in the Rwandan Patriotic Front, had kicked in, and it was a good thing, because neither O nor I had any training, much less in guerrilla warfare. We stepped out into the darkness and made our way to the back of the house. Out in the distance we could hear single gun reports: more victims by the roadblock.

“That is the
gotora
. That is what we used. I can recognize it anywhere,” Ngatia said. “One shot at a time, if you are lucky.”

But just when we were thinking it might not be so bad, we heard the pronounced sound of an AK-47.

“They definitely have the local cops with them,” O said.

We were no longer just facing machetes—the gang now had the aid of well-armed police. We were no longer the outnumbered but better-armed group—we had nothing going for us except the darkness, our training, and just a little bit of time.

“Our priority is the AKs—take them out,” Muddy said, to the sound of more gunfire.

“Element of surprise? Have they given up on that?” I asked.

“It’s a mob. Shoot anything that moves that is not us, but our priority is the big guns,” Muddy replied.

“What if there are others, like us, trying to escape? Are they to be shot too?” Mumbi asked.