#SmallFatesKE

He sat there, staring at her, unable to speak or be spoken to. For five years he had reminded her of her past. He may have been the fruit of her loins, but he was also the bane of her existence; a blot on her otherwise perfect landscape.

Alice Mugwe stared at her son Peter, and screamed her frustrations at him. Born both deaf and dumb, he was the perfect receptacle for her pain. He deserved it, you see. He was the cause of it all.

A year earlier, she had fallen in love again, with a wonderful man. They wed almost immediately. They shared everything, except for one thing: her son. She could never tell him about her son. She did not expect him to understand, or love the boy. Even she could not bring herself to love him. She kept it to herself. Everyone was entitled to their secrets, after all.

A week earlier, she had been cooking, just as she always did at 7.30 pm, when her husband came home. Something was not right. He looked flustered, and was muttering to himself. He looked at her, then it happened.

“Have I not loved you enough? Have I not trusted you with my life? Why would you lie to me Alice? Why would you hide your son from me?” She had to think fast. “What son?” she asked. “We only have one daughter, Njambi. Are you feeling alright?”

“Get out of my house! Enough with your lies. What kind of woman are you? What kind of mother are you?” He was serious; he had never hurled objects at her before. She ran out and took a matatu to her mother’s house.

She stared at the pest. He had a way of ruining everything with his existence. Was it not enough that she sent money to her mother every month for his care? Did he have to ruin her marriage?

The next day, she told her mother they were going to Naivasha. A short getaway, she said. She picked her bag and walked out of the homestead. The bus stop was 500 metres away, straight ahead. They took the first left, however, and went to the old, abandoned village latrine.

Alice took the boy in her arms. She looked into his eyes and smiled gently; it was time. She kicked in the door, and threw him inside the hole. It was perfect. Other than the thud when he landed, he made no sound.

First Published on Brenda Wambui

Everyone saw it, the dark blue Toyota Vitz with the bloody back seat. Everyone also noticed how the two men handled the old man; like used diapers, pinky fingers sticking out, noses facing away trying to smell something on their backs. The rumor started immediately the tiny car pulled off the emergency parking, and soon after, everyone knew the story of the man who bled from everywhere.

The collective gasp of the doctors almost sucked all the air out of Mombasa when one of them suggested that the 61 year old man might be ailing from Ebola. The man, who’s bleeding they could not stop, was placed in a shoddy quarantine and handled with two pairs of gloves and two masks, for extra care. Later, when the tests came back, Peter Simiyu, the Coast Director of Medical Services, wiped his brow and breathed a sigh of relief, “We can now celebrate,” he told a nurse as the old man was moved, unconscious, to the general ward, “at least his severe bleeding will not kill us as well.”

First Published on Mengesha’s Colours

The men from the bank were coming today. Dressed in her Sunday best kitenge, Wilkyester put milk for tea on the stove to boil. She would wake Wanyonyi, her husband, after an hour; a man needed his rest after a long night of business transactions at the local. She bustled around the kitchen; frying mandasi in the new Ramtons gas cooker that Wanyonyi had bought for her after they had signed those bank papers.

The door resounded with the sound of heavy, forceful knocking; and then flung open and crashed against the wall. Seven men stood at the threshold; radiating barely contained impatience that made Wilkyester tighten her grip on her khanga apron. “Hii ni nyumba ya Wanyonyi?” the tall, dark one asked. They were all dark and tall; but this one seemed to wear his darkness and tallness differently; irritatingly.

“Mnataka nini?”

In the space of breath it took for this exchange, five men wearing Equity Bank-branded caps had shoved past her, found the kitchen and started packing up her appliances. Wilkyester started screaming hysterically for them to stop man-handling her toaster and blender and get out.

But still they moved; setting down her tea on the sink and disconnecting her new Phillipsradio. The strains of “Kanungo e tek o” were silenced. Wilkyester did not do well with overt powerlessness. This was too much. She picked up the sufuria of boiling tea and slowly, purposefully; emptied its contents all over the smug face of the tall, dark one.

First Published on Etchings on the Mirror

The crowd outside the chief’s office is restless. It has happened again. Sinewy arms hold hoes and machetes aloft; khanga-swathed, baby-carrying women bounce up and down in motions of protest and cooing.

The occasional baa heard from the surrounding fields reinforces the fervour in which they cry for action. It has happened again—and this time the chief seems angry too. “Tayari wamemeza mbuzi na kondoo tano,” he says.

Forked tongued, cold-blooded and short on cash to purchase mutton and chevon, two pythons have taken to raiding homesteads in a forested Narok village. Now children are escorted to and from school and animal pens are bolted tighter. Yet the wily pair continues to slither in and out of the peasants’ compounds, taking their ill-gotten prizes week after week.

The crowd outside the chief’s office can’t take it anymore. An agitated chief quickly passes the baton to the KWS officer on site. They turn to him with expectation. “Tumepokea malalamishi yenu. Tutawaondoa,” he reassures the angry crowd as he exits the heated scene.

Shoulders droop and heads shake at the impotent words of a broken record. The villagers hasten to return home because no help will be coming tonight, yet again; only a pair of brown eyes and a deadly hiss.

First Published on Wanjeri.

Sunday 1st September, 2013. Rongai-bound matatu.

Kid eating crisps on his dad’s lap turns to me: “Should we thank God for all the good things?”
Me: “Yes.”
Kid: “I got this suit on Friday. I like it. I thanked God for it. I wore it yesterday and today.”
Me: “It’s a good suit. You look really nice in it.”
Kid: “Thank you!”
Me: “Why did you wear it for two days?”
Kid: “Daddy and me were burying Mommy yesterday.”

I had no response to that.
He turned his attention back to his crisps.

First Published on This Observer