Tag: Kenya

Born lucky: Tales of a high-class hooker

I met Lynn (not her real name) a few months ago at a club in town, and we’ve been friends since then. We see each other around, mostly by chance, and our friendship has strengthened. Born to a rich family at the coast, Lynn was educated at a private, “international” school in Mombasa and counted more white friends among her classmates than black Kenyan ones – you can tell by the absence of a Kenyan accent.

She’s bright, no doubt about it, and beautiful, with wild two-inch tufts of bleached blond hair, huge doe eyes, caramel skin and strong, bright white teeth. She could probably make a good living in front of the cameras in Cape Town but when she arrived in Nairobi she couldn’t find a job, so she became what she describes as a ‘chick hustler’ instead. She is only 20 years old and quite good at her job.

I sent her a SMS last week saying I wanted to write a piece about her.

“Sawa” (Okay), she replied, and we arranged to meet the next day.

“What do you want to write about me?” Lynn asks when we sit down, leaning on the table and squinting at me with mock seriousness.

“A true story,” I reply. She’d heard it before. My SMS had mentioned it.

“Why? There’s nothing exceptional about me.”

“Well, you’re hardly ordinary,” I say.

Lynn shrugs and leans over to rest her arm on my leg, her new white Alcatel smartphone in her hand, batting her eyelids and gazing into my eyes as if she had just found Prince Charming.

“Hold on, I’m going to the bank,” she announces suddenly.

She is slim in a Kate Moss sort of way, skinny legs and all. She’s wearing a tight white sleeveless T-shirt, grey tights, and a pair of flat sandals with beads on the top – the kind you get at the various Maasai markets here. She’s got a small grey sling bag and a long striped scarf wrapped around her neck in five shades of grey. It looks like it’s woven from raw silk.

“The system was down when I got here,” she explains as she gets up. “I just need to draw some cash.”

She leaves me at the table, promising she’ll come back. I know Lynn well enough by now to be sceptical, but I wait anyway. Ten minutes later, she’s back. Heads turn to follow her entrance.

“Escort me downtown,” she immediately commands.

“Okay. Where are we going?” I ask, realising that my story is about to slip away.

“Just downtown! I’ve only got a little money. I can’t afford a taxi so I want to get a matatu (minibus taxi) to The Mayfair. It’ll be good there now.”

We leave immediately and take turns to avoid injury in the 5pm traffic rush. As we find a little solace behind the Jamia mosque, she puts her arm around my shoulder as we walk and takes the hand of my far arm, swinging it in front of us. Childlike. We can’t fail to draw attention; the ever-present parking attendants and the Muslims heading for prayer watch this young Kenyan model walking with this older white guy. But there’s a familiarity between us that prompts smiles, not frowns.

We reach the terminus for matatus going to upmarket Westlands but she doesn’t stop there. We walk past the terminus and on to the real downtown part of Nairobi. We continue up the road and deep into the danger zone that lies beyond River Road. Just at the end, she slips into an alley adjacent to a minuscule shop that stocks groceries and motor vehicle spares. I follow. Through the alley, we enter the courtyard of a typically dilapidated Nairobi tenement block. The two-storey block is a courtyard of chipped blue enamel, grimy wire mesh burglar proofing and fresh washing hanging everywhere on makeshift lines.

Lynn heads straight for the back of the courtyard, to a small window in the far left corner. There’s a woman sitting at the base of the staircase in the opposite corner with a baby on her lap. She calls “Fatma!” and there’s a grunt from the floor above.

While Lynn stands at the window, she is joined by an anxious-looking Sikh youth with a black turban on his head, and a guy wearing uniformly dirt-brown clothes. The three of them wait, mute and agitated.

It takes five minutes before Fatma appears, stumbling down the stairs. She’s a mess, her forehead and hairline wet from sweat and it looks like she just had a shot of heroin. She looks Somali. She unlocks the steel gate next to the window, enters, locks it again, and then appears at the window within seconds. She serves the Sikh youth and then has to count the coins proffered by the dirt-brown-clothed guy before he too is served. Only then does Lynn get the little packet that she came for.

Lynn rushes out across the courtyard, through the alley, out, and down the road. Her stride is hard to keep up with but I manage. As we cross the street to the terminus, Lynn, in her rush, nearly gets hit by a bus and shouts at the driver, “Haraka niaje!?” In Sheng – Nairobi Swahili slang – that’s like, “What’s up with the rush, dude?”

“Fuuuuuck, where’s he gonna go?” Lynn asks in redundant reference to the wedged-in traffic that the bus nearly smashed into.

As we reach the terminus, she quickly finds a matatu and gets in.

“We’ll talk some other time,” she says through the window. I shrug and leave, understanding the occasional urgency of someone with a heroin habit.

Twenty minutes later, I get a text message from Lynn.

“Relief! And it’s looking very promising here. A table of 12 white guys at the pool gawking at me each time I walk past. Lol. But I only want one. Wish me luck.”

I SMS back to wish her luck.

After another ten minutes, she replies: “How can I be here and we not allowed to approach men. Unless he comes for you or you are sitting next to him. That’s when you can talk to him but not by getting up and walking to him. Imagine! If it was allowed I’d be a very rich woman tonight!”

It’s obvious that management at The Mayfair has laid down the rules about the behaviour required of ‘Nairobi girls’ when male guests are at the pool area.

At midnight, while writing this, I send her a text message.

“You were lucky tonight?”

Minutes later:

“I got this shit idiot who just wanted to pay me $20. I directed him to K-street. I literally showed him on Google Maps.”

K-street, or Koinange Street, is notorious for Nairobi street hookers.

“Fucking cheap ass is staying in a 300 fucking dollar room!” the message continues.

At 1am, this story nearly done, I send an SMS back:

“Lynn, you’re simply the best! Get lucky!”

But the message isn’t delivered until this morning, after I wake. At 8.25am I get a simple reply, an appropriate conclusion to the tale:

“I was born lucky. I got a guy for $100! ;-)”.

Brian Rath was born and raised in Cape Town. He now lives and writes in Kenya, and has a novel due to be published shortly.

12 years ago

Our World is Round

Our World is Round is a short film by Kenyan filmmaker and artist Mũchiri Njenga about the country’s star cyclist, David Kinjah. It chronicles how Kinja discovered the sport and turned it into a professional career. Kinjah’s efforts to transform the lives of the people in his village through the power of the bike is inspirational, and has resulted in an initiative called the Safari Simbaz Trust. The organisation gives underprivileged youth in Kenya the opportunity to develop their athletic prowess.

12 years ago

Voting for a better Kenya

At 7am on Monday morning, 45-year-old Maurice Otunga wheeled his wife, Nelly, into the Moi Avenue Primary School polling station in the heart of Nairobi.

Nelly sat patiently in her wheelchair. There was a huge smile on her face. She was eager to cast her vote in Kenya’s first general election since the promulgation of a new Constitution in 2010.

Nelly embodies the hopes of a country at a crossroads – a peaceful election in Kenya opens up new and enticing possibilities, but a chaotic poll could unleash immense suffering. Having voted in the 2007 general elections and witnessed the bloodshed that followed the disputed results, she is well aware of this. Some 1300 Kenyans died in the post-poll fighting, and hundreds of thousands were uprooted from their homes.

Nelly doesn’t want a repeat of that devastation. She’s more concerned about a peaceful election than about which candidate wins.

“I want peace even if my candidate of choice loses,” she tells me after casting her vote.

She hopes that Kenyans will remember that the country is bigger than any of the eight candidates who have presented themselves for the top job in the country. The heavy presence of police officers at the polling stations gives her hope that any incidences will be dealt with.

Maasai tribes-people leave after voting in Ilngarooj, Kajiado South County, Maasailand. (AFP)

Nelly makes a living from hawking. She wakes up at 6am to prepare her kids for school and then she heads to city centre to sell her wares. On a good business day, she makes KES2000 (approximately R200).

This morning she opted to come to the city from her home in Banana Hill, just 20km north of Nairobi, not to hawk but to make a date with destiny.

Unlike the scores of voters already waiting their turn at the polling station, Nelly was able to jump the queue because of an arrangement put in place by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission for people with disability.

“I am voting for the sake of my three children so that they don’t end up being a hawker like me. They [must] get an education. I am doing this for their future,” says Nelly. “I have never had hope like today because the new Constitution recognises people with disability and guarantees our rights. For the first time we will have representatives in Parliament. I hope our leaders will implement this Constitution fully.”

Polling stations across the country opened at 6am. Queues stretched for kilometres and it’s likely that voting could go on past 5pm, which is when the polling stations are scheduled to close. Since the government declared Monday a public holiday for voting, the usually bustling city of Nairobi was a ghost town. Streets were deserted and supermarkets, chemists, coffee houses and restaurants remained closed.

A voter puts a ballot paper into the senatorial box at a polling station in the country’s western province in Kakamega. (AFP)

With a few hours to go, many polling stations are still teeming with people. A voter takes up to seven minutes each to cast his/her vote. Each person is issued with six ballot papers – they are expected to vote for a president, governor, senator, MP, women’s representative MP, and a county representative.

When it comes to the presidential seat, the battle is between two of the eight contenders. Uhuru Kenyatta, the son of Kenya’s founding father Jomo Kenyatta, is slugging it out with Prime Minister Raila Odinga. Uhuru and his running mate William Ruto are among four Kenyans facing charges of crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court. They were reported to The Hague after a commission led by appeal court judge Philip Waki named them as those who bear the greatest responsibility for the post-election violence in 2007 that Kenyans are still recovering from.

Back in her home in Banana Hill, Nelly is hoping that this election will result in a better country instead of more violence.

Jillo Kadida is a Kenyan journalist based in Nairobi.

12 years ago

The day we buried my father

Red dipladenia: a shrubby climber with glossy leaves and red funnel-shaped flowers. A lively, you-bring-the-sun-out plant.

Last summer, I purchased such a plant for a friend’s garden. Immediately after paying for the plant at the florist’s, a female customer behind me said: “I bought the same a couple of weeks ago to place on my mother’s tomb.” I almost keeled over. Was I committing a faux pas? Not at all. Dipladenias are hardy, low-maintenance plants. All they need is moist soil, good drainage, and bright light. They are good for graveyards and friends’ gardens.

My father is buried at Langata Cemetery on the outskirts of Nairobi. It never occurred to us to check the weather forecast for Langata Cemetery on the day of the burial. It poured and poured after we had tossed the requisite clods of soil on the casket, after the grave diggers had covered the grave and each member of the family had placed a solitary rose on the mound of earth. It would not have made any difference if the weatherman had predicted a squall with a sustained wind speed of 70km/hr. We would still have done what was required of us: lay to rest our beloved pater.

Langata Cemetery is not a place to go to for an afternoon stroll. It would never cross a sane Kenyan’s mind to do so, even if there was no horrendous Nairobi traffic to contend with, even if one did not have to work one’s way through the huge cemetery, past a few well-kept graves, past a plethora of unkempt graves, past cemented graves, grassy graves, weedy graves, fenced-in graves, graves with wobbly wooden crosses.

The day we buried my father, I forgot my grief for a while and smiled when I saw soft drinks and bottled water vendors. Mourners also get thirsty after standing for a long time under the unrelenting equatorial sun as the priest invokes heaven’s mercies and sometimes drones on and on. Mourners also appreciate a bit of shade, so there were white marquees for rent. Lest we forget, dying is a thriving business – for the living.

General assumption has it that only those without a home (aka land) upcountry are buried in the city, specifically in Langata. Further assumption has it that those buried in Langata are rootless. Their origins are lacking. They were born in Nairobi, more’s the pity.

When my father, before passing on, asked to be buried in Langata, a small tremor ran through the extended family. “But why, oh why?” people murmured. But, whispers ran, he had land (aka roots and origins) upcountry where he was born, raised, and educated. Why was he breaking away with tradition? The explanation given was that it would be easier for his immediate family to visit the grave in Nairobi than upcountry. Secondly, it is impossible to sell land with family graves on it, one does not even dare to think about it.

Now, I am a city brat. I grew up and was educated in Nairobi. Upcountry, our drinking, washing, and bathing water came from a domestic rainwater reservoir. Paraffin and Tilley lamps and candles lit up our evenings. City Brat going upcountry was an epic event. She would be the one groping the walls instinctively at dusk, searching for the light switch. She would be one who would want to iron out a top but couldn’t. She would be the one longing for a hot shower instead of bathing from a plastic basin of warm water. And she would peer into her glass of drinking water trying to see if there was any unclear and present danger in it. She never got used to cooking with a jiko, a charcoal stove with zilch knobs to adjust the heat, or a paraffin stove (oh, the headache-inducing odour!).

City Brat had attended her fair share of upcountry weddings and funerals during the rainy season. There were only five words to describe her impressions of the events: mud, mud, lots of mud. Red mud under your shoes, red mud on your shoes. Red mud on the hem of your skirt, red mud on your trousers. Red mud in the car, lots of red mud under the wheels of the car. Loose red mud, squishy red mud, sticky red mud.

City Brat was eternally grateful to her father for his request to be buried in Langata.

Never once in my childhood and growing-up years did the family ever go to visit and tend to my grandparents’ and various relatives’ graves. I have no idea what happened to my maternal grandmother’s homestead, where she was laid to rest, but I do know that her legacy to my mother was a bunch of bananas from hwell-kept, weedless garden.

Graves are places my family never goes back to.

My father was wrong in his assumption that we would faithfully visit his final earthly abode: no one has made the effort to beat the traffic on the road — also called Langata – that leads to the cemetery. It does not behoove us to grab a matatu – Nairobi’s garish, raucous, travel-at-your-risk-but-what-a-ride! public transport minibuses – and we certainly do not walk with guilt stamped all over our faces since visiting family graves is neither an inherited trait nor a passed-down practice.

But surely my father, a sage, must have known that we would fall terribly short when it came to grave-visiting-and-tending matters. I can only conjecture that deep down in his soul, he, too, was a city brat and would say that a dipladenia clambering up a garden trellis is a beautiful sight to behold.

Jean Thévenet, a work-at-home mum, was born and raised in Kenya. She now lives in France and blogs at http://hearthmother.blogspot.com.

12 years ago

Blessed with the running gene

They call them the sub-seventies: those few people on earth that can run a half marathon (21 kms) in less than 70 minutes. Japhet Kiplagat is a sub-seventy and a friend of mine.

His last half-marathon time on the international circuit was 62 minutes 11 seconds, his personal best, and it took him to the winner’s podium in last year’s Spark Marathon in the Netherlands.

In the recent Nairobi Marathon, Japhet took eleventh place, running among some of the best in the world. In the 1500m trials for the London Olympics, Japhet came fourth, but failed to achieve a qualifying time. “It’s okay,” he says. “I’m a marathon runner!”

Japhet is 29 years old, so the time to make his name on the international scene is running out. He laments the fact that Kenya’s government supports only the very best and he knows he could be among them if he didn’t have to hustle a living every day from friends and willing supporters. It detracts from his ability to take running as a serious career.

Japhet lives in a modest house, on a very modest budget, at the top of the Ngong Hills outside Nairobi. Here, the altitude ensures that the air is thin and lungs have to strain beyond what they would at sea level in London, Boston and New York marathons. Japhet is among the “elites” for the Vancouver Marathon in May 2013 and has set his sights on gold. To achieve it, he aims to become a sub-sixty.

Japhet’s rigorous training schedule begins at 6am every morning. (Brian Rath)

Japhet’s next-door neighbour is a marathon runner and so is Maureen, who lives in the house behind his. Maureen is running in Paris in the spring. Their training regimen has them up at 6am and back in the house by 8am, following a rigorous schedule of stretching, running, stretching and running. If they can make the time, they do it again in the evening.

They are all from Kenya’s Kalenjin community, reputed to have the ‘running gene’ that is shared by the best of Kenya’s long distance runners. The Kalenjin are notable for their very dark complexions, slim build and long limbs. Japhet is 6 feet 2 inches tall and his legs seem to make up two-thirds of his body, ending in an ever-present pair of Nike trainers.

Ngong is their training ground, but ‘home’ to Japhet is a small village at the top of Morop Hill, one of the highest points at the edge of the Rift Valley. I was invited to join Japhet and a few of his friends for Christmas. On our way up to the heights, Japhet excused himself from our entourage at Nakuru, still in the southern part of the great Rift. Japhet stayed overnight in Nakuru while we soldiered on up the heights.

He had arranged an appointment with Curtis Pittman, an American marathon trainer who has been funded to train Kenyan runners. They met, and Japhet came beaming up the hills for Christmas, bearing news that Curtis agreed to take him on for 2013.

That Japhet is aiming for greatness is obvious, and, despite the distance, there’s a very good chance he’ll get there. Running is Japhet’s life, and Japhet can run.

Brian Rath was born and raised in Cape Town. He now lives and writes in Kenya, and has a novel due to be published shortly.