by Peter Ngila Download pdf ~ epub ~ mobi
When everybody is looking up and the sun’s lips are about to connect with the moon’s in a kiss, and when the clouds are all smiling, Buda slaps me hard on the cheeks. The piece of glass I’m holding slides onto the ground and shatters into uncountable pieces. I shake my head to clear the pain from my neck.
“You are not a scientist,” Buda says.
“I just wanted to witness the sky union,” I say.
“Leo,” Sisi barks from the kitchen. “Come quick or you won’t eat today.
I storm into the kitchen and find her blowing into the fire. Her cheeks form into cute side-dimples. Sisi is beautiful. Sometimes I wonder why she had to be my sister.
Temptations overpower me and my hands say it’s exciting to fondle her well-exposed buttocks as she blows into the fire. The sweet swaa swaa of roasting meat assaults my nose. It comes a few homesteads away from here, from the governor’s palace – I hear Tommy his dog is celebrating its sixth birthday – and it makes me salivate.
Sisi just gazes at me like her eyes have just become a swallowing mouth. I don’t really know why she hates me.
“Sisi, you are my sister,” I say, looking her straight in the eyes. “Even though I’m darker than you and Kim.” She shrugs and says nothing.
Sisi serves a steaming bowl of long cassavas. We all eat and after that, I boil some water and wash the dishes and place them in the drier, outside the kitchen.
~~
Before I take the cows down the fields to graze, Sisi comes in. She is somehow walking like those thin girls I saw on the huge TV in town the other day; legs crossed, buttocks going this way that way with each step. I cheer up considerably despite her bad mood.
“Sisi, let me wipe that for you,” I offer.
“Wipe what, fake brother?”
I’m not ready to ask why and how fake I am.
“Your purse, it’s coated with dust.”
She says that it’s my dick which needs cleaning, after bedding those dirty whores during the rugby championships at the stadium. That I should visit The Post, if not the police, before I kill the governor’s brilliant county with American diseases.
~~
The sun is hitting the world with heat ray missiles. My head feels like breaking, my The-Place-To-Be-Brown-Hat is no match for the heat. I wonder where the thousands of trees promised by the county went.
As I dig, I feel a sharp vibration on my thigh. I open the zip of my ‘outside’ black jeans, and from another dirty one, I fish out my small phone, to find Kim’s text message.
Brathe, Queens won’t defeat us this time. We are pitted against them in the finals. The governor says – win my cup win two million bob and a free tour to The Park
I read it thrice.
I type into my phone, hands trembling.
You can wrestle that strongman Injera; the huge gyms you guys practice with have made you very strong.
I press ‘send.’
Leo Bro, it seems the governor won’t stop at nothing to develop our county. I’ve seen a great link on Whatsapp and copy-pasted it on your FB; the governor says you are the boss.
I don’t reply. Time is racing pretty fast and I have to hit today’s target. When the mitumba sellers failed to comply with county regulations, the governor made good of his threats and sent giant tractors to do the job.
“Demolish your vibandas fast, before I spit on the ground and the saliva dries up; world-class hotels will be put up in the plot for investment,” the governor ordered.
~~
The smartly dressed operator half-closes his nose. I enter the black-and-white carpeted cyber café. I don’t care about the way other customers look at my tattered shirt and shorts and laugh. I just sit on a wooden chair between two brown-cheeks-made-up girls wearing ‘GoTV Entertaining Africa’ T-shirts. I open Facebook and smile to myself.
Our county should never have health-related problems; I’ve commissioned the construction of two hundred toilets, a link says.
I laugh more on realizing the governor appointed me as the contractor.
I won’t dig any more today, won’t sweat anymore. I’m the boss, county boss.
~~
Sisi, my sister who still thinks I’m a fake bro, is an expensive girl – great tights, a fast-thinking mind, brown face, manicured everything. Extra magnificent than the rainbow.
I see her.
Pink folder held between arms, phone fixed between the head and the shoulder, busy talking cheerfully while standing beside the Machakos University College gate. I approach her, her fingers are bound into a fist and I bump mine on it in greeting, awkwardly.
The likes of Kiss 100 FM and MTV BASE have spoiled Sisi. Is this why she says I’m not original?
I lower my sack containing a jembe and a panga and a slasher and spade. I smile a fake one and it is surprising that Sisi smiles back. Smiles at a not-original bro!
“I’m tired. Our good governor has opened Machakos Peoples’ Park where we can go kill our stress. You need a rest from work.”
I reluctantly agree.
The three-wheeled Tuk-Tuk wobbles dangerously on the wrong lane, missing oncoming Tuk-Tuks by a whisker. We huddle like lovers in the back seat. The driver is busy turning Kuber stuffed under his lower lip, busy nodding to a Ken Wa Maria tune lauding the governor for generously donating Tuk- Tuks to the whole town.
~~
Though I have dug toilets all around the county, I have never been here. Machakos Peoples’ Park is like a big city.
“I love all these countless headlights,” I say, pointing at the park’s hedge.
Sisi is quiet, her face assuming a secretive air.
MPP is surrounded by huge walls with many gates, each manned by KDF soldiers, guns at the ready, unsmiling and willing to kill any terrorist. Huge dogs sniff around for bad blood.
“Life is good, bro,” a voice behind me says.
I turn like an oiled bolt and my busy lips disengage from Sisi’s, a thing we have been doing for a minute. My fist is more than willing to remind somebody I hate being disrupted.
“Niajeni, bro na sis,” Kim greets and comes in front of us.
He is excited and we are surprised to see him. Sisi starts behaving like I have just become a real bro. She disengages completely from my arms.
“Governor Kesho has thrown today’s party for us. We won the championships. He has also awarded hot girls to us.” Kim is obviously happy.
He is wearing a Kenya Airways T-shirt assuring you of safe air travel all over the world, with a huge egg-shaped ball drawn on it. He immediately introduces a plump lady he is with as Achu. Sisi suddenly becomes my fake sister once more when she catches me gazing intently at Achu. Her bum is carrying really good stuff behind there; rich history.
FRIIII SMOKIN ZON24/7 (VVFSZ 24/7) shouts into your face, into your eyes. All over The Park’s erect structures; on those walls and on the trees, on those huge stones, the words appear like red dots, brought to life by neon lights. The Park’s walls are lined with sexing pictures; naked women and men making love, women and women making love, men and men making love, men making love to goats, dogs climbing on dogs.
The smell of shisha hungs in the air. The many shisha heads are being filled up once they die down, live charcoal pieces reloaded, and for the first time ever, I find myself in a real fight; fighting over the many hoses with other drunkards.
The music is now playing slow-slow. Sisi and I are in a boat, rowing-rowing leisurely along The Park’s small stream.
“Surayakomzuri mama… Mzuri mama…” This is Sauti Sol.
The governor hired the four-man band to perform today. As it assures women of their sexy faces, Kim and his lover are busy kissing, touching, zips opened, doing ka-standih. Most of the guys here are also thrusting hard into people’s daughters. Development momentarily swallowed, parents will later tear at each other.
“Why haven’t you taught your he-goat of a son about condoms?” Parent A will say.
Parent B will say: “My friend, my son carries his own legs. Ask him.”
“Ask the dick, Buda Kanono,” the son will say. “You hump your wife daily, you hump other people’s wives harder than I did your daughter. You were not born through spiritual intervention, old bro.”
The peace-loving chief will intervene; will say that disputes are ignited by enemies to disrupt peace. The governor will promise to take care of the girl and the boy and the families involved; the county won’t stomach exposure to foes.
~~
Just before you reach the Teachers College near the river, Buda finds his daughter sitting in a married way with a young man. Leo Ngilin, his other son. The son from Loliondo. Me.
“What are you doing with my daughter?”
His face contorts as if ready to dispense a slap or punch.
“I was trying to teach Leo how to use a smart phone,” Sisi explains, licking at her lips.
She is wise my girl, her voice trembling. That easily and you have caught a thief!
Unsettling my unwilling finger from her waist, Sisi fishes a Nokia Lumia from her tight blue jeans. She tells her father the governor will never know.
He tells Sisi that were it not for the governor, she wouldn’t be chasing the world up and down the phone’s screen so quickly; we knew when Kesho escorted the President to the court overseas.
~~
Sisi is not my biological sister. Nice. I found a VCD hidden among Buda Kim’s drawer and on it was written ‘The Revelation’. How it got into Buda’s house I don’t know. It explained my relationship with Sisi, why she would call me ‘fake brother’ initially, why my father hated me. Buda no longer forbids our relationship with Sisi. He seems to know I know the truth.
“Kim, what’s up?” I ask.
I greet him as he is preparing to get on his ‘gear’ bike. A small ‘Western Union’ bag is strapped to the carrier, a bigger ‘WelkamKenia’ bag is on his back. He says that he is rushing to the stadium to see the governor; Kesho is bringing them a new uniform.
“The president is coming to visit and give to us a tanker to support our activities,” Kim says. ‘Tanker’ excites me and I want to know more.
“So, what kind of tanker do you guys want?”
He says a milk tanker will do; youths can easily burn themselves with petro. I must have been saved from a milk tanker on the day I was supposed to die. Milk doesn’t kill.
Is it that people love death more that life? A petroleum tanker gets an accident and people rush for ‘gold’; then a fool somewhere lights up a cigarette and many die, many get hospitalized, a few others rich. I wonder.
I merely catch a glimpse of Kim when I recover from my reverie. He is fast disappearing, his black partially-buttoned shirt flapping away in the wind like a kite, a slightly bruised lower back exposed.
~~
I’m the boss. The long-sleeved shirt I had put on yesterday has been taken to the dry cleaner, and today I’m sporting a new white Harambee Stars jersey. My black and white ‘Let’s Do It’ cap is keeping off the sun’s rays.
Supervising part of the project around the poshomill, a neighbour’s greedy goat is speeding to the shamba. I pick a stone and throw it at the goat, and there is a gong and I think I have hit its horns. The governor immediately drives into the scene, and I’m rather taken aback.
“Leo, the stone you’ve just thrown hit my gate. It has reminded me how vital you are to this county,” he says.
When he greets me, his hand is surprisingly big and soft. Then Sisi alights from the governor’s Benz, looking cuter than beauty itself. That ground-sweeping floral dress with small beautiful Kenyan-American flags, her long man-made hair, her red lips, leave me breathless.
“Leo how are you today?” she says.
“I’m fine, darling,” I smile.
I hold out my arms to hug her, but the governor’s shoe digs into my bum, and I yelp.
“Young man, I’ve given you enough authority in this county, mentioned your name in every big meeting I attend, said you are a great leader; and you are flirting with my girlfriend?”
His guards spring into action, ready to knock me down.
Sisi, my girl. The governor’s woman?
“Eeh, I’m sorry, Sir Governor. She is…I mean we are bro and s….,” I stammer and close my legs together to prevent liquid soaking through my trousers.
Before I can say ‘sister,’ the governor is upon me, holding me by the scruff of the neck such that I’m barely standing on toes.
“Sisi is my sixth wife. She is already pregnant,” he barks, foam comes out of his mouth as though he is about to die.
He massages Sisi’s belly and I feel like kicking him back. I won’t vote for him in the next elections. They leave abruptly.
I feel bad Sisi has been having an affair with the old governor, my biological father. Could she not have just taken his money? She should have told me. But maybe she knew I would have been furious. If Sisi is really pregnant, I’m not sure whether the child is mine. My father and I could not have been sharing one woman.
No!
I hold my hands over my face. I’m not sure I really want to cry.
~~
Download pdf ~ epub ~ mobi
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Peter Ngila is a Kenyan writer, book-addicted insomniac and literature faithful. A typical Kinai; Kinai is a mad little-known Machakos County resident who reads always come rain or sun-while walking, while relaxing. Peter believes that stories must be treasured and promoted for they make the world. He has been mentored in the Writivism Creative Writing Program, and attended Writivism workshops in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. His fiction has appeared on Muwado, Amka Space Forum (the blog) and Daily News, a Tanzanian paper. Others works have featured in The Daily Nation and The Star; Kenyan newspapers. Ngila is currently working with The Star as a journalist. He can’t reveal he is revisiting and compiling few of his short stories for submission to publishers. He aspires to write more frequently as he grows up.
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Also in This Issue
Short Stories
Poetry