Kichorochoro
By Okang’a Ooko
Dedicated to the community development work of the Undugu Society
of Kenya
© Okang’a Ooko, 2004. All Rights Reserved
IN NORTH
QUARTER, Kochland, the lowly dwelling places for the ignoble
primeval Nairobians, the world opened out as the sun rose. Rose
like another hungry yawn, long drawn out. The great sky opened
and blinked hard at the biting cold, bustle stirred; slowly
progressed. Smoke rose out uncertainly as if from a grave yard
and reached out for the sad sky.
Rise up this morning. Such a satire of praise. In song
too. Protest. It was Bob Marley, wasn’t he? And he was
a firebrand slum terror-child too, wasn’t too, wasn’t
he? And see how true and pure his poetry was: rise up this
morning, smile with the rising sun, three little birds, beside
my doorstep . . .
One may
disbelieve the poet’s song right away here. There are
no birds in Kochland, neither trees. If you know what truth
means. You don’t see green in Kochland you see brown,
decay, earth. Bitter disintegration. You see high dramatic scenes
of misery at its barest, you see human ugliness. You see despair
ridden long relentless struggles with no quick solutions. You
see hopeless, wearing frustrations of hell in hell. Theft, illness,
murder, illicit drink, deliberate poisoning, social disorder
- that is Kochland. Here are the battered babies, twelve-years
old prostitutes, seven-year-old runaways, four-year-old AIDS
orphans, troubled teens – they all wake up to another
grime morning in these lowly dwellings, they’ve all found
themselves here, so oddly mismatched like used objects discarded
in a rubbish pit. They are children of the wild and unlike their
fellow elderly Kochlanders they cannot see why conditions are
like this; they cannot see they outlines of the system and its
detailed machinations.
The sun climbed. Njenga and his affiliate got up late as all
children of the wild and damned situations do and attempted
to breakfast inside the high and imposing city council rubbish
bin, gang-banged by all manner of litter, garbage and filth,
long ago set for disposal. They were repulsed, not kindly.
‘Another
day, another life’, Njenga swore, a scowl matching the
charcoal-black, dirt smeared and greasy – sweat stained
hard face. The greasy shoulder length greasy locks of hair and
the shining greased jacket that had once been 100% cotton country
outfit explained to any untamed social worker that the feeling,
coupled with the appearance, was mutual. That was enough. The
only non-black thing in this child, and also perhaps closest
to life, were his red eyes. Eight years only, those bolt-hard
eyes had lived.
‘Wish I was never born,’ his murmured his affiliate.
He yawned, his broad lips curling, exposing seven-year-old dirty
fangs. Sarcasm as bitter as quinine spewed forth.
‘Diambo,’ cursed Njenga. His claws dug intuo his
jacket for the glue can.
Suddenly a huge shadow blocked out the sun. The four red eyes
bumped the smartly attired female high vertabrate at the mouth
of the city council bin, always in the same place. And each
time they awoke to eat breakfast - stale bread, decayed oranges,
rotten fish, food stuff – wasn’t it some fresh illusion
of arrival that found her there in a never-ending vain attempt
to ‘rehabilitate’ them. Which was ask never –ending
questions and bribe them with gift clothes and provide them
with packets of biscuits (the latter which was soon turned over
to Musa, the kiosk owner, for cigarettes no sooner her figure
disappeared from the void that was their world) and persuade
them to go to school and get some free education And more unfanny
and boring and irrelevant and clearly non-priority and displaced
dialogue from the high society and the shoeshine.
.
‘You don’t look like any social worker to me,’
Jenga drawled in in Sheng, the distasteful lingua franca of
the youth from Nairobi’s Eastlands. ‘Yah. You are
just another one of the lazy do-gooders with money to spend.’
Her façade
of professionalism crumbled. Her tempers sparked, ‘I didn’t
come here to talk to you, Jenga. If you ever call me that again,
I’ll . . . I’ll . . .’ she stopped. Suddenly
she became self-conscious. She knew how exposed and vulnerable
she was in the eyes of these sleazeballs. They were so far gone
in the art of stratagem and orchestration. They were plain contaminated
and impure. Nothing moved them. In the self-pity that came to
her now she seemed incapable of being sure of any thing expect
her own depression.
At that moment she was drawn to some previous fifteen months
when she had tamed a most vicious, most dare-the-devil urchin
at the Korogocho Rescue Centre. To her best conviction Kichorochoro
had been more, more crude than all seven Jengas put together.
On meeting Kichorochoro for the first time that hot January
afternoon, the boy had epitomised all that she hated’
frayed baggy-wash canvas trousers a fancy t-shirt and high-tops.
The look on his face was even more worrying.
‘I’m Kam. Kichorochoro, if you like. Father Bernard
sent me over,’ he had the broadest lips she had ever seen,
and when he spoke, they curled up and moved in some bad way.
He handed her some papers. His hands were not kind –looking
either, his nails were torn and dirty.
She tried her best to hide her agitation. ‘Look’
she explained, trying to put on a smile, ‘You’ll
have to wait while I check these documents of yours then I’ll
discuss your case with my . . .’
He switched to Sheng, and rapped; ‘Unichimbe? Unanishow
nini? Cheki, utagutu hamna chali innocent ka’mimi. Story
ni ile paro zangu wote washa de? Washadedi, unaget. Time hizi
nina ubao, iko food? Nitaingia hapa na nidish. Uta do?”
She knew she had no choice. The premises was certified as the
Korogocho Rescue Centre for destitute children, open to any
child who was abuse, abandoned, or in need of temporary care,
she couldn’t figure out where he would fit in, but he
had stated his case very too straight-forwardly he had come
in from the hot sun and he was an orphan and he was hungry.
She stood aside and waved him in. A starved mongrel would have
been more welcome.
Kichorochoro was given a mixed reception by all the other boys
and girls in residence at the centre. Teenage boys always recognise
a threat to their turf but gruff Tito and quiet Wekesa who were
the oldest boys here, and who served as the prefects’
shrugged off Kichorochoro. “Kama ame come eti ana
ubao. Eti anajiskia kudish alonjike, aende lonkoo, avae mitumba
kisha aingie keja atune. Lakini a drop hizo steam zake za uduu
otherwise ataji invite ia horror,’ they warned.
But before
long Kamaate, who evidently possessed a talent for drawing people
into his circle and charming them with the most fabricated yarn
delivered artfully in the most funny and original Sheng, was
visibly being treated by Tito and Wekesa, together with all
the other boys, as if he were long-lost kinfolk.
That hurt
Tito and Wekesa had been her weapons!
The waiting
for Christ’s second coming couldn’t have been as
long as the next six hours. Kichorochoro was insufferable bawling,
howling with laughter, challenging everything she said. His
peer audience was quiet, but their thoughts were thunderous.
When Tito ordered him to bath for dinner, he rebelled, ‘But
why, I’m going to eat my own food with my own street clamed
hands from the plates and shovel them all into my own acid-packed
insides too. Now, can you tie this for me: its my own food and
its my own juice –starved stomach, come on.’
Afterwards it was the boys night to do the dishes. ‘OK.
Kichorochoro,’ she said, “the newest boy does the
washing. That’s you. It’s part of training and its
cost-sharing, now get going, will you?”
He fed her with his mirthless grin. ‘I like that. But
I m not going to wash any dishes tonight," he replied scornfully,
stopping her momentary, he continued, “Beside I don’t
work here, I live here,”
He siddled away without any heat and rejoined the boys.
She got some boys to do the dishes. While the kitchen was being
cleaned out she went in search of Kichorochoro, and found him
amongst the boys yapping away and howling with laughter. She
took him to one side, and tried again, “I’m a social
worker, so I m your mother, this centre is home for you. I want
you to respect and obey me because you’re my child.’
He balked, “First let me tell you this, that mother and
what story will make me sad, my mother died, OK? Affecting a
high Eastlands fasetto, he chanted, “Kichorochoro do this,
Kichorochoro don’t do that, Kichorochoro you’re
a bad, bad boy, Kichorochoro my foot! What on Kochland’s
kunyis do you want me to do?!’ Bitterly he went on, “Mama,
let me tell this. You’ve got some nerve calling this ghetto
home for me. Me? I tell you what. I’m Kichorochoro the
rushdum. I’m the jiggerman and I’m the gangster.
I'm the FBI and the mafia. All the bad boys in Kochland know
it. But you don’t know it - you could have me for a chali
than a son!’ He strolled away and rejoined the boys.
She walked fast away because she was on the verge of fears.
It was late in the night, the boys and girls were finally in
bed settled down for the night, she curled down in the little
bed and cried as hard as she could, let it all drain away from
her body with her loneliest body-wracking sobs, and it all came
out - the inner turmoil of her boggling mind slowly let fear,
anger and remorse swirl together in the cause of exculpation.
Swept off in the current too were misgivings, self-pity. Yes.
She had let the boy’s crude machismo override her intelligence
(did she have any?) Yes, she blamed it all not on the street
boys youthful selfishness but in her incapability to handle
the boy just plain naturally other than to go to pain to try
to assert some authority. False mask. Kichorochoro had been
painted all over with Eastlands antediluvian brush, for sure.
A rove mongrel.
Her despair rose and hot tears melted down her cheeks. She saw
herself clearly in one memorable picture as a young woman n
the midst of squalor and minimal expectations asserting her
humanity and dignity by humbling herself, reaching out physically
to others, embracing the problems of children of the wild, the
homeless, the destitutes, giving them the best she could offer.
Her mother had told her: my daughter, it is your job, Almighty
God chose it for you. Do it with the whole of your heart. And
God alone he will reward you. Her father had been a policeman.
He had been knocked down and killed by a matatu. James her brother
had been a lawyer and a good man. He found himself tightly wedged
in the teeth of heavy debts and took his own life, an exhausted
bow out of this impossible life. A polite young man by the name
William had reckoned that people should stick together in order
to give love to one another and liberate them from their worries
and problems, guard them against the dangers of this world and
help them grow. He had come into her confused life then, comforted
her, made her forget her pain. Promised her marriage and lifelong
support. William gave her long philosophical talks, that a reflection
of her brother’s own catastrophe, like her policeman father’s,
had been work of the evil force called Satan He encouraged her
to dispense with her unnecessary solitude because he was there
for her. Four months after she first set her eyes on William
she is healthy happy and in love and her stomach is sticking
out. William embraces by a street lamp post and whispers to
her that is coming for her the following day. And goes for good.
In the following months she is so terribly heart broken that
she suffers a massive depression. She miscarries Williams baby.
End of story.
It all went through her mind. Luckily she had gotten a job.
It had been six years since William had left her by the lamp
post and God alone in heaven knew the kind of debt William (if
he was still alive) owed her. They were going to meet one day,
she was sure. And there’s so much she was going to ask
from William to tell her. As an independent person, she feared,
more than any thing, lose of self control and that is why no
man had laid his hands on her since William left. And they had
a lot to say to each other. That William. He had been such a
perfect man. To tell the truth she had never met any other man
who carried half what her William had possessed.
She cried
more. Tears flowed freely. Her body shook and until she got
exhausted. She had never wept like this since the death of James
and she felt slightly exhilarated. She arose, blew her nose
and washed her face. She avoided looking at herself in the mirror
and she avoided checking the time although she knew it was late.
She knew she must have wept for more than five hours. She washed
down two Panadol tables with a glass of cold water, and laid
down in bed again. She said a light prayer before falling asleep.
The words – you could have me for a chali than a son
- reverbrated in her dream. Men. Boyfriend. William. Why
do they always fall out of linet?
The following days were turbulent for Kichorochoro and her.
She had gone to the Child Welfare Society and dug up some dirt
about him. He had passed through six foster homes, was extremely
sensitive, was a knife carriers, had spent a year in a delinquent
reform home, but one information was so bizarre to her: Kichorochoro
had been born out of incest, his mother had been his fathers
aunt! An awkward loneliness had drawn them and a desperate,
feverish, secret love affair had been the result. For whatever
reasons they carried on with the affair until they and discovered
that Kichorochoro’s mother was pregnant. As soon as the
two relatives understood that the pregnancy was taboo they packed
their bags and made for the city where Kichorochoro was born.
Kichorochoro’s father went to work with a road construction
gang, but ill fortune had tracked him down and one day he was
run down by a caterpillar. Kichorochoro’s mother felt,
in fairness to the whole situation, that her husband’s
death was the will of the gods. This man who had fathered her
son had been her brother’s son! She became wary with fear
and isolation. She knew she wouldn’t be long – it
was the way of things. She would die as sure as her husband.
But what about the boy? She had gone around inside her head
and asked: Why should I make the boy suffer? He should live
and be himself. And if the gods of the clan chose to finish
him off from the face of the land (he was an evil child) let
them do it their way. What does a mother do? She felt so guilty
as if she had been an inadequate mother because she had not
seen the signs.
Kichorochoro’s
mother felt inadequate as a human being. That was how Kichorochoro
started a life of animal despair and degradation in the hands
of foster mothers and church hands and social workers.
He had no family, no brothers and sisters, was a child who was
better dead and sooner. He had been ridiculed for as long as
he could remember and he was almost used to being scorned at.
He had never known kindness and for as long as he could remember
people were always finding something bad about him, were always
mean to him, were always trying to put him right. He learnt
to hate it; he learnt to lash out. Watching him clench his fists
when someone came close, his blood red eyes smouldering with
unhidden hate gave one the queasy feeling of living with a dangerous
cornered animal ready to unleash an offensive defence.
And yet at Korogocho Rescue Centre today he seemed so vulnerable
at certain times. He could coil up and recede deep into himself
where no one could reach him.
She found him in such a mood one day, sitting all by himself
at the extreme corner of the centre’s grounds, near the
wooden fence, vividly silhouetted against the dark wall of the
Boy’s Hall by the setting sun. And first all she saw was
a vague dark figure against the blankness.
She watched him with a strained inertia of someone hopelessly
lost in a no-mans-land of indecision. Then, carefully lowering
herself, she sat herself on the smooth grass next to the rock
upon which he sat.
A little cold, perhaps sufficient to make somebody shiver came
fresh and stayed. Her mind kept on fumbling towards her realisation,
but so far all she felt was that even though this story was
grimmer he was a parking boy like all rest of them and he was
constantly in need of care.
She made an effort to clear away through the muddle in her mind.
‘Do you remember your mother, Kichorochoro?’ The
ordinariness of the question seemed to reassure her. His presence
was perfectly acceptable and somehow, logical. But still she
did not look at him, only stared at the surrounding slum dwellings.
The long fingers deformed due to the rancorous encounters folded
into fists, and the answer came back low. ‘Yes, when she’d
come in from Mombasa.’ His frown focused on a far-back
time, ‘She sure was pretty.” He eased up a little.
‘A pretty woman, she was.’
She bridled
a little; ‘She came alone”’
‘No.’ A little hesitant, then with suppressed anger.
‘There was this tall fellow,” he chuckled with a
queer, throaty sound she had never heard from a boy his age.’
My mother didn’t introduce him. There was no need to.
I hated him and it must have shown in my eyes.’
There was a long silence, and when she finally spoke, her sluggishness
suggested a lack of interest or focus on what she was asking.
‘Was he your step father?’
He stretched out his long legs and rested his weight on his
elbows. He sighed, ‘He was her man.’
She said nothing, and she sensed calm in his deductions although
his tone seemed to imply long and bitter anger. Presently he
went on. ‘She never stayed long enough. And when she left
she never looked back.’
Faintly she caught the added words. ‘Not even once?’
Without thinking she asked, ‘How could she just leave
her little boy?’ One look at his face and she tried to
undo the hurt, ‘But of course she couldn’t look
back,’ she added quickly, ‘she was crying.’
There was
a long pause before he said, ‘She was my mother, and she
had come to see me. For the last time.’
She drew her feet, which were getting cold, under her skirt,
she asked, ‘Why?’
His voice was calmer, almost breaking. ‘She died. Two
weeks later.’ He took a deep breath and added, ’Like
my father she died under some wheels. Unlike my father it was
not a caterpillar: there was a death-roar of passage across
the Kenya Railway suspension bridge in Changamwe. Her man had
gone into the yards to vandalise imported cars and had taken
her with him. A goods train drifted by stuck with containers
like a city of night clubs. My mothers body tossed and fell,
rolled over and lay crumpled over, mangled mess of flesh and
bones and blood and fashion clothes. All the sound withdrew
into the mouth of the big yard wind – perhaps the devil’s
sigh.”
The following silence lasted in a hoarse voice.
‘They buried her?’ she asked simply.
He looked
at her with a faint smile. There was a clear relief and concord
in his eyes. ‘Where they bury all unknown people. Kisauni
Cementery.’
Suddenly she understood. Her sparing partner had become her
secret ally. The quietness around the Center was louder than
their sadness. Here was the boy who had been a constant headache
and heartache most of the time. The boy who put callousness
on her knees from praying for patience – or just plain
survival. Instantly her memory provided replay for their time
together. Where had the skirmishes disappeared? When had the
bitterness dissolved? Then came a voice in her head. ‘You
finally learned to be obedient and love him’ But she wasn’t
ready to concede that yet. She remembered how she wanted to
kick him out that day he first came in from hot sun. And how
he felt like bashing in a head or two. Maybe she just wanted
he should be something smatter than a child of the wild. Maybe
she just wanted to sow away his tough and ugly edges. Maybe.
And look what she had learned this evening: he was just a normal
human child with a painful past that constantly weighed him
down and if he only told this pain to someone who genuinely
wanted to hear then he was slightly less overweighed with grief
and he acquired some sense. He had feelings and he knew himself.
He had lost both parents in two separate tragic accidents that
so saddened him to the point they made him hollow inside and
demented him. He had badly needed someone to talk to, to express
his pain to.
In his voice was all the bleak solitude of a maturing boy who
had seen too much for his age. Now he needed some caring person
to carefully lead him away from the deserted silence and fearsome
recoil to the heart of everyday humanity.
Her tears of anger and hopelessness let go.
