5 a.m. they left Narok bullet for Nairage Ya Ngare and were home in less than two hours. Grandma Sayianka, their gogo, querulous as ever, opened the door slowly and when she saw them burst into song.
When they woke up the next day in the afternoon Juli discovered that the supplies they had purchased in Nakuru had been stolen from the Datsun.
II
The Sayianka family’s stone house at Nairage Ya Ngare was the first of its kind in the area. The first version, a small wooden bungalow, had been built by Petro Sayianka in the 1980s after he had bought the house in Buru Buru. Over the years as he prospered and his family grew so did the house, if it could be called that. More of a structure, it now sprawled with stone extensions, new wings, nooks and crannies made of mabati. Gogo had lived alone in the Nairage Ya Ngare house for years until Juli had been exiled by his father to the wheatlands.
Inside the house was a maze of corridors, cul de sacs, weirdly placed bathrooms and toilets. Most of the house did not have a ceiling underneath the mabati roof and sound travelled from room to room above the walls. One wing was Gogo’s living quarters, another their father’s former room and sitting room – the rest of the house was completely separate and could only be accessed through the tiny kitchen which also led to the front yard. Chiri and Juli took two rooms in the shaded southern side, Solo slept in their father’s old room.
Outside the house was a small shed and underneath was half an old John Deere tractor. The rest of the shed was littered with metal parts. Juli did not say much over the next few days about what they would do about the stolen supplies and so they slept, played cards, listened to the radio and talked late into the night. On other nights Juli pored over his late father’s papers and books – reading about agriculture, wheat farming. Solo remained unusually quiet and read some of his late father’s western novels and kept to himself. Chiri borrowed some of these and slept longer than he ever had since childhood. On the third morning Solo had regained his bravado at the breakfast table and plotted revenge on the Senyos. Juli remained quiet during these sessions. He had told Chiri that there was nothing to be done about the Senyos in Narok, especially now that the Sayiankas had lost their patriarch. Even Gogo laughed at Solo’s contorted face, his reckless talk.
The next day Juli woke Chiri up at 5 a.m. and they drove to Bomet and bought new supplies, even if they were almost twice the price of what they had bought in Nakuru. When they returned to Gogo’s there was a man standing in the compound. As they got out of the Datsun Juli said: ‘That’s the driver, Moseti Edwin.’
‘Machini is okay?’ Juli asked.
‘Ndio.’
‘Kweli. We don’t need to go to the garage?’
‘Ndio.’
‘Na Harvester.’
‘Also, that is okay.’
Juli beckoned Moseti and they went over to the shed.
‘Naona there are parts missing … I am told that you gave the plough to Kagunya…’
Moseti looked at Juli with feigned shock.
‘Si, he told me that you had talked.’
‘Skiza – go and bring it back today. Leo.’
When Moseti left Juli pored over the old tractor under the shed and said, ‘This used to be a John Deere tractor … this is money. Watu here took advantage of us when Mzee died … even that jamaa who was here. After this harvest I will wake up this old John Deere for my father. I’ve already done the hesabu of how much it will cost. Moseti will go with the Massey Ferguson Harverster to Mau Narok where they are already harvesting and here we will plant with the tractor.’
They started planting the next day. Juli had already leased farms in Suswa, Ngareta and near Narok town. Each of the three farms had a supervisor, two tractor drivers to do the planting and two boys to watch the seed, do menial small tasks. When Juli and Chiri went to the farm near town the owner said because they had been late he had given it out two weeks ago. A few days later they found a farm in remote Melili. They made sure the tractor work started the next day. Juli explained to Chiri the real numbers and how the acreage worked and how many bags he expected to harvest. Now that they were working Chiri saw a new Juli, older and watchful in the fields as the work went on. When he spoke now it was only of the basics, the figures. A good farm produced ten to fifteen bags of wheat grain per acre. Each bag was Kshs 2,000. Leasing one acre was Kshs 7,500-15,000 depending on where it was. Hiring a harvester and a tractor came to Kshs 1000 an hour. A tractor took half a day to spread wheat seed over ten acres. A harvester could take half a day to harvest ten acres depending on the shamba. Bottom line, if all went well you could double your money.
The planting took two full weeks and Juli and Chiri drove to and fro to make sure that none of the seed was stolen or wasted. Solo came out with them on some days and before long he declared that he was going back to the UK; that the dirty wheat life was not for him. On the days he did not come to the farm he went to the Nairage Ya Ngare bars and he came home late and found them spent eating ugali and sukuma greens. ‘Naona you are pushing the week,’ he laughed.
One evening Juli, tired and dirty from another day in the fields, watched him in the tiny kitchen, the light from the small wick dipped in the kerosene tin throwing their shadows all over the wall. ‘I talked to Mathe leo. This joini. There is someone who keeps calling her in Buru from the UK. Asking to talk to you. Ati she has your son.’ For a second Solo’s face went slack and then he regained the knowing smile at the edges of his lips and looked at Juli for a long time and left without a word.
III
The wheat crop was now three weeks old and susceptible to rust, which could destroy the crop in two days. During this period, Juli and Chiri no longer came home at sunset. They stayed out making sure that the insecticide spray had been done properly and, when it rained, re-done. Now all day the rain poured lightly over them and they came straight to bed. Solo retreated from them, harbingers of knowledge of his secret wife and child. When they made it back early Chiri now sought him out, feeling for him with the guilty face he now wore around the house. On some days he convinced Solo to come out with them to the fields.
After a month all the fields Juli had leased had been weeded and it would be another three weeks before they started re-spraying insecticide, this time for weevils. Now, Juli and Chiri took several trips out south, past Narok town, looking for tractor and harvester work which was scarce mid-season unless it was for maize and barley. It was now August and they were mostly on the road. They went from farm to farm, asking randomly around whether anyone needed a plough, a winch, even a tractor carrier for transport.
On the road Juli continued his tutorials, his moods starting to swing with the vagaries of the wheat crop and the weather as the season developed. In their new idleness Chiri understood Juli’s need to talk his farming dream into being, his voice at this stage betraying no fear of failure. In their road conversations Juli had long moved on from childhood to the more recent failures of their teenage years. Now when Juli talked against the pious mothers of the neighbourhood who had laughed when he failed his O-levels his voice was strained. He spoke with bitterness at their presence at his father’s funeral, their looks of pity at his mother and the burden of her crazy sons.
For days Juli went on about the funeral again and again and in his voice Chiri at times heard Juli’s gratitude to him for being there. And he was surprised as it was not like he would have been doing anything with his life that was of real importance. So, in between the planting and the wait for the crop to take hold Chiri played witness to Juli’s plans, his triumphant return to Nairobi
