it was clear that their little Agip misadventure that had delayed the planting would prove costly. Their crop in Suswa and Ngareta, having missed a week’s worth of rain, was fifteen centimetres shorter than the crops in the surrounding fields they drove past. They had planted when the rains were about to end. Then, in remote Melili, they spent more by having to import labour for another round of weeding as the locals were too proud to do such work, which they had not anticipated. In Ngareta, their second farm, which bordered the Mau forest, wheat rust thrived and the crop had to be sprayed over several times. In Suswa, the intermittent rain, driven away by strong winds, left a third of the crop stunted. That week, Juli did not call his mother with the fortnightly progress report. Instead they went drinking in Nairage Ya Ngare.
Their drinking binge moved between Top Life, Mara and Maji Ya Ngombe bars. After the first day they started drinking on credit and the three of them rediscovered a common ground over those blurred hours. Juli and Solo stopped circling each other. Chiri re-discovered a boyhood when he’d looked up to the older Solo who regaled them with tales of Manchester. Maybe they would have stayed indefinitely in between the three bars and the makeshift lodgings they crept to every morning if it was not for the news. A neighbour’s boy found them in Top Life and told them that the Massey Ferguson Harvester had been spotted in the hills of Mau Narok without its driver. The news had been brought by a herdsman who was waiting for them at Gogo’s. Juli beckoned at Chiri and they left Solo with his arm around one of the numerous Kikuyu barmaids. They found the herdsman on the road walking back and they stopped the Datsun.
‘Machini iko Mau Narok. Imekwama kwa mlima. Mko na ndovu ya kutoa.’
You will need an elephant to move it.
‘Uliona driver. Anaitwa Moseti? Mkisii.’
‘Ai. Sitaki shida.’
‘Twende? You show us?’
The man regarded Juli.
‘Ati.’
Then, Juli changed his tone taking out the drink from his voice. The man started walking away.
‘Two thousand shillings,’ Juli said, and grinned.
The man jumped into the back of the Datsun. ‘My name is Atelek.’
They stopped at the Nairage Ya Ngare Trading Centre and Juli borrowed fuel money from Johnny the Kikuyu bar owner at 15 per cent interest. They headed south first and were caught in passing rain heading towards Tanzania. In a few minutes they were in an indeterminate land where the rain fell with such relentlessness, it was as if time had shortened or space shrunk in the grey world. Now, for two full days, they managed no more than a hundred kilometres, stopping in trading centres, stuck beneath small kiosk fronts, abandoned cattle dips and, at times, under trees in open meadows. They did not notice at first when Atelek slipped away, back to the dry north. Without him, they kept at it because there was really only one road and little risk of getting lost if they asked along the way in the small trading centres where the event of a stranded Harvester was news.
One night, feeling as if they’d travelled almost to Tanzania, they managed to find a place to park the Datsun under a small shed in the middle of nowhere. They had started climbing and sensed they were already in Mau Narok. The world was a grey, stormy sea around them. With the incessant drumming of water on the Datsun’s roof, Chiri could no longer remember what the dry world felt like. They had carried a bottle of gin and a few sips woke up the alcohol of the last three days in Nairage Ya Ngare in their blood. Juli’s eyes were glazed: he was drunker than Chiri had ever seen him. And as he came to, Chiri heard the words: ‘Let me tell you about Naimenengiu Forest. Naimenengiu is a magic forest near the Tanzania border at the edge of God’s Narok. Uski Baba did not even wait for my Form 4 results – he sent me there after Highway.’
Chiri had finished school a year earlier than Juli even though he was younger and was already well into varsity when his childhood friend finished at Highway School. It was only later that Chiri heard from someone in Buru that Juli had been sent to shagz, back to the village his father hailed from. This magic Naimengiu Forest, however, did not sound like shagz.
‘Naimenengiu ni the remotest place in Kenya after Turkana. Haiko, even on the map. There I started a shop. Ilikuwa so remote that I did not need to be at the shop all the time. Because everybody knew each other people were so honest that they just took what they wanted and left the money on the counter. One day I left the shop to smoke a cigarette, those days I was on Rooster ile non-filter, not so mbali far from the village. There were these rocks I used to see every day that looked quiet. I went there. I also wanted to read a letter Baba had sent. Just before I reached the rocks, I looked up. Haiya, sitting hapo on top was a lioness.’
Juli went quiet, the sound of the rain against the windscreen and when Chiri turned he saw that his friend’s head had fallen to his chest. But Juli then continued, his eyes now fixed straight ahead. In his eyes Chiri made out something else – old memories and a bit of doubt.
‘There in Naimenengiu I saw things. Have you ever heard the roar of a lion near you? Or seen a snake the size of your leg? Nilikua in that place for two months alafu one day the oldest man in that small village sent for me. When I went to his manyatta and stood outside his voice from inside said: “Now you have become one of us. Do you want one of my daughters? Do you want land?” I did not want to refuse him. When I remained silent, he asked me whether I was wanted by the government. The police. He said he could send me to his brother in Tanzania. To Mlango Nyeusi. The Black Door. I told him I had been banished by Baba. The old man appeared on the doorway shaking his head. He gave me five goats. He told me that I would always belong to the village. He said that Nairobi is not for everyone.’
‘Catholic Parochial. Highway. You are Nairobi tao born and raised, man. You should have told the mzee that,’ Chiri said. ‘Those years for nothing. Pole, but to send you out there … I had a lot of heshima for him, you know that. But what was your father thinking?’
‘My father …’ Juli stopped and looked at him and then turned away: ‘Out there huko we saw a car once in two months when the Canter from Narok brought me supplies for that little shop. We ate nothing but mbuzi. Sukuma wiki once in two months. One day I bit into a tomato and almost came just from the pleasure of it. For the first time I almost returned to Buru.’
‘Yeah. But our paros, you know they are not always right. Half of the things my Mum goes on about… ’ Chiri said. ‘Wah.’
‘Hapana,’ Juli said, and turned to him. ‘Chiri, if you’d listened to her ungekuwa still in campus.’
‘Chief, let me ask you,’ Chiri said, his voice hesitant. ‘I do not know about you but I really tamani some fries.’
They both laughed and the world in front of them clapped in thunder.
‘When Solo and I finished school Baba called us one evening, you know how wazees are, and asked what we wanted from hii life. Solo said he wanted to go to the UK. I don’t think he was even serious. But me I was sent into the wilderness, to that shop. Because ati I was wild.’
‘Everyone kila mtu, all of us were.’ Chiri was still trying to push away the intense darkness with his eyes. ‘That’s why tuko in this party. To grow wheat and party.’
Juli ignored this. ‘Alafu Solo sent a letter to Mum from the UK saying that he wanted to marry this mzungu girl. The one who has now been calling. Huyu Katrina. Then he wrote to Baba separately and said he had a wonderful business idea. You know how much he asked for? Five milli.’
‘Million.’ Chiri realised that he had said this aloud.
