VoKe walked down the path. He’d walked it many times. In fact, he’d walked down it this morning. He’d walked up it again this afternoon. He was now down it again, with a large sack of books, and the afternoon sun keenly on his heels.
Along the path is where VoKe first saw the hand of God – a nimble woman who threw herself onto a thief about to be stoned to death or equally torturous, be burnt to death, ringed by a black tire and doused in petrol or both options, judging by the charged chants of the growing crowd. This was last year, in December. The mob would have stoned her too – there were already shouts of “wako pamoja hao!” those colluders! and “unatetea mwizi kama nani?” why are you defending him? So you want us to steal from you so you agree with our anger?! – but for her shrill Rose-muhando-like voice, which kept the mob at bay. And clearly Rose Muhando’s vigor!
“Nitalipia! I will pay!!! Just let us call the police. Whatever he has stolen I will pay!”
Already the cyber cafe owner, who wore a scowl like a nun would a rosary, had tasked himself with acquiring a tire. This owner had purposely made advances to Mercy on account of VoKe’s offer of aid one time when he was in the CyberCafe. He had not been back there since. VoKe had overheard the owner saying to a lady that resumes were hard work, her right hand clutching a worn handkerchief in one hand tightly, through which the edge of a fifty-shilling note could be seen. “Is there no discount? Lower price?”, she inquired.
“Madam utalipa mia tatu.” These things are not cheap, you know! PROFESSIONAL Services are 300 BOB! Pay Up!
Instinctively, VoKe said to the lady, who was standing by the metal grills facing in towards the owner on the other side of the grill, like one would in a prison visit, “I can help you for free if you don’t have the money.” The owner shot him a look!
Now this same owner, with a spanner in hand, has enlisted two boys and they are busy at work: prying a decrepit tire off the old Suzuki wherein Baba Stella had been known to sleep when the walk home from the bar round the corner seemed too insurmountable a task. The owner and the boys are unaware that Rose Muhando is busy thwarting their plans! But the owner is too absorbed by his malicious plans to notice the waning crowd, his jaws clenching and biceps flexing as they turn the screws, which are locked into place by rust – and most likely Baba Stella’s piss – but ultimately no match for a man with vehemence! The tire relents and it is hauled by the owner triumphantly – the key to justice! His smile only lasts a second before he comprehends that Rose Muhando has saved the thief, and police are just arriving on the scene.
It was on this path that VoKe tried selling mandazis; a tough gig. Preparing the dough before bed, waking up with the witches of the night so as to catch the early risers on their way to work, enticing them with the warm dough of goodness freshly deep-fried. When he began, he had soon realized that he wasn’t the only mandazi-seller, and that his new colleagues were not all too pleased to split their customers anew. They were not hostile at first, but when VoKe started adding cinnamon and used oil infused with rosemary, AND chatted his customers up like they were headed to their inaugurations instead of a mundane routine, that drew a line. Now the customers were especially waiting for him! Normally one had to roam, advertising the mandazis stuffed in a plastic bucket, but customers were lining up so much that he had a stall! A stall! A year ago, and the thought of a stall, let alone a customer lining up on this busy path to wait for a mandazi, would have been something one would shout in prayer in church, a sort of extreme request for a blessing so that even a less one suffices.
So what? They all get cinnamon? And Rosemary? What’s next? Ginger?! God forbid – garlic?!! “Why is VoKe making things complicated?” they bemoaned.
“VoKe, hatukatai mandazi zako ni nzuri.” These mandazis of yours cook them for yourself at home! At work, cook plain mandazi!
“Sawa!” Okay, fine! VoKe had conceded. He was going to stop it with the cinnamon and rosemary, but his conviviality was as true as the sun shone and the night fell, as true as how the heart breaks from a betrayal, and they could do nothing to stop it. A week later, without the sweet aromas of cinnamon and rosemary, even VoKe’s charm was no sufficient compensation. They would still smile, and some even said hello, but no, sorry, they said, no mandazis for me.
Two weeks in and the path was selling less mandazis than even before VoKe joined them. So the consociates came together once more to tell VoKe, “Yes, please, cinnamon and rosemary. This is a new world.”
It is on this path that he sells books by the stage at the lower end of the path where it meets the main road, tarmacked sparsely; where hundreds board and alight the matatus under the gentle nudge of the conductors, who grab your arm and promise you that the matatu was just waiting for you to fill up. Next thing you know one passenger jumps off as you board. Ameendea maji, He will be back. Here at the stage is where he has a higher chance of selling books, and he times it so he hits the evening rush hour of bodies being brought back from the machinations of this city. His mandazi-selling friends were surprised when he informed them he was quitting. “What will you do now,” they asked, shocked that a pâtissier of his talent and wit is retiring. “Too soon,” they muttered. Sorrowfully.
“What will we tell the customers?” they asked.
“Oh, don’t worry. I will see them when they get back from work?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll be selling books by the stage.”
BOOKS?!!!! Incredulous. Books! Even some put their hands on their head. Onyango, who had been the first to acquiesce and start adding cinnamon, patted him on the back with such softness, as if comforting a lost soul whose path of return was nowhere in sight, but perhaps somewhere within.
Selling books was Mercy’s idea. “You love reading,” she said, “and you love sleeping.” His teaching assignment was yet to come after studying to be an English and Swahili teacher.
“So patriotic,” Mercy joked.
“I love the country, true. Most times. But dying for it means I would have to believe in what it stands for. What does the nation stand for? And who for?”
“Well, it can just be a joke you know.”
“I know. It can also just not be.”
“I intended it as one.”
“It’s funny. Patriotic just rings strange. It sounds like an oath, and I want to see what I am signing up for before I side with the label.”
“So, you are not Kenyan.”
“No, Mercy. I am, deeply and truly, in the ways that I can. Perhaps not in all.”
“What is all Kenyan?”
“I don’t know? You tell me. Are you Kenyan??”
“Yes.”
“Are you patriotic?”
When the vendors at the stage saw that VoKe’s sack was filled with books – they burst out laughing! They had been in the selling game for years! The stage was a hot market to be sure, but books! In this neighborhood?! Who has time to read? The other vendors, mostly women, sold produce, shoes, kids toys, and rat-killing medicines. Not to mention that VoKe was set on selling fiction. Mama Stella, who sold tomatoes and onions and garlic and peppers two vendors down from VoKe, howled!
“Huyu kijana anataka kulala njaa.” He is a rich man, this one. Does he want to sell anything?
Huh! Not even ’10 ways to become rich?’ or ’21 signs your partner is the one’ or ‘God is for you – how to live as the Chosen One’. They were right, at first. People passed by him mostly even without glancing, or they’d cast a perfunctory glance, or hold the books without flipping through nor reading the back, as if weighing it. It was one week before he made his first purchase; sort of.
One evening, Mama Stella ambled over, leaving Stella who’d come back from school in charge of their stall and asked VoKe, “Kijana, are you sure about selling your books?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t read much but I can try one.”
“Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart. I think you will like it.”
“If I do, I will pay you. If not, I will return it.”
When VoKe staggered in the next day with his batch of books, it was again Mama Stella’s voice that floated through the stage, only this time instead of ridicule, Mama Stella was busy narrating the story to her consociates, and buyers, and anyone with ears to listen. One month later, Mama Stella handed VoKe a fifty shilling note and asked for another book. The market was excited for another story, and she was more than happy to be the mouthpiece.
Mercy, who had just arrived from her training classes and sat with him by the books reading through one herself, looked at him and beamed.
“Ah, my English and Swahili teacher!”