LIFE BY LOUIS: Tales from 'Machakos Airport'

This weekend and part of next week shall mark the full immigration of Nairobi inhabitants back to their rural areas.

We shall leave the city under the care of its residents, those who own real pieces of soil in the city. This includes house owners and landlords, and you can sneak in the caretakers of the flats we live in.

The said caretakers have enjoyed free hospitality in the flats courtesy of the landlord for so long until they live under the illusion that they co-own the apartments.

IMMIGRATION

This immigration reminds me of the days before I acquired a mechanical contraption that is sometimes capable of its own mobility.

Before KVX became part of my annual wealth declarations, I would join other Kenyans in flocking the major matatu terminus just a few days to the festivities on our way to our villages of origin.

Of all the ones that have been gazetted, the one that I bear worst memories about is Country Bus terminus, also known as 'Machakos Airport'. People from my clan pronounce it as ‘Mashagu’, but it does little to change my perception.

I was new in the City, and on this day I was on my way back from a prolonged holiday. We had gone on strike.

The then-Chancellor of all the public universities had ordered that we be sent home because during the strike we had shouted that he should vacate the big seat on the hill and return to his village to rear cattle.

I was carrying a large suitcase with all my books, a T-square, 2 sacks of potatoes, 4 cabbages, onions of leaves and half a goat’s head that I had pinched from the Christmas festivities. And a jerry can of soup, how could I forget that?

SWARMED

After I alighted at Kaka terminus via our route 120 matatus, I decided to rush to Gikomba to buy a few clothes because I had gained weight and my old trousers were feeling a bit tight around my lower torso.

If you know this City well, when you are walking from Racecourse to Gikomba you must pass via Mashagu.

As soon as I neared the terminus, about 30 deputy drivers emerged from it and swarmed all over me.

Before I could say Kaka, my bag was being loaded into a big bus headed to Garissa and I was being hauled into another bus headed for Nyamira.

It was all so swift and I did not even stand a chance to resist all the muscular hands that were almost tearing me apart.

COERCION

Tears, my biggest asset of coercion and blackmail those days seemed not to be working. The deputy drivers were probably thinking that I was crying because I had missed home so much and I was glad to be finally headed to Nyamira to visit my aging parents.

No attempts at protesting that I was not an original inhabitant of Nyamira could convince them to the contrary.

As I sat there in the middle window seat next to egg trays, empty banana baskets and assorted furniture, I felt lost in emotions.

I was sure that I was being forcefully relocated to Nyamira and my real mother would never see me again.

I thought about my brother and sisters, and I cringed when I imagined that my brother would inherit my piece of land after I was declared officially missing. Those days I was living single like broiler chicken and I did not have any dependents.

Maybe the deputy driver was going to drop me at a certain town called Nyansiongo, for lack of other instructions from me.

A rotund woman with a big banana plantation and 400 traditional chicken would receive me as her son after conversing in low tones with the deputy driver in a language that I would not understand.

I would never get to convince her that I am not her son because I would fear her shrieking voice and quick temper. After all I would never be privy to what the deputy driver told her when he handed me over to her. 

The clan would be receptive because I would employ my thick arm muscles to till the banana plantations and I would be the darling of the village.

RENOWNED

My new host would dutifully get me a bride, I suppose Kerubo, because the all the ladies I know from that part of the country are called Kerubo.

Kerubo would bombard, inundate and mesmerise me with the kind of loving that women from the region are renowned for. By the time that I realise that Wa Hellen is looking for me and she has sent her brothers to come and fetch me, I would refuse to leave Kerubo.

Our first born would be called Omariba, and we would soon follow him up with 9 other babies in quick succession.

Meanwhile, my bag would land in Garissa and some hungry deputy drivers would feast on my half goat head and give my potato and cabbages to a camel. And drink my soup. 

Finally, my tears prevailed because I had now boosted them with loud wailing. I was threatening to turn everyone in the whole of Kamukunji and its environs deaf with screaming.

It took me another one hour to retrieve my bag from the Garissa bound bus that was almost leaving, but my T-square was broken into two. 

If the besieged Head Prefect of this City wants to close Mashagu after he is through with his current predicament, he has my full blessings.

Merry Christmas to all Nairobi residents and inhabitants.