The Road To Eldoret - Tony Mochama
Written by Tony Mochama · March 25, 2008
The scene from his hotel room screen in Nakuru still fills his mind. Let’s call him M. He’s from Muranga, he still drives the Datsun 120 Y that he bought in 1972 when he was a twenty two year old boy, and he’s got a family in the outskirts of Eldoret where his wife runs the family farm (cows and wheat) that he bought in 1982 from a white man fleeing the coup that “never happened,” as he is fond of saying. “So I got the farm cheap.”
That was 1982. M was a sharp hustler from Muranga, now he’s grown into an old-ish respectable farmer, 57 years in age, a bit of a sage and a scrooge who in-spite of his Shs.3 million in cash in Equity Bank (savings, he takes no loans) still drives a Datsun 120 Y, and why, till last night, he had never stayed at a hotel! He did now, in the fiery first days of 2008, at a place called Midlands Hotel because he has heard that the land is no longer safe.
There was a television set in the hotel room with one of those fancy new satellites that one finds everywhere these days, even in tiny little bars in Muranga where the boys wear foolish ‘Manchester United’ and ‘Arsenal’ T-shirts like silly English blokes and speak with animation of ‘van Pussy Cats’ and ‘Lonaldo.’ In his days, this excitement was exclusively reserved for the girls – who was “digging Muthoni’s mo-go-do” or Njeri’s, that’s what got the lads hot in his hay-day, not weird African men with curly kits on their heads and Croat sounding names like Drogba.
M fell asleep drinking White Caps, which he has drunk from 1975, in his fancy little hotel room … and dreamt of the peaks of Mount Kenya.
When he woke up, that funny American station called Cable News Network (the only ‘cables’ M knows so far are the troublesome ones that disconnect the carburetor in his 120 Y) was showing a burnt church, with fifty dead, somewhere in Eldoret.
‘Elsewhere.’ That’s how M always envisions those pictures – burnt churches in Rwanda, skeletons on the hard, sandy faces of Darfur, long endless ant-like lines of refugees in the D.R.C., and those other unpleasant images from Inside Africa that Western media seems so very enamored of.
But the burnt church was in Kenya’s Rift Valley. The fifty or five dozen dead were Kenyans of a certain community, there were no ‘Interhamwes’ or ‘janjaweeds’ or other exotically named murderers in this mix, it was Kenyan jinns …
And M was on his feet, and out of the hotel, before one could say the words “balkanization” or “ethnic tension” – and now, with the sun just coming up over the horizon, M is on his way to Eldoret to get his family and take them back to the safety of his house in Muranga.
In the blur of the blue-purplish-golden light of dawn road ahead, M notices what he thinks is road-side bush and bracken. At first. Bushes do not grow on tar-macadam roads, bwana!
As he gets closer, he notices that the obstacles are actually stones – little rocks that prop up bushes, like ominous flowers in menacing vases. M does not stop to wonder why this is so, why anyone in their right mind would bother with this weird fauna-and-floral arrangement, in the middle of a road to nowhere.
Well, not ‘nowhere’ exactly – Eldoret!
Like the practical man, and farmer, that he is, Mr. M, 57, gets out of his old blue Datsun 120 Y, looks up to the sky, then gets to work – pulling at the bracken to clear the road.
And from behind the tall grass on either side of the road, columns of men emerge … somewhere between ten and twenty men. Some are tall, some are short, some are rugged, some wear Western T-shirts with improbable messages like “Rainnkonnen Rules,”– and “Vote for Al Gore, 2000” They look like refugees from a beer budget movie called Old Sierra Leone. And in their hands, Mr. M. notes, they carry elongated shadows.
No, not shadows! It is the silhouettes of machetes, and suddenly Mr. M’s insides turn to maji. Now he can see the faces of some of the men, hate-contorted contours that appraise him savagely.
“Haka hakana pesa,” one of the men, dark brown snaggle – toothed snarls, and the mob looks at his old blue Datsun 120 Y, and laughs. The laughs aren’t merry. They are blood-sodden, sanguinary, somewhat liquid and hungry “Niko na chapa,” Mr. M hears himself mutter in a strange voice. He has never spoken sheng before, but terror lends lips new tongues “Twende ATM ya Equity …” he hopes they are highway robbers.
“Hapana!” one of the men screams, raising his panga to the sun, “Chomoa ID!” with trembling fingers, Mr. M. ‘chomoas’ his I.D. It falls to the ground. Another man, in tattered red and white shirt, snatches it up, dirty nails scraping the grimy road to Eldoret. “Huyu mbuyu ni mmoja wao waliiba kura,” the man yells, and his companions close in on Mr. M., who realizes he has wet himself for the first time since 1955, when he was just five.
Elongated shadows rise and fall in the sun.
The road to Eldoret is no El Dorado! In the middle of the murderous commotion, no-one notices when the driver’s side of the door of the 120 Y is slammed shut in the movement of the mayhem, or the exact moment that Mr. M becomes 1950 – 2008, R.I.P. The short rains are over. January will be hot and dry. And the rivers, for once, will run red and riot.
This piece is an excerpt from a longer story, ‘The Brinkipiece of Genocide’
Tony ‘smitta’ Mochama is a poet and journalist who lives and works in Nairobi. A Law graduate, Tony is also a vodka connoisseur, gossip columnist extraordinaire, and has a collection of short stories coming out soon titled – ‘The ruins down in Africa’. He has also been called a ‘literary gangster’, from time to rhyme. His collection of poetry, ‘What if I am a literary gangster?’ was published by Brown Bear Insignia in 2007.
So vivid, yet so chilling.
Good distilation of the negative vibes we know from the violence. Kenya is now ripe for a story that will remind us of how ready we are to kill and die for causes we cannot comprehend.
Lessons from Gunter Grass’ The Tin Drum.
well, Mochama crafts this story so well at least now I can laugh but not back then. It is what we saw our people do brought out in a light manner that only him could master.
The reality of the innocence of most Kenyans caught at a crossroads comes out quite clearly. Rwanda seemed so distant…
i just like yo country grammar, hood slang i might call it.phat.
Tony, before now I could only think of you as a synonym to Russian Vodka!! This story just shattered my myth! True, when we cant cry, we simply laugh!!! Thanks for the laughter you have constantly, continually and consistently given us!!AWESOME
Although i have been drilled into a strange German Dialect here in Munich, i have always appreciated your ”Gangster” style.Wonderfully constructed, vivid. I thought you might be a real Gangster, until i blew myself into ” So what if am a literary Gangster” on your way to Eldoret!
The narrator is kind,for writing it from an Kenyan’s point of view.
Tony,your works are always well flavoured.Great story
Your writing technique is refreshingly uncommon. Where could one get the complete ‘The Brinkipiece of Genocide’ story? It is quite a task to narrate that story as you did and not sound like one of those feature articles from the dailies. For instance saying “becomes 1950-2008″ as opposed to just pronouncing the guy dead! I love that one!
The only issue I have with this excerpt is that it is hard to imagine why M would not have anticipated the road block to be what it was and the killers to be what they were. I know you wanted to have fun with that description about plants growing in the middle of the road but he should have at least suspected what was going on especially given the fact that his trip was prompted by news about the violence. Don’t you think?
I give it a thumbs up.
Dear w and all you wonderful folk who have commented on my lil hood-slang, violently-flung tale of subtle massacre, circa, the road to eldoret - spasiba!Hugs.
Where can one get the entire ‘brinkipice to genocide’? Well, I’d intended to launch it as part of an anthology of my kenyan storoz “the ruins down in afrika” in Jan, but i may just get it out on its own as a booklet this august, at a sanguinary store nearby.
Ok. Books’ First.
Why didn’t M anticipate the road-blocks? Well, maybe he loved his family so much he was prepared to get em, or die trying. Or maybe, like other folk who reached those fatal forks on the road, he thought death was only in eldoret (remember the first two days of the shit, it looked localised to this town). Or perhaps M was just a shagsmodos. I donno.
That’s how life looks, sometimes, and ends.
tony m.
Toni,
Hiyo ni stori poa, stori real, lazima nijue vile ita-end.
Pulsating then petrifying not unlike the heartbeats within fated Mr. M as the matchstick struck its box….
Keep them coming in Tony.
It is all lies for the literary gangster to be more than 57 years old yet he was twenty something boy in 1982
It is all lies for the literary gangster to be more than 57 years old yet he was twenty something boy in 1982. Thats really nice Mr. Tony “M”
Heh heh,
It is all lies, Kiprutoski, if someone sez you know arithmetic.
My protagonist, Mr M, bought the datsun in 1972, when he was 22.
He bought the farm in 1982, when he was ten years older (naturally).
The Literary Gangsta is a poet who has nyet±! to do with this story.
Other than ‘catching me out,’ i’d appreciate more constructive ‘flatterisms’ from you, even via SMS or MPesa. Papo hapo ambapo po-po hippo po, poa?
p.s. for PosthumorouSly.
Gud storo smitta.Afta all tha vodoski u’ve taken in ur lyf its gud to knw it actually does affect ur medulla oblongata in a positive way.Nice story n lookn 4wad to getn tha full copy.I can’t stop wondering bout tha end.
You all have said wonderfull things about this piece… I am disappointed. It IS a nice story but not very well written. First, i think the narrator or the writer can barely relate to Mr. M because of the way he describes things, like when he says “…They look like refugees from a beer budget movie called Old Sierra Leone.” OR
“…where the boys wear foolish ‘Manchester United’ and ‘Arsenal’ T-shirts like silly English blokes and speak with animation of ‘van Pussy Cats’ and ‘Lonaldo.”
That is all beautiful but i don’t expect Mr. M to know anything about European football if he had not even watched CNN before. It just sounds like a lie and hard to believe the writer if he cannot relate or think in the mind frame of the character. I’m sure Mr. M wouldn’t think that way and if he were to tell the whole story by himself he would tell it completely differently!
Also the story is moving too fast.
I wish I could say more…
I write too.
Thanks Divine Bandit. Liked your poetry recitation at Kwani? the other night.
C’mon Owen. This story is not wholly from the ‘first person singular,’ therefore allowing analogies from the writer like ‘Sierra Leone beer budget movie.’…
Where it is, I have deliberately twisted names like ‘Ronaldo’ and ‘van Persie’ to try and (hopefully comically too) inject the old man’s indifference to the shenanigans of the football world.
Not watching CNN doesn’t mean our Mr M is blind or daft or illiterate - he can read soccer T-shirt ‘names’ and knows they relate to foreign football. The story is too fast??
Well, I thought a more leisurely, picnicky- strolly, I’m going-nowhere-in-a-hurry-sort-of-pace would interfere with the mood of urgency and trepidation of the tale, ama?
But Wandago, if you write too, that’s the way to go.
You read too? I wish I could read you too. Where may I?Toodles. Tony Twitters.
short? hell no
mochama is fast
he’s like Arsenall
too good it ends too quick
like a flash of a
kill me quikly!!!
Awesome! I have never been to Kenya, but I have been trying to learn a lot about it. This story makes me feel like I’m there. Great plays on words, great style. “…and dreamt of the peaks of Mount Kenya” just makes dream of the peaks of Mount Kenya. Phrases like that really make the whole story kind of a dream, as if the narrator were simply telling the tale of my own forgotten dream.
Reminds me of my own writing style when I am truly inspired, which is rare nowadays. I will remember this story the next time I try to write one. Asante sana, bwana! :p
tony,
apart from bieng a loyal fan of your column of the ‘furahiday’ and sato magazines in the paper, to be honest at the back of my mind i have a thought of the unborn generation, frankly speaking,how i wish the would get to read some of your stories!! He’s a toast to you and to the URBORN child, live long!!
tony,
apart from bieng a loyal fan of your column of the ‘furahiday’ and sato magazines in the paper, to be honest at the back of my mind i have a thought of the unborn generation, frankly speaking,how i wish the would get to read some of your stories!! Here is a toast to you and to the URBORN child, live long!!
Well excecuted… I would like to write like you when I grow up and mature in writing. I have learnt from you and Binyavanga the importance of description in advancing your point. Take a bow…
Mwamerika,
Thank you, although I’m sure it is Otiato Mkikuyu, the Arsenal lightning rod, who dreams most of Mount Kenya peaks, heh heh. Miz Mijski, I’m sure what you meant to say was ‘here’s a toast to the URBAN child.” Ok. Joy to the world. I’m taking a bow out now … though one could say Mr M was booed off stage …
No need to say am a big fun of yours Tony. Well it’s AUGUST.Now how do we get to maliza the storo? Am still waiiiting…
I’m hoping to launch the full monty (or massacre montage) of Mr Mwangi on-or-in-between Dec 12 ( 45 years of ‘independence’) and Dec 27 (first anniversary of ‘voting’ day) at a cinema near you, Sani. So be patient, sonny, and thanks all for your support.
TM>
More……more and more is all I ask for. A pleasant read all the way!
TM
Keep the vibes flowing. It is my dream that when I grow up ‘literary’, I will be able to express my thoughts the way you do. My line of trade is in engineering but would really love to be a “Literary N’gan’gaster” one day. I dont know when, but maybe in my next life as writer, I will be able to go ‘Beyond the River’ as we shall have crossed the Katikati ya River.
Okay Tony, I wish to be read too. I wish for my work to be put under the microscope. And ofcourse i read too… maybe i’ll post something on my blog then i’ll let you know.
that story was tight. i love it. really loved it
i think the piece is a typical kenyan story,probably mr.m;a maina,mutinda,mwema…e.t.c but it iliisha 2 sun.is there like a continuation.
Tony is as literal as he is gifted with a descriptive sense of churning events. Read his book and must say he’s quite more than I expected. Way on Tony!
“The dark times” turned into a lovely story by one of our very own, Kenyan writer. with all honesty this is my first 21st century Kenyan Writer fictional story I’ve ever read. Brilliant flow of ideas…. How can i get the Book and even more of your writings?
thats a gud piece of work
Nice piece of work esp the homorous parts of an otherwise tragic storo
Hey Mark, Saint Maya’ll,
Thank you soo- oo much for the kind commentz. Makes me determined to ‘andika’ more ’serious’ stuff about our mainas, mutindwas, muemas, obamas, and yes, our bums too…
For those of you who have ulizad me about when the entire book ‘The Road to Eldoret’ will be out, i now have confirmed launch date of 28th Feb, 2008 - same day peace deal was signed. Share with me? Do you think summa the architects of the Woes, by that tyme, will be eating cold ugali with freezing Dutch bile water at the Hague? Me, I doubt it.
Then I have a May 9 anthology of short storoz coming out … on May 9, 2009.
Now hell have mercie on me, i have a mocha to kwachu. Hugs, TM.
very well written article, your style is quite refreshing, atleast you dont sound like some washed out newspaper columnist writting just to meet a deadline or coz its the hot topic of the week………….i love the humour, great work, toodles
it was a tragic moment but i like the way the pain of those moments is hidden in your writing its the kind that does not give one the desire to revenge its leads us to the desire to heal love and repent.kudos! can’t wait for the entire story.
Quiet a storo, i doubt if anyone has told it this way. They really should but i doubt if anyone will be eatin cold ugg in Hague damnitt.
I love the part about , ‘crat names like Drogba’, kuddos
looks like Toni you cherish what happened to the mt. kenya tribe. BTW, what was that on the flight to Lagos. Why did you drink yourself silly and then zushad about Obama? Is it true that you told Ghanian journalists that if Nigeria were a house then Ghana would be its toilet??
Good stroy Tony, very well written. Twendelee kuomba for those buggers or as said “in 2012 elections, 2007 will lokk like a Christmas Party”