MATHREE

by Makena Onjerika

Globe Roundabout

If there is one issue I have with Klemo, it’s that this guy can never let you tell a story properly. He always has to insert himself somewhere. I tell him, “Dude, wait, I’m getting there.”

He pushes his spects up on his nose and taps Fat Toni. “Listen to this guy. Is there a time when his stories are not pointless?”

Fat Toni lifts his Tusker and gives it a long kiss. He burps. “Dudes, I’m done thinking hard stuff till Monday morning.”

We are at our usual joint, sitting on the wannabe terrace above the sidewalk on Kimathi Street. Outside, Nairobians are speed walking toward bus/mathree queues. A Kenya Bus is dragging itself down Kimathi toward the Hilton Hotel, changing gears like a guy suffering from asthma. And fat nimbus clouds are holding a kamkunji above, debating when to piss on Nairobi.

“Mike testing, testing, one, two, three,” says some guy in the church upstairs. Soon they will start pouring buckets of cold prayer on us, as in, Jesus Christ, deliver those drunkards downstairs. I swear.

Klemo signals for another round from this new waitress he’s trying to square. He makes sure to flash his watch, a serious wall clock.

It’s early. The only other guys in the bar are two tables away. There is a fool over there loudly declaring Man U will beat Arsenal in the game this weekend.

“Let’s talk about something else,” I say, and knock my Tusker on their Tuskers, cheers. “How’s that mama of yours, Klemo?”

His face drops. Last week, his main chick found a suspect phone number in his pants pocket. The scars all over his face are exactly why I don’t date chicks who wear fake nails. Dangerous shit. I’ve pissed him off. Good thing Fat Toni and his potbelly are between us, to keep the peace. This guy seems to add more weight daily.

“Just finish this story fast,” says Klemo. “I want to talk some business with you guys.”

* * *

12:05. It’s not even lunchtime proper, but I am the only one in the office doing any work. Since eight, everyone else has been pushing papers, playing solitaire on their comps, and kick-starting the weekend. Brian and Carol, sitting behind me, haven’t stopped arguing about Goldenberg and who stole the money. I don’t know how many times Brian has said Kamlesh Pattni was the mastermind, with Carol opposing him from all angles. He taps my shoulder and says, “Jaymo, kwani, you’re being paid extra? Learn to relax, man. It’s Furahi-day. Ebu, help me out with this woman.”

Carol, who would be superfine if she just never opened her mouth and showed those brown teeth, jumps on me with her argument: “Kamlesh is just a scapegoat. Where are the cases against people like Moi, for example?”

They can relax and talk politics, of course; they are old-timers on this job, and no one is giving them 24/7 CCTV. I say I don’t know, it’s not like I have a TV set to follow news anyway, but before my eyes are back on my comp, Mr. Kajenjo is shouting my name across the office.

Somehow I don’t panic. I walk over to the door of his glass office. He puts his hand on my shoulder. “James, how long has it been since you became permanent?”

Next to this guy, I’m both vertically and horizontally challenged. “Two weeks, boss,” I say. Imagine, I even smile.

He dims his eyes and squeezes my shoulder. “Is that why you’ve started sitting on your buttocks?”

He doesn’t even tell me what the issue is, that I messed up the job for our Westie client. He just starts slapping me with words. And when this guy decides to work on you, walai, it’s like you are a shirt he’s washing. He soaps you up proper with hard soap, he suguaz you, he wrings every drop of dignity out of you, and then he throws you on a line for everyone to see. The whole time he is demolishing me I’m thinking about this story Klemo likes to pull out when we are giving chicks vibes at the club: “You see Jaymo here, this guy was a ninja back on campus. One time a lecturer was thinking he’s a makmende, saying how he couldn’t believe any of us airheads had managed to get into Campo, and guess what Jaymo did? He just shouted, Shut up, kubaf!”

In front of the chicks, I like to maximize on that story, but honestly, I don’t remember anything like that ever happening. Then again, on campus I was mostly high on weed.

Kajenjo keeps shredding me and I keep bleating, “I’m sorry, boss. I’ll go fix it immediately, boss.”

That’s what tarmacking for two years does to you. After choking yourself with a tie and suit and displaying your certificates from office to office until your shoes run out of sole, you press delete on all that campus nonsense.

Kajenjo finishes with, “I’m giving you an hour to fix this, James, an hour. Otherwise . . .” Pause. Have you ever eaten bread and water for one year—breakfast, lunch, and supper? How about playing hide-and-seek with your landlord?

12:15. I remove myself from the office immediately and head toward Old Nation to find a number 23 mathree and get myself to Westie ASAP. Man, I’m shaking all over.

The city council has gone for lunch so hawkers have emerged and are in full-swing business on every centimeter of the sidewalks.

“Fifty bob. Bras, panties, everything fifty bob.”

Some guy grabs my arm. Ati, “Brother, buy something nice for your girlfriend.” I slice him with dagger eyes.

Seriously, do Nairobians leave their houses to come block the street, watching naked chickens on skewers going around and around in Kenchic and McFrys windows? And isn’t my stomach talking to me this whole time: Jaymo, why don’t you buy yourself a chicken quarter? A man can’t work properly without fuel, bana.

I tell myself mind over matter, mind over matter. It’s already 12:25.

But what do I see when I get to Old Nation? Empty number 23 mathrees packed bumper to bumper with their slide doors yawning. It’s like a vehicle bazaar: blinging chrome wheels, supersized posters of Eninem-Shakira-Tupac plastered on the bodies, and inside, four rows of seriously uncomfortable seats and wall speakers pulsating with the latest pop hits. The drivers are sleeping in their front seats and the kangees are yawning, eating, fighting, and doing everything except trying to fill mathrees with passengers. The only ones working are this pair next to the first mathree in the line. They are shuffling words like pastor and translator in a Pentecostal church: “Westie (ten bob), Kangemi (twenty bob). Westie (ten bob), Kangemi (twenty bob). Get in we go (chap, chap, we go).” At this rate, how long will it take to fill a fourteen-seater? Jesus!

This chaos is mixing up my brain. A beggar boy is shaking a tin with three coins at me. The blind man holding his shoulder says, “Saidia maskini.” Honestly, I feel for this guy. Nairobi is hard. If this wasn’t Tom Mboya Street, I would contribute a ten-bob at least, but there is no way I’m removing my wallet down here. You see people walking fast like their shadows are running away from them, but 50 percent of this crowd is just waiting to permanently borrow your wallet. The boy keeps shaking his tin, and I keep ignoring. I fix my eyes across Tom Mboya Street, at the signboards on the mathrees packed inside the Koja roundabout. Limuru. Kinoo. Banana. Kabete. All the places I don’t need to go to today.

A honk, a screech, someone’s buttocks slap the tarmac. Uuuwii. A mathree driver has almost hit one of the pedestrians trying to cross the Koja roundabout.

“Kubaf! Nyang’au!” shouts the karau trying to control the traffic swinging around Koja. He is walking through the traffic like black Moses, baton raised, white kofia on his head, reflector vest throwing flashes.

All this time, the sun is shaving my head and sweat is doing chromatography around my armpits. It’s already 12:35 and the two Westie kangees are trying to smooth-talk me to board their mathree. Ati, “The other passengers are on the way.” And my name is Michael Jackson!

Then, a mathree headed to Kinoo shoots out of the Koja roundabout and cuts in front of the Westie mathrees, its kangee shouting, “One person, forty bob!”

These are the moments I think weed really pulverized my brain. How had I not thought of taking a mathree going to Kinoo or Kabete or Kangemi or a million other places on Waiyaki Way and getting off at Westie? I elbow some guy out of the way and climb in.

Bad, bad idea.

First, the only empty seat is on the back row, between this big guy and a high schooler in some ugly uniform, right where your head bangs on the roof when the driver decides to fly over bumps. Second, anywhere past Westie is up-country, so people are acting up-country-ish, i.e., there are two smelly chickens staring at me from under one of the seats and a gunia of cabbages rests squarely between me and the empty seat. Third: I ask myself, Jaymo, why are three guys wearing heavy-

duty jackets in this heat? And look at the way they’ve planted themselves strategically in this mathree. There is the big guy in the back row, another guy with a square head in the third row from where he can put the kangee in a nice chokehold, and the third guy, sitting in the first row behind the driver, is concentrating very hard on a newspaper, yesterday’s.

I tell myself, Jaymo, here, just subtract yourself. See, last month, Fat Toni’s older brother was in a mathree on Ngong Road when three thugs with guns diverted the mathree to the Ngong Forest. Those thugs cleaned everyone out. Fat Toni’s bro made it home in socks and boxers. And here I am, carrying the 20K phone I bought only last weekend. But before I can backtrack, the kangee, who is being clobbered by Westie kangees for diverting their passengers, jumps in and slaps his hand on the roof.

I say, “Boss, let me get off.”

“You see what they have done to me,” complains the kangee. Someone’s whole hand is stamped on his face.

The driver steps on the accelerator and I have no choice but to climb over the sack and two chickens and plant myself in the back row.

“Then put me down when we hit traffic,” I tell the guy.

The high schooler twists her lips at me. Here I am, trying to create some space between me and the big thug, but the chick won’t move even an inch. I push her with my shoulders and ignore the teeth-kissing and murmuring.

The big thug is inspecting me thoroughly and I am hoping he can see my shirt collar is frayed and my shoes have known a hard life. At this point it’s between fire and fire. Getting off and finding another mathree will eat up my time, but getting hijacked . . .

Now, here is the thing about Nairobi: every time I’m going to Westie, the karaus at the Globe Cinema roundabout are experimenting with the best ways to create a traffic jam: Let’s stop traffic from Murang’a Road for five minutes and then traffic from Tom Mboya for ten minutes. But not today, when I actually need a jam. Today, Tom Mboya Street is wide open all the way to the Globe Cinema—buildings are flying past the mathree and the cinema is coming closer and closer. The driver is feeling happy with his life. He tunes the mathree radio to K___ FM, landing us right on Usher going, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

The high schooler decides even her, she can sing, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

The big thug coughs and I can feel him eyeing her through me. He spits out the window. Man, this stress is not good for my health.

I almost shout Hallelujah! when I see one of the karaus at the Globe roundabaout raising his hand and stepping onto the road to stop vehicles coming from our side. I am thinking, Now I can get off, but then our kangee is announcing, “If there is anyone who hasn’t buckled their seat belt, you are getting arrested alone.”

Ah, shit. We are going to stop right in front of those karaus. Forget getting off this mathree. I start looking for my seat belt. The one I find refuses to go into my socket. Turns out the high schooler has somehow managed to tie my belt. I say, “Excuse me, you have my belt.”

She shakes her head. Just shakes that head with the eyes wide apart like a sheep. Meanwhile, one of the karaus is walking around vehicles and looking in through the windows. So I force her belt into my socket and hope the karau doesn’t notice. The first and last time I was at the Central Police Station (weed plus fighting in a club), I came out with broken ribs. But if I touch this chick, she will start screaming and people will descend on me with their fists: Young man, what are you doing to an under-eighteen?

The karau nods at the driver and walks around the mathree, tapping its body with that black stick that traffic karaus always carry around (is it for beating people or what?). Where my heart is at this point, don’t even ask. Half of my brain is thinking, What if I get caught? The other half is thinking, What if he notices the thugs and radios the Flying Squad so they can come spray bullets into everything and everyone?

The karau reaches the back row window and lifts the rim of his kofia. “Habari yenu,” he says, and it’s a shock ’cause I can’t remember a karau ever greeting me. He continues tapping his stick on the mathree, goes around and ends up at the window next to the kangee, where he shakes the kangee’s hand. And we are off again.

“You see that,” says the big thug, and I agree with my head even though I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be seeing. He starts lecturing me about how things have become bad in Kenya since the Moi days. “Now everyone is eating bribes, left, right, center.”

And I am stuck there pretending to care, because the kangee shakes his head when I ask to get off.

“Boss, wait until University Way. That’s the next stop,” he says, starting to collect fares.

A drop of sweat meanders down my back. It’s now 12:43, but of course, this day can get worse, much, much worse. My phone starts ringing. People are looking at me, wondering why I am not answering it; I am looking at them, stone-faced. Do they know how long I took to save 20K and buy this thing? After four rings it goes silent. The radio presenter breaks in. “You are listening to K___ FM, entertainment all the time. This is ___, helping your lunch go down smoothly. And the question of the hour is, should we have a Kenyan national dress?”

The big thug is now shaking his finger at the speaker on the wall of the mathree. “All these problems in this country and this is the only thing they can talk about? Bure kabisa.”

When my phone starts ringing again, he says, “Si you pick that phone?”

I fish it out, planning to kill Klemo or Fat Toni if it’s one of them. Kajenjo’s secretary says, “Hello? James? Mr. Kajenjo would like you to come back to the office.”

My lips unzip in a Colgate smile. “The issue is resolved?”

“The client has canceled our contract.” She hangs up.

The high schooler now thinks she is Beyoncé: “Tonight, I’ll be your naughty girl . . .”

And the kangee is waving the two hundreds, five hundreds, and 1K notes he has collected and folded over his index finger. “Where do you people expect me to get change for all these?”

I am feeling dizzy. Contract. Canceled.

“Deree, ebu pause at that Shell I get change,” says the kangee to the driver. He signals me to start moving forward so I can get off, but now I don’t know what to do. Going back to the office means I am 100 percent fired. I check my watch: 12:50.

I give myself a quick pep talk: Jaymo, these guys may not be thugs at all. Stay on the mathree, bana. Grow some balls and get to this client ASAP.

The kangee wants to shoot me with his finger when I hand him my full fare. “Boss, is something wrong with that head? Mara, you’re getting off; mara, you’re staying.”

I have a good answer for this fool, but first I need to get to Westie. We swing around the St. Paul’s Church roundabout but before we hit Museum Hill, the high schooler has unleashed her lunch—fries and sausage in a Kenchic bag. And she starts chewing loud enough for me to imagine her tongue rolling the fries and sausage into bolus at the back of her throat. I’m seriously not feeling well, but the square-head thug in the third row is complaining about how much change he has received. Didn’t the kangee say the fare is thirty bob?

The kangee is taking no nonsense. “Town to Kinoo, thirty bob? Those are jokes.”

Spittle lands on my face from the right. “Thievery. You people are the ones killing this country. You said thirty bob.”

And now, people who already received their change are remembering very loudly that the fare is thirty bob. I watch the thug in the first row carefully folding up his newspaper. He slides it under his jacket and turns to look at the other two thugs. It’s obvious he is the boss here, the way he is no-smiles, calm. His hand is still inside the jacket. I watch that hand. My heart is beating like a Chuka drum. Ngu, ngu, ngu. I know what’s about to happen.

* * *

“Wait, wait,” Klemo cuts into my story, literally, with his hands. “That makes no sense at all. First, what is a high schooler doing in a mathree at twelve, one, instead of being at school? Second, why would anyone hijack a mathree to Kinoo? To steal chickens?”

And that’s not even the weird part of this story. I need another Tusker. The waitress swings her hips as she comes over and Klemo licks his lips. He really thinks he’s taking this one somewhere?

I take a sip of the Tusker, for strength. They won’t believe me, but I just say it: “I’m focusing on the thug in front, waiting for a gun to appear, but then I hear a sound on my left, a bleat. The high schooler is bleating like a goat, and on top of that, I look down and she has goat legs.”

Klemo is laughing the spects off his face. “Jaymo, seriously, just stop. Where did you get this story?”

Fat Toni has folded his arms over his potbelly. This is his thinking mode. “As in, Legs. Of. A. Goat?” he asks.

Klemo slaps the table as he laughs harder.

I don’t know why I am telling them this story at all.

Imagine this: We get to Westie and I find myself alighting the mathree, following the goat girl like a zombie, with zero control over my body. I can hear words coming out of my mouth, begging people for help, but it’s like my voice is outside my body, far away. Of course, no one helps.

And the chick isn’t a chick anymore. She explodes out of the uniform and becomes this animal, covered in black, shiny hair. Hips materialize on the sides of her body, as in those giant-size madiabas that move out of sync with the mamas who carry them. I know today is my day; I have met the devil; I’m finished. When she checks on me with a glance over her shoulder, she is smiling and her lips are red, that scary red that makes chicks look like vampires. Walai, now she is bending the space around her: buildings, roads, people. I don’t feel well, majamaa. I think I have vomited. I think I am praying. Forget the fact that I haven’t seen the door of a church since before campus.

And then suddenly we are in some forest. Don’t ask me how. All I know is I am feeling seriously cold, like to the bone. It’s nighttime somehow, and the chick/woman/thing is glowing. She stops, and I know this the moment she will kill me.

“You will taste good,” she says. She opens her mouth, her big, black hole of a mouth, and goes for my head. Her teeth dig in, crushing my brains. I scream. (You don’t remember you’re a man when someone is eating you, bana.)

Next thing I know, I am in Kinoo and the kangee is preparing to slap me: round two. “This is not a bedroom. You don’t have a bed in your house?” he asks.

This is all very funny to Klemo. He is almost falling off his chair with laugher. Tears are making rivers down his face. The fala.

“Let me guess: when you checked your pockets, you didn’t have your phone or your wallet,” says Fat Toni.

The pain of thinking about that phone is too much. 20K gone just like that. Plus the 1K I had for surviving this week, my ID and ATM card (although there is nothing but air in my bank account).

When Klemo is done laughing, he claps me on the shoulder. “Sorry, bro. That’s life in Nairobi. At least you didn’t get hurt. Say thanks to God.”

Part of me knows I was drugged in the mathree. There was no chick/woman/thing trying to eat me; part of me is impressed with these Nairobi thugs and their methods, like how did they drug me; and part of me is scared shitless because that chick/woman/thing was too real. I sip my Tusker to push it all down.

For some minutes we are all quiet. We listen to the Man U fool two tables away insisting that the score this weekend will be Man U 6, Arsenal 0; that Ferguson is greater than Wenger; Wayne Rooney should be footballer of the year. Serious verbal diarrhea. Then the volume on the TV goes up, and I see the waitress pointing at it with the remote. Seven o’clock news. Some political activist is giving a speech: “It is the youth of this country who suffer the most because of corruption . . .”

Man U guy whistles at the waitress. “Woman, are you okay in the head? You think we came here to listen to politics? Put SuperS . . .”

I don’t know why, but I hate this guy like a problem. Maybe it’s the five bottles of Tusker I have downed. Or maybe it’s remembering what happened at the client’s when I finally made it there two hours later, groggy and with a headache the size of a hot-air balloon; how much I had to beg to get that contract back; how I kneeled before that boss lady. Maybe it’s having to walk all the way back to town to get another shredding from Kajenjo, plus a warning letter from HR. Or maybe I just need someone to hate right now.

“Kubaf, shut up!” I shout.

Eight pairs of eyes zoom in on me. Man U guy is already getting out of his chair. “You, nyang’au, what did you say?”

“You are a total kubaf!”

Aah, now this feels right. It’s been a seriously long time since my fist connected with a face.