five

       jessica

My foot slips. Black, thick mud—please, let it just be mud—coats the canvas of my shoe and I cringe as I feel it seeping through. A squeal envelops my throat, seeking a way out, but I push it back down, clenching every muscle to keep from shrieking “ewwwwww!” Kennedy looks at me, one eyebrow raised, waiting. His look clinches my determination. I don’t want to be what he expects, what I know I am. “Need help?” he asks—offering his hand to steady me as we cross this sewage river by skipping from stone to stone. The surface area of most of these stones is barely big enough to hold a footprint. “I’m fine,” I mutter. When he turns his back to continue crossing, I desperately shake my foot. I say a quiet prayer to pull it together.

We ascend a steep hill; Kennedy is fast and nimble, and I struggle to keep up. We arrive at the top and turn back around in the direction we’ve come from. My breath catches; beneath this open hill lies all Kibera. I’ve never seen Kibera from a vantage point other than being in the middle of it, crushed by it. From up here, I can see its tight corners and weaving pathways. There are so many rows of houses they look almost miniature. I see clothing hanging on lines to dry. There is something intimate about trousers washed so many times by hand that the color and fabric has worn thin in the middle. I look away.

It seems surreal that this is now my temporary “home.” I steal a glance at Kennedy. He is quiet, his eyes fixated on the landscape below. I follow his gaze and smile. It lands on his house, his own tiny world in the middle of all this chaos. I can’t help but wonder what my mother would think.

We walk from the edge of the hill toward the soccer pitch—I’ve never seen earth so richly red before. “GOAL!” There is a blur of dust and commotion as team members run to congratulate the tall girl who scored. This whole area is an empty space, bordering Lang’ata, which has become the slum’s soccer field. It’s so open, I breathe in and out deeply, noticing the space my body takes up once outside of Kibera’s tight confines.

“This is where the SHOFCO soccer teams practice,” Kennedy explains.

I watch transfixed as they nimbly cross the field in bare feet.

“They are so good!”

“I used to be pretty good myself,” Kennedy jokes. “And the SHOFCO teams—they are Kibera’s champions!”

As the team sees Kennedy approaching, practice comes to a halt and the players swarm him. In the rush, I move off to the side and watch Kennedy high-five and fist-bump his admirers. He is clearly at home in the midst of this chaos as he calls out jokes and encouragement and mimics a soccer drill to much hooting and hollering. He then motions me back and tries to introduce me to forty players who haven’t stopped shouting things they want Kennedy to hear.

Kennedy stands in front of the group, speaking in animated Swahili, gesturing and clapping his hands with laughter. I look at this group of boys and girls watching him with rapture. They are drinking in his words of encouragement and hope, laughing and exclaiming in what can only be described as gentle devotion. I watch him too, the ease with which he engages them, the genuine warmth in his smile, the determination in his eyes. It strikes me very suddenly that he was born for this; leadership comes to him as naturally as walking.

I talk to a few of the players as Kennedy takes the coach by the shoulder and walks away with him, deep in conversation. The players ask me where I am from, and what I’m doing here. When I say that I’m volunteering with SHOFCO, several shout their enthusiasm. Others ask me what the differences are between Kenya and America, but before I can answer, Kennedy comes up behind me and guides me away from the excited chaos.

“Come, I want to show you something,” he says.

We walk along the perimeter of the bluff in silence. I can still feel the joy and exuberance from the soccer field.

We arrive at a place overlooking Kibera. There are trees and rocks, and we’re beside a river.

“This is my private place,” Kennedy says. “I come here to meditate, to think—to get away from it all. I used to bring books up here. Marcus Garvey when I was mad at how the world treated me. Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King when I was searching for inspiration. This is where I had the idea to start SHOFCO.”

There is a sense of peace up here, and I can easily picture Kennedy contemplating the challenges he left down below.

“I’ve never brought anyone here before.”

Before I can respond, unsure if he even wants me to, Kennedy turns away and sits down on one of the rocks. He knits his eyebrows and grows serious, transported by his thoughts, and suddenly it’s as though I’m no longer here. I sit down a bit of a distance away—I don’t know how to read him, but something tells me that even though he brought me here, he’s not inviting me to come too close. He is so mercurial. It’s amazing how quickly he shifts from this jovial, larger-than-life visionary to closed and quiet, almost brooding. I don’t want to overstep my yet-to-be-solidified welcome. He is quiet for such a long time, I start to wonder if I should leave, and if I can even make it back on my own.

“Do you want to know how I first knew I was different?” he suddenly asks, without meeting my gaze.

“Yes.”

“My mother was pregnant with me for fourteen months.”

I burst out in astonished laughter. “That’s absolutely impossible!”

He looks at me, indignant.

“It’s true. Even the village seer says it’s true. I was a unique baby. I was in her womb for fourteen months! My mom always told me growing up that was the reason I was different. My brain had more time to cook.”

I laugh again and look at Kennedy, shaking my head. He isn’t joking but seems to be enjoying my amusement. I try to argue that this is scientifically impossible, how his mom would have died, but he dismisses me with a wave of his hand.

“Not everything works the way you wazungu think. In my tribe, we believe in things that you cannot see or understand. Not everything can be explained.”

He will not hear my rational scientific arguments, so I have no choice but to compromise: “Well, I bet to her it did feel like a really long time.”

“You know what else the village seer taught me? How to read messages written in the palms. Let me read yours,” he says with a gleam in his eye. The warm, open Kennedy is back.

I scoot near enough to him to hold my hand out for his inspection. Apparently, I have interesting palms—instead of two broken lines I have one line that goes straight across, one long unbroken crease on both hands. Kennedy takes my outstretched palm. His thumb traces my line and he looks up in question. I explain that it’s called a simian crease—and only 5 percent of the population has it on both hands.

When I was a child, I thought it made me unique. My brother retorted that it wasn’t anything of the kind—it only made me more closely related to apes. My mother said that it can reflect a chromosomal abnormality. I always thought it could be associated with the circumstances around my dramatic birth. I was born full term, but weighed only four pounds and twelve ounces. My mom’s placenta was unusually small—so I didn’t get all the nutrition I needed. In delivery, my heart rate started dropping as the umbilical cord, wrapped three times around my neck, tightened. When doctors realized what was happening they rushed my mom in for an emergency C-section. Luckily, they got me out, untangling the cord in time.

I tell Kennedy all this and then stop abruptly, looking up to find him listening intently, his eyes still focused on my palm.

“So you could have died too,” he whispers, as if this is significant.

“See anything there?”

Kennedy is fixated on one line that deviates from my crease, forming a v-shape in my palm.

“I’m looking, it takes time,” he shushes me.

A nervous giggle escapes my lips, and Kennedy glares at me, impatient.

“Wait! There is something there. This one continues; the other goes another way. It means there is a choice in your future, and soon, the lines separate near the beginning. And whichever way you go, it won’t only impact you, but many others.”

I don’t believe much in palm readings, or seers, or things that can’t be explained, but it’s clear to me that Kennedy does, so I try to keep from rolling my eyes.

I pull my hand back. “That sounds to me like a load of crap.”

“Sometimes I see things when I am up here.” His look is so direct, so unflinching, I feel my face flush.

“I’m going to spend the rest of my life with you,” he says matter-of-factly and then, as if he’s merely said he’s going to the grocery store, he walks away with a spring in his step, down the edge of the hill, leaving me behind.

“You’re out of your mind! You don’t even know me!” I call after him, but he doesn’t so much as turn.

Every Saturday morning, I sit frantically typing, trying to shape the scenes and exercises from the previous week of rehearsal into a cohesive play before my laptop battery runs out. The young people in the theater project amaze me. When we started working on the play, I asked each member to write down the five most important experiences in his or her life, as scenes for us to theatrically explore. I am blown away by what they share: being arrested for simply being poor, put in jail and forced to do hard labor until someone bailed them out, being tortured by the police, girls selling their bodies for money and getting pregnant. They talk about taking drugs to escape life, the death of parents, friends killing themselves (taking poison, burning themselves to death), hopelessness, joblessness, rape. We also talk about their hopes for the future—their dreams for equality, an end to tribalism, and the differences between the stereotypes of Kibera and the realities.

Kennedy interrupts my rhythmic striking of the keypad.

“Let’s walk somewhere,” he says. I push my notebooks and laptop to the side and scramble to find a sweater. He’s so busy, time to just talk with him is precious. I hurry to catch up. Today, he doesn’t seem in the mood for stories and so we walk in silence. It is easy to walk alongside him, each of us thinking our own thoughts and sharing the afternoon’s glow. We pass Olympic, a big church on the outskirts of Kibera, and a car wash run by some enterprising young men, until we arrive at an iron-sheet structure bigger than any inside the slum.

“This is a local favorite,” he says, and I read a sign that says GARAGE PUB.

“Have you ever had nyama choma?” Kennedy asks.

“What’s that?”

“It’s roast meat, a very good Kenyan specialty.”

Inside we sit down at a plastic table on the back patio. He calls the waiter over and places an order for the nyama choma, adding two Tuskers, a Kenyan beer. His phone rings, and with an apologetic look he picks up. The tone of his voice shifts, and I immediately get the feeling that it’s a girl on the other end. I study his voice, looking for a sign of who she is to him, suddenly realizing how little I know about him. His charm is so compelling; he’s skilled at making people feel like he’s letting them in more than he really is. Underneath there are many closely protected layers.

He excuses himself, walking to the back of the restaurant, phone clutched to his ear. I study his posture, his gestures, hoping to glean something from them. When he starts to walk back to our table, I pretend to be very interested in the label on my Tusker.

“My boyfriend, he’s been in the Peace Corps in Zambia,” I say. The lie just rolls off my tongue. I want to put a barrier between us, something that makes it safe for me, given what a mystery he is. I look in his eyes, and I can see he knows what I’m doing.

“When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?” he asks.

“An actress, or director. To be successful in the theater. What about you?”

“A priest,” he says with total seriousness. “That changed later on. But I saw the priests living what looked to me like a nice life; they were the ones who had food to eat, driving in cars.”

I am learning so much about his world, while he knows nothing of mine. I feel a perplexing desire for him to be able to see my world too. I want him to grasp how different it looks and to help me map my place in all of this.

I tell him about where I grew up in Denver, the inviting family homes with garages and swings outside, with a hulking tree in the center of our lawn like an anchor. In our driveway, my brother, Max, and I imprinted our handprints into the cement when we were five. We’d moved from a small house on a bad block that I don’t remember, except the green dinosaur cookies we used to get from the nearby bakery. At Christmastime the neighborhood came alive with lights, and one year my parents put funky household reading lamps in flower planters outside our house—“Solstice chandeliers,” they called them.

Kennedy nods politely, but I can see with disappointment that he can’t picture these scenes. While we are so comfortable together, I realize that we may never truly be able to understand each other’s worlds. That might be too much to expect. I have pictures with me of my house, my dogs, my family, in a small pink photo album my mom put together, but I don’t think I will show him.

My childhood was surrounded by all the comforts of upper-middle-class life in the Rocky Mountain West, and I never knew, until I came here, that my background could be something to apologize for. That these privileges were so randomly given to me, while other people were just as randomly denied. I’d always known my family was lucky; it wasn’t until college that I understood that in fact I was privileged. Privilege has begun to feel like an inescapable infection. I carry its implications with me, and my desire to understand how it works only seems to underscore it.

He abruptly changes the subject, interrupting my thoughts: “How old do you want to be when you get married?”

“I’m not sure I ever want to get married. Since I was a little girl I’ve never really believed in the idea of it. I want a career, a life of my own. Love is a distraction; you get so tangled up in someone else that you forget what you want for yourself.”

“In my culture, I’m old not to be married. Twenty-three is old enough that my mom has stopped asking me; she’s given up.”

“Are you going to get married?” I ask carefully.

“Not anytime soon. I still feel like I am young. I have other things I’m focused on. My work takes a lot of energy. A lot of ladies and even their parents have tried to get me to say kuisha, ‘the end.’” He laughs. “A Kamba girl even made me a love potion. Kambas are famous for their love charms.”

“Have you ever been in love? Not charm induced?” I ask, joining in his laughter.

“No,” he says, his tone suddenly serious. “I want a partner. In Kibera, women defer to their husbands. They wash the clothes, cook, and don’t argue. That’s not what I want.”

“So you want someone to fight with?” I tease, enjoying the slow, confident smile that spreads across his face.

“Not fight—challenge,” he teases back. “Have you ever been in love?” he asks.

“I don’t know. I’ve said I was before, but really, who knows what that is?”

“I think it’s being able to ‘spend’ for someone. Being able to give to the world outside because of them.”

The sincerity in his reply shifts the balance. I can’t think of a clever retort.

“I always think I’m too young for anything like that. I feel like there is so much left to live and see, and I plan to make the most of it. No strings attached.” I meet his gaze and hold it for a moment before looking away.

“Me too,” he replies. “I have much to do in this world. Except for you. I’d say kuisha for you in a second.” I can’t tell if he is serious or joking—and the prospect both excites and terrifies me.

“Haraka haraka haina baraka,” I reply—a Swahili proverb I picked up from Kennedy a few days ago that means “hurry, hurry has no blessing.”

He cheekily replies, “Chelewa chelewa uta pata mwana si wako!”

“What does that one mean?”

“‘Delay, delay, and the child will no longer be yours,’” he says with a mischievous grin. We both dissolve into laughter.

In the SHOFCO rehearsals, things are moving slowly. Some of the girls still don’t say much. I’ve tried everything I can think of to make them feel comfortable, safe. But the only progress we’ve made is that now instead of one-word answers I get two. Isaac, Zadock, and of course Kennedy have each brought in two stories to share—each day we brainstorm and everyone goes home to draft something to bring in the next day. After Isaac finishes his first sharing, I look at Sadie, Amina, Regina, Deb, and Dorothy and ask so hopefully that it’s pathetic: “Anyone else want to say anything? Someone new for a change?”

They avoid my gaze. Isaac finishes his second sharing, and as Zadock is about to stand for his turn, I make one more plea. “Hold on for a moment, Zadock—anyone else who hasn’t tried yet?” Silence.

Dalton offers, “You know we all made the contract together.”

He points to the big piece of paper posted on the wall that lists the agreement everyone has made. Most of it is ordinary—Don’t come late (no one seems to follow that), Be respectful. One is unique, which Dalton himself, a very articulate and poetic young man, contributed.

“See—it says Try to be private in public.”

“You came up with that line, Dalton,” Isaac teases.

“No one has to speak if they don’t want,” I say, resigned. “Zadock?”

“Wait.” A small voice.

I spin around and see that Deb has her hand in the air.

“I wrote a story. I’ll tell it,” she says quietly. Deb is stocky and beautiful, her features very sweet and open.

“Great, great, great, okay, um, great, Deb, everyone.”

“Well, this is a true story about my cousin. Last week she killed herself by taking five sachets of rat poison. I wrote this kind of short play from my imagination about her perspective. Do I just stand here and say it?”

“You can do whatever feels comfortable: sit, stand, whatever you like,” I say quietly.

“I’ll read it.”

I nod encouragingly.

“So I’m pretending that I am cooking over the stove. Okay.” She takes a deep breath, and we all nod.

“When I was a child, I never imagined that married life would be like this. I imagined it differently. Happy. This is my husband’s home, but I do not live in it with him. He has been away for years. I must take care of the home, my four children, and make do on the little he sends. I wake each day feeling the shame of not being able to provide for my children, so some time ago I began to sell my body. Still, there is never enough for clothes, food, school. How I long for the days when I was a child. I used to go hunting for birds of the air with my friends, and so I thought of myself like a god, and I know that the birds also thought so about me because whenever I saw one of their kind I would release stones to bring them down for a game popular among the kids called cha mama na cha baba kalongolongo. I know that even though I am taking the lives of birds away from them, some giant or someone higher than me is also hunting me, but luckily he misses the target every time. Not anymore. My life is too overwhelming to live. Five sachets of rat poison. That should be enough.”^*

The sound of children screaming in play outside seeps into the small room through the tin walls. The noise outside only amplifies the silence inside.

“Thank you, Deb, so much, for trusting us,” I say quietly, barely trusting that my voice will work. “That’s it for today. See you all tomorrow. As always, if anyone has any questions, feel free to ask.”

Usually this offer does not have many takers. But today Regina lingers as everyone else filters out the door. Regina has yet to say more than one word. She is thin and dark, her lips full and eyelashes beautiful. She wears a black headscarf every day. Once, the first week, when I asked her if she had enjoyed the day, she said yes and has not spoken since. She comes every day and sits silently with her knees drawn up to her chest, looking off to the side. Once everyone has gone she says, “Can I talk to you?”

“Of course,” I say, surprised. Kennedy catches my gaze, and I indicate that I’ll meet him outside.

“Not here; tonight. I will come to your place.”

“Okay. Do you know where Kennedy lives?” I ask hesitantly. She nods.

Kennedy and I walk down the path toward his house, both wrapped deep in our own thoughts. I trip over a few rocks, but we just keep walking past all the little shops with people gathered outside, the children playing in the garbage, and past the women cooking chapati on the side of the road. After a while he says: “You know what? No one says ‘mzungu, mzungu’ anymore. Look, no kids are even saying, ‘How are you? How are you?’ Have you noticed?”

I look around, and it’s true, no one is staring back. Kennedy and I are walking home, through the heart of Kibera, as if this is normal. Our eyes meet and we smile. As we approach the little cranny of mud and rocks that leads to our compound one little boy runs up to me chanting, “How are you? How are you?”

Kennedy shakes his head. “He must be new.”

I laugh so hard I have to stop walking.

Later as I am cooking the ugali to go with the meat that Kennedy has prepared, Regina knocks on our door. Kennedy signals to me that he will take over, I take off the kanga that I have tied around my waist as an apron and go outside. Regina takes my hand and leads me to some rocks outside of our compound, next to the river filled with garbage and polluted by waste. We sit across from each other, each gathering our skirts tightly to keep them out of the mud.

“I don’t have anyone to talk to,” she says with her eyes fixed on her feet.

“I’m a pretty good listener,” I offer slowly.

I wait for her to continue, and when she doesn’t, I gently touch her arm. She flinches. I let my fingers softly settle.

“My parents never got along. They separated before I can remember; we don’t divorce here like I hear you can in America. When I was twelve, I found a sponsor to help pay for my school. He paid my fees, and each month he would give me some little money for clothes and pads. I would hide them, but my two older sisters would beat me and take them. My mother abused me. She would refuse to let me go to school, telling me that I had to do the work. One day I came home from school and she was burning my things, so I went to my father to live with him.”

She pauses, and I don’t say anything, just nod, waiting for her to continue.

“When I moved in with my father, he began to sexually take advantage of me. When I was thirteen, I became pregnant with his child. I left, and with no place to go, I lived on the streets. I had the baby, a little boy, and my mama came and said that she would take my child but that she never wanted to see me again. When I tried to go and visit my son, they beat me until I went away. I stopped trying to visit. He’s five now. I can’t do anything to take him away from there because I can’t support him.”

A tear has stealthily leaked out of the corner of Regina’s eye. She swipes it away in a deft, practiced touch.

“I got involved with the wrong people to make ends meet. I had a boyfriend who was a thief, a gangster, but I didn’t know. I was at his house one night waiting for him when a mob came. They thought that because I was there, I must be a thief too. They burned down the house, took me outside, and stripped me naked.”

The words become choppy, stuck. She squeezes my hand and continues.

“They walked me naked around the slum and then beat me very badly with machetes. They burned my boyfriend to death in front of me. He was screaming, ‘Regina, Regina, you betrayed me.’ I was taken to the hospital, but they kicked me out after two days because no one would pay my bill. My mother came and told me that she wished that I had died. I wished so too. I became desperate and so became, became . . .”

“It’s okay,” I whisper, even though I know that it isn’t, that it might not ever be.

“I became a prostitute. Now I have three boyfriends, but none of them know. They give me some tiny money for food sometimes and places to stay. But they won’t use condoms. I’m afraid, I’m afraid that I have HIV. My breast hurts and look”—she takes my pointer and middle finger and touches them to her breast forcefully—“there is a lump. One of these men, he wants to take me to his place for three days and then he says that he will marry me. I don’t want to go, but I don’t know what to do.” She begins to shake, something deeper than a sob taking control of her body. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Shhh. Shhh.” I wrap my arms over her, awkwardly at first but then she folds crying onto my lap. “Shhh, shhh, it’s okay, it’s okay. We’ll figure it out. It’s going to be okay, it has to be okay.”

But really, I have no idea if it is or will be.

“What can I do to help? What is the first thing to do? What about your own place to stay that doesn’t depend on men, would that help?”

She nods.

“Okay, okay. If it’s okay with you, I need to talk to Kennedy.”

She nods quickly. “You can tell him all of it. I think I want to tell my story to the group.”

“You want to tell it to the group?”

“Yes. If I tell them, then I make it my story. I want to tell them, and I want them to turn around with their backs to me while I speak.”

“Okay, sure. We can do that. When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Okay. What will you do tonight? If I give you a little money, can you stay with a friend and maybe bring food?” She nods again.

“Thank you, thank you for listening.”

I think that perhaps she has told me this, trusted me with this, so that I can tell Kennedy, so that he will know what to do. I hope he will know what to do. I go back inside and sit quietly for a while, picking at my food. Slowly, I begin to share with him, until it all comes spilling out.

“She’s eighteen. I cannot believe that she is only eighteen,” I finish.

He makes a phone call to another girl in the theater group—Amina. She says that Regina can stay at her place. That she will go find her now and Regina will be safe. Kennedy and I talk late into the night about starting a sewing group for young mothers to earn a living making school uniforms, dresses, and doing other odd tailoring jobs. Eventually he falls asleep, but I can’t. Regina’s words keep running through my head, the memory of the lump I felt in her breast on my fingertips.

The next day, Regina stands in front of the group and tells her story. We all face the wall away from her, but I can hear her determination not to let her words be beaten by the tears. Afterward, in the silence Hadija stands up and without speaking switches places with Regina. She tells her story, which is all too similar and at the same time heartbreakingly different. Then Sadie, then Deb, and then Dorothy speak, each trading places with the person who has just finished. No one speaks in between.

Each had a child when her own childhood was still unfinished. Amina’s little girl is one and a half. Amina wants to become a cook or a dressmaker to take care of her daughter, but as of now does not have a way to earn a living. Sadie’s baby girl died at age one and a half. She wants to be a hairstylist, but for now sells marijuana and miraa (a local plant that produces a happy, sometimes hallucinogenic state). Deb has a daughter who is five and another who is seven. She wants to be a good mother. She does not have a job. Dorothy, whose baby girl is three years old, wants to become a secretary. Now, her only way to make a living is by trading her body. Each young woman said that she told her story today in order to get her body back. To reclaim and reenter her skin.

The next day Regina does not come to rehearsal. Frantic, I pull Kennedy outside.

“Where could she be? What do we do?”

He goes in and motions Amina to follow him out.

“Do you know where Regina is? Did she sleep at your place last night?” he asks.

“She did not come home.” He nods, thanks her, and tells her that she can rejoin the group, we will be right in.

“No, no, no, no!” I cry. “Where could she be? Do you think that she went with that man? What will happen to her? Can we find her? What do we do?”

“We wait.”

We go back in but I can’t concentrate. I end rehearsal early. Amina, Kennedy, and I set out to look. We ask everyone we can think of if they have seen her. No. No. No. A few days ago. No.

The next day I arrive early, hopeful that she will come, that yesterday something came up, that it was just a bad day but today will be okay. Everyone trickles in slowly; Amina arrives last and just shakes her head as she comes in.

The next day is the same. And the day after. And the day after that. No one has seen her. No one knows or is telling. “But we found her a place!” I say to Kennedy. “We had the idea of the sewing group. You talked to her—you told her that SHOFCO would help. We would have found a solution. I don’t understand,” I say helplessly.

He places his hand on my shoulder; its weight says it all. There is such a thing as too late.