In the last novel Makena and her mother had read together, orphaned boy wizard Harry Potter had used an Invisibility Cloak whenever he wished to disappear. In Nairobi, none was required. Twenty-four hours on the streets without access to a bathroom and clean clothes was all that it took for a girl to become a gutter rat and join the six hundred thousand-strong ranks of Mathare’s unseen.
That’s what the woman selling iced buns on the street corner called her – a rat. She eyed the bloodstain on Makena’s sweatshirt and implied worse.
‘I didn’t steal the money,’ Makena informed her crossly as the vendor took her damp, crumpled bills with distaste. ‘My mama gave it to me. She’s a science teacher, you know.’
And for a minute she could almost believe that her mother was still a science teacher and would be along as soon as she was done with her lessons.
The part about her mother giving her the money was true. It had been intended for Shani, to help with Makena’s upkeep during her original six-and-a-half-day stay. Shani had refused it so Makena had hidden it in the pouch for valuables at the bottom of her backpack, ready to return to her mama when she came home. But Betty never did.
Scratching through Makena’s belongings on that first, awful day in Isiola, Priscilla had somehow missed the money. Within the hour Makena had transferred it beneath a paving stone in the garden, for safe-keeping. There it had stayed until Priscilla evicted her from the house.
The morning had not got off to the best start. Being mistaken for rubbish had a way of draining one’s confidence. But it cheered Makena to think that the cash her mother had intended to help her was finally helping her, just when she needed it most.
Nearly two days had passed since her last proper meal, longer if she considered that her breakfasts and lunches at her uncle’s house had consisted of bread and jam alone. She was ravenous. She did not intend to waste the money, but as she’d be on the streets for another day at most, after which she’d come up with a plan, she treated herself to a good breakfast.
She came away with two iced buns, two Cokes, a bottle of water, a banana and two vegetable sambusas. It was such a grand haul she could hardly carry it. All she had to do was find a place to enjoy everything away from prying eyes.
Her wild flight through the storm had got her thoroughly lost. In daylight it was apparent she was in what her parents would have termed a ‘bad area’. It was far too close to Mathare Valley for comfort. Driving through Nairobi, her father had always taken detours to avoid the slum that sprawled over two kilometres. Makena had only seen it twice, through a shut window, her car door firmly locked.
Both times she’d been conflicted. Part of her was riveted with sad horror at the crush of rusting shanties that walled in the squalor as effectively as any fortress. The other half found it too hard to bear. That was the half that usually won. She’d avert her eyes as they swept by one of Africa’s largest slums.
Now its tragic skyline was barely ten minutes’ walk away. A ribbon of smoke twisted into the blue above it.
Makena hoped that her breakfast would give her the strength to jog the five kilometres back to downtown Nairobi. Or she could take a Matatu Madness taxi. Just as she was considering it, one did an illegal U-turn in front of her. It mounted the pavement, nearly mowing down Makena and a woman selling peanuts. The driver leaned on his horn, as if it was their fault for being there. He accelerated crazily away, his crammed-in passengers staring wide-eyed from the rear window.
Makena nixed the Matatu idea at once. She’d rather walk to Nairobi on blistered feet. More chance of arriving alive. Strange how her survival instinct had kicked in. At her uncle’s house, she’d spent every other minute wishing she were dead. Now she wanted to delay that day for as long as possible.
The roads around Mathare overflowed with music, grime and life. The sambusas were cold by the time Makena found a picnic spot. A market stall not currently in use had been left on a quiet side street. An aged, ripped green tarpaulin was slung over it, weighted down with stones.
Makena hovered until she was briefly alone, then scooted under it. Beneath the cart it was clean and rather pleasant. She spread out a paper bag and laid out the iced buns, sambusas, banana and Cokes. She bit into an iced bun.
‘Are you going to share that or hog it all to yourself?’
Makena almost choked.
An albino girl in a floppy hat leaned out of the shadows.
Makena recoiled. It’s not that she didn’t know about albinism. There’d been a girl in her class with the condition. Her parents were as black as Makena’s but Mama had explained that albinism occurred when a rogue gene blocked the enzyme involved in the production of melanin – ‘the body’s paint palette’. The result was soft pink skin, a dusting of white-gold hair, and faded blue eyes.
Pigment aside, the girl at school had been no different to Makena or anyone else, but most of the children had ignored her. Some were mean to her because she didn’t fit in and others shut her out because of superstitions that she wasn’t quite human or that touching her would infect them with illness or turn them white. Makena had refused to sit beside the girl but not because she was an albino. To her, skin was just skin.
‘Whether a person has stripes, spots or is as colourful and shiny on the outside as a butterfly, isn’t important,’ Mama had often said. ‘It’s what’s underneath that counts. Are they courteous to others and kind to those who are weaker or less fortunate than themselves? Are they loyal to their friends? Do they stand up for what is right?’
Makena felt the same way. When she reeled away from the girl beneath the cart she was really recoiling from a shameful memory – the memory that she too had rejected the albino girl at school for the worst possible reason: because it was easier to follow the crowd.
She stuck out her hand. ‘I’m Makena. Sure you can share my breakfast. If I eat all of this by myself I’ll pop. I think my eyes were bigger than my stomach.’
The girl grinned and their palms met. ‘Good recovery. I could write a book on all the thoughts that went through your eyes just then. That’s okay. I’m used to it. I’m Diana, as in the Queen of the Supremes.’
‘Who?’
‘Diana Ross, Motown legend.’
In a strong, clear voice she sang a few lines from songs about morning heartaches, Monday blues and getting by even when there were clouds in the sky.
‘Heard of her but not the song,’ said Makena, handing her new associate a sambusa, an iced bun and a can of Coke.
‘Don’t you know anything?’
‘I know a lot. More than you, I bet. I like everyone from Rihanna and Freshlyground to Oliver Mtukudzi and One Direction.’
‘Who?’
‘Don’t you know anything, Diana?’
She giggled. ‘If we’re going to be friends, you’d better call me Snow. That’s my label around here.’
Makena was taken aback. ‘You don’t mind?’
‘Why not? Snow is cool and not just in temperature. I saw it in a movie in the slum cinema once. These kids were rolling in it and building snowmen. It was beautiful.’
Makena found it surreal but also rather wonderful to be discussing snow with a stranger under a market cart, one flap of a yellow-billed Black Kite’s wing from Mathare.
‘I’ve seen real snow on Mount Kenya. It was from a distance, but the early-morning sun was on it and it was a gorgeous, sparkling pink. Last time he climbed it, Baba brought me some actual snow from the summit of Batian. That’s the highest of the three peaks. ’Course it had melted by the time it reached me but I didn’t mind. That’s what imagination is for. All I had to do was touch that jar and I’d be sitting on top of Batian in one second flat.’
It had been so many months since she’d allowed herself to think about the mountains she loved that even talking about them was a release.
Snow munched steadily through her feast, face enraptured. ‘Where’s your baba now?’
Pain filled Makena’s chest like a vial of poison. She had to force the words out. ‘He … he and my mama passed away unexpectedly. One week they were here, next they were … gone. My Aunt Mary too.’
‘What happened?’
Makena had a flashback of Priscilla reacting to the word ‘Ebola’ as if she were the Bubonic Plague in girl form. ‘I don’t want to say.’
‘Sure, whatever. But just so you know, in Mathare, there’s nothing new under the sun. How do you think the residents keep smiling? They arrive believing that whatever has happened to them is the worst thing in the whole world. Within hours they’ve learned the truth. Now they’re thinking: “Compared to my new neighbour, I am truly fortunate.”
‘There’s this girl I know whose parents were chopped to pieces in front of her in South Sudan.’
‘Chopped to pieces?’ Makena put down her bun, appetite gone.
‘Uh-huh. Her story is tough to hear but there’s always worse. You should see the child soldiers. They’ve escaped from Al-Shabaab or the Lord’s Resistance Army or Boko Haram. Most are still babies but they shiver and shake and forget their own names like old men because they can’t get the pictures of the terrible things they’ve seen and done out of their heads.’
She opened a can and took a long swallow. ‘Famine, war, snakebite and malaria orphans, we’ve got them all. Then there are the Ebola orphans from Sierra Leone. We’ve been seeing more and more of those.’
‘It was Ebola,’ Makena burst out. ‘That’s what killed my mama and baba.’
Snow shrugged as if the Doomsday Germ was of no more consequence than the weather. ‘That’s life. Every now and then it springs a nasty surprise. That’s why there are always at least three magic moments every day, to make up for it.’
‘Are there?’ Makena was doubtful. In the four months since she’d been orphaned, she couldn’t recall a single one. The thought that there were thousands of children in more ghastly situations than hers brought her no comfort. Her own wounds were too raw. ‘Why three magic moments? Why not two or twenty?’
Snow counted them off on her fingers. ‘Sunrise and sunset, there’s a couple right there. If I wake up scared and hungry in Mathare and life doesn’t seem worth living if I’m stuck in the slum till I die, all I have to do is look up. The sun doesn’t care whether it’s shining on Mathare Valley or some gold skyscraper in the USA. It always brings its best costume to the party. Some sunrises take your breath away more than others but no two are the same. It’s like the dawn is saying, “If I can be bothered to show up and treat each morning as if it’s a fresh start, so can you.”’
‘How do you find the third magic moment?’ asked Makena.
‘It’s already there, waiting. You just have to keep an eye out for it. Same with the fourth, fifth or twentieth. You’re in one right now. Or I am, anyway.’
Makena was startled to find that she was too.
By lunchtime, Snow knew Makena’s entire life story. Makena, on the other hand, knew little about Snow and was still too shy to ask. But in the middle of a competition to see who knew the most lyrics to the most songs, Snow suddenly said: ‘You’re wondering about me, aren’t you? How I got here.’
‘You can tell me when you’re ready. I’m in no hurry.’
It was true. It was so long since Makena had had a friend to confide in that she was reluctant to leave the enchanted green space beneath the market cart to embark on the long, hot trek to Nairobi’s centre.
However, when Snow started speaking, she could no longer contain her impatience. ‘Begin at the beginning,’ she said eagerly.
But Snow started in the middle, when she was twelve years old, with her midwife mother taking her to the place where she’d been born: Sumbawanga in the Lakes region of Tanzania.
It was election time, one year ago. In Tanzania, each new day brought a fresh report of Persons with Albinism being hunted down like antelope and killed or mutilated to order by witch doctors or their clients or apprentices. Politicians and other officials seeking power believed that albino body parts brought luck or riches.
They were not alone. Fishermen kidnapped albinos for their hair. They wove it into their nets, believing it would bring a bigger catch. Miners ground up albino bones and buried the dust, convinced it would turn into diamonds.
‘Mama and Bibi, my grandmother, thought we’d be safest in our home village, away from the town where my mother worked in a clinic. We’d known these families all our lives. But on the first day the elders came to Mama and ordered her to dress me in black and leave me in a hut alone that night. They told her they wanted to perform a special blessing ceremony.
‘Mama knew right away that they planned to abduct me and maybe kill me. There are places in my country and in Malawi where the Tribe of Ghosts – that’s what they call us – are worth nothing alive. Dead, we can fetch as much as seventy-five thousand dollars. I’d sell a finger or a foot myself if I didn’t think I’d miss it.’
Makena was aghast. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing, much less that Snow was able to crack jokes about it.
‘What … what did your mama do?’
‘She told them she needed to go to a nearby shop to get some black items for me to wear. Then she disguised me and put me on a bus with Bibi. I was clinging to her, begging her to let me stay. It was the last time I ever saw her. Next we heard she was dead. Bibi smuggled me into Kenya. We got as far as Mathare Valley before her heart gave out. The slum was too much for her.’
Inwardly, Makena was sickened beyond words. Outwardly, she showed little reaction. She had the feeling that that’s how Snow coped, by making light of things.
Snow’s eyes were bright with hurt and fury. ‘She and Mama sacrificed their lives for me. One day I’m going to make them proud.’
Makena wanted to hug her but held back. ‘You will make them proud. I know you will.’
Snow bit into an iced bun. She spoke through a mouthful, spraying crumbs: ‘So where’s the jar now?’
‘What jar?’
‘Your jar of snow.’
‘Oh. The new people at my old house put it in the rubbish.’
‘Then you have to make it your mission to get another. Everyone has to have a mission. Without that, why would they get up in the morning – except to see the sunrise? That can be yours. One day you’ll fill a new jar with snow.’
‘It wouldn’t be same,’ Makena said sadly. ‘It wouldn’t be the snow Baba gave me.’
‘Tch! You wouldn’t survive two days in Mathare if you went around feeling sorry for yourself. In the slum, we kids are the rubbish. You have to look forward to a day when things will be different or you go mad. The gift your father gave you, why does it mean so much to you?’
‘Because he understood. He knew that there was nothing he could buy me from the mall – no music, clothes or even books – that would mean as much as snow he carried with his own hands from the summit of Batian. I’ll never forget it.’
‘If you’ll never forget it, then it’s not lost or broken. It’s in your heart for ever. That means you’re free to fill up another jar. Then you’ll have double the joy.’
Makena stared at Snow. She’d never met anyone like her. Her words were bubbles of light, floating between them.
A police siren banished their magic moment. The street erupted into chaos. A scream, yells and the whip-crack of bullets. Running feet swerved by. Something struck their cart with such force the tarpaulin fell off, exposing them.
Makena ducked behind the rusty sign she’d been using as a backrest. ‘What’s happening?’
Laidback Snow had gone. She was on high alert, watchful as a wolf.
‘Gang wars, that’s what, between the Taliban – they’re Luo, not the ones from Afghanistan, and the Mungiki, a Kikuyu sect. Some call them the Kenyan Mafia. They’re going head-to-head over who controls the chang’aa business.’
‘What’s chang’aa?’
‘Rocket fuel. That’s God’s honest truth. The gangs brew African moonshine out of molasses and millet or sorghum, then spice it up with jet fuel and battery acid. Sometimes they even use embalming fluid. You know, the stuff undertakers use to pickle bodies. It’s vile but there are plenty in Mathare who can’t get enough… Uh, we need to get out of here.’
She gripped Makena’s hand. ‘Now! This second, not yesterday.’
Makena tugged away. ‘I’ve got to get back to the city centre. I’m not afraid of the police. I’ve done nothing wrong.’
‘You think they’ll believe that?’
Two vans with flashing blue lights screamed past their cart. Tyres squealed. Riot police with shields and batons poured out. Muscular young men, buzzing like hornets, were massing at the end of the street.
Snow gripped Makena’s hand and refused to let go. ‘If we stay here, best-case scenario we’ll be beaten, shot by mistake or taken away to the cells. Come with me to Mathare.’
‘I’m not going to the slum,’ cried Makena with real fear. ‘No way.’
‘You got any better ideas?’
‘No.’
‘Then run.’