“Mathee kaa square, niaje bana?” I am jolted back to the stuffy atmosphere by the unruly makanga. When did I become a mathee? Five years ago and new in the city, I would have almost spat at a tout who would have dared to call me sistee. It must be the 200 bob weave that Mama Karis from the salon insisted looked as good as new. “I washed it myself na nikapaka Dax”, she had assured me yester-evening as she sewed it into my overgrown perm. Now, I’m mathee, oh how I do miss being a sistee!

Outside, it’s still dark, blurry images of people rushing by. I glance at the matatu’s dashboard; the digital clock blinks 05:30.

“Kwani ni nini mamaa .. siukae poa! Kila mtu anataka kufika hiyo Nairobi moja tu”.

I heave myself two inches closer to the rusty matatu. “Another one from Crater Automobiles,” declares a sticker on the inside of the window in reference to the matatu body. Since I moved from Isilii to Kayole, I have had to be at Tushauriane stage by 5am every morning in order to get to town by 8am. I always take Kamaa’s matatu but today I didn’t find it. At least Kama is polite, maybe because I loaned him 50 bob eight months ago which I am yet to recover. Nevertheless, I know that if I am ever without fare, I can count on him, if I can find him.

“Na uchunge magava manze, mi sina rwabe ya kuwaangushia saa hizi,” the driver warns the tout while we stop to pack in two more passengers at Corner Mbaya.

“Usijali, Michuki bado amelala!!” the tout yells back as he jumps onto the matatu just as it takes off in full speed. The driver hardly slows down for a bump and everyone one shifts uncomfortably in their seats.

Minor crisis averted, the matatu bumbles along on the faithful Kayole roads, ducking a pile of garbage here and a ditch of open sewer there, hooting to frighten more than warn the bicycle man who is hurrying to deliver crates of bread and milk at a kiosk. The cyclist hurls an insult at the driver and the driver returns the “greeting”. I try to drift back to sleep, but the instant brakes to avoid god-knows-what irritate me enough to give up the nap.

“We! Wacha kunikanyaga, huoni nina mguu gonjwa …” wails a man’s voice in the back-bench.

“Si uniambie pole pole na usonge basi,” says the offender unapologetically. “Na ushukishe hapo madukani”.

The man with the sick leg squeezes himself into the corner to make room for the alighting offender and I could swear I heard him whimper like a wet puppy. Just as the driver sets off again, a little boy in school uniform jumps in and clings onto the metal bar that separates the driver’s section from the passengers’.

“Hatubebi watoi, we unaskia …” the tout barks menacingly as he pounds the roof with his fist signaling the driver to stop.

“Jamani ndugu, wataka huyu mtoto afike skuli na nini?” A buibui clad woman speaks out from the second row. “Kwani wewe ulikuwa unaendaje ukiwa mtoto?”She implores.

“Huyu hakwenda shule huyu, huoni ni makanga?” the man with the sick leg has found his voice and laughs dramatically at his witty remark.

“Niko na pesa,” the little boy speaks out as he reaches into his wrinkled blue shorts and proudly bears a shiny five shilling coin. His scrawny little body struggles to stand firm on equally scrawny legs as the matatu sways this way and that.

“Kuja usimame hapa kijanaa,” Mama Buibui calls out and the little boy with his ashen elbows sticking out of his torn sweater hauls his school bag that sags all the way below his buttocks and squeezes past the passengers and seats himself on the lady’s lap.

“Asante mum”, he sweetly tells his matron in black amour.

“Kweli kina mama wana roho, si tungechagua Ngilu ’97 tungekuwa mbali,” an elderly man seated next to me speaks to no one in particular. I am not in the mood for a chat and so I clear my throat and shift my legs both to release a muscle cramp and also to make up for the uncomfortable silence. As if on cue, the radio crackles to life. Someone fidgets with the dial and finally settles on a station that has Lingala music on.

“…Muziki moto moto huo wa the late Franco Luambo Luanzo Makiadi. Endelea kusikiza Radio Citizen …”

Everyone seems to drift off to their individual thoughts as the soothing melodies of Congolese musicians ease their stress. As we wind down past Soweto and into Donholm, we pass mammoth crowds of passengers all waiting for a ride into town and I am gratified at having established a routine that never lets me down. I cannot afford to jeopardize my coveted “office job” due to such things as “chronic late coming”, as Jane my office manager terms it.

Since I started working at Watu Wetu Community Based Organization three years ago, I have achieved a lot by anybody’s standard. I moved from my aunt Tata Wangeci’s flat in Isilii to my own place in Kayole. Even though it is a single room and I have to share the single toilet and bathroom with my six neighbours, it is my home and I do not have to share it with my four ill-mannered cousins who expected me to mboch for them just because their mother, Tata Wangeci, was paying for my computer packages. On top of my paying my rent of 1,500/= and sending Cũcũ 1000/= every month, I have done a lot with my salary of 5,570/=. I bought a five by four bed and a high density Vita Foam mattress for three thao and a small Sony radio for one fifty so I am not bored and even then, I would rather the silence of my four walls than the endless whining of Tata Wangeci about how all men are womanizers, drunks and liars – so goes the story of her life and my four cousins with three different fathers. That does not stop her from bringing a new man with her every time we meet for the Christmas Mbuzi at Cũcũ’s.

“Simtakuja ruracio next year, imagine Sam ali-propose…” the only thing that changes is the name of the guy and the year. I have come to conclude that this is the type that is in love with the idea of love. Don’t get me wrong, I love Tata Wangeci dearly. She single handedly transformed me from a naïve shagz-mũndũ to a proper Manzi wa City, Manzi wa Nairobi. When I finished standard eight and there was no money for me to go to form one, she materialized with wads of cash, took me to Nyahururu town where we shopped at Tekelezo, the biggest supermarket at the time and she let me pick all the things a wide eyed 13 year old village girl could ever dream of. And to top it all off, she even hired a taxi to carry us, my new mattress and blue metal box all the way back home.

“Tomorrow”, she had promised, “I will take you to high school in style.”

And true to her word, she deposited me at Thirũ Girls’gate with all my shopping and waved me goodbye. I was the envy of all the schoolgirls. Had I really been brought by a taxi and was all that my shopping! I made many friends in that first term. I think the fact that I had two full bottles of Lady Gay that I gladly shared with my dorm mates helped ease me into the social scene a bit.

“Mwisho, mwisho!! Kila mtu mwisho!” I awake with a start.

“We hapa sio Commercial,hatushuki!” we all protest in unison.

“Nimesema mwisho, nani alikwambia Commercial?” the defiant tout asserts, daring anyone to respond.

Some passengers have already started alighting and so our fight lost; we all trudge out at Muthurwa terminus and begin the trek to our various destinations in the city centre.

I sigh dejectedly castigating myself for not having waited for Kamaa’s matatu which would have gotten me closer to Ronald Ngala Street where the office is located.

I unfold my kikoi and wrap it around my neck in an effort to keep warm from the chilly July weather. As I cross the road at Wakulima market, a man carrying a huge sack of potatoes on his back appears out of nowhere in front of me shouting wildly for me to move out of the way. Too late, my feet crunch under the weight of his giant shoe and he almost knocks me down if it is not for another man who pushes me out of the road to safety.

“Aaarrrgggh!” I notice the muddy patch on my shoes and skirt! But that is nothing compared to the anger I feel when I realize that all I have left of my handbag is the shoulder sling! Not again, I lost my first Nokia at this same spot to a chokora last year!

There is no one to shout mwizi to so I cross the road anyway only now in search of a simu ya jamii. At the newly refurbished bus station, I approach a lady who is just setting up her stall; her brightly colored head scarf attracts me.

“Aki nime sanywa hand bag hapa Wakulima, si unisaidie nipigie mtu simu?Ona hata wamenipaka matope..” I wait expectantly for her response.

“ Na usipitishe kobole,” she says matter-of-factly. It’s my lucky day!

“Tata, ni mimi, nipigie saa hii na hii namba, saa hii please”. The words pour forth hurriedly.

Less than a minute later, Tata Wangeci calls back and I explain my predicament. We agree that I meet her at Kencom at lunchtime and she will give me her old Motorola and one hundred bob, both on loan. I hang up, thank the lady profusely and walk as fast as my bei-ya-jioni pumps will allow – I’m already five minutes late for work.

I sneak in without even greeting Musa, the watchman. The kitchen is a mess and the bathroom is no better. I don the oversized black gloves; grab the mop and some soapy water and hurry to clean the main office before the rest of the staff arrive.

“And so what happened? It’s 8.40!” I am greeted by Jane the Office Manager.

I fiddle with the mop as I try to figure out what to tell her. Why does she have to be so mean? I hardly ever come in late and when I do, she makes it look like I’m always late.

“Uzoee hivyo, utajua Nairobi kuna shida ya kazi,” she saunters off leaving my nose already irritated by her overly done perfume. I hurry to clean the toilets in a record six minutes and wind up in the kitchen ready to make tea by exactly 9am when most staff members are at their desks. By eleven, all the dishes are drying on the rack and since no errands are forth coming, I go outside to hang the freshly laundered hand towels.

The sun is nice and warm so I sit on the grass to bask. My thoughts drift to Tata Wangeci and our meeting a lunch time. Always one with a plan, she has come through for me yet again. The story of Tata Wangeci began when she left home for the big City in the Sun at sixteen, having dropped out of secondary school in form two. Every two years, she would come back infant child in tow, breast feed for two weeks and then disappear back to Nairobi having left the weaning to Cũcũ; who never complained nor asked after the children’s father(s). However, every first Monday of the month found her, walking stick in hand, at the local Post Office queuing for the money order service. Cũcũ, bless her, raised eight of her own and then five more of her grandchildren, me included. Cũcũ tells me that my own mother dropped me off when I was two and never came back. She later heard that she ran off with a white man that she had met while working at a curio shop near Thompson Falls. Once when I was twelve, some gossip trickled through from a relative of a friend that she lived in Boston, USA and had a point-five son. I did not realize how my mother’s absence had affected me because I covered it up so well by keeping busy with chores and that earned me the nick name “Kawira” and the coveted place as Cũcũ’s favorite.

One weekend when we were on April holidays, after Tata Wangeci had settled in Isilii, she came and bundled her four brats and their village belongings into a blue Mazda and drove all the way back to Nairobi. I only cried because I had wanted my own mother to come and get me first. I wanted to show those brats that I was not an orphan like they said and that I had a mother who lived in America and she had a rich white husband and that I even had a kamũthũngũ brother. I wanted to be the one going away to the big city, to a big city school where only English was spoken and everyone wore black shiny leather shoes. I wanted to be the one leaving them in their dirty village dresses, with their short clumpy hair, cracked feet full of ndutu, those pesky jiggers, and endless chores. As the Mazda disappeared beyond the hill, all I could feel was the tonne-sized lump in my throat that would not go away and the streams of tears coursing through my cheeks, to my chin and tracing their way down my neck, caressing me like I had dreamt my mother would.

For three days I did not eat. Even when Cũcũ made my favorite mũkimo with pumpkin leaves, I pushed the plate away and went to bed hungry. At night, I heard her beg Jesus to heal my loneliness and I painfully sobbed some more. To me, God, Jesus and my mother were all dead!

“Kwani leo uko strike ama nini?” Musa’s booming voice was a welcome distraction from the thoughts of my past.

“Akuna job. Sema?”

“Salamu tu, leo naishia mapema nimepata off so nataka kwenda nika surprise madam wangu na ka-date,” he says obviously exciting about his prospects.

“Poa. We ji-enjoy. Tuonane kesho basi,” I bid him unenthusiastically. As I wait for the lift back to the 2^nd office, I notice the clock at the reception reading 12.50. I hope Jane will let me have my full hour lunch. Sometimes I have to sit in for the receptionist incase the boss calls. And he always throws a fit when there’s nobody to answer the office phone.

“Madam, I’m leaving for lunch but I will be back by 1.45,” I announce.

She dismisses me with a wave and out of habit I reach out for the top shelf only to remember that I no longer had a handbag.

One o’clock finds me under the city clock amongst throngs of people. The sun is blazing hot by now and I use the kikoi to wipe my brow. At 1.15 I spot Tata Wangeci’s brown, plump face scouring through the masses. I walk towards her and her dimpled cheeks deepen with a smile when she spots me. She reaches out for me and buries my face in her bosom as she rubs my back in her trade mark hug!

“Sema kairĩtu. Ati what happened?” she enquires.

“Some jamaa pushed me as I was crossing the road at Wakulima and hepad with my handbag.”

“Hali ya Nairobi tu. Si twende ni ka ku-baiye chipo.” Ever generous, we walk towards Moi Avenue struggling to maintain conversation as we dodge and duck vehicles and pedestrians alike.

Finally we perch ourselves atop the round stools at Mcfries and dig in to our quarter kuku na chips. Tata Wangeci pulls up her low rise jeans self-consciously in the process.

“Aki I need to stop eating these chips. I need to lose some weight.” Aunt Wangeci declares while she chomps down a mouthful. I glance at the exposed roll of flesh on her mid section, struggling to fit into the top that looks three sizes too small.

“Auntie, uko sawa. Just stop wearing Ciru’s clothes.” I laugh referring to her 13 year old.

“We wacha kuni-enjoy. Hizi mg’aro ndio ziko fashion!”

Our lunch ends all too soon with gratitude and promises of visits. She hands me the Motorolla T 190 and one hundred bob as promised and I dash back to the office.

The afternoon goes by without incident. Five thirty finds me jostling for a matatu in Muthurwa. As it happens when there are too few matatus and too many passengers, fares double. So I decide to hang around and see if Kamaa will show up. He would never over-charge me. Ok, so yes, I like Kamaa. He’s not the regular makanga. I met himduring my first week in Kayole at the PCEA church youth meeting. I would never have guessed that he was a tout by his dressing. His permed hair was in a pony tail, his black trousers and brown shirt well pressed. He told me he was studying for his CPAs. We discovered later that we were from neighboring villages back in shags; him from Maili Saba which is 5 kilimeters from Siron, my village. We were not exactly dating; he had never asked to spend at my place nor me at his. But every time I thought about his smile, his full lips, his neatly trimmed goatee and smooth chocolate complexion, I melted. I was not sure if he felt anything for me and I would die first before I asked him about it.

I hadn’t noticed darkness settling in and by the time I give up on Kamaa’s matatu, it is already 6.30. I board the next matatu that charges 60bob. At 7pm on a weekday, Jogoo road is chocking with vehicles headed out of town. I settle into my window seat and gaze out into the traffic trying to drown out the booming crunk music coming from the 21 inch screen hanging directly above me.

My high school years flew past and I seemed to have forgotten the pain of not having a mother since Tata Wangeci took care of my needs like her own. Unlike my primary school, not once was I sent home for lack of fees because my Tata, whom everyone in school knew as my mother, always paid it in time. I worked hard not to disappoint her but I was never really A material and she seemed to understand that because she never raised an eyebrow at my plain Cs and at best C+s. I spent a few holidays in her 2 bedroom flat in Isilii and did my best to get along with my cousins. During this time I dropped the Kikuyu accent that my cousin’s always made fun of and also learned the wonders that a blow dry could do to my kinky afro. Back in school, I showed off my Nairobi sheng’ and wore my hair in the famous matako style that oozed sophistication. I did a good job at convincing my school mates that I was a rich city girl. One Monday afternoon, just before my mocks in form four, the headmistress sent for me from class. I was hardly surprised because we often talked as she solicited my opinion on the latest beauty products and I always remembered to bring her a tube of Demovate cream from Nairobi. No one would guess it, and I’m sure she would not willingly confess this to anyone, but the cream formed an integral ingredient for her skin-lightening mkorogo. It was our little secret. But on this day I knew something was terribly wrong when I entered her window-less office and saw my Cũcũ seated there solemnly. My heart sank to the pits of my stomach at the thought of something bad having happened to my dear Tata. Could it have been an accident? Was she badly hurt? She must have been if Cũcũ is here. Or god forbid dead?

“Your grand mother is here to take you home because your mother is sick,” the headmistress announced to me without much feeling.

Oh, Tata is just sick, I concluded. Well, good thing I have sometime before mocks so I can go see her.

I got leave from school for three days. I was happy to be going home but sad because I was yet to know how sick Tata was. Cũcũ did not say much until we got off the matatu at Maili Nane and started the 3 kilometer trek homeward bound.

“Kawira ..” she started hesitantly. I think she spoke for the full length of our walk home but my mind had stopped processing the information after the first minute or so. My mother was back. My real mother. It was my biological mother and not Tata Wangeci who was back home and ailing. After 17 years, she had arrived only two weeks ago on Tata Wangeci’s blue Mazda at Cũcũ’s wooden gate with nothing to her name except her frail and vomiting self. Cũcũ told me how she had begged her to go to the hospital but she was adamant that she had carried all the medication she needed from America and who could trust these village doctors anyway.

I always wondered how it would be seeing her brown pretty face again. I wondered if I would be angry or overjoyed or both. When I was five years old and going to nursery school, I used to fantasize me coming home and finding her there full of presents and hugs and kisses and promises of never leaving me again. When I went to primary school and had memorized her face from the picture Cũcũ had given me of her, I dreamed of her coming in a big car with my point-five brother and taking me back with her to America. When I went to High school, I had purged her face from my memory and pasted a smile to mask the pain that I was sure would literally rip through my chest to expose the broken heart side.

“Aren’t you going to see her?” we had arrived. I went inside Nyũmba Nene, the main house, and put my things on the bed I shared with Cũcũ. I stood there for a minute unsure about my next move.

“Kawira .. “ I hear Cũcũ calling from Riiko, the wooden shack with gaping holes in the roof where we cooked.

“Mathee leta do,” I hear the tout call out from a distance. I reach out to my trouser pocket and unfold the one hundred shilling note and hand it to him. He folds it into half and bunches it up with the rest of the notes and then squeezes them all between his index and middle finger. I look at him with my hand half stretched waiting for my change.

“Nakupa,” he says as he reaches out to collect fares from the passengers at the front.

I approached her from the left side so I could not face her directly and just stood there.

“It can’t be her,” I told myself at the sight of the charcoal black, bony and hairless head atop a skeletal figure that everyone had convinced was my mother.

“Hautanisalimia?” she spoke. In contrast, her voice was strong and it reverberated in the small kitchen that had gone dead silent when I walked in. I stood there, numb. I didn’t know what to say to her. All the things I had rehearsed growing up, all the anger and the pain – it was not there anymore. Seeing her frail helpless self dissipated any negative feeling I may ever have harbored. Still I could not find my words. Maybe it was the shock of seeing how she looked. Anyone would have been shocked, I reasoned.

I stayed for two more days and then returned to school to sit for my mock exams. It was while I was home for the August holidays that the whispers began.

I first heard Mama Soni tell the shopkeeper’s wife one day after church. She was visibly surprised when she saw me standing beside her and smiled awkwardly.

The next day while I was waiting for my turn at the tap, I heard the shopkeeper’s wife tell a group of market women. It was not very long before Cũcũ finally came clean and confirmed the gossip I had been hearing. Now it all made sense; the endless vomiting and diarrhea, the skin infections, the almost bald head, the refusal to go to hospital, the fact that she was not getting any better … all classic symptoms.

“We shukisha … shukisha hapo Tushauriane!” I yell and the driver hits the brakes instantly sending everyone almost flying off their seats.

“We mathee kwani umelala!!” The makanga demands. On another day I would have given him a few choice words but not today. I alight but not before demanding for my change. He hands me four ten shilling coins which I jingle in my hand as I walk to my flat hoping there is electricity. The air is abuzz with people’s voices, the vegetable vendors haggling with customers, the hawkers announcing their bei-ya-jioni offers and groups of friends catching up after a long day. I say hello to Mama Samaki who is busy fixing the little lantern while simultaneously turning the fish in the dangerously boiling oil. My mouth waters and I am momentarily tempted to buy one freshly fried. I change my mind when I spot Kamaa at the butchery next to the stage spotting newly and neatly trimmed hair.

“Imagine nimekungoja hii time yote!” He breaks into a smile, and his left cheek creases into a dimple.

“Aki ile jam iko Jogoo road!” I defend myself as I jump over an open drainage and step onto a corridor.

“Sema, ulikuwa wapi leo morning?” I can feel my cheeks flush as we shake hands. He holds onto mine a second longer and then lets go.

“Ndio nlitaka kuku-show, nilisare story za mathree.”

“Haiya, serious? Sasa umeamuaje?”

“Hebu tuingie kwako tubonge. Hata nime-buy kanyaks tunaeza pika supper. Ama?”

I blush, unsure of whether to invite him in or not. But his smile does more to tempt me than re-assure me.

So he has taken a new job as an assistant accounts clerk in town and I am full of praises. We talk at length about his plans to register for a degree in Finance Management. I tell him about my desire to run my own salon. It might have been the food, but he also mentions that maybe he could take me to meet his parents in December and I smile shyly and tell him yes, maybe. After supper, he begs leave and I am even more pleasantly impressed. I successfully resist the urge to ask him to stay as he hugs me goodbye.

At about 11pm, I tune my radio to KBC General Service and stretch out on the bed waiting for my favorite show, Late Date. I count the number of bloody patches from the mosquitoes I have swatted on the wall. The single window that refuses to close tightly lets in a breeze which reminds me of the drafts that could fell a tree back in Siron.

Exactly one month after she arrived, Alice Waithera, the woman who gave birth to me, died in her sleep and was buried three days later in front of the big mũtarakwa tree in the middle of Cũcũ’s compound. I did not cry at her funeral and I did not wonder why because I knew I had already mourned her death a long time ago.

I struggle to keep awake. Jeff Mwangemi is in the studio tonight and I am assured that my favorite love songs will be featuring. My gaze is fixed on the wall; the nail I use to hang my clothes is loose and needs fixing. I haven’t ironed the clothes I will wear to work the next day and I hope that there will be electricity when I wake up. Tomorrow will take care of itself, my Cũcũ used to say. I crawl in between the bed sheets, pull the blanket over my shoulder and fall asleep to the harmonious duet of Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers.

“….Islands in the stream, that is what we are, no one in-between, how can we be wrong, sail away with me to another world, and we rely on each other, ah – ah, from one lover to another, ah – ah ….”