Baba Jimmy played. Nyipir listened, he cried, and then he wiped his face with his arms.
“Thu tinda …” concluded Baba Jimmy. The end.
“Baba Jimmy, how do I go to Burma?” Nyipir asked seconds later.
Two weeks later, Baba Jimmy and Nyipir left for the Catholic Mission Orphanage and School that was in a village in Kisii. Dressed in their Sunday best, Baba Jimmy wearing his two war medals, footsteps on dusty roads. They walked for four hours to meet the blue bus. Nyipir walked backward, ahead of Baba Jimmy, staring at the gleaming medals.
They had approached a forested patch, the green so different from the dust of the plains that it caused Nyipir to tremble.
He told Baba Jimmy, “I want to go back home with you.”
“You want to go to Burma?” Baba Jimmy demanded.
“Yes!” Nyipir yelled.
“Boy”—he pulled away his hands—“when you get out of this bus, after your feet reach the ground, don’t look back. Only a hyena travels the same road twice.”
18
AJANY READS THAT IN 2006 ENGINEER JEREMIAH MUSALI OF Tich Lich Engineers received the Gedo Award — a red-and-green rhino-horn-shaped protuberance — for regional engineering excellence and innovation. Ajany rereads the bronze plate in the pale-yellow-and-rust-red T. L. Associates Engineering offices in Lavington.
A cursory glance. In an alcove, a glimpse of a blown-up picture. Ajany moves closer. Five men in white-and-yellow hard hats. Behind them, the Kiambere power plant. In the middle, a man taller, broader, more muscular, and darker than all the others, with a thin mustache, his hair cropped close to the skull, his coat stretched over his body. Moses Ebewesit Odidi Oganda in a charcoal-gray suit, with a gap-toothed grin.
“Odidi!” Ajany cries.
She stands dry-mouthed. Hears a car slowing down outside. Petrol engine, four-liter engine. Smell of sprayed-on, bottled newness everywhere. The photograph. Odidi.
A woman in a flowing green dress walks in.
“Hello,” she says. “May I help you?”
Ajany grabs her arms, points at the picture. “My b-brother …”
“Sorry, madam?”
“Moses Odidi Oganda. I’m his sister!”
The woman pulls away.
“Eh … wait here.” She points at green chairs nearby, seizes a handset, and spits into the receiver.
Ajany stands next to the chair, gripping the armrest, eyes focused on the photograph, her heart beating.
A turbaned man of medium height in a tight German suit hurries in. The receptionist calls to him. They exchange quiet words, and he turns toward Ajany. “Odidi’s sister?” He rushes over to pump her hand. “I’m Joginder. Uh, you know, uh … he left … maybe two years … maybe … ago. He … uh … hasn’t, uhhh, called since.…”
Ajany stares.
He says, “Uhhh … wait.”
He turns. Neat, hurried steps down a corridor.
Ajany’s hands are damp. She wipes them on her skirt. The receptionist is answering phone calls.
Coffee appears.
Ten minutes.
Half an hour.
At four-twenty-two, Engineer Jeremiah Musali appears. He is not as thin, highly strung, or twinkly as he used to be. There are, however, traces from the past. Musali practically leaps into Ajany’s arms. High-pitched voice, more fashion than steel; well-oiled, short hair with little waves. Manicured hands. Still handsome, he wears round glasses, like Gandhi’s. Copper skin, ocher highlights. A brace around his neck.
“Arabel ‘A. J.’ Oganda! Ei! Let me see you,” He looks her up and down. “Such a ka-lady! Brazil! You went faaaar!”
Ajany takes two steps back. “Yes … uhm … Musali, was wondering about my b-brother?”
Musali’s eyebrows make small movements across his forehead. They are subtly plucked. His facial bones hold his muscles close to their structure. And, like an old person’s, his ears are longer than his nose. Time seemed to have rubbed out the tiny lights that used to make his face a most mobile presence, fascinating to watch. Still, his would be a curious face to sculpt. Musali exhales hard, looks at the carpet. “Hasn’t he contacted you?”
“Should he have?”
“Sit down.… Tea?”
Tea, the national balm of Gilead. She sits. “Your neck?” She watches his face.
“Some stupid jamas tried to jack me. I was lucky. Cops twanga-ed them.”
Ajany studies the floor, biting inner lips.
Musali looks away, tea in hand; he says, “Odi, man. I’ll tell you.”
Silence.
“That jama, man, AJ, everything black and white for him. Shit, look, I feel bad. Y’know, we started this thing together. After campo.” He glances over his shoulder.
“Where’s my brother?”
“Don’t know, man.”
“Your friend?”
“Long ago.”
“What, friendship?”
Musali sighs. “There was a deal.”
A time in the life of Kenya when the long and short rains failed. El Niño. Odidi had chased after a contract for the repair of the nation’s dams. He had lobbied, argued, and dazzled. Their company, Tich Lich Engineers, had won the contract with the power company. A two-hundred-and-seventy-five-million-shilling job.
They had “made it.” Doing what they loved, designing with water. They had signed the bottom line, signed nondisclosure agreements — part of the procedure. Dated everything. Received a quarter of the money. Bought guzzling cars and started to dredge the dams. One day, they were summoned for an urgent meeting. They waited in the boardroom for half an hour until a senior magistrate came in.
They were given a paragraph to recite. An oath of secrecy, subject to the Official Secrecy Act. A man in the proverbial black suit witnessed it all. A week later, Odidi, as chief engineer, received top-secret instructions to silt the dams. Contract to “service the turbines”—in other words, render them incapable of delivering power to the public.
At the same time, news of the sudden flooding of the lower reaches of the Tana River. Traveling to the dam site, they found the dam gates opened.
“We knew what was happening. Told that jama to back down and shut up. Why be martyrs, man?”
Odidi had insisted on talking to the managing director, who was in another meeting. Odidi had left a note, setting out what he had seen and asking for an explanation.
“Who did he think he was? It wasn’t rugby, y’know?”
A few days later, the managing director was on national television, showing journalists how low the levels of water in the dam had fallen. In sorrowful tones he announced an imminent power-shortage emergency and the enforcement of a power-rationing plan. As if by coincidence, obsolete diesel generators from Europe and Asia happened to be aboard cargo ships on their way to Kenya. They would take care of the shortfall in power at 3,000 percent above the usual cost. A company to administer the supply of power from these generators had already been registered. Tich Lich had been contracted to install and service the equipment.
Odidi barged into the minister of energy’s offices the next day.
“Something’s wrong,” he shouted.
Musali smiles as he remembers.
“The minister listened, then said, ‘put it in writing.’ ”
So Odidi wrote a letter to the minister headed Acts of Treason Against the People and Nation of Kenya, backed with data and evidence, dates and figures.
When there was no response from the minister’s office, he circulated it to the dailies. It was not published. Musali grimaces when he recalls Odidi rushing to record a statement with the police. “He even wanted to see the president.” He wipes his eyes.