Читать книгу The Cape Cod Bicycle War - Billy Kahora - Страница 10

WE ARE HERE BECAUSE WE ARE HERE

Komora Kijana Wito sat outside his grandfather’s hut watching Ozi village in its daily moments of morning wazimu, idleness, and petty quarrels. It was a week before the War between Tsana and Indian Ocean. His grandfather, Komora Mzee Wito, had come in with the first cockcrow after the meeting of the Gasa and was asleep in the main hut, so there was little for Komora Kijana to do before the old man awoke. It was early in planting season and outside the gate of their compound Komora Kijana now saw a few of the men going to the farms; some women singing while they cleaned their compounds; girls running off to the river to fetch water; young men beating the animals heading off towards the swamp and the forest.

Not for the first time Komora Kijana wondered what it felt like to have a baba, mama, sisters and brothers. The people of Ozi thought his grandfather, currently the most senior elder of the Gasa, was teaching him to become a mganga. The boys he had grown up with now spent most of their time watching Premier League DVDs in the small social hall, dreaming that they would one day play for Manchester United. After being cut they all now lived in their designated camp near the mangroves. His former headmaster, Mr Fito, had even stopped coming to look for Komora Kijana to convince him that he needed to go to university, so that option was also closed. All this was because of the Book that he was helping his grandfather write about his life. Komora Kijana could not do the things of other young men.

In another time he would already have started planning the trip upriver to steal a girl from beyond Shirikisho in a Malajuu village. Komora Kijana now remembered Mariam, the girl he had grown up closest to. She was the only one of his age who was not married because she was going to university. All the other girls of their age already had children. After he and his grandfather had started the Book, Komora Kijana and Mariam stopped seeing each other and when he saw her at the market recently there were no words, just an exchange with the eyes.

Now he wondered where his grandfather’s breakfast was. It was getting late. Every week a different family was assigned to bring food for the elders of the Gasa. Komora Kijana remembered that this week it was the wife of Ukonto assigned to the Gasa’s feeding. Looking into the sky he realised that she was already late. Komora Kijana was relieved, if only for her sake, that his grandfather was asleep. Not that the old man ate anything more than a few bananas and pounded pumpkin leaves every day. Ukonto’s wife was nowhere to be seen and Komora Kijana stood up and decided to get on with the day before his grandfather woke up and demanded his attention.

He could hear the more active children already running around the homesteads – when he looked over the fence he saw the older ones release the chickens from their coops. The clucking birds complained about being cooped inside all night and immediately started scratching and pecking the ground. Cats of all shapes and sizes slunk from the newly open hut doors and stretched and lingered near the hearths. When the women of the houses emerged their cats circled them; some purred from beneath their mistress’s kikois.

Older boy-children snatched the long cylindrical calabashes from the rafters of their mothers’ huts and took to their heels to deliver their fathers’ breakfasts to the shambas. The girls wandered out of huts that sat next to their mothers’ and stood there scratching themselves with sleep till their mothers placed faded yellow plastic containers before them and barked a few commands. The girls reached for the ropes that held each yellow plastic container and slung it on their heads. They headed to the river chattering – more and more girls joining the line from all the homesteads. They all wore red gingham Ozi Primary School dresses. Some wore blue school sweaters, faded at the elbows. The girls all somehow managed to keep talking, some chewing leftovers from last night’s dinner – a piece of cassava, yam, arrowroot, fried banana. Some even carried tin cups from which they sipped their tea uninterruptedly with skill and poise as they carried containers half their body-size on their heads.

Komora Kijana sighed, picked up a couple of water containers and followed the line of girls to the river, hoping to fetch water before his grandfather woke up. The girls giggled when they saw him and taunted and sang at him: The young man who is the wife of his grandfather.

It was cold by the river. The more reckless girls rushed to the water, cupped the cold water in their hands and splashed at their friends. Containers were flung aside as the smaller girls took to their heels. The ones who could not get away fast enough received an unwelcome gush of water down their backs and shrieked. Some pretended to cry and even produced tears. They were immediately mocked and threatened with ‘death by crocodile’. Others did mini-impressions of their mothers and bickered and argued, with arms akimbo. Soon the disagreements turned into girlish laughter and containers were placed next to the pump and then the line of girls could be seen streaming back into the village.

When Komora Kijana noticed how swollen the river was he realised that the War between the Tsana and Indian Ocean was not too far off and he dropped the container he was carrying and hid it in the nearby bushes. Walking along the river he could see the farms, the men bent over digging up the burnt grass because they had to plant in a few weeks. Komora Kijana looked over across the river as the morning disappeared under the sun and he could see young boys carrying packets of food wrapped in banana leaves. The best farms had always been at the shores of the Tsana till the War started.

Komora Kijana found Mzee Jorabashora’s son Hamisi working in the shamba. Hamisi had been his late father’s best friend and was like an uncle to him. The man straightened and smiled at him and they both looked at the river.

‘Has your grandfather told you when the War will happen?’ the son of Jorabashora asked.

‘He says a week at most.’

‘Has he seen the river lately?’

‘He sees its changes in his dreams …’

Hamisi said: ‘Look at the water. The War will come any day now.’

It was the third week of March and they discussed who had tilled the first bush and who had not. Thinking back to the past season Hamisi talked of men like Kase Morowa who waited till the last moment to put seed in the ground and did not take to the fields with the early sun. He then pointed at the shambas, which were all ready for the coming season. Komora Kijana nodded when Hamisi repeated what the old men of the village never tired of pointing out, that it was the footsteps of the woman who had become pregnant that required placing on the ground with care. Crops needed a brave hand. Even now there were still men who were asleep, who only took the path to the shambas when the dew had long evaporated.

A boy emerged from the trees on the other side of the shamba and came towards them. It was Jorabashora Kijana, the son of Hamisi. He waited to be greeted but his father ignored him. Komora Kijana could see boys on all the adjoining shambas bringing breakfast for their working fathers. Many of the men ignored the boys and continued working for long periods before they stopped what they were doing to eat.

Hamisi turned to his son. ‘And now what is wrong with your mother?’

‘Father, it is the government boat,’ the boy said, rising on the balls of his feet with excitement. ‘It passed this morning measuring the level of the Tsana. Everyone went to see it. The whole village is talking about it.’

‘Is that what they teach you in school? To give answers to questions that you have not been asked? Did you pass by the mapera tree? Is that why my breakfast has to be late?’

The village mapera tree had not produced any fruit in the Nyuki and Moto generations, and the rebuke was meant for the boy’s whole age-set – whose coming of age had dried the hundred-year-old tree.

‘Baba, I told Mother to give me your food but she told me that water must be fetched from the river first. She said everyone is saying the river will be too muddy any day now from the rains.’

‘Eh, she knows better than the Gasa when the War will come. Any day now there will be no food at all and my arm will drop from weakness because my food is always late,’ Hamisi said.

Komora Kijana could see all the men in the adjoining fields unpeeling the banana leaves that held their breakfast to start eating.

‘Father, may I go to school now?’

‘Can’t you see I am talking to Komora, who is old enough to be your uncle?’

The boy stood there waiting and when his father was not looking Komora smiled at the boy.

‘When I was your age I would now be working next to my father,’ Hamisi told his son. ‘You children are very lucky nowadays.’

A few minutes later a few of the men in the adjoining shambas looked up as they finished eating and a few wiped their mouths with relish. Some of them waved in Komora Kijana’s direction.

‘What are you still doing here?’ Hamisi said to the boy. ‘If your teacher comes to my hut to complain that you are always late I will teach you what my father taught me at your age.’

The boy rushed off and his father looked at him with pride. ‘He is a good strong boy.’ Komora Kijana and Hamisi watched the river for a while and Komora said, ‘I will tell my grandfather that the river is becoming a python.’

Remembering that he had started his morning drawing water from the river, Komora Kijana rushed there and filled up the container he had hidden away. He lifted the container with one arm with some ease and decided to take the long route back to his grandfather’s hut to see how the village was preparing for the War between Tsana and Indian Ocean. Ozi village was 300 huts in total, big, medium and small as well as thirty small stone houses and two large ones with wide verandahs that belonged to Chief Mpango and the late son of Mzee Chilati Dhabasha who, a year ago, had been arrested after being mistakenly accused of being the famous terrorist Faisal. He had died in government custody and his father had left the house empty in anger. Ozi was the last inhabitable space on the Tsana before the mangroves by the river and the wilderness leading up to the sea. Komora Kijana now reached Ozi Primary School, which stood at the northern edge of Ozi, a clear mark of colour and design that stood out from everything that surrounded it in age and appearance. He looked out to the far end of the village along the river to the small bay where the farms, rice and bananas ended. Beyond the bay, kilometres of mangroves stretched along the river where the men went to fish or to hunt. The small bay also held the new fish-smoking facility from where the fishing boats left early every morning. Behind Komora Kijana, inland beyond Ozi Primary, was the indigenous forest called Kilu after the great Mbakomo mganga. Half a day’s walk along the river on the edge of Kilu Forest was the larger Ungwana Bay, which for Ozi was the end of the world where the wild animals prowled. But in the other direction along a dirt track that became murram road all the way to the Malindi Highway, an hour away by Nissan or tuk tuk were the other Pokomo villages, and then the lands of the Ormah dotted the land. There was also a mosque along the dirt track navigable by car; there had been talk of a dispensary for two years but the floods and the wild animals thankfully kept Kenya at bay.

Komora Kijana reached the most densely inhabited huts in Ozi that formed a collective mass in the middle of the village. From that spot he stood in the middle of the rough triangle that was Ozi, with the Tsana as the base line. The pier boat launch with the fish-smoking house next to it was one angle of the triangle, the swamp-farms and the gate that led to the long road on the opposite corner the other. The chief’s camp near Ozi Primary formed the top of the triangle.

He made his way slowly back to his grandfather’s hut further from the river, beyond its flood level. His grandfather had moved there after the great El Niño of ’97. Only the ancient hut of Gasa next to the kizio was on higher ground and, because of its special magic, was said to be the only place in the village unaffected by the floods since the Malachini settled in these parts when they came from Shungwaya.

When Komora Kijana reached the homestead his grandfather was still asleep and so he started with the kayapa hedge, heaping twigs and small branches that he had collected from the forest the previous day. He fortified the fence all around the compound till he was sure that even a senge pursuing a she-goat in heat would be deterred from entering the enclosure. He started a small fire and found the two walking sticks that his grandfather had instructed him to make for their forthcoming journey to the Constitutional Conference. Both heavy and strong, the two sticks were just about the right weight and firmness. He laid them back to harden against the small flame that came up. From inside his hut he brought out a long, hollow calabash container. He popped it open, holding it away from his face and nostrils to let the fermented porridge release its tang. He held it against the wind for a few minutes and soon enough there were yells of dismay in the neighbouring yards. Mama Kutula, their neighbour, appeared and shouted, ‘You, Komora! Is that how you treat the friends of your dead mother? You will make me bring a smelly child into the world with your nonsense.’

Mama Kutula was heavily pregnant and complained loudly every day to the world about all the things that plagued her, including the increasing activity of butterflies, sparrows and swifts that were harbingers of the flood.

Komora Kijana noticed two eyes watching him keenly through the hedge. An arm appeared slowly over the hedge and placed a large wrapping that steamed away in the morning air. It was Ukonto’s wife, Kerekani. His grandfather’s food was almost three hours late. Kerekani was not allowed in the compounds of most homes because of her husband’s lung condition. Most of the villagers feared their children catching germs from her that she, in turn, had caught from her husband. Ukonto had been predisposed since birth to a heavy lung that shed sputum and mucus all day long, especially in the wet rainy seasons. It was said it would have even been better if he had been born a mkabira in a land where the air is dry and there is no land to be tilled or river to be ridden. Ukonto now worked as a watchman at the government offices near Shirikisho because he could not farm.

‘There are no children here to be sick,’ said Komora Kijana, picking up the food. ‘You can come into the compound.’

‘Wewe, what about you?’ Kerekani said, with habitual irritation, appearing from behind the bush. ‘You think you are now a man?’ Komora Kijana thanked her for the food and she left muttering. He winced when he tasted the first mouthful. The millet maize was too soft. Ukonto, it was also said, had weak teeth from his condition. Komora Kijana sniffed at the stew and it had too much pepper. He also saw that the vegetables were too dry.

Komora Mzee woke up with a few deep coughs. Komora Kijana waited for a few minutes and then went inside and they ate in silence. After the meal, the old man pulled the Book from the eaves above him and dusted off wasps’ eggs and handed it to Komora Kijana. Then the old man started talking in his quick breaths and Komora Kijana wrote it all down with the Youth pen he was so proud of, a prize that he had been given for being first in his fourth form class.

A month ago the government delegation from Constitution and Water, Katiba and Maji, had come to visit Ozi village and invited Chief Mpango to the Tana People’s Constitutional Conference. The Chief then asked Komora Mzee Wito instead to represent Ozi and the Malachini. With the coming Constitutional Conference the finishing of the Book became even more important. His grandfather said there was no better way to show the people of Katiba and Maji why and how the Malachini lived on the shores of the Tsana. At the conference he planned to give the Kenyan government the Book of his life to explain everything about the Tsana and the Mbakomo, the Malachini, and Ozi.

Over the last month they had worked till late in the night but when the Gasa started consulting every evening about the coming War between the Tsana and the Indian Ocean they started working till maghreb. Then, Komora’s grandfather would take his hand and they would walk slowly to the hut of the Wazee wa Gasa, near the kizio, and he would send Komora Kijana away.

Komora Kijana had lived with his grandfather since his parents died ten years ago during the last War between Tsana and Indian Ocean, also known as the El Niño of ’97. Even when his parents were still alive Komora Kijana had gone into his grandfather’s hut every evening to hear stories about the River, his people the Mbakomo, the downriver villages, the Malachini, his own village of Ozi and his clan, the Komora. But that one morning changed everything. Komora Kijana’s father set out up the river to fish at Kau where the sea’s waves at high tide pushed the fresh water trout. The floods had been expected any day and his father wanted to do his last bit of trout fishing before El Niño ’97. But it was as if the Tsana had been waiting just for him.

Days later his canoe came back empty as the sea tides retreated from the force of the river. Komora Kijana’s mother refused to leave her home till her husband came back. She was bitten by a snake washed out of its hole by the floods days later. When his father’s head was found upstream, the rest of him taken by crocodiles, Komora Kijana’s mother succumbed to the snake-bite. Komora Mzee was unable to speak at the funeral which was held quickly as the water climbed. And his sight and hearing started failing as the thick river spread over Ozi. Later, when the Malachini learned that the Kenyan government had panicked over El Niño’s rainfall and opened the Seven Forks Dam upriver, known as the Seven Stone Men by the Mbakomo, without warning, Komora Mzee blamed his brother, who was Assistant Minister for Water at the time, for the death of his son.

Komora Kijana went to live with his grandfather. A year later, when he turned eight, he was sent to Ozi Primary School. When he learned how to write his grandfather told him that one day he would help him put down the old man’s life in a book as a way of the Mbakomo recording their lives by the Tsana and even what had happened during El Niño ’97. So, every evening, the old man told his grandson of his long life.

When Komora Kijana finished primary school his grandfather called the boy to his hut to tell him all the things that young men are told when they leave home. Komora Kijana did not expect to continue his education after primary school after his father’s death but his grandfather sent Komora Kijana to stay with his brother, Komora Mzee Sazi, so he could attend high school in Ngao. After El Niño ’97 the two old men had stopped talking when Komora Mzee Wito accused Komora Mzee Sazi of choosing the government and Kenya over Ozi and his own people. But he also said that Kijana Komora was his brother’s son too when he sent him there.

Once Komora Kijana arrived in Ngao, Komora Mzee Sazi, whom his grandfather had fallen out with over the Tsana, laughed at this small victory over his older brother and said at least the old fool knew the value of formal education. The four years of secondary school went by quickly and every holiday Komora Kijana went back to Ozi. By Form 2 his grandfather was asking him to write down the things he told him every evening. Just before he did his final exams, Komora Kijana went back to Ngao before that last term and found that Komora Mzee Sazi had had a stroke and was bed-ridden. His younger grandfather lay beneath thick blankets surrounded by several hovering women. The photos on the wall next to his bed were littered with Mzee Sazi’s wordly greatnesses – in one photo he stood with the first two Presidents of Kenya. One of the photos, with Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, had been taken at the site of the largest Stone Man, Masinga Dam, with the rest of the other Seven Stone Men in smaller photos. There was also a photo of a white man with his arm around his second grandfather. Another photo had Komora Mzee Sazi standing before a tall building that said: ministry of water headquarters. With a shaky hand and the smell of illness and lilies from the river, Komora Mzee Sazi scrawled a letter and asked Komora Kijana to go to Kipini Secondary School with the document and give it to the headmaster, Mr Fito. His younger grandfather also looked at him and said an odd thing: ‘Now you have been given the power to read and you must not stop.’ When he saw Komora Kijana’s incomprehension he laughed and then fell back to the bed coughing. He died a week later.

After Komora Kijana sat his O-level exams he went back to Ozi. Two elders from Komora Mzee Wito’s Sinbad age-group had died within a week of each other and his grandfather was worried he too would be called soon. They started working on the Book every day.

Komora Mzee Wito handed over an old brown-and-black diary with golden lining that he had been given by his brother when they were still close. The diary was embossed with the crest of the government of Kenya. At the bottom it said ‘Ministry of Water’. The dates inside were from 1990. This became the Book. That had been a year ago.

Over this period Komora Kijana found some of the things that his grandfather told him strange but he wrote them down without asking questions. Mostly, they told of Komora Mzee Wito’s past journeys along the river. Journeys without the maps that Komora Kijana had learned in school. Places that the maps in school never mentioned. Words that did not exist in Kiswahili or Mbakomo. Stories of men who could summon crocodiles and send them to their enemies. Of spirits in the hills and in the forest.

Komora Kijana came to understand that these things that his grandfather told him would be lost forever if they were not written down. At times his grandfather called one or two of the old men of Gasa, Mzee Jorabashora and the oldest man in the village, whose name was never said aloud, and they added things from their own memories and so the book grew.

Komora Kijana remembered one of those first evenings when his grandfather put the Book aside and reached up into the rafters of his hut and some ancient-looking scrolls fell from it. The old man handed them over to Komora Kijana and asked him to rewrite the words in the Book. The parchments had a kind of writing that the boy had not seen before but after looking closely he made out the words:

Imperial Majesty of Britain.

The Territory Ozi will serve as agent of the Imperial Majesty of Britain against the German Territory of Witu.

‘Do you know what this is? This document shows that this village was given Madaraka by the Queen of England a long time ago. That Ozi was the first agent of England in the place we now call Kenya.’

And that was when Komora Kijana realised the importance of the Book.

A few days after the river began rising Chief Mpango’s aides started going around the village with loudspeakers warning everybody that the coming floods were just days away. The whole village laughed and abused the aides. Serikali was always late. A week ago a messenger from the Malajuu had come with a missive from the Gasa of Baomo to warn them of the heavy rains that had already started upriver. The Gasa had sent him back with a young man from Ozi but this emissary was yet to return with news of how strong the Tsana was. Nature had already given its signs the day before when a large snake had appeared, sunning itself on the path to the swamp. Those who rose early missed the snake. And so it was Ukonto who had almost trod on the snake. When he saw it the heavy something that had sat on his chest all his life lifted away – he felt his mouth open and take in the morning air with such ease that he felt as if he was floating on air. The snake slowly slid into the grass and Ukonto saw it make its way into the Tsana and head towards the sea. Later, when the elders of Gasa listened to Ukonto’s tale, several observed that a snake of that size had not been spotted in Ozi since the ’97 Great El Niño War of Tsana and Indian Ocean. By the next day news of the snake was all over Ozi.

When Kerekani brought food for Komora Mzee Wito the next day she squealed at Komora Kijana Wito, ‘My husband is healed. He asks when he can come and see Mzee Wito for his blessing?’

‘I will ask him.’ Komora Kijana knew that his grandfather would only bless Ukonto when he had cleared his land of bush.

The next morning before the sun was up the Tsana started swelling. For the next few days the villagers of Ozi village walked with tight backs and drum chests, breaths held, as they watched Indian Ocean fight the Tsana. As if connected to a huge river in the sky the Tsana pushed the ocean tides, the sea foam and its ancient salt back. The wind blanketed Ozi village with warmth during the day and when this was flung away at night, as if by an invisible giant hand, the cold deflated the people of Ozi. As the Tsana grew the air thickened and the people of Ozi walked up and down as if asleep. The children ran around trees faster and faster like twirling tops, as if mad, before collapsing to the ground. Babies’ cries were picked by the spiralling wind and flung across the village. They refused to sleep at night, unheeding of even the famous Pokomo lullaby that forty-four years ago had become the tune of the Kenyan anthem.

Two days later the rain reached Ozi. It started in the afternoon, becalmed the children. Babies slumped on their mothers’ chafing shoulders and only woke up to eat banana pulp with fish, their evening meal. Then suddenly the rain stopped, and another blanket of warmth covered Ozi village.

The younger generations of Nyuki and Moto spread out on the river’s banks till mji Kau to cheer the heavy wind-swept victory as the swollen Tsana slowly pushed the sea back, past their village. The tea-brown waters from Mbakomo soils lapped steadily over the foreign metallic-grey liquid sea and Nyuki and Moto raced along the banks waving their arms, flinging their thin bodies into the air. The more foolhardy jumped and washed in the meeting of Tsana and Indian Ocean. Some young men even followed the victorious river past the Island of Kiundani where absent rich men of Ozi who had moved to Malindi owned rice fields; they skipped over the channel of Suez to Kilunguni where Mbakomo weddings were held. They saw how the river churned the prawns from the beds in Chala Chala and they waved at the tourists’ white faces peering from the tops of Polikani Hills where the German Meinherztgen had said he was building a hotel for the community but then kept all the profits for himself. It was whispered that the German still came in the dead of the night to give the money he owed to the old woman, Mama Mamkaze Witu, who had now been dead for five years, long after she had approved the building of the hotel. The German, it was said, left the money where her hut still stood every fifth day of every month, when all were asleep, to pay for the profits that he had kept for himself to stop Mamkaze Witu from haunting the hotel. That was strong medicine no longer seen in these days.

More young men jumped into boats and were buoyed by the climbing river. They eased past Camp Ya Tiro, where Mbakomo fishing tents were moored but now destroyed, past Bashwani, where they kept their sisal nets – now lost after being pushed out to the sea. Their boats passed Pajero, named after the richest Giriama man who had drowned himself because of debt. In Kivunjeni, they stopped and sang above the fish-breeding grounds where millions of eggs were planted by the Mbakomo gods to become fish and where their forefathers had harvested turtle eggs. When they came to Mlangoni, the door of the sea, they fell silent.

Hundreds of Mswahilis stood there, facing the sea, waving long white cloths calling for their beloved Indian Ocean to return and conquer the ‘Tana’, as they called it in their language. Low in the sky where they could almost touch it, hung a pale-brown, desiccated moon above the young foolish Mbakomos – a fearful sight they all looked askance at. They realised that their joy was the sorrow of others and they rowed back home. But once they reached the home shores of Ozi they forgot all they had seen and started dancing when their feet touched the ground at the victory of the Tsana over the Indian Ocean.

As the War raged the Wazee wa Gasa sat in the ancient hut at the top of the village. Their night talk swept the decades aside: they remembered even older Wars between Tsana and Indian Ocean, before El Niño ’97. They remembered the Wars of ’37, told to them by the grandfathers, and ’67 – the other great El Niños. They talked of how God helped the Indian Ocean every nine years to climb upriver and then the Tsana fought back every tenth year to overcome the sea. They remembered how, in their lifetimes, the Indian Ocean had increasingly become stronger than the Tsana. How it had pushed the people of Ozi and the other villages back from its door, almost to the lands of the Ormah who lived behind the Mbakomo, away from the river grazing their cattle. Before this new swelling, the Wazee lamented the Tsana’s nine-year cowardice, and how it had failed to protect them or to give them all the good things it should have brought: the soil from the mountains in Meru to grow bananas, rice, millet, mangos, watermelon and sim sim; the fish it allowed to breed and thrive with crocodile and hippo, whose meat they loved so much. They remembered how the Indian Ocean had won the small and big battles in those nine years to bring drought every three years. They now worried about the Tsana’s rage – once it conquered the Indian Ocean and the moon and the land it would come for Ozi. They instructed the celebrating villagers to abandon their homes and move to higher land in the forest. Many, however, were too drunk with river joy to listen and laughed, drunk on maize beer at the elder’s emissaries. So, the Wazee waited for the flood even as everybody celebrated.

Then, just like that, the Tsana stopped raging against the Indian Ocean; the moon shrunk to an even smaller and paler hole in the sky, unable to help the sea, and the tides came back up the Tsana to Ozi. Those in Ozi with shambas near the mangroves stopped dancing first because the Tsana had now come into their homes. They were the ones who had lived with the salt that burned their land and rejoiced when sea-water was swept from their banana plantations and rice fields. Over the last few days, they had harvested salty catfish suffocated by the Tsana’s fresh water. And so they were the first to tell that the river was coming into their shambas.

Now the air stilled and the rain poured all day in a slow, steady drizzle, picking up at night in a furious torrent. And it came up the banks, further and further, till even those who were cursed by distance from the Tsana’s providence beheld a sight unseen in all their lives. Something they only knew in the tales of their grandparents from the War of ’67 – there was water on their doorsteps. And so the village paused in its drinking and dancing and watched the Tsana. When the water reached their feet they still laughed, stopped what they were doing and danced away nervously till it followed them. Then, they saw the crocodile snouts, their gaping jaws beyond the old banks and they fled and rushed into their homes to pack their belongings and drive their goats and cattle to the swamp, to high land beyond the river. And so, the Tsana, as if pleased, lazily at first, crawled into Ozi land through furrows and channels. It then overflowed the channels and overcame more land. It now licked the furthest houses from its banks and even there, it woke the people up in their beds the next morning. These people who had been cursed to live at a distance from the river but had rejoiced at their temporary fortune only a few days ago also started moving like others but, because there were already numbers at the edges of the forest, they were forced to crawl beneath poisonous vines and enter the undergrowth; and there their children and babies trembled when the elephants trumpeted and the buffaloes bellowed not too far away.

As always, since the Malachini settled in Ozi the water stopped rising when it reached the ancient hut, where the Gasa sat inside. The hut was protected by old knowledge of the river and its ways, built in between its natural channels and history’s study of the land’s contours.

Komora Kijana was seated outside the hut of Gasa waiting for his grandfather when the old man called him. He went to the doorway and stood there because no one but the elders was allowed to enter. His grandfather appeared and came out into the daylight and handed him the Book. ‘Bring your stool here.’ And this is what he wrote as his grandfather addressed the Gasa:

My First Journey

When I was born the river was not where we, the Malachini – or us the people of Ozi, live. The River was at Shisrikisho when I was born. It was the British who brought it here. I am sure that the river will be elsewhere when you die and your grandchildren grow up.

I have travelled up the river. And it is these things I want to tell you. The British brought the sea to us – the river never came this way. Ungwana Bay is where the river went to that time long ago. When I was a boy we would watch the big pelican boat of the white man pass by our village – it made a loud noise that we had never heard before. Louder than thunder or any waterfall. I remember the British made my father and my uncles and all the men of the village dig the channel that became the river today. If the river had been left where Mola had placed it, the sea would not be attacking our land. Even now the days are too hot. Or too cold.

We, the Pokomo, come from Comoros. Because Comoros is small, our forefathers had to leave and over many days and nights came in small boats to Shungwani. I hear people calling it Shingwaya. It is Shungwani. Like I said, it is because people get the message wrong that things are the way they are in the world today.

All this place that we call home was forest and animals and all the peoples of the Coast were one. We were all Wakomora. Wakomora of the grass houses. The Galla made us start building mud houses. They were always fighting and we agreed to do what they wanted so that we could keep our land. Here at least, it was warm. Others were chased to where the Gikuyu have their God on top of a mountain. The age groups that we still have in our heads are part of the legacy of our forefathers: Gigiwa, my grandfather; Loda, my father; Japanisi, which is me; and the Gasa; Sinbad, the younger members of Gasa; Shombe, our sons; Moto, their younger brothers; Nyuki, the sons of my son and the ones who now think they are strong and call themselves ‘Generation Man U’. Wembe, the sons of my son’s younger brothers.

But first the Wakamora forefathers spread in Shungwani – some of you call it Shungwaya. Then they spread to Siu where that real Faisal was said to be, Pate, Kizunguti, Majimwale, Makoe. Then, they started travelling up this river we now call Tsana on their Kinga. The river was called Gamba then. They passed Lango la Simba where there were hundreds of lions but had to stop to rest.

One woman fell pregnant and when she stopped to give birth that is where the Pokomo settled. It is in the place that is now called Panda Nguo. Here the people started separating. Their tongue got twisted and because of the state of being pregnant (mbakomo) we became the Pokomo. Then they started spreading into Ndera, Gwano, Gwale, Kinakomba, Ndura, Zubaki, Malalulu and Malakote.

We had also separated from the Digo whose common food was mihogo; the Rabai who stopped because they liked raha hii (easy living); the waDavidi, also called the Taita because they looked white. And that is how we came to be here and live next to the river.

Our government was the Kijo. And every so often we made sacrifices on the river after planting and harvesting. We danced the kitoko and mwarabe. And we spread from Kibokoni to Garsen where the Ormah and their enemies the Somali live. The Ormah ran away from Ethiopia and on the way they started fighting the Somali who had always lived on the other side of the river. The Ormah came to us and asked for help and we hid them in huge baskets from the Somali. Ever since we have been enemies with the wakabira.

There is nothing wrong between us and the Malajuu. I have been travelling to them for years. There is also nothing wrong with us and Kenya. What is wrong is always the message. There are too many people talking. About us and them. About us and the Orma. About us and the Wakabira. About us as different peoples. Wandera, Wagwaro, Wasumbaki, Milalulu, Kwakomba, Mwinamwina. This river was our shield. Our Ngao.

His grandfather finished talking and Komora Kijana could hear the old men of the Gasa inside sneezing snuff from their noses. He heard them talk about how the Mbakomo lived in the balance of Tsana and Indian Ocean. How many of the people of the Tsana would die from this ancient battle now renewed but it was a death that was better than most. It was better than the desperation that was brought on by failure of the crops. The Gasa gave thanks to the strength of the Indian Ocean for nine years that allowed their sons to go upriver to fish. They talked of the risks of death by hippo or crocodile in the small boats on these fishing trips. They talked of death by the strong curses of other villages when Ozi was forced to steal from their shambas – clans up the river where the sea never reached and where crops thrived. This was better than death by buffalo, when Ozi was forced to go deep into the forest to look for food.

Over a low fire the Elders of Gasa murmured and gestured over all these things and commiserated with the people of the Sea, the Mswahilis whose lives would be taken away till the sea came back. They prayed that the other clans, their other people, the Malajuu, had not already been swept aside from the outpouring of the river from the Mountain and the opening of the Seven Stone Men.

Komora Kijana sat outside the hut of Gasa and wondered whether Mariam was okay.

All the young men who had climbed into boats and danced their way to Mlangoni to cheer the Tsana had now wisely left the river. Not far from the hut of Gasa there was a half-built stone hall with a flat roof – this was the youth social hall that was yet to be completed. The money from the Constituency Development Fund had dried up before the windows and the floor could be put in. But the Tsana was yet to climb onto the roof and so, happy and distracted, the young men stood on this vantage point and cheered the river against Indian Ocean.

The young men had been drinking maize beer since the War started. Most of the Nyuki and Moto generation were too young to remember the ’97 El Niño War so they celebrated the majesty of the river shouting: ‘Man U, Man U.’ There was no electricity since the rains had started and they could not watch their Premier League DVDs so they sang the song of their favourite team.

Semikaro the councillor was among them and he put his hands up and they all fell quiet. Now he told that the water came from the upriver dams, the Seven Stone Men built by a government that did not care for them. The young men listened and became animated again, drunkenly shouting that they would go upriver and destroy the dams.

Semikaro hailed their bravery and promised to find them money from Nairobi for transport to carry out this important task. He also told them not to heed the words of the old men of Gasa who led the village and were past their ‘expiry date’. The young men shouted they needed to choose a leader (Semikaro cleverly declined the great honour when they shouted and cheered Siad Barre, Siad Barre, his nickname from the aviator shades he always wore, that made him look like a giant insect) who they could send before the old men for support of their plan to kill the Seven Stone Men.

One tall, wide-toothed young man with a big mouth, the best soccer player in the village, wearing a Manchester United T-shirt, nicknamed Ronaldo, offered himself as their new leader. When the young men gave him their drunken vote of confidence he jumped from the roof of the stone building and waded confidently to new ground, to the ancient hut of Gasa and asked to be heard. He removed the earring he wore in his right ear like his hero, Ronaldo, and stood and peered through the open doorway. He spoke to the shadows as he could hardly see inside the hut and the old men grew grave when they heard his proposal. Komora Mzee Wito said: ‘Kijana wa Mimili, you wear an earring like our daughters and mothers. Do you know what you speak of when you tell us of the Seven Stone Men found up the Tsana?’

‘Fathers, with the blessings of Gasa all is possible.’

‘Have you ever seen the Seven Stone Men? You speak with a mouth that should still be suckling. The Seven Stone Men cannot be destroyed. The whole of Ozi from a hundred years knows this. Even if my grandfathers from the time of Gigiwa and Loda, fathers and uncles from the time of before Sinbad, my brothers and cousins from that of Sinbad and my sons and nephews of Shombe were brought back together as young men – they cannot destroy the Seven Stone Men. So you children from Moto and Nyuki have become nothing because you worship a football club far away. The Mbakomo have to live with the Seven Stone Men. It is time for you to start using your young arms to add mud onto the dykes of the river. The floods are here. If I still had the strength I would have locked you in the kizio myself. Ati you now call yourselves generation Manchester United!’ Komora Mzee Wito spat on the ground.

Ronaldo left the hut and thought about the trip up the Tsana to destroy the Seven Stone Men. The furthest he had ever been from Ozi was when he rode upstream on a canoe with two of his best friends to ‘steal’ his wife from Ngomeni, which was half an hour away by boat.

He did not go back to the roof of the social hall where he had left his friends but went to join his young wife and two babies near the forest. The young men he left sang with new energy till it was clear that their Manchester United hero was not coming back, so they clambered into their canoes and rowed to Shirikisho with the little money that the councillor had left them and bought more millet beer.

The Tsana had now risen higher and the young men could only get off the boats beyond the swamp, which had become a small lake. They bought the beer and came back to their high outpost and started drinking again, dancing on the high concrete till they fell to the ground one by one, drunk. They did not feel the water come up slowly in the night as they slept and crocodiles pulled two of them into the river.

Semikaro had travelled to Shirikisho and when he came to Ozi the next morning he heard what had happened and stayed in the safety of Kilu forest. There he shouted at the government in Nairobi and the district headquarters in Garsen and swore revenge for the two young men who had been eaten by crocodiles. The whole Ozi world had become water.

Agitated by the words of Semikaro and worn down by the hunger and cold, some women in Kilu Forest started whispering that the Katiba and Maji government visitors the village had received before the Tsana had overcome the Indian Ocean and Ozi were to blame. Questions about the visit of the Katiba and Maji people now spread in the forest, asking what they had come to do and where they were now that Ozi was suffering. The forest spread with the news of these harbingers of ill. Different accounts were given of the visit. Angry, the people of Ozi asked why the Land Rover the men had come in had not been fed with saltwater from the mangroves to kill it. Or why the hair of the white girl who had come with them had not been shaved off as she stood because, more than anyone, she had brought the river’s wrath.

The people in the forest now remembered how the British had favoured the Malajuu and given them their land because they thought they, the Malachini, were lazy. Someone asked how the elders could let the granddaughter of the British come back to their village, after all that had happened years ago. They told a version of the story over and over again of how the British had also stolen the river and taken it away near to where their big man lived so that he could travel by boat to the Ameru people far away near the mountains. They agreed that the British girl had now brought more bad luck to them.

Semikaro listened to the poisonous voices and sensed new opportunities against the Gasa. He did not correct them on many things such that the girl who had come to the village was Dutch or that Katiba and Maji had come to propose solutions to the Tsana’s flooding. He turned to them instead and said: ‘You people. The rest of Kenya does not take care of us. They have now opened the dams for us to drown. They have built dams in our river to benefit themselves. Now we suffer because of the dams.’ The people all fell silent. The dams were too far away from them. They were getting hungry and somebody suddenly asked the councillor about the CDF funds and how that would help them in this time of need. He promised to see what he could do the next day. Deep in the night he rowed away in one of the boats to Shirikisho and never came back. Without the poison tongue of Semikaro they settled and looking around the trees remembered that Kilu Forest was their friend. It was their refuge in times like this.

The rain stopped as suddenly as it had started and because the air was calm and quiet everyone knew that the War between Tsana and Indian Ocean was over. Komora Mzee came out of the hut of Gasa and Komora Kijana led him home. The water had never threatened their homestead. They slept for days and when Komora Mzee Wito had rested enough he called Komora Kijana to his hut. The old man reached into the hut’s rafters and removed the Book. He dusted it and handed it to the boy who opened the pages to release a pile of dead wasps to the ground. The old man sunk onto a stool at the far wall and started talking. The words from his mouth fell on the pages and now and again he paused and sifted the dead wasps through his hands and crushed them and continued talking.

After he finished, he sang the Pokomo lullaby the way it was supposed to be sung. Then, he looked at Komora Kijana and said it would soon be time to travel to the Tana People’s Constitutional Conference. The old man handed Komora Kijana the Book and told him to read through as much of it as possible and to prepare for the trip. Komora Kijana could see that his grandfather had aged with the swelling of the Tsana. Over the last two years the old man had stopped taking his annual trip to Malajuu, up the river, to see the other Wazee wa Gasa. He had been building strength for this last journey to the Tana People’s Constitutional Conference.

Komora Kijana spent the next few days reading the Book. When he finished and took it back to his grandfather, Komora Mzee Wito was unable to leave his bed. He called the boy to him. ‘I am told that the river is back to normal and is moving again in its natural direction.’ Komora Kijana held out the Book to his grandfather but the old man did not take it. ‘This is now your Book. This is what I leave you. I cannot come with you but I will be with you in spirit. There is no time to waste.’

Komora Kijana slipped out of the village five days later in the early morning and only the Gasa knew he had left. Along with the Book, Komora Mzee Wito had given him a pile of papers that included an old map. He also carried a small bag that contained a calabash of water, three pairs of trousers, two shukas, four T-shirts and two shirts. He wore a cloth inside his trousers and there was a knot to the side where he kept the money his grandfather had given him.

It was still dark when he left and he wanted to catch a boat at Shirikisho village that he hoped would carry him to Ngao. From Ngao he would take a Nissan matatu to Garsen where he would spend the night. He now kept on foot through swamp and open grasslands – the track was treacherous and he ignored the likely looking firm grounds and took the steps of his childhood. The sun would be up in a few hours and so he rushed. The shadows of the crops of his people by the river – familiar banana shapes, blade-like knives of the maize, the shaded looming thick figures that he knew held mango fruit guided him. The last sound he had heard from his village was the sound of young men cheering at the village TV – electricity had returned and they were back to watching the recorded Premiership games they had missed during the floods. He could also hear the voice of the man far away in England talking everyone through the game. A goal was scored and the shouts of ‘Man U! Man U!’ came to him.

Now he wondered where Mariam was and how she was doing, and he knew she would have gone to university when he returned.

Komora Kijana touched the bag on his shoulder again and felt the Book inside and walked on towards the Mountain they called Kenya where the Tana People’s Constitutional Conference was to be held. He remembered his grandfather’s last words: ‘At the conference you will find people asking you to keep explaining yourself. All you have to say is this: We, the people of Ozi, Malachini, we are here because we are here because we are here.’