An Ode to My Hood

STAGE TWENTY THREE, THE WAIYAKI WAY

At the Odeon, that’s where it starts. The KMO matatus calling for those heading there;
               Kangemi juu ya daraja thate,
              Kangemi juu ya daraja thate…
Sit through the close to twenty minutes ride and arrive at the crowded fly-over that doubles up as a market place and a conveyor into the inner chambers of Kangemi. First thing you will notice is the red Kangemi Petrol Station. Essentially, it is a petrol station (of course, it says so) but in reality, it is a matatu stage in disguise. Just wait until night fall, when the whole station gets turned into a loading zone, flashing lights and lots of hooting everywhere.
Stretching just beyond this petrol station is the famous Kangemi market. Now be careful how you walk on these grounds. Littered with fruit and vegetable peels, then covered with the water used in washing of these fruits and vegetables which are then displayed out there in the open and gather dust again so that you will wash them again when you get home, the ground is the best place to slip on. Usually, you will hear the mtumba guys howling at the top of their voices as they display their wares on gunias, reducing a wide street into an alley, so on top of trying to keep your balance, you need to be careful not to step on the clothes strewn haphazardly on the place where you are meant to walk. Step on one cloth, you will buy the whole cargo.
Anyway, why did I single out the cloth sellers as the noisiest? Because, usually, those selling vegetables and fruits know that you cannot avoid certain things, and among those certain things are vegetables and fruits. So they will sit back and let the reddish-green beckoning colour of the mangoes, the deep orange colour of the oranges and the vibrant yellowness of the bananas call you to their stalls. And don’t get me started on those selling sukuma wiki and cabbages (makabo). I mean really? For how long can you avoid their stalls? Probably just the first day of the month when the pockets are enthusiastic about making it rain because it’s payday. Mama Mboga just knows it’s your pockets, not the sukuma wiki or cabbage, which will direct you to her stall later on in the month. So, in that case, why bother with this window dressing nonsense? Just scatter the leaves of the damn thing on a gunia and watch them sell out like a brand new flagship Samsung phone. The very enterprising ones will cut them for you. Kuna ya ten bob, twenty bob, thirty bob and so on. Others even add some grated carrots on the cabbages, ‘kuongeza taste’.
In the inner stalls of Kangemi market, you will find all sorts of assorted stalls, all arranged such that you cannot miss any one of them. The streets are narrow so that the shopkeeper can just whisper in your ears as you pass by; Kuna ya soo, soo biri, yoyote unataka brathe, siste, aunty, etc. Here, you will find an electronic stall dealing in those Chinese sub-woofers that often look like a Sony shelf component that hit the shelves before it was fully done. Next to them is a sub-woofer repair shop. And they will swear they do not know each other. ‘Sisi tuko na wakachop huko towni’ they tell you as they pack the system into a paper bag before you even get the chance to bargain. And warranty, you wonder. Six months, he says, handing you a receipt which, incidentally, has the name of the ‘chop’ on it, a little misspelt but still genuine from the look of things. Unbeknownst to you, that speaker has a life span of seven to eight months. Also, you lose the right to complain if anything physically happens to the system, which while built quite well, has some brittle external parts, like a really crappy aerial that need a caress, or knobs that won’t work unless you punch them. Then, there are cloth stalls, where you will find a pair of jeans retailing for 1000 Shs in one place, then a cool five hundred shillings less at another place, all before you bargain. Of course, if you don’t want to walk the squeezed, claustrophobic place, you might as well exercise your jaws and begin a negotiation with the one selling it for 1000. You might end up paying 400 for it.
As you walk, please take care of the open sewer frothing just a slip away from your swede shoes. When you buy a banana, this is where the peel ends up. A mango, same, oranges, ditto. Food left over from the eateries dotting the market? You guessed it. Pouring urine hear is dependent on how many fucks you don’t give but yes, it is totally unpunishable if you do it here. The only thing frowned upon is doing a number two here.
Now, Kangemi is vast, and I mean, like really big. There are places that look like they belong to an urbane neighbourhood like Donholm, then there is the face of it, the ones that look like a glance of an upgrade on Kibera. In fact, in an alternate, I would say that Kangemi is Kibera’s fraternal twin although it is occurring to me as I write this that there is nothing stopping me from declaring it Kibera’s fraternal twin in this universe. So, Kibera’s fraternal twin it is.
There are all sorts of houses in Kangemi; single bedroom ya mabati, single bedroom ya mawe, single bedroom na jikoni, two-bedroom, three bedroom etc. And they are advertised on black boards erected strategically by the feeder roads taking you deep into the mtaa. Just take a short stop to look at them and boom, you have this guy on you like a shadow. Apparently, they are ‘agents’. For a small fee, they will take you to the ploti where the house whose price your pockets desire is located. How much, you ask? How about between two hundred and five hundred. Yes, you cough that much for a house you probably won’t even move in to. Moving houses isn’t cheap but apparently, neither is showing people moving houses houses. So it’s better to go through the torture of house hunting the hard way.
Kangemi has several small mtaas within it. There is Bottom-line, which is the first one just as soon as you walk down from the fly-over and take the turn on your right. Here, you will find a big pub with a Tusker logo on the entrance. It is Bottom-line Pub. That’s where this mtaa gets its name from. The place is littered with butcheries. Indeed, beef and beer are truly an inseparable couple. Wish we humans were more like them in our relationships. A small sewer streams on the side of the road. Unlike the one we encountered earlier though, this one is safely running on some lowered grounds, passing beneath the mama mboga vibandas and the chapati stalls. Oh, did I mention that the chapati business is gold here? You will hardly walk a few feet before you hear the sizzling of the dough on the pan, with the scent floating in the air as the yellow tower of the flat bread rises and is torn down just as immediately. You will notice that, the people selling this chapatis all have their peculiar way of making it. You will find one who makes them very round and tasteless, others raggedy and very salty. Another will make them like biscuit, very tough and dry but then, when dipped into supu ya madondo, it softens into a tasty piece of food, as long as you don’t finish the soup before the chapo, otherwise you will eat the rest of it with water, and while water is healthy and all, you will agree with me it is not the best when you want something to accompany food down the gut after each bite.
Kiumbuini is a football ground here in Kangemi. Located just off the matatu stage after the market, it is home to Kangemi United, Kangemi Sharp Shooters and stray dogs. The footballers are usually young men in their twenties who dream of one day playing in the Kenya Premier League. While most are good, law-abiding citizens, you will encounter a few hardcore muggers. This also includes some of the mechanics there. They have a day hustle and a night hustle. You really don’t want to run into your favourite fundi in his night hustle. Otherwise, all you will here is ‘ako na tenje! Ako na tenje!’ and the next thing you know, your phone is gone and you almost peed yourself.
Sodom is another of Kangemi’s smaller mtaas. This the worst place to stay in Kangemi. First of all, it borders a flight of high-rising apartments where the bourgeoisie look down at the sun all crooked on your rusting iron sheets and wondering just how people live ‘down there’. The sewers from these affluent houses often find their way down to the plots here in Sodom. Second of all, Sodom is a criminally sunken area. When it rains cats, dogs and their grandmothers, be prepared to have your houses flooded. You will find all manner of junk floating in your single room after a heavy downpour. So severe is flooding in Sodom that people living here have decided to…do nothing about it. No seriously, it’s so bad that apathy has set permanent residence here. People have desensitized themselves to it. So why don’t they leave, you ask? Because the houses around here are the cheapest one can find in Kangemi. Plus, it doesn’t rain every day so chances must be taken.
Thirdly, Sodom is overrun with rats. No, I’m not talking about the little cute ones that look like they could do with a hug. I’m talking about the big fat ones that could stand up to a cat. In the night, they come out to play and you will hear them on the rafters, running, squealing and falling on your bed. They will topple the dustbin and eat through the basins and possibly, your soul. These monsters don’t die easy though, so good luck getting rid of them.
Here, the kiosks don’t have Nairobi City County licenses so it is when you are really desperate for a tissue paper that you will find all the shops around closed because ‘kanjo wanatembea huku’. This game of cat and mouse is very common in these places. Maureen, a mama mboga in this area, has lived in Sodom for close to a decade. Her house rarely floods but then, she runs a small kiosk so there is kanjo to worry about. So, she rarely sets out to her kibanda during the day. She ventures out just as the sun is going down and is open into the tens in the p.ms. She is a blessing to the late-coming bachelors, especially considering she is among those who cuts mboga for you.
Sodom borders Waruku but that is in Dagoretti so we won’t talk about it. On your way out of Sodom, you can easily access Waiyaki Way through an alternative route instead of going back to the fly-over. Across the road, is a bar called Gitoka Springs, red in colour. You can take it easy and unwind here though don’t take any chances with your priced possessions. Outside, you will look over at the Tim Wanyonyi Boda boda den, where the motorcyclists like to pass their free time as they discuss politics. When you leave, feel free to just walk over to the stage outside and jump into the nearest matatu to town. If you got time to spare, you could walk up the mtaa beckoning you ahead, leading you back to the fly-over. Here, you won’t encounter anything new save for more women selling fish and many psychedelic M-pesa signboards flickering their annoying green lights at you. Also, for some reason, there are a lot of charcoal dealers here. Maybe we have the next Njenja Karume just toiling away here, unassumingly, as thousands in the bank account grow into millions then into billions, probably. Feel free to sample the mutura beckoning deliciously at you as you try to pass by without looking. ‘Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look’, oh who are you kidding? ‘Nikatie ya mbao. Na hauna kachumbari leo? Ayaya, sawa tu.’
Then you walk across the fly-over, stop and lean on the railings and watch the traffic tide ebb and flow below into the distant, savour the far skyline of Nairobi city in the horizon, bathed in the orange gaze of sunset, before you walk past some more fish basking in the evening dust towards the matatus now beginning to occupy the entry to the petrol station. Oh, before you get on the mat and leave though, just turn to your left, behind that guy selling ‘dawa ya mede na panya’ on a wheelbarrow, there is a Kisii woman selling fresh njugu karanga. They are very tasty when a little warm. If not, just take the ones that have cooled, but they are a hit or miss in that state. Then, get into the mat. Since its evening, you could end up paying probably thate or fote. Safe journey and please, come back because Kangemi is too big to be completed in half a day. Yes, more than two thousand words later, we are still not done with Kangemi.