Vengeance Is Not Mine (1)

Vengeance is not mine.

By Clifford Oluoch.

The news that Felix dreaded the most finally reached him. It was a still morning, the skies grey with scattered clouds, an indication of another warm Nairobi day.
“He is dead!” the rough male voice simply told him. “Come and collect his body!”
The room spun, a constellation of stars seemed to go on and off forcing Felix to sit down heavily on the closest chair available – heavy mahogany that was specially reserved for his 75 year old father.
“Damn it!” Felix whispered. “Wicky is dead! This will kill my parents,” he whispered of his 72 year old mother, ailing from hypertension for the last twenty or so years and his 75 year old father who was diabetic. Both parents were on heavy medication and strict dietary monitoring. Stress is the last thing they needed. And this was stress. Big stress.
The truth is that they were not his real parents. Felix had grown up in the expansive Ayany Estate house ever since he was 3 years old, piecing together his family history through household rumours and half baked stories from his own brother Wicky and the noisy neighbours, especially neighbours’ housegirls from the sprawling Kibera slums.
The phone rang again and this time Felix had the presence of mind to answer it. It was a private number.
“Yes?”
“Wicky has been shot dead at the end of Joseph Karanja road,” came the recognizable husky and shaky voice of Nijo, one of Wicky’s partners in crime.
“What happened?” Felix asked, his voice trembling with fear of the unknown and what implications the death was going to have on him and his family.
“Long story but the short of it is a deal gone sour with one of the nasty cops,” Nijo said hurriedly. A loud hooting in the background swallowed Nijo’s words.
“Where are you?” Felix asked, knowing that he would need all the required support to sort out the situation at hand.
“Fleeing to anywhere. I will call you daily at around this time.” He hung up and Felix suddenly felt alone.
Wicky was five years Felix’s senior. According to the grapevine, both boys had been adopted by their current childless parents after the land clashes that rocked the country just before the 1992 elections. This was in early 1991.
Rumour had it that Wicky’s real parents and two other family members were killed during the clashes and that Wicky, who was hardly eight years old at that time trekked, hiked lifts from Molo to Nairobi. Once in Nairobi, Wicky lived on the streets, fending for his younger brother and making sure that no harm befell him. While on the streets, an older and more sympathetic streetboy advised the two brothers to change their names to mask their tribal identity.
“Tribalism is everywhere, even on the streets! And so Wycliffe Njoroge adopted the name Wicky and Felix Mwangi stopped referring to himself as Mwangi.
It is during one of their begging sessions at the General Post Office that an old lady took pity on Wicky and Felix and asked them where their parents were. Wicky had told them the whole story and that was the day the two had made a shift from the hostile streets to the comfort of a real house.
Felix had vague memories of those early days though he grew up knowing that his parents’ origin was coastal and that they were the most caring and forgiving human beings he had ever come across. Wicky and Felix adopted the surname Chari, thus wiping out any trace of their past.
But Wicky was trouble from the word go. He was wild, exciting and generally a ring leader who heavily leaned towards law breaking. In primary school, he organized deadly gangs that struck fear in the hearts of pupils and, sometimes, teachers. For this reason, when Felix joined primary school there was an immediate defensive ring around him. No one touched him, though the teachers and other pupils were clearly shocked at the gaping difference in character and work habits between the two brothers. Felix remembers the day he was caned by his class teacher in std.1. A mention to Wicky about it and the teacher was mugged and robbed of all her belongings while going home. Wicky was nowhere near the scene but his hand was felt. No teacher ever touched Felix again.
Election years brought the worst out of Wicky. He and his gang were hired to harass opponents of certain politicians. Each subsequent election year seemed to get worse. The years 2002 and 2007 when violent elections took place in Kenya were particularly tense moments for Felix and his parents. Stories of Wicky and his terror gang dominated talk in the estate. His parents’ health problem worsened.
A hard knock on the bedroom door and Felix shook himself from the train of thoughts and quickly got to his feet. He went to open it and standing there was Wambui, the elderly housegirl who had taken care of them since they were babies. She was more of a second mother to them. Her blue women’s guild head gear was a permanent feature in her matronly dressing.
The two looked at each other and Felix knew that she knew. Her eyes were puffy. She must have been crying.
“I tried telling him to keep off those boys from Kibera but he just never listened to me,” Wambui wailed like someone who had lost a son. “What will happen to Baba and Mama?” she asked amidst sobs.
It is then that Felix remembered that he was supposed to pick his parents from the Nairobi Hospital doctor’s plaza where they attended weekly clinics with Dr. Kioko. That would take another half hour or so but he had to deal with Wicky’s body. Felix decided to call Dr. Kioko, the urologist who treated both his parents. He had the doctor’s personal cell phone number.
“Yes Felix?” the doctor’s smooth voice came on line.
“Hi doctor. Are my parents through?” he asked almost in a whisper.
“Not yet but they are next in line. I will be done in an hour or so. Is there a problem?” the doctor asked. He knew the family and both kids very well. He could sense the tension in Felix’s voice.
“Big problem doctor. Wicky has just been shot dead at the Joseph Karanja and Woodley estate junction. I am on my way to collect his body and take it to the mortuary,” Frankie whispered.
“Oh no, this will be a tough one for your folks,” the doctor muttered. “But I will take care of it.”
“Just keep them with you until I sort out this issue,” Felix concluded as he slipped feet into the Nikey sports shoes to complement his hand made black jeans suit. He got out of the house and opened the door to the wine red Subaru Legacy that his parents had bought him for his 21st birthday two years back. He wore his shades and black Nikey hat. It was a black day.
“Please do not call my parents about this and if they call you do not say anything,” Felix instructed Wambui. For the first time he regretted the advancement in technology. With the advent of cellphones and cable TV, news travelled at supersonic speed.
Felix started the car and reversed it out of the compound that housed the three bedroomed bungalow with a one bedroomed extension at the back of the house. This room was exclusively reserved for Wicky. The estate, once immaculate in its design, had seen mushrooming extensions and to some extent some high rise, thus distorting the beauty in the uniformity of the area.
Felix hit the road and listened to the hard hitting lyrics of Tupac Shakur’s song “I Wonder If Heaven’s Got a Ghetto”. He found little solace as he joined the busy and notoriously chaotic matatu infested Joseph Karanja road. He maneuvered his way through the maze of matatus and buses whose incessant hooting was a landmark of Kibera. A number of the drivers recognized him and gave him way, either because they already knew about Wicky or just out of respect. He had schooled with most of them at Olympic Primary School. Felix was to them the epitome of academic success – a straight As university student. Plus his brother was well known. The contrast between the brothers made them folklore.
It took Felix almost twenty minutes to reach the junction. It was not far from Joseph Kangethe nursery school, his al mater, and Moi Nairobi Girls boarding schools. Fond memories flooded as Felix remembered being dropped by car to nursery school, where he had met his first love – Chepchumba, a petit Kalenjin girl whose bulging eyes, smooth dark skin and white sparkling teeth had swept Felix off his feet. Wicky was hostile towards her. “Their people slaughtered our parents and sisters,” Wicky would drum it into young Felix’s head. But Felix did not care. Whenever Chepchumba smiled, his feet went weak. That is all he knew.
Chepchumba lived in the Nairobi City Council’s Woodley flats. As the years went by, Felix tried to maintain a relationship with her but Wicky could hear nothing about it. It was one of the few times that they had a serious argument.
“Leave the house right now!” Wicky had ordered Chepchumba one day when she had come calling.
“Why should she leave?” Felix had come to the defence of her teenage girlfriend. It was during the August school holidays and Chepchumba had come for some Maths lessons from the maestro himself.
“Because if she doesn’t leave, I will shoot her dead!” And with those chilling words Wicky had signaled with his hands pointed at Chepchumba. “Bang! Bang! Die! Die!” Chepchumba had gathered her stuff and ran all the way never to be seen again in that compound.
A sizeable crowd buzzing with excitement craned their necks to see whose body it was. Felix wished that Chepchumba would appear. The playing ground between the road and the flats reminded Felix of the many innocent games he played with Chepchumba. The famous ‘catch catch’ game that always ended up with Felix always letting Chepchumba ‘catch’ him.
“Please move,” Felix shoved his way to the body which lay sprawled on the road side just a few inches from the dry trench. Yes, it indeed was Wicky. The shoes and the jacket he was wearing were the ones Felix had given him as a birthday present, a day that even he, Wicky, forgot on an annual basis.
“When will this madness ever end?” Felix had asked Wicky.
“When I am buried,” had been Wicky’s answer with a distant trace of regret in his voice. “But don’t ever follow my path.”
“Why Wicky? Why?” had been Felix’s desperate plea to the only blood brother he had.
The deep sigh that had accompanied that question had convinced Felix that Wicky was going to off load something from his chest.
“I died twenty years ago when I witnessed the brutal killing of our parents and our two older sisters,” he started. “You are the reason I did not give up in life. I promised myself that I would see you through life whatever it took. Now you are a grown man and my mission is over.” It had been a statement loaded with coldness.
“The only thing that kept me going was your cry ‘Mama has not given me my chapatti’. I had to buy you chapatti to appease your hunger and anger.” Wicky had smiled at the thought.
Felix had said nothing. A week later and Wicky was dead.
Felix moved to the body and bent his left knee; put his right hand under Wicky’s feet and his left hand under his stiffened neck. The pool of blood did not seem to bother him as he counted the bullet holes in the body. He was sure those were more than ten holes. A part of Felix’s life died. The coldness in his heart frightened him. It is when he felt the streaming tears that he knew that he was crying.
He was about to lift the body when he heard the soft voice that was permanently engrained in his brain. “Felix, is that you?” It was Chepchumba
Felix lifted the body and turned as the crowd parted as he carried his brother’s body to the car. Chepchumba followed him and opened the back door for him. He put his brother’s body in. He shut the door and turned to look at Chepchumba.
“I am so sorry about what has happened,” she started and then came forward to hug him. He held on to her for some time, savouring the warmth and support of a human being. “Can I come with you?” she asked.
“No, this is a complicated case and I don’t want you to be mixed in this. I will pass by in the evening to pick you,” Felix replied as he put his hands on her shoulder and bent slightly to kiss Chepchumba’s forehead. She shut her eyes and sighed.
Felix got into the car, started it and drove first to the police post where he picked Omari, a former class mate who was now a policeman. The news of Wicky’s death was hot news all over Kibera and its environs.
He wanted to make his way to Lee Funeral Home, off Ngong Road but Omari advised him against it. “It’s a police case, so City Mortuary must be your first drop. Once you get clearance, then we can transfer him to Lee Funeral home.”
Felix avoided the notorious traffic jam ladenned Ngong Road, preferring the smoother Kilimani Road a route that had been his daily route while attending secondary school. The every changing Nairobi’s landscape never ceased amazing Felix – too many high rise buildings.
Felix changed radio stations to a gospel one which was belting out the all time favourite ‘Then Sings My Soul’. He needed the moment with God. It took him another ten minutes to reach the funeral home where he was quickly attended to mainly due to Omari’s influence and presence. Felix felt like he was living a nightmare. After almost an hour of formalities and form filling sessions, Felix finally got to transfer his brother’s body to Lee Funeral Home using an ambulance from City Mortuary. Again Omari’s influence worked wonders and in a record twenty minutes they were through.
Felix was not far from the Doctor’s Plaza where his parents were being treated. He decided to have his car washed at the City Mortuary parking area. It was one of the many illegal water points in the city but the City Council just did not have enough muscle to track them down. Here he parted ways with Omari, promising to keep in touch about the funeral arrangements.

To be continued

(c) 2009 Clifford Oluoch. oluochcliff@yahoo.co.uk