When Jaba came home the first time flush with money, she smiled and said God is great. When he bought a car, she told Moraa, her neighbour, that God answers prayers, that she will never trouble her tired legs over long distances. How she will be using the car that often yet her son lived miles away in Nairobi, she did not say. When he built them a house, she told people, “you see the importance of educating your children”. That Jaba had dropped out of school in his second year of secondary education had not escaped people in this village where everybody knew everybody’s business by default, and not wish. That is what they could talk about, all they had; whose daughter had gotten pregnant, whose husband had inherited which widow, whose wife was cheating and how they knew she was cheating. So they asked. However, they did not ask the right person; how had he gotten all that money? Maybe, he had gotten into business. Don’t they have a streak for business, that family? Wasn’t his mother the foremost shopkeeper in the village? They have always had a way with money, that family. The admirers said.
Maybe, he had gotten into politics. Hadn’t he been seen on several occasions with Tenga, the MP’s handyman? They must be eating together, with the MP, not Tenga. Tenga was still poor in comparison to Jaba. You know, in politics, if you know the right people, you get tenders. You make roads, even when you don’t know the difference between sand and ballast. But there were whispers. Those from the city who knew him asked his neighbours to tell his mother to ask him to take it slow.
“Nairobi will swallow him,” they said. It is a big city. You know it swallowed Rasta and Wanugu. “And we all know Jaba is not Wanugu, will never be Wanugu,” added Otenyo. That was the talk in the drinking dens. That Jaba was not Wanugu, that he should take it slow. It, however, was different in other places. Over tea, they said, maybe he should run for county rep next time. Or even Member of Parliament. After all, all you needed was money. But as they said this, they didn’t look each other in the eye.
“Otenyo said he knew what Jaba did. He doesn’t like me, because I always tell him the truth.” He said, not knowing that in that statement he had unintentionally acknowledged that Jaba was better than him. “At least he should go slow on the women. A man who does what he does should always be below the radar. They are always watching, the police. And some of those women, may be the police, or working with the police.” He added. They had always been rivals, Jaba and Otenyo, since their days in lower primary.
It did therefore did not come as a surprise when Paulina, Jaba’s mother, publicly accosted Lucia, Otenyo’s mother and told her that they will always be poor. That they will die from jealous. “Some people don’t even know how to wish others well,” she spat.
Lucia told Otenyo to let other be. Of course after she had told Paulina that Otenyo was a grown man. His business was not hers. If she had a problem, she knew how to find him.
“One day, you will know I was right.” Otenyo said.
They always knew, they said. They had anticipated it. That is how people who get money fast behaved. “It is worse if they are young, or uneducated.” They added. Since the incident, Paulina had changed. At first, she started saying her greetings briskly, as if in a hurry to get somewhere. She had stopped shaking people’s hands. Maybe, because she had stopped looking them in the eyes first. She said they had planned it, the market women, that they had moved their tomatoes and sukuma wiki closer to the road when they had seen him pass. They knew he would return, she said, so they timed him.
But she never said that Jaba had spent close to four hours in a bar before getting behind the wheel to drive back. She also never said whether the women who had been injured also positioned themselves by the road. He had paid them of course, even their medical bills. That is the first thing he had said when he got out of the car,’ I will pay you, don’t worry. I have money, lots of money”. And the girl who had been rubbing his thigh earlier on had laughed, and called him brave.
Now the tone had changed. Now there were whispers that he had been taken to court over stolen vehicles. That a photo of him with three other men covering their faces had appeared in the newspapers. He denied it. But after that incident, he had stopped coming to the village as often as he used to. There had been rumours that he was in prison, but they were disapproved when he appeared with a new flashier car, his smile wider, his laugh deeper, his girl more stunning.
“The Lord is good.” His mother said, “He fights for me.” But she didn’t say whether her God was fair. She said people were jealous, that they couldn’t stand seeing others succeed. Some shook heads and wondered why people are blind to the truth when it suits them.
It dropped like a bombshell, but people were not surprised. They had not anticipated it, but they had not ruled it out either. “I told you, Jaba is not Wanugu.” Otenyo kept saying.
Paulina had picked up a long slender piece of gum tree that was outside her house and started beating the roof of her house. She had screamed, she had cried since morning till evening. Her morning shrill cries had metamorphosed into slow deeps hums. She had not shed tears, she had just screamed. And talked. She had said she knew it. She had seen it from the way she looked at her, and him. At his car. Lucia was always jealous. She was not surprised she had done it.
“I had a feeling she would do it.” She said and laughed sarcastically. “Sometimes, I can be so naive.” She added. The way she had looked at her when she stood by the fence to ask for salt and somehow it had degenerated into a shouting match. Hadn’t Lucia said it. What was it, enjoy them, they may be your last. That must be it. How had it escaped her? And she knew Lucia was a witch. The village was full of witches, of people with the bad eye.
When the body came, the casket was never opened. Paulina said she didn’t want people who had killed her son to have the pleasure of seeing the results of their handy work. But those who came with the body said that the bullets had damaged the body beyond recognition. Was it twenty rounds, or thirty, no, it must be twenty two. That is what the police had told them. That they pay for twenty two bullets before they could hand over the body. And of course, those who read the papers knew that four robbers had been gunned down in cold blood in Nairobi’s Ngong area, and it wasn’t coincidence that Jaba had died the same day from gun shots. And so it happened, that Jaba, the village’s colourful son was buried without people viewing his body; the kind of burial that the villagers considered demeaning.
Native Essays 