It was during the height of the tobacco collecting season in Kuria, Southwestern Kenya. I was just about to leave the office for a deserved beer when the telephone rang. It was my friend F, the @pamba (Godspeed, my brother) at Kehancha Police Station. He wanted me to go to some joint between Kehancha Juu and Kehancha Chini and take care of his girlfriend since he was going to be late on a patrol. It was no bother since we collaborated a lot. Oftentimes we depended on him to tell us where the patrols to control illegal tobacco movements would be so that we design the safe routes to our stores in Migori and Oyani. But this is not the story of illegal tobacco transfers…
I strolled down after locking up and it was getting dark when I entered Black Bull Restaurant… I went to the back where there was a thatched Banda, after telling Omahe, the owner, to get two wet fry chicken going. In the glow of two kerosene lamps was F’s girlfriend…and…wait for it, a near replica of her. Their only difference was the apparent age difference. F’s girlfriend, a nurse, was a looker. One of Kisii’s finest that for many days the fisi in me had salivated over but the Bro Code being what it is I could only kula kwa macho.
Now here was the replica. young and innocent looking. After greetings I was told she was Maricera - the younger sister. She had finished school the previous year and was waiting to join a college. Small talk and drinks flowed and before long F’s girlfriend began getting fidgety. Their landlord locked the gate at 930 and F was taking too long coming. Eventually, I convinced them to take it easy as I had a place they could spend the night, seeing as my colleague had traveled home to see his family.
Towards 11.00 we asked Omahe’s junior wife (the sod was maried to sisters!) to bring the food, leaving some for F. We ate and I guess because we had drunk a lot on hungry stomachs Maricera was wasted. After dinner we therefore didn’t take long but started walking towards Kehancha Juu. What started as a hand of support for Maricera ended up with me almost carrying her…
The place I called home was a building, one of those “plots” they build in rural towns with shops in the front and some backrooms that the shopkeeper can turn into living quarters. The Company had leased the entire building. We used the front rooms as an office and stores for hesian sacking, rolls of sisal twine and other paraphernalia for tobacco baling. K and I had appropriated the three backrooms for our living quarters, seeing as there was an acute housing shortage in Kehancha, which was a new district headquarters. the middle room was the sitting room while the two other rooms were our bedrooms.
On entering the house, Maricera saw a bed and made a beeline for it. I made the sister comfortable in one of the two office chairs and a stool that were the only items of furniture in the “sitting” room. I rustled a pair of clean bedsheets from my bedroom and escorted F’s GF to K’s bedroom and soon the bed was ready for the night. I suggested I bring Maricera from my bedroom but the sister just laughed and told me “wewe enda mukalale”. At first my beer fogged mind did not register what I had been told but it soon caught on…It was an eventful night with a young “innocent” who lost her virginity that night…
What followed was a rollercoaster of events. If Maricera did not sleep at my place, mainly because we had been out at night transferring tobacco, she would be there at seven in the morning and only left when we were leaving for field work. A lot of times I would leave her in tears because she wanted to get in the pickup we go to the field together. I had to refuse rather forcefully because tobacco buying was work that entailed carrying 10 enforcers armed with fanbelts, bicycle chains and heavier (very crude and sharp) “equipment”. Thank God we rarely had to use it…
Time flew fast and soon her parents were demanding she returns home to go go join college. She left but was back after a few days and had not bothered to tell the parents where she had gone. She told the sister that she did not want to go to college and leave yours truly. She was in love…
The parents came for her and there was a fight because they could not understand why their sweet little baby had suddenly turned into this rebellious stranger. My own life was a mess because I had this girlfriend I had even introduced to my mom as the one. I had to do something drastic to save her life…And that meant sending her on her way kimadharau… though I wasn’t proud of it…
A few weeks later, Maricera was back. She called me from Umoja Bar where I was drinking with some friends and after a few words I was clear that I only wanted to see her after she had graduated from college and left her there. When I eventually retired K and I noticed her sitting next to the door, dejected. I quickly whispered to K who went and after entering from the rear opened the office side for me and I was soon in bed, leaving Maricera out there in the cold.
Perhaps it was my legendary snoring that eventually sold me but soon Maricera was banging my window. She was like a crazed woman - at times wailing and at times chanting something in her mother tongue. Intermittently she would pick some ballast and hurl it onto our roof then resume her keening. I was later to be told that the chanting was part of the process of her intending to administer Kababa, a Kisii love portion…and warned not to accept any food from her. There is no way I am ever going to know whether it would have worked or not…
Fast forward to 2006 (13 yrs later!)…I was in the office in Garissa when this familiar-looking woman walked into my office. To my surprised horror I realised it was Maricera. I had earlier heard that her family shipped her off to the US. She had tracked me down through K who still works for the company at head office now. She was there to see me one last time before she moved on, she said. We went to Nomad’s Palace and had an early lunch. I then escorted her to the bus station where she boarded the one pm. She had seen me. She occasionally sends a goodwill email during the festivities…the ghosts of her one sided love are finally at rest; or so it appears…
hehehe