The Cape Cod Bicycle War. Billy Kahora
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