The sun was rather hot for this May weather (no pun intended), it was 1 PM. I had just left church, I was not feeling so great, so I couldn’t stay for the afternoon Sabbath session. I wanted to get home ASAP, so I decided to get into the Naivas Supermarket at Westland to grab a few things. By the time I was leaving the supermarket, the level of exhaustion I was experiencing was beyond me. At that point, I couldn’t tell what was up, but by 9 PM that day, it hit me why I was having a long day and feeling sickly. I caught the flu and I am currently dealing with it. Home remedies and antibiotics have become my friends.
As I was leaving the supermarket, I decided that a matatu was the weapon fashioned against me on this particular day. I wanted to get home and hop on my bed as soon as I could. So, I ordered an Uber, but one driver cancelled on me, the reason is that they had just passed the fake roundabout in Westland and headed to town, and it would be a lot of work to turn around. They ask me to get another driver. I am hungry, and the sun is scorching, it’s like it is on a revenge mission seeing that April was a very chilly and cloudy month. I order for another cab and after a couple of minutes, the driver shows up. He exits his vehicle walks towards me and carries my bags. I am grateful for this gesture!
We kickstart the journey and he asks me about my destination and if it is Kikuyu or in Limuru, I let him know that it’s on the opposite side of Kikuyu, past Gitaru, and from here, we catch up on a bit of politics. To be honest, these days it’s so hard to not have these conversations and sometimes it feels like where two are gathered, whether strangers or long-term friends, the topic is inevitable. We talk about how our political choices reflect on our current realities and why we should do better the next time we go out to vote.
As we are approaching Kangemi, we witness an accident my driver is the first to see it happen, so he slows down. A Range Rover and a Subaru have crashed into each other, how it happened is beyond me, I was on my phone, so I didn’t see it. A crowd has gathered, looks like no one was hurt but the car bumper might need some serious repairs. Looks like one of the drivers was a lady, she is pretty shaken. My driver sparks another conversation, this time about how the police might handle this situation. He goes on and on about how the two will part with hefty amounts of money based on the accident and the type of cars they were driving. He says that somehow the police are building mansions somewhere in the village out of these kinds of situations.
As we pass this scene of the accident, he begins narrating his encounter with the police. He had been to a party with his cousins; they had had one too many and he decided to drive himself home. He was approaching his home when he was stopped by traffic police, it was an alco-blow situation, and he couldn’t escape it. That, ladies and gentlemen is where his story with askari jela begins. He was asked to part with Ksh 30K, at the time, he says he did not have the money. That was how he ended up in court and sentenced to 2 months in jail.
Jail was not a walk in the park; he says this experience prompted him to quit alcohol. He said that there was no way one would get out of jail the same person, something had to change. I asked him about his routine, and he told me it was more of wake up, take jail porridge, do some cleaning and wait for the next meal and sleep if you wanted to. But the sleep, was the most uncomfortable part of his day.
He spent most of his days getting to know fellow inmates and what had brought them there. He had heard it all by the time he was leaving. The prison guards would go about their day trying to ensure security is enforced but to him, the real askari jela would be unleashed at night. He emphasized this askari jela and I wondered if it was someone different, stricter and for a while I had not caught up with what this meant. So I ask him who this askari jela is. He blurts out “kunguni” (bedbugs). I could not hold my laughter.
According to him, bedbugs were the ultimate prison guards, they were part and puzzle of prison life. I asked him how come they spent a lot of their day just doing nothing when they could literally deal with the menace that was bed bugs. That sounded like a constructive way to spend a day and in no time maybe with more cleaning, aeration, disinfecting their rooms etc, they would be sleeping a lot better. He told me that the rule was to ensure they existed so they could be part of their punishment, and the guards enjoyed that these tiny bugs existed to make their lives miserable! “Askari hawezi kubali kunguni ziishe” (The guards cannot allow for the bedbugs to be exterminated. )He explains how sleeping at night was not easy, he spent most of his night scratching and in the morning some people would wake up with inflamed skin, but no one cared. Askari jela was everyone’s worst nightmare.
He counted days to his release. In the meantime, he spent most of his days in deep thought, he says this can be a very depressing state. You are forced to reflect on your life, your choices and what led you there. He noted that he built castles every day. In his own words, “unajenga ghorofa inaisha, unatfuta tenants, unalipisha hadi rent” (You build a whole apartment building, rent it out and even collect rent)
His stay at the prison made him reevaluate his relationships with his family and friends. No one paid him a visit. By the time he left, he had cut off some of his relationships. He told me that he spends most of his time in his car and goes back home to sleep. As for alcohol, he quit. He showed me packets of milk he had in his car. He made fun of how he lives by bread, milk and the word of God.
We inch closer to my place, and unfortunately his narrating must come to an end. His biggest lesson, you are somehow on your own at the end of the day, and so you must make it work for you!
XOXO
