DELUKA
BY
BRIAN MOSETI
If a great eye could look from the cloudy dark abyss above, it could center on the brilliance of shukas shawls and flowery dresses that outshine the night. Their bearers dance around living music. Tunes that have been passed down generations by word of mouth and beating drums. The thump thump of the drum and mellow voice of the singer ring with what I imagine to be tinges of the Nubian Desert.
I do not understand the language but the beat simply enters
my body, does a little jig in my brain then trickles down to my limbs which
start tapping the ground on their own accord. M suddenly propels me to dance,
in a crowd of female dancers in flowery dresses, shukas and a storm of
perfumes. We dance in rings around the source of the music, a middle aged man
sitting on a stool cradling his drum and sweating as he belts out happy songs.
“Lets go to the middle,” M pulls my hand. I don’t want
to go, then the lady next to me who has clearly seen that I’m new nudges me in
a, what-are-you-afraid-of, manner and laughs, “Just go,” she says.
I shy off and as M heads into the throng I go back to
my seat to watch.
I try to find the groom and his bride because I want
to see how they are dressed. But I can’t see them in this throng and when M
comes back we head to behind the tent where the hood boys are sitting, some
standing, smoking drinking, chewing khat and catcalling the ladies. There are
more ladies than men.
The ladies spare them knowing stares and walk on, it
almost looks like a free for all but no one does anything indecent like
grabbing a lady or anything. If I was with my other friends and this was going
on, it could be debauchery, but it here it looks so organized.
“Unataka, mwanamke? Go talk to any lady there, which
one do you like?” M who sees my interested eyes that are swallowing in this
maiden experience like a hungry desert does water tries to get me to talk to a
girl. Then he walks over and talks to one of two girls dressed in maroon shawls
with gold lacing. He walks while dancing and before he can get there the girls
are giggling. I don’t know what he tells them but they jokingly run off
giggling, he comes back punches me lightly and says, “You got to show them your
moves man”.
“So how will you know who is married or not because I
don’t want to be found dead,” I ask him fearing that I don’t possibly want to
do something in a culture I don’t understand and end up dead, considering we
are in the belly of the infamous Kibera Slums.
“If she is married atakwambia uwache kumsumbua,” this
answer again shocks me as it seems so simple and disciplined. Here a no means
no.
M passes me the drink. B who disappeared as we walked
in comes over accompanied by a lady carrying a baby in her arms. The baby is
about a year old. I swig straight from the bottle and hand it to B. All around
me people are having fun. The guys behind me all know one another, as they catch
up describe shootings that happened, who went to jail, who won Sport Pesa,
while catcalling at the girls who are passing by. Inside the massive tent,
people are sitting bobbing their heads to the music. In the middle of the
compound the rings continue around the music. It’s a merry affair, Deluka is a
Nubian wedding after all. The drink has started to make me feel giddy, I feel
infinite. How did I get here?
Kibera has been previously painted as squalid and
gory. It has been painted as a festering scar on bordering the almost affluent
Langata estate. It has become a postcard picture of NGO’s sourcing for funds.
Stand from a high point and all you see are tin roofs, some new and shiny, some
so rusted they seem to be bleeding, spreading on to the horizon. Kenya Power
poles and wires dominate the skyline above the shanties like a canopy of
leafless trees in the jaundiced evening light when I alight at the stage to go
visit B.
B’s house is like a coin. You step out of one world
into another. Its mud walled on the outside but there is cement plaster inside.
A one room without a ceiling but there are two couches inside and a five by six
bed. On one wall there is a 24 inch TV and a thick blue carpet on the floor. He
tells me he is intending to put a ceiling.
We start the evening with memories of how I became a
load the last time we got drunk together in town. C comes over later, more
drinks. Its starts to get dark and B says he wants to make a book shelve. We
think he is kidding until he gets out timber boards and tools. So we sit
outside his house drinking as we watch him hammer away. The din disappearing
into the shanties, I wonder why no one is inquiring about the noise.
It’s almost nine but little kids in Bui Buis are
playing about, B seem to know almost everyone and some of them stop to inquire
what he is making. One elderly lady asks if he is making a stool and if he
could make one for her. Then M shows up out of nowhere staggering and shouting
greetings at everyone. He sits down. Apparently he is eight years younger than
B but he looks older, and rough.
I ask him to show me where the loos are. The outhouse
is communal and it is cleaner than it’s immediate surrounding. You walk through
pathways flowing with muddy water, cross over a bridge under which if you fell,
you’d have to swim in disinfectant, and probably drink it to ensure you are
clean. But I never expected to find a clean toilet in Kibera. Kibera is famous
for it’s flying toilets.
As we are heading back, we can hear overtones of music
over the slum din. “Unataka kwenda Deluka?” M asks. “What’s that?” I ask back
as I’ve never heard of the word before.
“Twende tu, utaona,” he says.
By the time B has finished making a rickety book
shelf, C is drunk and has started singing in vernacular. The solitary Mulika
Mwizi floodlight bathes the ghetto in an orange glow. Almost outside very shop
that line the road, young men sit dreamily chewing khat in groups of stoic
silent with lost dreams in their eyes. The road is still crowded.
On either side of the road, young men sit chewing Khat
and sharing stories of despair. Its 10pm but business is thriving, Matatus
weave through the throng of pedestrian traffic incessantly hooting. B buys a
Legend mzinga. Today, we do not stop drinking, the music calls to us. M is
still shouting at everyone, they all know him.
“Hii ni ghetto bro, you have to belong,” he tells me
hugging one side of my shoulder to stop falling.
We arrive and immediately B disappears. The first
thing that hits me is the smell. It’s a rich mixture of henna, perfumes, sweaty
people and above all these, the smell of marijuana. Behind a massive tent, the
hood boys are standing and smoking. The joint is passed around in a circle, no
one cares, it is a merry affair after all.
We sit for a while among them sharing our drink, then
M gets up to dance pulling me with him. The dancers, a whirlwind of perfumes
and the music in a circle. The musician is an old man riding a cradling a drum
between his things belting tunes I’ve never heard. A little boy is holding a
microphone to his mouth.
‘Where are the bride and her groom?” I ask.
“Over there,” M points to a little tent secluded apart
from the crowd where a few elderly women swathed in layers of flowery shawls are
sitting with distracted bored eyes watching the revelry as if wondering what
the youngsters are up to.
The drink is warming me up, I don’t see the two I’m
looking for because I want to see how they are dressed. Later I chance on them
dancing, the groom is wearing a navy blue a suits and an Islamic cape, the
bride is in a white shawl decorated across the body with patterns of lace and
flowers. I’m disappointed. I expected something more exotic.
I’ve also missed the actual ceremony and I was curious
as to whether they say the “I do” and who performs the ceremony.
But this does not matter as M is pointing out girls he
wants me to hit on, which is making me wonder why he thinks I can’t do it on my
own. But my mind is a blur with the smells and the drink we are having which is
three quarters gone and I’m still a little afraid as I don’t know this place. I’ve
heard stories of how young Nubian men will gang up on you and beat clobber you
to death if they catch you hitting on their women.
B comes back with a lady cradling a baby in her arms. He
has also brought another bottle with him. This is Chang’aa in a plastic bottle
which he passes to M who passes him the Legend. B gets lost in the conversation.
The scene has started to feel shifty. Earlier, the
moon was feebly peeking from a cloudy sky. Now the clouds have swallowed the
moon. Only the lights from the scene disappear a few meters above and fade into
nothing. M passes me the plastic bottle. The baby with B’s woman starts crying.
I feel giddy.
The music goes on, the revelry goes on, the guys who
were behind the tent have come out and some of them are dancing, a lady tries
to get me to dance but I shy off, then out of nowhere, gunshots!
The crowd scatters, I don’t even have time as M swigs
the drink, passes it to me and says, lets run. I drink and throw away the
bottle and follow them, not knowing where or why we are running to. B is
laughing, “you have been baptized to the ghetto,” he says between the laughter.
Everyone is running away.
ENDS.
@Mossetti
Image sourced from avax.news
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