So you meet a girl. Let’s say you meet her in some bash along Ngong road. She is sitting at a corner, nursing a drink in a plastic cup. Legs crossed. 3 Doors Down’s It’s not my time is thumping in the background. Her body language screams, “Talk to the hand,” but her eyes say, “I’m dying for some originality.” So after taking a large gulp of your drink to calm your jelly nerves you strut over, the hell with 3 Doors Down, it could be your time. You introduce yourself. She looks at you like you work in a morgue. You have nothing up your sleeve but you dig in your oars nonetheless. You don’t tell her she’s pretty or that that there is a way she holds the air around her captive with her silent charisma. None of that bullshit. You make vague statements like “Can you believe Besigye, trying to get onto YouTube by trying to catch a bullet?” There is a chance she might ask “kwani who is Besigye?” which is fine because that means participation, and participation is okay in these scenarios. You give current affairs a wide berth. Then you lob a joke. She laughs, once, twice, thrice. You have a foot in the door. The only way you can mess this up is if you told her that you love her. Or if you playfully stuck a paper plane in her cleavage. The evening is yours.
You fetch her another drink. More jokes, more laughter. At some point she touches your arm lightly. Yes, 3 Doors Down, did you see that? Whose time is it now? Huh? The night ends with her throwing you a lifejacket; “Let’s get together sometime for a drink,” she says. You tap it three weeks later. Er, two weeks if you work in an advertising agency. Bastards. But here is what you don’t know all this time. You don’t know she’s from Kapsoit. Or Kutus. Hell, or Kamagambo. You don’t know because you didn’t ask. And why would you anyway? It’s not like you wanted to marry her. Only as it turned out you do. You fall in love like a mad man and you want her to give you children who look just like her. So you have to jump through hoops and go to Kutus or Keroka- a distant land- to meet her stubborn uncle who is in a pre-historic coat. Or you go to Kakemega as my brothers and I did late last week to take cows. My brother was taking the cows.
Kakamega is far from Kenyatta Avenue. My sister-in-Law is from a place called Kabras. I’m not going to poke fun at Luhyas here because my brother is the touchy type. Plus he has never found Churchill funny, and anyone who has never found Churchill funny is not someone you want to make fun of. Anyway, last Thursday at 6.45am we were standing at this market center called Lubao -6kms from Kakamega town – waiting for a middleman to help us buy cows. It was my two brothers, myself, my old man my uncle and one of my smart-ass grandfathers who had the uncanny gift of the gab. He would later do most of the talking during the negotiations, a man heavily skilled in the art of telling you to “eff” off but in a way that makes you like him. A lesson in diplomacy. Lubao market was originally as the dog market. Yes, they sold dogs here. Still do. We saw a bunch of hounds tethered to the ground; mangy looking mutts being sold for a prayer. Most were gaunt, but all were miserable. Asking price, 600 bob a pop. I wandered over to one of the sellers and asked him how you would tell a dog was good and he fed me some cock and bull about looking at how the dog rested, if the dog rested with its head on its front legs then it was a kali dog. Anything else was uncivilized.
One guy confided to me that what the owners did was to whip the dogs the morning of the market such that when he pointed at the dog with his bakora to a buyer the dog would bare its teeth and growl menacingly anticipating another beating. The buyer would imagine the dog is real kali one and buy it. Smart. Every market has a mad man they say, but every market also has a smart-ass. A quick talking hustler. The tenth rule of journalism is how to spot this guy who is normally called a fixer. A fixer is someone who holds your hand in the deep end when you search for a story in a foreign territory like this one. Like a facilitator? My fixer was called Felix; a stout, powerful Luhya man with a massive jaw and a cinderblock neck. Very intimidating chap. My kid brother- our last born- plays rugby, he’s a cocky 24yr old ripped guy who feels and acts tough and invincible, but he saw this guy and admitted that yes, Felix was from another league. But in the grand scheme of things, Felix wasn’t the baddest ass in that market as it turned out. Here is what cut. There was a point when I started taking pictures and shortly these three lads showed up at my elbow. They looked skinny, ragged but with determined jaws. Violence leaped in their eyes like flames. They didn’t look like guys who squeezed toothpaste tubs from the bottom. They told me to stop taking pictures. Note, they didn’t ask me, they told me.
I looked at Felix who sort of feebly protested that I was harmless. No, he isn’t, one of the Kakamega Sopranos hissed, “Yeye, ni wa CID.” I wanted to laugh. CID? I was with the bleeding Criminal Investigation Department? I’m sorry, which year is this again, 1989? CI bloody D? I was flattered; I mean what was I looking for, a cow who had committed a crime? Or perhaps someone who had gotten my goat? (Just so you know I’m very proud of that wordplay right there hehe) But I wondered, if indeed I was the CID who gave them – these ragtag vigilantes – the power to stop a government agent from doing his job? Who really was the law there? Was there a law? Felix embarrassedly asked me to keep away my camera. Can you believe Felix!? You would think a 100 bob would get you protection in Lubao market! But the way those fellows spoke and the chilling finality in their voices I had no choice but to return my camera in the car and that’s the reason why this post has no pictures. Blame Felix. Or the CID.
We all shopped for a cow with my grandfather leading the search. How do you tell a good cow? This might be useless information to you city sleekers, but you can tell a good cow by first its hide. A smooth healthy hide is a good cow. Also a cow that chews cud is a good cow. A cow that drools all over the place is not a good cow. A cow that looks like it’s having a hangie is also not a good cow. My grandfather also looked into the mouth of cows to determine if they were healthy. He had the owner pry open their mouths and then delicately perched his spectacle on his nose and peered into it their mouths. We also peered over his shoulders hoping to see a gold tooth. That’s another thing, a cow that has a gold teeth is a not a good cow, that’s a pimp cow. But seriously a chipped tooth or missing teeth means the cow won’t be able to feed well and consequently won’t be able to grow big. Interesting eh? I got bored with checking cows teeth and wandered out, trailed closely by Felix who was now trying to redeem his street, er, market cred after that tasteless CID debacle. “Have you ever seen a pig being slaughtered?” Felix asked. I said I hadn’t. He motioned me to follow him.
There is an expression I use once in a while, but one that made sense that day. It goes something like, “You are going to need a stronger stomach if you are going be at the back of the kitchen watching how a sausage is made.” I read that in a Nick Hornby book. In Lubao market pigs are slaughtered in a small wooden structure, just big enough to swing a cat in. The man to which this great responsibility lies is called Wicky. Wicky is one of the reasons you eat sausages in the morning. Curiously Wicky doesn’t remember the last time he had a sausage. Must have been 12 years ago in a hotel in Kisumu, he confided in me. I told him I wanted to watch him kill a pig. He shrugged; I guess my request to him was like someone telling me he wants to watch me save a word document. A pig is herded into the enclosure. I try not to look into its eyes. Of course I’m being foolish but still I avoid any eye contact, I don’t want to see something in the eyes of an animal that is about to meet its violent death. In the wooden structure the pig’s front leg is tied to this metal hook imbedded in the floor. Then one of the hind legs is stretched and tied to another hook. The pig is now doing a 180 degree split and since it’s not been attending aerobics class lately it’s in pain and is snorting and making a racket. Wicky stands over the pig; fateful and cold. The final destiny. Then like a comedian picks his hat he carefully reaches for his knife from the window sill.
Now allow me to tell you about the knife Wicky uses for the kill. In his business a man is only as good as his knife. In fact a man is his knife. A man respects his knife because although his knife takes away life it brings life to his family, it feeds them. In the slaughter house there is a general rule; you don’t share knives. Never. So in essence your knife is like your manhood; no other man is allowed to touch it apart from you. And perhaps your woman. The amount of respect the men accord their knives are admirable. Wicky told me that part of the rule is never to take the knives home at the end of the day. Yes, at Lubao men don’t carry work home. Either that or they don’t want to expose their families to such instruments of death, even though they feed off the edge of those knives. Wicky’s knife is an arm’s length, he’s had it for ten years now, of course it was longer, the knife, because initially it used to be a slasher, but years of sharpening turned it into a long knife. This is the only knife Wicky uses, he is loyal to it. But it’s an ugly knife, this knife. It’s a crude knife. At its base is wound sisal to give it grip. The rest of it is dull cold, angry steel. Wicky never washes this knife; he runs water over it and stores it in the open when finished. Nobody touches Wicky’s knife and Wicky never touches anyone’s knife. That’s the rule of the slaughterhouse and these men abide by it. That’s honor right there folks.
He slowly weighs the knife in his hand, turning it over absentmindedly as one of the guys secures the pig. They are conversing about something I’m not listening to. I’m standing at the door not sure whether I want to see the end. He briefly glimpses at me, Wicky, and then without warning and in one swift fluid motion he bends over and finds one of his guys has pulled back the pig’s neck exposing its chest. He plunges the ugly knife inside the pig’s chest. It happens too fast that I don’t have time to process what just happened. The gutting scream of the pig is unmistakable though; the scream of death. It’s ghoulish as it is macabre. When an animal dies from pain, it doesn’t matter what animal it is, pig, cow, man, their scream sound the same. And this pig screamed like a man I swear. A most hounding cry, the final cry and it stirs something in you. It shakes the foundation onto which you have so far built your deceptive mortality on. A foundation made of clay. Was I scared? No. Was I disgusted? Hardly, I don’t eat sausages. Was I impressed? No. I was bewildered at the choked screams of the pig as one of the guys held it firmly for the few seconds it thrashed about, Wicky still holding the knife in its chest. Then it ended. There was blood all over. Wicky pulled out the knife and looked at me like he expected an applause, like I was supposed to be impressed. And I was, but at his disassociation. At how detached he seemed from it all. And I was a bit scared of him if you want to know the truth.
The great British writer AA Gill last year wrote in UK’s Sunday Times how he came to Africa to kill a baboon so that he “could see how it feels like to kill a man.” It was a morbid piece that caused a storm with rights groups. So in Wicky’s eyes I searched for a man who was capable of killing another man. But there was no indication; his eyes –disappointingly – were of a guy who was doing a job. He wasn’t different from me and you. I mean he sticks knives in pigs’ hearts while you tweet and poke people on Facebook. It all levels out. Later – while scrapping off hair off another pig’s charred snout- he mentioned that he had killed more than 10,000 pigs in the years he has been in business. Those are many sausages! And much later when while he shared a cigarette with Felix I asked him if he would kill a man, a dumb and uncomfortable question no less, but I just had to know. I was curious as hell to hear his answer. He thoughtfully took a drag at his cigarette then passed it over to Felix as he pondered my question for a second. He then looked over at Felix and asked him if he- Felix- would kill a man to which Felix said, “Ah, mara moja!” But Felix’s had to say that to redeem his tattered image, to earn his undeserved 100bob. But Wicky never answered me, that question eventually went up in smoke, cigarette smoke.
Ps. Have a happy Easter gang! And for chrissake don’t drink and drive, it’s not worth it.