Have you ever driven against a wave of manual labourers rushing to work? A horde of them, wearing shades of brown, jackets with tired linings, scruffy shoes and flailing hands, trudging like an army marching to a war they have already lost. Chaps with leathery faces dented by poverty, their failing spirits reinforced by hope; they put on determined looks as they swim against the tide, conversing in the tongues of their mothers, clutching dodgy paper bags and rushing into the road with nary a care. Have you seen them?
Then your side mirror snaps back sharply because you hit someone’s elbow, a dull thud of metal meeting flesh? Then you hear someone angrily slap the ass of your car, a resounding thump, and your tail lights immediately burn red because you hit the breaks afraid that you might have run over someone. Suddenly an open palm is banging on your window and when you cautiously roll it down about a hundred faces with cold noses and frozen eyebrows are thrust into your car, demanding an explanation as to why you imagine you are so special that you can “run people over.” What happens next is a fine moment of group psychology, a brief but intense period of mental blitz where all at once you think of your laptop in the back seat, your phone in the front seat, your nuts in your hands and how much you have in your wallet to appease the anger now curled around your steering wheel like a serpent.
And you couldn’t have picked a worse crowd to agitate with your side mirror that morning.
These are guys who are headed to sit in the scathing sun outside a factory or a construction site hoping that an Indian guy bearing a clipboard will open the gate and pick them for a 300-bob day’s worth of honest work. These are guys who slept with bread and strong tea in their stomachs and crying children in their ears. Then you hit him with your stupid side mirror because you have a car and you are wearing Givenchy cologne and listening to Capital-effin’-FM. You hit him because you have on a white starched shirt and you keep pictures of your smiley children in your wallet. You hit him because you don’t know how it feels to walk five kilometers in the unrelenting rain because you are saving the 60 bob in your pocket for the kids’ dinner.
Because of that you remain besieged in your car, surrounded by angry frustrated chaps who want your head on a stake. You are everything they resent because you represent the gap between them and the haves. And that gap is so vast and desolate you can only cross it with a well-watered male camel and lots of luck.
That happened to me once, around Yaya. What saved me was that I picked up the ring leader’s accent (he’s always the guy with hair in his nose) and I switched to my mother tongue, and he softened. Of course I parted with 500 bob but mostly I was only happy to retain my dignity.
Mjengo guys can be rough on the road when they are a horde. And so when I found myself hanging out with them a few weeks back I was surprised at the departure of the image I had of them.
I went to Two Rivers Mall, sandwiched between the Northern Bypass and Limuru Road. It’s currently under construction. Huge-ass place. Cranes swung against the grey clouds. Men drilled and hammered. It had rained the previous night, so the ground was soggy. I arrived at 12.15pm and parked near this place the mjengo guys had gathered for their lunch. Women in lesos heaved bucketloads of food onto wooden tables: githeri, beans, rice, beef, ndengu, porridge, bananas, meat, ugali. A lady cooked from a three-stone hearth nearby, blinking away smoke. Men in hard hats milled around. Men wearing yellow hats and red hats and white hats perched on their heads. They hung loose in small groups, holding mounds of food on plastic plates. They chattered. And chewed. They were electricians and painters and labourers and carpenters and they all had big hands. Even the small guys had big hands.
How it works is that the women make food and ferry them to the site. These women follow construction workers. The building you are sitting in right now? It was risen by men like them, men who were fuelled by the pots that those women stirred. Two Rivers Mall broke ground two years ago and these women have gone there daily since then, feeding these men and making a living in the process. They tie money on the edge of their lesos. Or stuff them between their breasts. The money you have in your wallet? You won’t believe the number of breasts it might have gone through. And isn’t it amazing that money goes through so much and yet it never smells anything other than money?
The average these men spend on food is 50 bob. If you spend 100 bob you are either balling or you are a glutton. And there are no gluttons there. An average mjengo guy eats not less than four chapos. One man eats like six chapos with beans or ndengu. Lakini those chapos are so thin you could use them as mosquito nets. Few pay cash. It’s credit. End of the week they pay up. Sometimes when they are fired they don’t pay. So it’s a loss to the women, but what to do?
Fact: All the women I spoke to didn’t have husbands. I keep saying husbands are going out of fashion but nobody listens to me. Every woman whose man I asked about just giggled and said, “Si hayuko,” as if he had been taken by aliens in the dead of the night.
“Alienda wapi?”
“Aii, si unajua tu nyinyi wanaume?”
“Mimi sijui wanaume, niambie…”
“Alienda…”
And they all have kids whom they school and feed and clothe single-handedly. The landscape of the mjengo is a vast gritty land marked by absentee fathers. And they aren’t even bitter. They don’t have time to go ranting on FB. Or copy paste quotes on social media. You leave they move on. It’s cold out there. They were in fact surprised by my curiosity at the men taking off. There was a lady called Grace who was selling jackets. Tough looking lady – I think you have to be tough to sell there. She was also a single mother. She had two children, aged five and fifteen. I asked her what happened to baba watoto and she said, “Hata sina shughuli.” Ngai. See? We are slowly going out of fashion. That wave will one day get to Kile and then this “bae this” “bae that” fad will end.
Have you ever been in traffic along Waiyaki Way and seen a bus with all these chairs, side boards, sewing machines and sufurias on its roof? Of course the those belong to Luhyas. I mean everybody knows that, let’s not even pretend. But have you ever wondered why they carry all those things back to shags and then bring them back? Is it to show off to the villagers? Is it because their Nairobi houses don’t have doors? Is it because buses don’t have excess baggage charge? Can someone take a wild guess why Lunjes carry their sofas home?
Anyone?
I found out why when I interviewed this chap called Timothy, a labourer from Vihiga. He was thin but hard as nails, you could tell from how his arm muscles layered on top of each other like the bark of an ancient exotic tree. He was eating boiled maize, and every time he chewed a vein the size of a fiber optic cable zigged and zagged down his neck. He said, and listen to this, that when his job ends at the site, he has two options. One, get another job immediately. Or two, in case there is no job, take his ass back to shags and wait until someone calls him and says, “Omwami, kuna kazi nimesikieko hapo Upper Hill, unaweza kucha Nairopi kesho?”
But because it doesn’t make sense to pay rent in Nairobi while he’s in shags tending to his shamba businesses as he waits for a call, what does he do? He packs his belongings and goes shags. With his sofas. And when the call comes he packs his wooden coffee table and things and heads back to Nai.
There was also Fred, a painter. His job is to paint all of the 700 doors that will be in Two Rivers Mall. 700 doors! Of course he has a small team. They paint about 15 doors a day. He’s been painting for 12 years. I asked him if he is happy with the way his doors are painted at home and he said he isn’t, but he doesn’t care because it’s not his house. His house in shags well painted though. Fred knows more colours than anyone here. Or even Peter Marangi.
There was a chap from Meru, a 22 year old guy called Mureithi who moonlights as a rapper when he’s done hauling cement. I asked him if he is any good at rapping and he did a freestyle. He sucked. No, really, he did. I’d love to say that he was good and that one day someone will discover him in one of those clubs in Kayole where he plays at night because we all root for the underdog, but he sucked. But he’s 22, at 22 you can take your life anywhere. Actually, you can take your life anywhere at any age. If you want to. Only if you want to. If you don’t you can moan in a corner.
I met this jango guy, called Ouma. His mates called him Ous. Funny-ass guy. He’s a labourer. He told me has has eight kids. He’s 23. Eight kids! He said it didn’t work out with his first woman so he got a second one. The first one has five kids, the second has three. He announced this nonchalantly. He lives in D. (Uhm, that’s Dandora, ye, folk of Peponi Road.) I was intrigued by the number of kids that have come out of him. Eight kids, at 23! How does he even have the energy to make kids after working so hard at the construction site? How many kids will he have at 30?
Tell you what, I went there thinking that these mjengo guys are unhappy or discontent, that they long for another life. Turns out they don’t. I asked all of them if there was one thing they wished for that would make their lives complete and they all said they were happy with their lives. I mean all of them. You see them walking in troops along Langata Road, headed to Industrial Area and you think, “Oh poor souls,” but imagine they are cool? In fact it might be that you are unhappier than them because you want to keep up with the Joneses. You have to keep appearances on Instagram. You think Ous even cares what Instagram is? His only concern is where his next baby is coming from. Life to them is about today and now. And they are content because their lives are about having a meal and having healthy kids and waking up to a job the next day.
And when it’s not working out, as it sometimes doesn’t, or when Two Rivers Mall is complete, like it will be in a few months time, they will have no qualms packing up their wooden coffee tables and sewing machines and hauling them up onto a bus and heading back to shags. Going to shags for them is not a downgrade, it’s going back home to their people.