I was seated on my large hotel bed, staring out the big window, both my feet immersed in a pool of nostalgia. Outside my window was the skyline of Kisumu’s CBD; a derelict telecoms mast stood erect in defiance of the sky; buildings snuggled together, and the lake shone in the far distance. This is the standard view when you are staying in the premium suite at the Imperial Hotel. If you grew up in Kisumu, like I did, you’d know that the Imperial Hotel was a monument of sorts—a revered place. As a twelve-year-old boy, I was convinced that only immortal men lived in that hotel. Important men, not women because what business did women have in a hotel in the late 80s? There was always a tall doorman in a crisp uniform standing outside, the medals on his lapel trapping the sun, opening and closing doors for important men. Even after I had grown up and seen a bit of the world and stayed in more luxurious hotels, I still looked at the imposing Imperial with great wonderment. A place for kings, for men in suits, hats, and glasses. Of course, now it’s called the Sarova Imperial Hotel but what’s in a name? A tortoise called by any other name will still be slow.
Now I found myself seated on the bed of one of its best rooms, lost in a series of childhood reveries. On the horizon, the evening sun looked like a big orange falling to earth in slow motion. It suddenly felt immoral to be seated watching the sunset from my bed without a drink in my hand.
So I called reception. A girl picked up on the second ring. I could hear the smile in her voice. Her smile sounded 23. I pictured her small frail wrists holding up the phone to her ear. She sounded like someone with a mother that tells anybody who cares to listen; “Janet* now works at the Imperial Hotel.”
“Janet*, where is your bar?” I asked.
“We have the Perch Bar and Lounge on the rooftop.”
“Perch as in P-E-R-C-H, like a bird perches on a branch kind of perch?”
“No, Perch, as in Nile Perch. The fish.”
“Of course, yes. Very apt.” I said. “Is it nice?”
“It’s very nice.”
“I’m thinking of going for a drink there.” Useless information, really, a waste of her time.
“Oh, you will certainly enjoy it.” I could hear her teeth on the phone, they were very white and very small and they all stood in a neat row like new police recruits.
“So, I just take an elevator up to the bar?”
“Yes, Mr. Biko. I hope you enjoy it.”
“So, I won’t get lost looking for it or anything because sometimes one gets off an elevator and they are confronted with a very big decision to either turn left or right. Most people turn left. Most people get lost. Will I get lost?”
“No, you can’t.” She chuckled. “But if you want someone to come get you, I can send someone right over.”
“Is that someone called Janet*?”
“Ha-ha. Uhm, no, Mr. Biko. I’m here manning the front des –”
“Oh, the desk will just be fine. Let the damn phones ring. I bet people just ask you tiring questions anyway, like “Has my taxi arrived?” “How do I turn down the AC? Have you seen my socks?”
I didn’t get lost getting to the Perch Bar and Lounge. It opened to an even better vista of the city. While the main bar had patrons, the large terrace was empty save for a young svelte girl in a red dress having her photo taken by a guy who looked like he had taken many photos of girls against his will. She was holding a bouquet of red flowers, turning, offering the camera her smokiest look.
I ordered a whisky and stared at the lake. I wondered how vain the lake must be because everybody stares at it, everybody, even people who love forests. I thought of my childhood when once a year on school holidays we’d take a ship to shags. The ships felt grand because I was so small. Of course, I had nothing else to compare it to since there was no internet to see anything else. It always felt like I was stepping into another world that moved in water. The lake felt endless and intimidating. We’d stand on the deck and stare at the water for the whole journey while my dad read a newspaper back in the cabin. Adults were always reading newspapers to look like adults. I don’t recall what my mom would be doing the whole journey, maybe waiting for him to finish reading the newspaper so she could have a go at it.
I brought my attention closer to the streets below. To my left was KCB Bank with its massive pillars and glass walls. This was my late mother’s bank, and also another hallowed ground for every beginning of the school term. My mother, while leaving for work, would say, “Meet me outside the bank at 2 pm.” I’d be there, leaning against a pillar, in my school uniform, my metal suitcase at my feet. I’d wait for the banker’s cheque before heading back to boarding school and because boarding school was the gulag where they educated you by making your life as miserable as possible, standing outside the bank
would be filled with such anxiety and sadness. I hated the rigorous routine of boarding life. But mostly, hunger. I was hungry every day of my boarding life.
From where I stood, I would see my mom inside the bank, either at the counter or talking to someone on the main floor, her purse clutched under her arms like a bird she had just captured that would attempt to flee. She was a teacher. Teachers seemed to know everyone. She would later come out and give me less money than I expected. Than I needed. And although I understood that having five children to feed and support might have been a lot, I couldn’t stop sulking at this great injustice. “Try to spend this wisely, money is hard to come by. I will send you more in a few weeks.” A lie. At the bus station which was simply known by everybody as Stend, she would stand outside the matatu’s window and offer me her last words of encouragement: Study hard; life out here is very difficult; life out here is even more difficult without education; if you don’t improve your grades you won’t amount to much; so work hard; don’t be distracted by these other things, you will do them when you finish school, they are not going anywhere, they are waiting for you, and stay out of trouble. “Travel safe and God be with you.” She would shake my hand and smile, turn, and leave. Somehow I just knew all these were expressions of love. I knew it through telepathy. I’d watch her head bob in the sea of humanity in motion, until she’d disappear, leaving me feeling abandoned. Left to go starve. To die. Going back to school would fill me with a great sense of trepidation because I was socially awkward, shy, and thin. And I could never concentrate in class. I was always looking out the window a lot, washed away in useless fantasies.
I turned to look at the birthday girl who was now leaning against the terrace, her boyfriend still on the grind as a photographer who never gets credit for his work online. As if photos take themselves. “Is it your birthday?” I asked her.
She turned and said, it was.
“Happy birthday!” I raised my glass at her. She raised her flowers. I nodded at the boyfriend. He nodded back.
I watched the sun until it fell away, leaving the city shimmering in its man-made lights. I then ordered chicken wings which I ate as the breeze intensified, but not enough for you to think of fetching a jacket. Later, when it was officially night, I went back to the room to fetch my hat, and went for a walk. I walked up Uhuru Road, down Achieng Oneko Road, and then to the main street, Oginga Odinga Road. I faced downtown and strolled towards the lake because the way the city was built, Kisumu seemed to have its back to the lake. I walked past shuttered shops, under long shadows cast by awnings, and past night guards seated on stools in closed doorways. Kisumu is a very clean city. Even though it was the weekend, I didn’t see any trash in the streets. There is an effort to make it green, so young palm trees line the middle of the main street. I took a left and walked down Kendu Road and just before the old municipal houses, the absence of anybody made it too ominous to walk any further so I turned back. I went back to my room, showered, and slept with the curtains open.
The following morning I slept in. This, for me, means I woke up at 7:16 am. I went down for breakfast and ate alone. My flight was on Monday morning so I stared at a vast empty day. My childhood friends all left the town. One who still lives there never wants to meet up. It started feeling like I wanted a date with him, so I stopped trying. Mose, en’ ango, buana?
I stayed up in my room reading until I got tired. I walked across the street to where a cobbler had set up shop and I asked him if I could chill there with him. His name is Timothy Obiero. We sat there in silence for five minutes, him stitching leather, me, looking at people walking by. Then I asked him, “by the way, how long have you done this for?”
“Thirty-four years,” he said.
“Thirty four years!” I screamed. OK, I screeched. “Thirty-four years?! Right here?”
“No, I started somewhere else.” He said.
“Where?”
He pointed across the street, “Over there.”
I laughed. Right. That’s very far.
Thirty-four years ago he started out selling newspapers with his dad across the street, under the Jacaranda tree near the KCB bank. He had finished high school, with no prospect of furthering his education. His father had sold newspapers for over a decade when he joined him. Thirty-four years ago the only source of news were newspapers and radio. So each morning, suits heading to the office would congregate around the newspaper stand under that jacaranda tree. Kisumu is a city of politics. We breathe it. So men would read and talk politics. Then they would head out to their offices, filled with the holy grail of politics.
And because of that, his father was well known because he was the custodian of news. But soon Obiero found himself idle most times so his father said, “Men who read newspapers have shoes, so I want you to polish their shoes as they read these newspapers.” His father bought the necessary tools and set it up under that tree. His career in shoes started. He became a shoeshine. He wiped shoes, polished and shone them. He learned that the dignity of most men is held in their shoes. That some men hide in their shoes. And some want to be seen in their shoes. When you are a shoeshine you don’t need to look at a man’s eyes to know the kind of man he is; you only have to look at their shoes. He learned to tell men apart from their shoes, to recognise them from their shoes. That you can tell a man by how he treats his shoes. The proudest of men hate to have dirt on their shoes. That most men wear black shoes.
His father fell sick one day, went to the hospital for an operation, and never returned. After he came back from burying him, it was left to him to run both the shoeshine business and the newspaper business. He now had two balls in the air and selling newspapers turned out to be a circus because he discovered, quickly, that selling newspapers meant he was a messenger of news. Newspapers affect people’s moods. It determined the kind of day they had. Newspapers dictated how men lived their lives. Newspapers, at times, were a crystal ball in which men saw what their futures held. He also had to earn the respect of his father’s old clients; older educated men with grave demeanors, the office types, who, from behind the newspapers said strange things like, “This government is incorrigible.” He learned how to keep the books; who owed what, who paid at the end of the month, and which office needed how many copies. He made friends. He knew people without knowing their names. He knew the names of people he didn’t know. He kept his head low because that’s what you do when you polish shoes, and did what he had to do. He learned humility. Learned when to speak, and when to not. He got married. Had children.
Then the bloody internet came.
He didn’t know what that was, but he knew that his newspaper sales started plummeting slowly over the years. He noticed fewer people were buying newspapers and soon it was no longer making him any money. People were getting their news from their phones, he said. “I’d sell over 100 newspapers a day before the internet,” he said, “ The last five years I have been selling about five newspapers a day. Unless I have an order” With that line of business going tits up, he had to change tact or starve.
“So I learned how to mend shoes to supplement my income.” That’s how he became a cobbler. The bloody internet; turning men into cobblers. Things were changing everywhere and one day someone from the town hall stood over him and said, “You can’t sell your newspapers in this corner anymore. You have to move.” So he moved across the street to Achieng’ Oneko Road.
“Do you love this job?” I asked him.
“It’s not that I love it, it’s what I do,” he said pragmatically.
Funny thing; unlike the declining newspaper business, the shoe business was picking up. Men are polishing their shoes now more than they ever did.
“Why do you think that is?” I asked him. “Because we have more paved roads than ever before, so less dusty shoes. No?”
“Might be,” he said, “ But fewer women are cleaning their men’s shoes at home.”
He said the culture of women cleaning their men’s shoes has declined steeply over the years. Oh, what a shame. I thought, shaking my head. These women are too important for our shoes now, huh?
“Wamama wako na kazi zao siku hizi, wanatoka nyumbani kutafuta.” Women are chasing the paper too, leaving the house to go shake the bushes so everybody just has to polish their shoes. Shoes were telling the story of changing gender dynamics at home. The phrase, “Uliza kiatu”, suddenly made sense.
Now he barely sells any newspapers. The shoe business sustains him; on a bad day, he will polish ten shoes and 30 on a good day. He mends an average of 10 shoes a day. He’s 52 years old, he doesn’t know how long he will be there, doing what he’s doing, he told me. He still has responsibilities. He has four children, his firstborn just finished high school and has to go to college. His last born is in form one. There is still so much to do, a house to build in the village, and children to take to school.
“Do you wish you were doing something else apart from this?” I asked him. He didn’t answer me for a while, so long I thought he wasn’t going to answer me at all. Then he said, “This is what I was given.” I didn’t know how to ask for clarification. What did he mean given? Given what? Did he mean the card he was handed? Or did he mean the job he was given? Given by whom? God? His father?
“Thirty-four years?!” I thought as I rode the lifts up back to my suite. “Thirty-four years!”
***
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