No Hurry in Africa by Brendan Clerkin Read Free Book Online Page B

‘p’ as ‘f.’ Because of this, I once heard Sr. MM’s school caretaker shout to the students, ‘No taking flutes at the liver.’ After a moment of wondering what on earth he was on about, I deduced he must have been referring to ‘fruits at the river.’
    Whenever I met a Kenyan for the first time, the conversation typically went as it did with Mwangangi’s portly uncle in The Paradise Hotel (that well-known misnomer!) in Kwa Vonza.
    ‘Where are you from?’ he inquired.
    ‘Ireland.’
    ‘Oh, what part of the U.S. is that?’
    ‘The Europe part,’ I informed him.
    ‘Oh, you’re beside Australia then!’
    ‘Yes, of course I am.’
    How long would it take me to explain that ‘Whiteland’ is not all the one big place? I just said ‘England’ from then on; at least they had heard of that, to which a cousin of Mwangangi’s responded on the same occasion,
    ‘So you are the same country as Canada’
    These are the same people who speak, perhaps, four languages. Their geographical knowledge usually falls far short of their linguistic ability.
    Keeping in contact with home was also difficult. It was an arduous four-hour cycle under the punishing sun to a landline phone. There was no coverage for my mobile around Nyumbani and no way to re-charge the phone because there was no electricity. Using the internet normally involved going to Nairobi for the weekend, and that was at least three or four good hours away in a vehicle. Getting to Nairobi normally started by jumping on the back (or hanging off the end) of an open-topped lorry, bouncing and swaying over the rutted dirt tracks for mile after juddering mile. There might be as many as forty Akamba packed onto the lorry. I found it thrilling. The alternative could involve sitting with the dangerously stacked luggage on the roof rack of an overflowing, speeding clapped-out bus.
    However, despite all the difficulties of transportation and communications, there were occasionally pleasant surprises. One evening in Nyumbani, as the orange sun descended over the scorched red Kitui desert, I managed to pick up Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh on the BBC World Service radio, commentating on Tyrone winning the All-Ireland. Despite the static, I was able to follow the action. Croke Park seemed very far away though.

C HAPTER 4
T HE B ANANA R EFERENDUM
    I N THE M ONTH OF O CTOBER, I gained an insight into the sometimes bizarre world of Kenyan politics. The talk of everyone that month, whether they were knowledgeable or not, was about the big referendum due in November on the proposed changes to the constitution. The main points of contention centred upon land reform issues and the powers invested in the President. President Kibaki (who was elected in 2002) and the smaller parties of his coalition were urging a Yes vote, while the largest coalition partner had left to join the main KANU opposition party in opposing the proposed constitution.
    The symbol for ‘Yes’ was a banana; the symbol for ‘No’ was an orange. They had to have pictures of both on the ballot paper because so many are illiterate, even though some people of the remoter tribes in the northern deserts, like the Turkana tribe for instance, may have never seen either fruit before.
    Kitui was ‘No’ country. The Akamba, just like many other tribes, feared that the Kikuyu tribe of President Kibaki was trying to take over the country to benefit themselves at the expense of the others. Bananas were being sold on the streets of Kitui village but nobody was buying. You could not for the life of you be seen eating a banana. I was innocently chomping on one in Kitui village shortly after coming back from Mombasa when a random Akamba passing by challenged me,
    ‘Why are you supporting the Kikuyus?’
    It would be prudent, I decided, to eat local fruits from then on. Of an evening, crowds of ragged men would cram into a bar in Kitui village to watch the news on a small fuzzy TV. They bought nothing, then exited the bar