I Go Put A Punch On Your Nose O!

After my Master’s degree from K.U., I was fortunate enough to land a well paying job (by Kenyan standards). Unfortunately, there wasn’t a single day I was even mildly interested in the job. For me, it was a means to an end. And the end was to save enough money, boost my bank statement, and happily jump into the swelling brain drain flood. After four years of careful planning and saving, I had a bank statement that could impress any Western embassy in Nairobi. To get out, I applied for a Master’s degree in one of the European countries, got my student visa, jumped on the plane, and landed in Europe.

During my preparation to leave Kenya, I had cultivated contacts in the city I had chosen as my new home. I knew only one of the contacts at personal level. I got to know the others through the ‘a-friend-to-a-cousin-to-an-aunt’ informal type of networks. Months before my travel I called these guys almost on a daily basis and ran up a huge bill on my home phone – which I didn’t mind – for I had no intention of paying it anyway. My plans were to pay all the bills I would run abroad. My simple rule was: Once out, there is no back.

I noticed a certain change in attitude as soon as I informed my ‘buddies’ that I had acquired a visa and had already bought my air ticket. Suddenly, most of them didn’t want to answer my calls anymore. I left messages on their answering machines but never got a call back. Using the networks mentioned earlier, I was able to get the physical address of one of the guys who had seemed the friendliest. So, I packed a few Tuskers (having heard they were rare) jumped on the plane and was in Europe. Planning to give my new found ‘friend’ a surprise visit, I took a taxi to his ‘apartment’. Boy was he wide-eyed and amazed when he opened the door bell and found me outside wearing my big sheepish grin. A bit confused, he welcomed me coldly. There were about 8 others who lived in the same apartment. He had a small room which he shared with two of his relatives.

He gave me the rules of the game:

1.I had to find myself a job, but he was quick to add, the best job I could hope to find was as a cleaner. I could also raise a few buck collecting bottles on the streets and taking them to recycling machines, he added.

2.I had to find a place to stay really quick, but he added it was very difficult for a black to find one. Whites highly distrusted blacks. His advice was I should find a black who had been fortunate to get a room, and hope he was willing to sub-let a corner of his room to me.

3.The highest level of self-deceit, he informed me, was to think that I could use my Kenyan educational qualifications. These, he told me, were as good as toilet paper.

4.Don’t trust any Kenyans. Most Kenyans will make sure you get into problems and get shipped back to Shamakhokho on a one-way ticket. That, he said, was the cardinal rule.

I had three weeks before commencement of classes. During this time, I tried to make contacts and find myself a room. He told me not to bother about attending college. Every other Kenyan I met told me:

‘Hapa tumekuja kutafuta pesa bro – SIO kusoma. Kama ni masomo, rudi Kenya usome bwana! Hakuna Mkenya anasoma hapa – kwani wewe ni mjinga wa kutoka wapi uanze kufikiria kusoma? No wonder wasee wa Shamakhokho mnatomba kuku!

I soon got a cleaning job and quit after the first day. I tried collecting bottles but found the competition to be cut-throat. There were just too many bottle collectors. After quitting the cleaning job and the bottle-collecting enterprise, the Kenyan who had taken me in kicked me out for gross insubordination. I had made the unforgivable mistake of going out for a walk without asking for permission!

So I took bags and walked to the nearest train station. I didn't know where to go. Luckily, my ‘primitive’ social Kenyan side was still fresh in me. I tried to talk to people but they made such a diversion as soon as I said ‘Excuse me’, - I thought I must have looked out of place or something. Whenever I saw a fellow African and started approaching, they turned and sped away. Some brave ones sternly looked at my sheepish grin and extended hand and said:

‘Leave me alone o! Or I go put a punch on your nose o!’

Sometimes an African woman chanced by and rubbing my hands with excitement, I would widen my grin and be like:

‘Excuse me sister…’

‘Am NOT your SISTER o! Do you know my moda? I said do you know my MODA? Leave me alone o!’

To cut the long story short – I survived. And I finally got myself a job that I like very much. I did clean a bit as I settled down. But that isn't today's story. Today, I have a question, or rather a wonder: why do we Kenyans in the Diaspora hate each other so? Or did I just fall into the wrong crowd?

After my nightmare was over, in my early days in Europe, sometimes I would call home and my mother would be like,

‘Oh praise be to God Masinde – when did you get out of jail?’

Apparently, a fellow caring 'Diasporian' had called ‘a-friend-to-a-cousin-of-an-aunt’ and said I was in jail for statutory rape. Other times, news in Shamakhokho were that I had become a criminal who specialized in mugging ‘illegals’ who couldn’t complain to the police or that I made my money as a homosexual prostitute.

I have talked with many Kenyans living in different parts of the world, and the story isn’t any different. Kenyans in the Diaspora are famous for selling out each other.

If every time you see a newly-arrived Kenyan, anger builds inside and you are like screaming in your mind:

‘I go put a punch on your nose o!’

think again. There is space for all of us in here. New arrivals don’t mean we’ll have to lose our place, and get shipped back to so that the new arrival can can find space?

Just a few cents from the Son of Shamakhokho.