~~~
Roma Café is a lifesaver at Kodrum. You need it to stay sane around campus. Taking a sip of hot chocolate, I munched on my multi-coloured M&Ms as I waited for the shop assistant to warm my blueberry muffin. As a better part of me concentrated on the mouthwatering displays and smells, the other kept wondering why I had taken Literary Journalism that semester. It was not a compulsory unit. For some reason, I thought it would be appropriate.
‘No talk about assignments!’ I heard someone exclaim behind me in an African accent and almost agreed out loud.
‘African accent’ are two words most Africans would not agree with. There is no way 53 nationals can speak uniformly.
In between uncountable yells of food orders, assignment and due are two words you cannot miss at Kodrum University’s Doof Court. Doof Court is the food mini-mall where Roma Café sits. I always wonder whose idea ‘doof’ was.
‘Coffee and muffin,’ a freckled-faced young man ordered.
He is definitely Australian. The accent screams it. Home and Away and Neighbours on Kenya-TV had left me well equipped in that sector. So why do we Africans have a problem with ‘African accent’ again? Oh well, Africa, unlike Australia, is not a country.
‘What kind?’ the cashier asked half-heartedly, bringing me back to planet Roma Café.
‘Orange poppy seed.’
‘And coffee?’
‘Um ... let’s see,’ he mumbled, tapping his foot.
‘Sure, mate,’ someone interrupted. ‘We are standing here just waiting for you to decide what kind of coffee you want.’
Thankfully, the pink-haired shop attendant is here for our rights. Her bright hair is newsreader-stiff on her head. For a moment I wonder if super glue has been used here. Her tiny eyes vaguely remind me of someone.
‘Look, there are people waiting here ...’
She gives that plastic smile salespeople are taught about customer service. I notice she has a ring on her tongue. Just the thought of how she got it there makes me cold.
‘Latte will do.’
My muffin was obviously taking longer than the average warming ... global warming perhaps. It is another five minutes before I can get a bite of my Doof muffin.
Outside Doof sits the ever-noisy Kudrom Park where most of us like to kill time. It looks more like an arena for fresh, green grass to fight dying, brown grass. Surrounding it are tired yellowish looking cement pillars that are a definite contrast with the insides of the buildings they enclose – a clear indication that too much touch-up work is done on Kodrum’s insides than its outsides.
The sun is bright. People who ditched their sunglasses squint like they have just been fed squeezes of fresh lemons. I love the play of sunlight on hair; the perfect time to see who finds comfort in wearing dandruff. Among them is a tall, rather built Zimbabwean-Sudanese student named Yonah. Yonah does not have dandruff. What he has is a deep voice. A voice he probably exaggerates. I have always thought he makes it sound croakier than it really is.
I first met Yonah in 2004 in my Creative Arts class. Yonah looks misleadingly reserved. We never spoke outside class until the day I wore a t-shirt with a Kenyan flag to school. Of course, ‘So you are Kenyan’ had been the opening sentence.
He told me he had lived in Kenya and topped it with a little detail. He finds Kodrum Africans too proud to talk to.
‘Yonah Santino Mayang,’ he had said, offering his palm of long fingers. ‘I know you. Katila Nyanyai Dengere, right? Right!’
I try to speak. He doesn’t let me. I raise a brow instead.
‘How do you know people are proud without talking to them?’ I return to his previous comment.
‘They don’t talk to other Africans the way Africans should talk to each other.’
I raise another brow.
‘Well, you know, saying hello.’
His tone is dismissive.
‘Too proud. At home people say hello.’
‘Sudan, you mean.’
‘No, everywhere in Africa. I have lived in Kenya, Zimbabwe and Sudan, o’right?’
‘Those are three countries, Yonah. I am sure you have only lived in parts of those countries. But I agree there is a bit of a difference. I think people try not to bother with greetings.’
‘No. Just pride. Some Africans thinking they are better than others.’
‘Surely you can’t walk around looking for faces you recognise. Sometimes they simply don’t see you. This is uni ...’
‘They see you, they look away.’
Yonah was not entirely wrong. There were Africans walking around campus with strange I-am-better-than-you sneers. I could never be bothered saying hello myself. These people seemed to befriend their nationals only.
Is that not what freedom is though? People have the freedom to choose friends.
‘Next time, don’t look either. Get yourself an attitude too.’
‘What for? I was not brought up like that. Even in Nairobi that is what people do,’ Yonah continued, making me wonder what happened to ‘everywhere in Africa’. ‘I told you I have lived in Kenya.’
I heard you the first ... second time.
‘It is a city. People are busy. People are nicer in small towns,’ I defended yet again.
We never came to an agreement on that topic. It reminded me of a Burundian friend who had said she loathes the way Kenyans treat house-helps and patronise them with aunt-titles. ‘Ati auntie,’ she had said, sneering. ‘Kenya ni nchi nzuri lakini madharau hivi mnayo.’ I knew exactly what she was talking about.
I had asked Yonah a favour. His father was a politician. I assumed he was rich. He was not. Just before he moved to Australia, Yonah lived in a refugee camp in Kenya. Being fairly self-conscious, he does not quite appreciate being considered the ‘helpless’ refugee.
In a matter of weeks, Yonah oddly started calling himself Yosam. Something about using his three names in one word. I refused to put that into practice. Other things came with the sad death of Yonah – a name I truly loved for its meaning – and the uncelebrated birth of Yosam. He even deserted his neat hair cut for a mop of dreadlocks. I have never understood why.
Zimbabwe had been on the media for quite some time. You would need to be exceptionally naïve to miss the controversy surrounding its leader, Habemu. Somehow, Yonah’s father was caught in the middle of it. I had asked him to tell me more about his father. The last time I had seen Yonah, things had not gone well. He had been stopping to greet just about the entire campus ... typically Yonah. He had told me his father had recently been released from prison. I wanted him to tell me more about his family and how they were coping.
‘Terrible, of course,’ he had said, giving me a critical look.
‘You are strong. You laugh like nothing is wrong. Greeting everyone and stuff,’ I had said without thinking.
‘Well, I guess so. So, what do you want to hear? Why me?’
He gnawed at a packet of salt-vinegar potato chips he had literally grabbed off me. The sound of cracking chips kicked off the interview.
‘Well, you are an international student, you are African and your background is pretty rare. A Sudanese-born Zimbabwean.’
‘People travel, don’t they? My father married a Sudanese woman who happened to get paged.’
I blink, a little confused.
‘Preg-nant,’ he enunciates, grinning. ‘They had a son. His name is Yosam. He is in Australia now. End.’
I had to laugh.
‘Yonah, this is serious. You are my assignment.’
‘You asked me about my father, yeah?’
‘Well, he is a politician, hey? I think you have a story worth telling.’
‘My screwed up life, you mean.’
‘I was not going to say that.’
‘The idea of my father being sick in prison and being refused treatment is pretty screwed up. Zimbabwe is screwed up. Sudan is screwed up. At some stage every country in Africa will go through what we have gone through. Wait and see.’
&nbs
p; ‘You think so?’
He nodded.
‘Well, in the meantime I think you might be an interesting part of my piece. The essence, actually.’
‘As long as it won’t get published.’
There. My first problem. Great. Just great.
‘The piece is nothing political. You have nothing to worry about,’ I said quickly.
He shrugged.
‘So, would you consider your father a good politician? Like, you know, not corrupt?’
This question, I realised, had been the least appropriate.
He gave me that withering how-dare-you look a sworn priest would give when asked if he gets certain feelings around women and said, ‘He is anti-Habemu, if that is what you are asking.’
That had been the end of the first interview.
I had ruined it.
Literary Journalism is boring. Making things up is much more fun.
You know you are bored when you can hear your watch tick. I can write no more. I am losing the plot. I cannot get myself to read anything either.
I switch on my tiny TV. An Aboriginal teenager is dead in Halls Creek. He had been sniffing petrol. I instantly remember Nairobi’s street kids sniffing glue.
Who will help these kids?
I am staring at the glittery stars on my ceiling. I stuck them there to add magic to my room. I am missing home. I am missing someone I do not really know.
Earlier that evening as I drove my tired ’92 Toyota Camry listening to 91.5FM, a radio presenter named Nash had been having a shot at improving his on-air sense of humour by making fun of celebrity child-adoption. Lina Jole and Brett Pride were in the business and rumour had it that Pride’s ex Jo Angestone was considering joining the adoption party. Nash had written a mock letter to Angestone. It started with something like ‘I know you are targeting some little boy or girl from Sudan, Uganda or whatever but I’m not too old. Just twenty. I am Australian ...’
I did not listen to the rest of it. Of course, only African children need adoption.
Besides, you are a foreigner, Nyanyai ... not quite the targeted audience.
I replaced the adoption thoughts with more home-thoughts.
It is better to study here and get a job. Australia’s laws work better. You know Kenya. Toa kitu kidogo. TKK, they call it.
I cannot afford to ‘give something small’ to get someone to do their job.
For one moment I imagine what life would have been like if my father was alive and a politician. He could just use taxpayers’ money to get us a good care-free life.
My family moved from Sudan a long time ago when Sudan was better. We became Kenyans. I do not know how that happened. Uncle Deng’s explanation is as vague as ‘your father knew people’.
I was the only child of my parents at the time. Uncle Deng said ‘Dad’s people’ thought he was a smart man who did not foolishly sire many children without a plan like many Africans do. That is because they did not know my twin brothers Batian and Nelion died of malaria in Mama’s hands. They liked Dad. I guess that is all that mattered. Dad started as a watchman at an international hotel in Nairobi. Then he became the hotel’s concierge. Promotion, they called it.
Then he managed the hotel.
Then he died.
I was ten when he left. Someone said he had to go. He owed someone money ... another of Uncle Deng’s vague answers. Mama checked into a nursing college two weeks after the funeral. Apparently Uncle Deng asked ‘Dad’s people’ to check her in.
Dad could have left money in the bank for us. Mama would not be waking up early to go to Shah Hospital. I would not be doing crap jobs in Australian hotels ... Dad should have been a politician.
No, I do not want anyone in my family in politics. Not African politics. Uncle Deng looks like he wants to get into politics. Deng-daring, as Mama calls him. He forgets we are not really Kenyans. You cannot trust these people.
Whatever. We are Kenyans. Mama, my little sister Ajak, my little brother Tut and Uncle Deng.
I love and miss my Kenya. Can I work there though? How many times will I wail to speak to a manager? Even the wind knows I am a drama queen. But how long am I going to feel this foreign? Unlike my Asian friends, being an African international student in Town meant two things – your parent or relative was a corrupt politician with lots of money or you were a displaced refugee.
It took me well over two years to wake up and smell the coffee, as Mama phrased it one time I was getting nonsensical on the phone. She said I had been wasting money on phone cards. She said I had to make friends. I had friends at home who became my friends. I never made them.
I was suddenly different and foreign. Strangers became friends. You made the effort. You had to call them up once or twice a week, join them to some movie you did not exactly want to watch ... force strange tasting food down your throat and have the sweet gut to compliment their cooking. Complete honesty was certainly not the first step to getting close to other people. I remember being suddenly loyal to a diary: Life sucks. I want to go home. My heart will stop beating. So tired of crying quietly ... no one can hear me n’ think I’m having boy issues. Boys are least of my concerns at this point. Wanna go HOME!’
That entry was not entirely correct. There was a boy I missed. A boy I never really knew. A charming boy in my neighbourhood. He looked a lot like Yonah.
I knew the answer to that even as I wasted ink, paper and time. I could not go back home. Some things go without saying in my family.
‘I miss home daily,’ I told Yonah as a Ugandan girl named Celia joined us at a table in Doof Court. ‘Who doesn’t love home anyway?’
If I had upset Yonah, I was determined to improve this time. I needed him. My grades depended on him.
‘I love home. Talking about it does not help,’ Yonah said, transferring a reasonable scoop of rice into his mouth. ‘I mean with the situation in Zim now.’
‘You have to love it,’ said Celia. ‘Home is home. Most dudes never miss home.’
‘Well, I do. I just think it is useless talking about it.’
Celia had ordered herself some coffee. She speaks in gestures. The wave of her hand could have sent the coffee cup flying in the air and probably slash someone’s entire face while at it.
‘How’s the currency there?’
‘Terrible,’ Yonah answered almost immediately. ‘It used to be the richest country in Africa.’
‘Was it?’ I asked. ‘South Africa or Nigeria, I reckon. Higher currency, minerals, oil and stuff.’
‘Having a higher currency exchange rate does not make a country rich,’ Yonah stated. ‘Can you say Kenya is better than Japan because the amount of Kenya shillings that make an Oz dollar is less than the amount of yen that makes the same dollar?’
‘Whoa!’ Celia laughed. ‘Can you say that again? In simpler, shorter sentences, please.’
I sipped my coffee as I listened to Yonah make good use of the second chance to bash the Kenya shilling. Celia seemed to have been convinced.
‘Just so you know, Yonah likes to have the last word,’ I told Celia.
Yonah went on to speak about corruption, poverty and AIDS in Africa. The usual media-baptised African tags. At some point Celia argued that ‘AIDS is not caused by poverty but by dogging without thinking’. She had said, ‘Dog with a condom, for crying out loud!’
I sat there wondering where my story was going. I stared at the last bits of my muffin crumbs like the answers lay there. Yonah did not seem to want to talk about his father, probably not in the presence of a third person.
‘Just give me a call when you are ready to hear the stuff,’ he said in that killer smile I happen to like. ‘You know, the screwed up stuff.’
That was the thing. I was always ready to hear ‘the stuff’! He wasn’t.
‘Are you two ...’ Celia slanted me a look, showing me two twined fingers.
I could only laugh. Yonah laughed too.