Let nobody fool you on the state of
Thika Fourteen Falls. It is despicable. It is filthy. Its waters has more
polythene bags than you can count. Simply, it is a total eyesore. A shame of
Thika. A shame of the Nation. A shame of Us All. No, I was not told all these. Neither
am I paid to discredit the Thika Fourteen Falls. Sijalipwa. To put it into clear perspective, we shall have to start
from the beginning:
On Saturday 11th, ten
minutes before four p.m., I left Kahawa Wendani Estate, together with four
friends, packed a few belongings – a black sweater, a pair of blue rubber
shoes, two ball bens, a notebook, two books, just in case: Nairobi Heat by Mukoma wa Ngugi and The Penguin Book of Modern African Poetry edited by Gerald Moore and Ulli Beier (that I
never read) and left to go camping.
But I forgot my National ID. You can
imagine how significant it is right now when the State is trying to sanitize
and redeem itself after bungling (yes, bungling) the Garissa College University
bloodbath that allowed four terrorists to slaughter 148 of our brothers and
sisters. Your ID is your life. So I worried over my ID the entire journey that
ended – pwap! At the Fourteen Falls Lodge located along Thika-Garissa Road.
Camping
Camp
Mates: Mesh, Solo, Mike, Kweto, and I
It was my first time going for camping.
So were my friends except one, maybe Mike. I am speculating because from what
he has told us before, it is often: it-looked-like-camping-but-again-it-was-not-camping
stories. Himself he is not sure. Nobody is sure.
We arrive at the lodge a few minutes after
seven p.m. and are welcomed by a man of short stature, stocky, with a clean-shaven
head except for a few tufts of hair. It looks like box-cut, his hairstyle. He
wears those bad plastic shoes that expose his big toes under the yellow glow of
the neon bulb fixed up there – atop the reception room–a mud-walled hut. Back
in my village, his shoes fetch less than $1. The temperatures are near freezing
here because the Lodge is adjacent to River Chania and it disturbs me how our
man survives the cold in those bad plastic shoes. When he opens his mouth to address
us, he comes off as informal, casual, street-smart, something unexpected, or
rather, I did not expect. He delights in cutting corners as we shall realise
later.
L-R: Solo, Kweto, and I
‘Karibuni’ he tells us extending a
handshake.
The leader of our delegation, Mesh,
advances forward and makes to sit on the only available seat opposite our man.
Meanwhile, we remain standing at the door of the hut, savouring the natural
scent of flora and fauna, so we believe, as the two deliberate.
‘Tent, unfortunately, hamtapata. But
kuna manyattas. Pia haziko mbaya,’’ he tells us.
‘But kila kitu iko.’
They do the math of the total cost. We
shall not use the brochure that has standard prices. I told you our man knows
how to cut corners. And corners he cuts because, surprisingly, they arrive at a
budget of 4,200/-. We suspect foul play in his quick deal. Not that the budget exceeds
ours. In fact, it is way below. We only believe he wants to give us sub-standard
services. We insist on first seeing the manyattas.
‘Aya twendeni. Ziko sawa.’ He assures
us as we file out of the hut.
They are manyattas for real. Like
those used by Maasais. Except these have electricity. We complain of the
electricity.
‘Hatutaki stima. Hamna candles ama
taa aina zingine,’ we innocently protest.
We shall get candles, he pledges.
What about firewood? Do they have enough that we can buy? Yes. They have
plenty. But we shall not buy. Instead, he shall ‘organize.’ Like Red in Stephen
King’s short story, Rita Hayworth
from the collection Different Seasons,
he is the man who can get you things at Fourteen Falls Lodge. Or, Morgan
Freeman acting as Red in The Shawshank
Redemption, the movie adaption of the story. He simply ‘organizes.’ But he
does not expect something small the Kenyan way. We look at each other in
foolish delight. And to his word: we get plenty of firewood later in the night
for our bonfire. Free!
Can we stroll on our own at night to
enjoy nature and refresh, maybe, for some of us now plagued by an outbreak of
village nostalgia, the memories of listening to the chorus of the crickets,
watching the half-moon, the stars, and fire-flies with their greenlight?
Indeed, he gives us the greenlight, metaphorically, i.e., but first, he gives
us an orientation where we can roast our meat.
During the orientation, he warns us of
the limits of the night.
‘Do not go near the river now’ he
points at the direction of the river. ‘Hippos are out and it could be
dangerous.’
Mesh shrinks at the revelation.
Follow the Leader: Mesh
‘Soldiers also train around.’ He adds,
again, as an afterthought, something that further chills us.
The night remains ghostly still, with
occasional fluttering of leaves and singing insects as we scan the wild with satisfactory
relish. This is what Jack London referred to as The Call of the Wild. Here, we have been called upon to bear
witness to nature and night. London writes:
“But
under it all (we) were men, penetrating the land of desolation and mockery and
silence, puny adventurers bent on colossal adventure, pitting (ourselves)
against the might of a world as remote and alien and pulseless as the abysses
of space [words in bracket mine]. ”
Later, our man walks us to where a
grill jiko is for roasting our 5kg of goat meat. Together we carry the grill jiko to an
isolated spot – a cave-like ground with peculiar animal sounds.
‘That’s a baboon,’ says Solo.
Frogs croak incessantly, setting a
uniform tempo that pierces the still, ghostly night illuminated by a half-moon
playing hide and seek with the clouds and stars above. The restful sky reminds
me of the innocence of village life, sitting by grandmother’s mango tree
waiting for supper together with my stepbrothers and stepsisters now scattered
in this wide world.
L-R: Solo, Mike, and I
Camping is an opportunity for one break
free from the rat race of city life. Here, deep in the wild, God gives you
another chance, and only chance, to review your dreams, hopes, aspirations,
mistakes, fears; a moment to atone for past sins if possible. It is here where
you can look at the sky and promise yourself and only yourself alone that you
will change that man in the mirror for the better. That you will not break
hearts again. That you will be wide as that dark blue sky in your relentless
search for the true self. That you will shine amidst the vastness like the moon
above.
Everyone is overwhelmed with sickening
nostalgia. So everyone wants to fetch firewood to light a fire. We scramble for
the few twigs that we can find in the semi-darkness. Mesh has brought a dozen
red candles.
‘Kwani you think we are belong to the
Legio Maria Sect,’ I remark.
Legio Maria Sect is infamous for its
use of red candles, white cloths, and other strange paraphernalia during
closed-door sessions when called upon to exorcise bad spirits in a homestead.
Our nyama
choma is ready after an endless trial and error. We should have boiled it
before placing it on the wire-mesh. We forgot to use a foil paper – a silvery
paper that you use to wrap the meat and prevent it from absorbing direct heat.
So we end up eating half-cooked meat. But that is camping. And it comes with
experimentation, learning new things, making mistakes.
Two a.m. Sleep in the manyattas. We
wake up to chirping birds, female talk – a group of women have come to shoot a
gospel video. It is a choir type. The morning allows us to absorb the wholeness
of the Lodge. We escape into the woods, play childish games, marvel at River
Chania with its expansive length. Chania’s resoluteness reminds one of the
political overtones it evokes in Central politics.
Landless
Estate
‘How
come rich people live here in landless estate?’ That’s what I ask one of the
residents I meet in a small hotel where have gone to have brunch[1]*.
Apart from Landless Estate, I am
told there is also Gatundu Estate (though different from the one in Kiambu
County). There’s also Muuga Estate. The latter estates belong to commoners. But
I am still not satisfied. And not amused.
Why Landless and yet people in the estate live
in gated homes with high walls, surrounded by well-trimmed gardens? And they
have street names, too. Pretentions of the rich know no bounds: Cairo St, Freetown St, Canaan St. Inside
their prison-homes, I wonder if they have same question as I do: Why landless
and yet they occupy tracts of land space for their majestic bungalows?
Afternoon we devote to swimming at
Fourteen Falls Lodge. The management charges sh200 per person. But because our
man is around, he shall organize. And he lets us swim at sh125 per person. I
told you he is Kenya’s equivalent of Stephen King’s Red. No kickbacks. No
chicken.
That is when it coldly dawns on me that
I do not know how to swim. All those years. I have learnt how to (mis)use all
manner of drugs, experimented with different sex positions, I can confidently
roll a joint, but I know nothing of freestyle and breastroke and backstroke. So
all that watching of Jason Dunford and Michael Phelps during the Olympics has
been in vain. I mean, at 25 years, a quarter century, at least some people are
unable to dance like my boy, Nyanchwani. But swimming, Nyasaye wuora!
You should have seen me, dragging my
weight inside the waters and slapping it stupidly into big bubbles, unable to
move from one end to the next, meanwhile, children of age 8 or 9 gliding effortlessly
like fish, enjoying themselves and so were my camp mates except for Kweto,
another asshole in swimming.
Note to self: Learn swimming as soon as
possible.
Pollution
of Thika Fourteen Falls and the Final Journey Home
The journey to Thika Fourteen Falls
first leads us to Kilimambogo centre. From the centre to Thika Fourteen Falls
is a distance of approximately 10 km. One can use a motorbike or a matatu. It
is a wide murram road, well maintained, and can allow two vehicles to bypass
one another simultaneously. We take a motorbike.
‘Mtalipishwa kila mtu mia. Kwa ivo
nyinyi wote, mia tano,’ one of the motorcyclists warns. We had not factored in
the entry charges. One hundred bob? All of us are taken aback.
‘Ya nini? We ask to nobody in
particular.
We later draw conclusions to
ourselves: Maybe for maintenance. Someone has to maintain the place.
The motorbike will charge sh50 per
person with the promise of taking us to the same place, but following a clandestine
route where we shall not pay a single cent, but shall still see Thika Fourteen
Falls. Everywhere, I realise, Kenyans are eager to cut corners. Nobody wants to
follow the direct channels. The clandestine route ushers us to paths zigzagging
into expansive pineapple plantations and, to our right, an overlooking Mount
Kilimambogo.
Arrival
at Thika Fourteen Falls marks the collective disappointment of a polluted
river, a polluted environment, polythene bags everywhere; but the waterfalls
remain defiant, pouring its water with elegant grace, oblivious of its
endangerment! Lovebirds have flocked here. Children. Family. A school is here.
It is a Sunday. They take pictures against the background of a dirty water –
brown and full of industrial refuse!
Our anger is palpable!
‘Who dumps all these refuse into the
water?’ I ask one of the photographers.
‘Nairobi River. All the waste people
pour onto Nairobi River drain here,’ he says. I can read the dejection in his
voice, too. He is also disappointed.
On our journey back, I keep
wondering: where does the money collected at Thika Fourteen Falls go? Are we
seeing the heartless destruction of our ecosystem in broad daylight?
I get home before eight p.m. Pending
emails. Pending online research assignments. I am back to my rat identity!
