As I hit the tracks, I lost sight of the chaos on the hill, the sounds of children shrieking and the sweet smell of rotting garbage, shrouded in the acrid smoke of burning banana skins. The scent of my flesh scorched on the hot tracks , sizzling beneath me. I lay limbless now, my skin drying as the merciless sun rays vaporised my being towards the heavens , juices oozing from my lacerated body, attracting carnivorous ants from miles away. What on earth and in hell had I done to deserve this torture metted out by an ignorant child, ignorant to the value of my being, ignorant to the need for us to exist together.
We live in Kibera. We thrive in Kibera. We are ignored and abused in Kibera.
The silver sunrays baked the mud that housed us, radiating a warm glow through our bodies, slowly drawing the night chill upwards and away. Drawing with it moisture from the depths and encouraging a flurry of activity of all those around, resulting in an everincreasing sweet stench to fill the pockets of icy night air. The land was still. Our land was good. Our land was fertile, we kept it this way. We encouraged the growth of crops we did not eat, but took pleasure in feeding. We defecated tirelessly, endlessly. We fornicated often, polygamously, under cover, privately. Our population increasing by the day in this slum, the biggest in Africa. Surviving as scavengers, our children merrily wandering through the piles of garbage, oblivious to the dangers of suffocation, the threat of playing or feeding too close to plastic bags. Oblivious of dangers of vermin, rodents and children.
The quake was sudden! As most quakes are! The ground ripped from around us, under us, and turned above. The worst quake ever felt in Kibera. Bodies were severed. Body parts writhing in the glistening sodden mud, chaos all around. WHAT THE……..!!!!!
Shards of bright light forced us to cringe and seek escape. Disoriented by the sounds of ripping earth and foreign voices, we tried to tunnel downwards , upwards, anywards, desperately trying to survive, to escape from the unfolding hell that surrounded us.
Hours later, in the calm, I lay in a strange stillness. My body unscathed. All in one piece. How had I survived, Why? Where were the others? The moist walls around me reminding me I was still underground. Sickly sweet rotting fruit drizzling over my body, marinating me slowly. Tantalizing me and tempting me to reach out and take a mouthful. I was starving. Just a bite. It was good. It went through my system in no time. I felt I could eat my way through this icky rotting mass if I had to.I began to regain my strength, and decided to squirm through the debris searching for my family. Where were they. My world seemed upside down. The sky, blue as ever lay beneath me. The sun threatening from above. Was I hallucinating? Was it something I had eaten.
And then suddenly, the chaos started again. A second quake, bigger than the first tore through my universe, exposing me to the world around. In seconds the sound was unbearable!! My body gripped at the waist line, tighter and tighter until I was sure to black out as I was lifted from mother earth, strangled, squeezed. I recall urinating, not in fear, but by force. Gasping for air I was suddenly surrounded by it, as I took flight.
Was this a dream? I was flying!!
Green meadows swirling below me. Silence filling the air with every second. Was this for real? Was it something I’d eaten?
I tried to look down my flight path. Everyone was staring.
Someone was shouting “Snake!!”
Snake??!!!Geepers, where??? From my vantage point I couldn’t see one!!
Su was shouting. “Hey!! Wewe!! Kwanini wewe ame fanya hiyo? Hawa ni rafiki yako. Ni mzuri”
(Hey , why did you do that? They are your friends!!)
The little boy looked on puzzled. He raised his soily hands in confusion.What was going on? What had she said? What language was she speaking? He had saved the crowd from the snake hadn’t he?
Instinctively recognising the confusion, Dino Martins (our superman!!) came to the rescue of all and translated in perfect swahili “Don’t harm the earthworms, they are very good for the soil, they are our friends”
They are very good for the soil??I knew that all along……………….Is this what you do to friends?????
As my soft body lay on the searing rail tracks, I hoped that the sacrifice of my life, collateral damage, would be a lesson to the future farmers in Kibera. We need each other.
(The story of an earth worm, captured and put into a blue crate to be shown as an example to the children of Kibera. One child however,on seeing the worm grabbed it and flung it over the edge onto the railway track.)
Technorati : Africas’ biggests slum, Dino Martins, Kibera, Vermiculture, earthworms
