Free Black Star Nairobi by Mukoma Wa Ngugi

stepped outside and he called to one of the taxi guys. “Go home!” he said.
    I walked over to the taxi gliding on air, like MC Hammer.
    But when I got home, I remembered that Muddy had a performance the following evening and so I slipped in next to her, leaving the rings in my shirt pocket. There was no way I wasgoing to wake her up to propose now. Her response would be simple. “What the fuck? If I was going to marry you tonight, I would marry you tomorrow too.”
    I passed out.
    The following day, O and I started rattling the bushes. We went from tourist hotel to tourist hotel, from one cold trail to another, until at last we made our way to Limuru Country Club. It was a golf club that pretty much functioned like an upper-class Broadway’s. Under the guise of playing golf and protected by the privacy of a clubhouse, everything from land grabs to hostile takeovers was discussed here. The potbellied black and white men in white polo shirts and golf gloves went back to their businesses a little bit richer every day.
    As we were about to sit down, a burly Kenyan man approached us, feigned a jab and a right hook in my direction, and I pretended to be knocked out and slunk into my seat.
    The man’s name was Nyiks, short for Wanyika. A former boxer, he had almost held the national title back in the day. He and I had fought for real once, when he had called me a
mzungu
and I had just lost it. I won, but only because he was out of shape then—a victim of too much
nyama choma
. With some persuasion from O, he had helped us with the case of the missing white girl, and we had done each other a few solids, as we called favors. We had slowly become friends before we lost contact. After the fight he started hitting the gym again, and now he resembled George Foreman: big, a bit comical but strong and fit enough for anyone not to want to mess with him, unless they were in it for the long haul.
    He was at the club to buy and sell American dollars totourists and wealthy Kenyans. It was illegal, of course, but legality could be easily bought—and so he operated freely, so freely that he had set up shop in one of spa rooms. He even had regular business hours, 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.
    After we explained what we were looking for and made it clear that there was enough cash to go around, he agreed to ask around the club and call us as soon as he knew something. It was past seven when we left him to go see Muddy’s performance.
    The crowd at the Carnivore was an odd mixture of people. There were tourists tearing into crocodile meat and God knows what else—someone had once told me that for $500 a plate you got lion meat. The Kenyan elite in evening gowns and three-piece suits were dutifully sticking to the
nyama choma
and cocktails. The urban youth, trying to be hip in baseball caps and 49ers jackets, but broke as hell, were slowly sipping their Tuskers, trying to make a single beer last the night.
    They were all here to see Muddy. As she walked onto the expansive stage, the lights came on, revealing a shirtless muscled conga player. Muddy was dressed casually, a sleeveless white shirt, jeans, and sandals. She had let her dreads let down—set them free, she would say—so that they came to the small of her back. The drummer did a solo, eliciting thunderous sounds from the congas before cascading into a low constant trickle of beats.
    Muddy started.
    “Here is the problem of being a witness, it never happens to your confessor, a witness is to be pitied, to be patted on her shoulder, warnings become post-traumatic stress disorders, a cry of pain, remembrances of the past. So, I stand here to warn, but you will pity me, pat me on my shoulder, share in my tears butyou will believe they are not yours, and you are not me. Deep down you will believe that I deserved it, it was because of something I might have done, or not done, and where I didn’t, you will and where I did, you will show restraint. Listen! There is no such thing as a trickle