Free It Happened on the Way to War by Rye Barcott Page B

Kibera, a rookie without a clue. I was a big white mshamba , though I tried my best to look cool and confident. I couldn’t afford to show them how lost and afraid I really was.
    Deep reggae rumbled from within the only painted shack on the alleyway, a forest green ten-by-ten with an orange sheet draped over its entrance. MAD LION BASE the main wall of the shack read above a painting of a lion’s head that looked like something out of a comic book. The beast’s salivating mouth was frozen between a smile and a snarl. Its fiery red eyes appeared to be watching me.
    Men smoked joints on a wooden bench. The bass thumped, rippling the orange sheet and rattling the thin tin walls. One of the men took a drag and pointed at me like a target. Heads turned.
    I walked on, sweating, wondering why I had been so foolish to have walked into Kibera alone on my second night in the slum. My father would have been furious with my judgment, as would Major Boothby.
    â€œMister Omosh,” a voice said.
    I spun around but didn’t see anyone.
    â€œMister Omosh.” A young boy half my height was standing at my legs.
    I crouched down and gave him a gota . “Hey, buddy, how do ya know my name?”
    The boy was a relative of Baba Chris, the man who had offered me chai at the front gate to Dan’s compound. As relieved as I felt about now having a guide to reach Dan’s shack, I didn’t know what to make of the fact that the news of my presence was spreading so rapidly. Would the community awareness protect me, or would it make me more vulnerable?
    BY THE TIME I arrived at Dan’s shack, he had finished cooking the maize meal ugali and sukuma wiki , collard greens. Baba Chris joined us for dinner. He was sick and wanted to make some small talk to take his mind from the pain. We spoke about English Premier League soccer, then we turned to politics, which Baba Chris seemed to follow as if it were a sport. Baba Chris was particularly enthused about the prospects of his tribe’s most famous politician, Raila Odinga. Odinga, the Luo son of Kenya’s first vice president, was the member of Parliament for the district of Nairobi that included Kibera. He was also the leader of the NDP, the opposition party that had been rallying at the dirt pulpit near the tracks.
    Eventually Baba Chris brought the conversation to his illness. Sweating and shivering, he had lost his appetite and was in too much pain to ignore it. A friend of his who was a nurse thought he had malaria. The cost of the medication was about $7, which was more than he could afford. A week earlier he had spent his meager savings on school fees for his children. Without other options, Baba Chris intended to wait it out. If his wife made enough money selling some “small things” in the local markets, they might be able to pay for the medication in a few days. I didn’t ask what was on my mind: Was Baba Chris going to die?
    Later that night, as Dan slept soundly, I tried to process the blizzard that had been my first two and a half days in and around Kibera. I knew so little about the place, and it was so vast. Yet I was meeting good people: Jane with her unforgettable smile and infectious laugh, Dan, and Baba Chris. The only reason Baba Chris brought up the cost of the malaria medication was because I had asked him. He never asked me for assistance, and I wasn’t sure how I would have responded if he had asked for help. I told myself that as a rule I wouldn’t give out money in Kibera. It was a safety mechanism that my father had suggested. The color of my skin made people suspect that I had a lot of money, and I couldn’t afford to confirm those suspicions if I intended to spend my nights there. Yet I wanted to help Baba Chris. I admired his strength, and I felt that I knew him even though we had just met. I could give him some of my mefloquine pills. However, to the best of my knowledge the pills were designed to prevent