Flowers Reign in the Green City

It’s always greener after the Nairobi rainy season. The waters create red rivers that give life. Because here, life has to continue through flooded roads, soaked shoes; it happens everyday. There’s a look of lushness the water gives. This lushness permeates and communicates nourishment, that a thing is well-cared for. It gives not only a glow but a softness, explaining the contrast between the two girls well. They could have been identical as their father’s genetics dominated in both, but Wangari was a blooming cherub in a way Paulina had not been allowed to be.

Until the small girl had been presented that rainy day.

It wasn’t a long drive across the county that separated the two girls. Oh no, it was merely fifteen minutes, well forty in Nairobi rush hour traffic. The glossy black Toyota SUV was the most domineering structure in that corner of the slum that day. I don’t remember which one — not Kibera, but it traversed the muddy pot-holes and umber puddle craters to come for the little one. Her deliverance from sweltering, iron amplified heat to sterile, air-conditioned leather. The only other time the car had been sent to this corner of the world was after her birth. Their father hadn’t been in the car, but the ochre undertone to her skin and the shape of her nose confirmed paternity enough for the driver to take a picture of the baby on a cracked screened Tecno and send it to his boss. This WhatsApp message quietly acknowledged the truth with the discretion of two blue arrows. Silvers of crisp brown banknotes were exchanged between hands. Mama Paulina offered the driver some tea to drink, but the cup remained untouched and he promptly left.

Another message that managed to snake through the high walls of The Estate was that of the girl’s mother and her declining health. The soda bottle glass shards a top the fence couldn’t pierce the fact that a certain resident’s daughter would face eminent starvation, or worse due to the circumstances of her birth. His wife, Mama Wangari was called by the members of her clan to discuss the matter. This was a few weeks ago when the women cooked massive sufurias of food, ate and cleaned up leaving face down dishes to dry on the rack . During the systematic deconstruction of her monthly food stores, the female members sat Mama Wangari down. As they chopped, stewed and stirred, they explained how when a woman only gives her husband one daughter in ten years of marriage, she has to understand when he seeks out comfort in the lady who comes kufua nguo, that the man cannot be blamed. This is what men did. Hadn’t their own husbands not done the same to the women they became co-wives with? Hadn’t their husbands not made them raise another woman’s children if she was otherwise indisposed? She was lucky that she hadn’t seen the girl thus far. Mama Wangari didn’t speak, she drank a cup of unsweetened uji, and dutifully mixed Royco with hot water for the stew as instructed by her foremothers . That day, Wangari was just excited that all her aunties and Cucu’s were in the kitchen and there was so much to eat.

Mama Paulina boiled some tea again when the driver came for her daughter. Despite her ailing, majani na maziwa were always accounted for in the budget although this time there was no sugar offered on the small table. The tea was prepared, but this time since her child was about to be taken, the driver sat with her. He still didn’t drink anything from the plastic cup, but there was a softness to his eyes, a mixture of pity and something else. None of this conversation was in English, the shared language between the two was Kiswahili, and that is what they spoke, but as the conversation became heavier Mama Paulina began using more Kikuyu words. The driver wasn’t Kikuyu, but since living in Nairobi had began to pick up on it. He earnestly did understand her story, there was a level of mutual intelligibility. She like many had come to the city looking for more, and Nairobi had money but it had other things. After a falling out with her staffing agency as a maid, she started working odd jobs even though she was only 22. School had stopped when money became more of a necessity, so she never bothered going back. There were people with bachelors and masters degrees who couldn’t find work in this city. Mama Paulina’s sickness wasn’t terminal but she would have to go her home where money went further. She was grateful her illness wasn’t HIV, she just needed to go back to her people, back to something simpler. They didn’t even know she’d been pregnant. Luckily, the father had agreed to finish raising the child even if it meant she would possibly never see her daughter again. She could come back to the city when she was better and try again, this time properly with a husband and more to give. Mama Paulina didn’t clutch her daughter and she didn’t want to scare her by crying either. The interaction was calm, Paulina obliged when her mother told her her to enter the car, thinking she was following behind. Paulina was distracted by a game on the driver’s phone. This was a day of novelty and exciting strangers, so Paulina hardly noticed until the quiet, cool air became stiff that she was alone in a strange car with a strange man without a clue as to where she was going.

Wangari hadn’t come easily, and almost in spite of her meticulously planned birth: Lamaze, pre-natal yoga, bone broth every morning, and the fine accommodations at the Nairobi Hospital. Mama Wangari lost a lot of blood. She had to be cut in order for her daughter to be delivered. The father was in the room and he severed the cord. He didn’t express any wistfulness at her gender like most of his cohort, really not even a wisp of it. This was his baby girl. She was the first grandchild, so there were endless, eager hands ready to hold her, kiss her, examine her features and claim them. Everyone reached for the baby as Mama Wangari recovered in her medical suite. Her husband visited her every week, even after her stitches tore open and she had to extend her stay. He came with food, clothes and charisma. The female members of her clan congratulated her. To have a supportive husband and for him to pay the bill in full without a Harambee! Mama Wangari was blessed by God, but she wondered if it was selfish to have wanted him everyday?

Paulina came too easily and quickly. The pain started and Mama Paulina had to work through the intensifying cramps when they began in the morning. She had to go and wash clothes. The pangs continued into the afternoon, so she excused herself and decided to go home with a half-day’s pay because it was unbearable. To have to kneel, squat and fetch water whilst her back burned and her womb wanted to expel this man’s child. She went to the bathroom and used the night pads near the toilet to keep her leaking water from staining the carpet, anticipating the demand’s of the day she took two more.

It was especially bad when Mama Paulina decided to go home. She didn’t even think to go straight to the women’s hospital. She craved the only comfort she’d had in the city. She focused on the singular task of going to her little space to divert her attention from the ebbing pain. Once the mabati sheltered her, and the sun was sufficiently dimmed by the small curtain, she felt the strongest urge to push. The community could hear her wails so although she lived alone, women began to mobilize around her. The women who sold piecemeal goods on the streets, the neighbors. Faces which had greeted her in the blackness of early morning, hands whose merchandise she’d refused. Water was boiled into a green plastic basin and conversations about if a vehicle was nearby were taking place. The women made sure that there was someone with clean, capable hands and a razor ready to catch the baby.

Wangari was playing on the jungle gym at the restaurant in Westlands they all usually congregated to for lunch after church. She always ordered a bottle of Fanta Orange and pork spare ribs. She adored the rich brown sauce and her father would call her a baby carnivore. When she stripped the bones bare of meat and then ran off to play, she would always make a friend that day. Her parents would give them money to get their faces painted. Wangari would either pick flowers or a butterfly, but she couldn’t be too greedy. They either had to pick face paint or balloon animals. After her face was covered, Wangari would run around on the manicured lawns with the pretty bougainvillea hiding the grey concrete walls. When it was nighttime and the adults were still talking and piling up the table surface with various bottles, the playground became cold and ominous. Wangari would then curl up around her dad and he would order her a hot chocolate. The sweet warmth would lull her to sleep and she’d wake up spontaneously outside her home ready to be bathed and prepared for bed. Small flecks of paint would remain dotted around her hairline on Monday morning.

On Sundays, Paulina went to church with her mother and she loved it. The loudness of miracles, the static of the microphones, the motion of the choir robes, the flowing prayers in tongues. The music, the dancing, the dry, biscuit halves that were snuck into her hands, and the jugs of over-diluted red squash in bent out of shape plastic mugs. She loved church and she loved Jesus. Even though her mother was always in a hurry and tugged at her arm everyday: away from the orange coals of the open jiko, into stuffed matatus, away from the bigger children outside that would make her cry, into an Auntie’s red kiosk who would watch her for the afternoon and successfully placate her with round, colorful globes of chewing gum. Once, Mama Paulina had pulled her arm so forcefully, she’d dislocated it. But, Paulina knew that Jesus loved her too, and would always love her just like last Sunday and the one before. They would go to Uhuru Park, and if her mother indulged her she would let her play on the paddleboats. She was a cute child and she would force herself into the nearest one much to her mother’s disapproval and the crowds amusement. After a loud and fierce negotiation with the operators, they would go around the lake together. Never mind that the money was supposed to go towards buying that week’s water or replace the uniform she was always outgrowing. It was in these moments, the Sunday’s when Paulina got her small strawberry-vanilla swirl cup, that she saw some of her mother’s hardness melt. She lapped up the sweetness and offered a precious plastic spoonful to Mama Paulina who shook her head, insisting it was all hers.

The metal gate opened as Peter returned that wet afternoon. Wangari wanted to run down and see if he’d brought her anything back. Sometimes he would get her bhajias wrapped in oil soaked newspaper, or rotisserie chicken from Sonford’s Fish and Chips in town. The kind of greasy food her parents would disapprove of her eating, but was her birthright as a Kenyan. This time both her parents were solemnly waiting outside, serving as an indicator that this was not one of these occasions. Wangari was better off observing from the safety of her upstairs window behind the purple curtains. Their housemaid, Auntie Carol opened the car door and slipped inside. The little girl who then appeared was almost Wangari’s age wearing neat, over-washed clothes. Her natural hair was plaited in thin, delicate lines down the back of her head. Wangari’s own plaits led into a ponytail extended with hairpiece, the ends adorned with tinkling plastic beads on that represented her school colors.

The girl clutched at her shoulders but slowly gave herself over to this new yet familiar Auntie, avoiding Mama Wangari’s watery gaze and their father’s lurking presence. She gingerly led the girl into the main house, shielding her head from the light precipitation with her apron.

“Sasa Paulina,” Auntie cooed in a hushed tone. “Kuja, I want you to meet someone.”