The township called him the Mkokoteni Pusher. While he didn't care for the name, he knew not to work himself up over it. One humid March afternoon, he hurried along the dust road that led from his homestead, which even he sometimes caught himself calling kwa mkokoteni pusher. The jerrycans on his handcart knocked against each other, filling the morning air with sound. On either side of the dust road were roughly-constructed wood and iron-sheet structures that came to life once the sun was up. The land on which these structures were built had originally belonged to his father. Over the years, it had been grabbed by a dozen different people; each claimed it was government property on which they, as taxpaying citizens, had a right to build until the government found alternative use for it. With no legal documents to prove his family had owned the land in the years before colonization, he was left with the choice to either fight a dozen machete-wielding businessmen or let the land go. He let the land go.

Consumed with thoughts of how strategic this land was for business, the Mkokoteni Pusher tripped on a root and stumbled forward.  The handcart slammed into his back as he lost his grip on the handle, throwing him down. Lifting himself quickly, he stopped the wheels with his legs and arms. Some water had spilled from the jerrycans without lids. He cursed. Although no one had seen him fall, he was ashamed, and he carried this shame through the rest of the morning.
One thirty-five in the afternoon was a special time for him. It was the time he usually took water to Adeke's house. The Mkokoteni Pusher forgot about the fall and whistled. He pulled his handcart with new strength and hurried down Arap Moi Street, the wheels of his wooden handcart moving dangerously behind him. When the speed of the wheels was too fast for him to keep up, he let his feet off the ground and, hanging on its handles, let the handcart free-fall down the street.
"Move!" he called out to the people he hustled out of the way. The Mkokoteni Pusher defeated most people's understanding. One minute he was somber, almost melancholic, and the next he was jumping up and down the paths like a lunatic. Although people moved out of his way, they rarely returned his enthusiastic greeting. With the dry earth and the general hunger in the town, people's tolerance for clowns was low.

A Mkokoteni Pusher in Nairobi. Photo: Creative Commons (via flickr/oaxacania )

The Mkokoteni Pusher began braking with the soles of his rubber sandals on the dust road a few yards from Adeke's house. The handcart came to a gentle halt in front of the once-white house that was taking on a strange mix of reddish, brownish and greenish colors. A small, gray kitten with metallic eyes sat on the front steps, eyeing the square-jawed man. He stared back at it, and when the kitten did not drop its gaze, he made faces at it. The kitten sat back and meowed. The Mkokoteni Pusher shrugged his broad, sweaty shoulders and shouted "Water!" as he lifted multi-colored jerrycans off the handcart. 

"The brown!" he cried, holding out his arms when a young woman with sharp facial features and shoulder-length braids walked out of the house. She swayed her large hips and her breasts shifted rhythmically behind the colorful kikoi tied around her chest. When she bent down to stroke the kitten, he saw the outline of her buttocks through the thin kikoi. The thought of her naked underneath the thin cloth sent him into a panic. He quickly put down his outstretched arms and dipped his hands in his pockets.

I brought your water," he said, shifting his eyes to avoid betraying his discomfort.

"Could you bring it in please?" she said.

He lifted two jerry cans and followed her into the house. In the hallway, she bent to sweep some soil particles from the floor using her hands. There was not enough room for him to walk around her, so he stood there and waited for her to finish. His eyes shifted restlessly from her behind to the wall to his side. When she was finished, she rose and some cloth got stuck in the divide of her buttocks. She turned around for a brief second and in her eyes he saw she was playing with him. He grinned.

"Fill the drum," she said when they got to the kitchen. "You can pour the rest in the green bucket."

"But of course, the brown," he said, searching her face for that flirty spark, "Anything for my brown Adeke."

The inside of the house seemed cared for. The furniture was old, but it was covered with colorful pieces of cloth. Just behind the door was a rusty drum half-full of water. The muscles on his arms stood out as he emptied each jerry can of water into the drum. Some of the muddy sweat on his arms dripped into the clean tapwater. Adeke was visibly repulsed. The Mkokoteni Pusher wore the same clothes every day; a browning sleeveless T-shirt that had once been bright yellow, and black shorts. A stench filled the air around him. His lack of hygiene both repulsed and aroused a sexual curiosity in her. Every now and then she caught herself staring at him and wanting some of that filth. Disgusted with herself, she went into the inner room and returned holding a shiny, green purse. How much?" she asked without looking at him.

"Ah the brown, let's talk about other things first. It's not polite to talk about money before you greet people properly."

He sat down on one of the empty jerry cans.

I'm not trying to be polite," she said. "And do stop calling me the brown."

But the brown is such a beautiful name, just like you Adeke"

The brown what?" she snapped, startling him and herself with the anger in her voice. "I don't like nicknames," she said a little more softly, hoping that would somehow erase her outburst.

Don't be like that, Adeke," he said.

How much do I owe you?"

Don't be like that."

"How much?"

He held Adeke's twenty shilling coin in his hand as he pulled the handcart out onto the road. It still felt warm from her touch. He was silent for a long stretch of the walk to his next customer's house. He did not shout for people to move out of the way, or croak any traditional tunes. He walked slowly, dragging his handcart behind him.

He'd known Adeke since she was a toddler, hanging on her hard-working Mama's skirts all day, always demanding. The old woman had been friendly with his mother. She'd gone out of her way to create work around her compound so that his mother could keep them fed. But the lot life dealt her did her great injustice. Her husband abused her, beat her down so much she did not feel human anymore and eventually brought home the disease that killed them both. Adeke now lived in the old house with her younger brother, Etyang', who'd over the years grown into something of a thug.

The more the Mkokoteni Pusher thought about Adeke, the more he wanted to take care of her. He wanted to take her home with him and make her his wife. But what could a man like him do to get a woman like Adeke to consider loving him? He knew the Township thought he was silly, maybe even stupid. He did not have enough money to take care of a woman like Adeke. She knew she was beautiful and most men would part with a fortune to sneak her into a motel for a few minutes. The difference between the Mkokoteni Pusher and the other men in the Township was that he wanted to take her and keep her. He needed a wife, especially since his younger brothers were pushing him to marry and open the way for them to bring their own brides home. If he took much longer, they'd marry before him and bring him shame.

That evening, after he'd delivered water to his last customer, the Mkokoteni Pusher stood in front of a posho mill in the shopping center with a group of unemployed men. The men poked fun at each other to pass time.

"Man, the way you're growing thin, your wife will soon be the one beating you every morning", a stocky, bow-legged man with a round, babyish face said. He was known to take pleasure in questioning other men's masculinity, but when his own was brought into question, smoke came out of his ears.

"I don't beat my wife every day," the man in question said, "only when I wake up with a stiff arm that needs some exercise."

"Man, but women are very lucky creatures," a third man said. "Even now, with all this hunger, a woman can get money just by spreading her legs."

Such luck," the bow-legged man agreed.

"But I hear there are male whores in the city," said the Mkokoteni Pusher.

"Imagine that."

"How ugly does a woman have to be to pay a man to do her?" the wife-beater said and they laughed. "But I swear I'd do even a broom if it paid me for it."

"Personally, me, I'd do that only if I was very very drunk," said one drunk that had not taken interest in the conversation until money was mentioned. "But you people don't know how Europeans make money. Do you know I heard on the radio, in America people trip themselves and fall, just a little, and then sue other people for real money?"

The men laughed, waving him off.

"One God, I swear." The drunk licked his finger, brushed it on the ground and licked it again, demonstrating that he was ready to die and go back to the soil if he was lying. "I swear. Just ask Kobole, he was with me that day."

Once Kobole, a shy man that buried his chin in his chest when he spoke, had confirmed that what the drunk said was indeed true, the drunk went on to talk about how Kenyans in big towns had adopted this scheme.

"It's the easiest way to make millions, I tell you," he said. "All you have to do is throw yourself in the way of a moving car and...pap... you get hit and the rich driver's insurance company pays you hundreds of thousands of shillings for your trouble."

  "But couldn't you get killed?" the Mkokoteni Pusher asked.

   "Here in the Township?" the man laughed. "Have you ever heard of anyone getting killed by a car in this Township? Man, the cars here move like snails. The worst you could get is a broken leg, which, mind you, can be fixed with a few hundred shillings. You still get the hundreds of thousands to keep."

When he went to bed that night, the Mkokoteni Pusher held Adeke's twenty shilling coin close to his chest and smiled. He dreamt about her sad, brown eyes and the gentle sway of her round hips as she clicked her tongue against those black, Vaseline-ad lips and turned to walk away from him.

                    ***

The Mkokoteni Pusher was free-falling his handcart down a dust road in the heat of a July afternoon when he noticed a crowd in front of Adeke's house. He pushed the handle down and slowed down to a full stop. Abandoning the handcart by the roadside, he ran to Adeke's house, where people were pushing to get a better view. He could hear Adeke's voice. She was shouting and crying.  

He elbowed his way to the front, ignoring the curses and threats that followed him.

   "Thief!" Adeke was saying, "You've become such a thief you steal from your own house!"

  "This is my house, whore. If I take something from this house, I'm not stealing it, understand bitch? Can you get it through that thick skull of yours that this is my house?" her brother, Etyang', shouted back. A section of the crowd laughed. The Mkokoteni Pusher winced.

  "This is our house, Etyang'. You've sold everything we own. What are we going to eat now?"

   "Did you want to eat the radio I sold?"

The crowd roared. The Mkokoteni Pusher shifted restlessly on his feet.

  "What is it that amuses you so?" he asked an elderly woman that was standing beside him.

  "Don't you see?" she quipped, "They're fighting!"

The quarrel between brother and sister went on a while. Soon the crowd got bored. Some people went back to idling away the afternoon in front of some shop or the other. The more patient stayed on, urging Etyang' to show them that he was a man.

  "Beat that woman and finish the quarrel," one young man suggested. The rest of the crowd cheered.

Etyang' suddenly swung at Adeke. A triumphant whistle went up. The people that were walking away came back running. Real action was rare and when the opportunity presented itself to see pain inflicted and possibly some blood drawn, the people of Wendo Township were sure to be there to witness.

The Mkokoteni Pusher rushed forward. Several people pulled him back and strongly advised him against interfering in domestic quarrels. Etyang' raised his hand to hit her again. He was a small man but his fist threw Adeke right down. He rushed forward and grabbed her off the ground.

  "Whose house is it now bitch? Whose house is it I steal from?"

He slapped her ear and kicked her towards the crowd. She gasped. The Mkokoteni Pusher closed his eyes. He felt something bitter, like bile, travel up his throat until he could taste it in his mouth. The crowd fell back when he pushed his way forward and jumped at Etyang'.

  "Woiiiii!" the young man screamed in surprise before falling to the ground. The Mkokoteni Pusher stepped on his chest and punched him in the face. The crowd was silent. The Mkokoteni Pusher cried as he beat Etyang'. He meant to hurt him. He meant to pound his face until nobody could make out where his nose ended and his mouth began. He got hold of him by the neck and began to squeeze. He was outside his body and somebody else was in there, squeezing the young man's throat, making him choke, struggle.

He surprised himself out of it. Jumping off Etyang', he looked around at the crowd, waiting for someone to confirm that he'd killed him. The young man coughed. Relieved, the Mkokoteni Pusher scanned the disappointed crowd until he spotted Adeke at the back. One of her eyes was swollen, and her face was bruised. He went to her. Someone clicked their tongue as he passed. "These ones fight like women."

The Mkokoteni Pusher reached out and touched Adeke's face. Her eyes instantly welled and tears involuntarily came down her bruised cheeks.

   "Come home with me," he whispered.

She sobbed, at first softly, and then she began to wail, calling on her dead mother to come and witness her suffering. The Mkokoteni Pusher took her into his arms and she let him whisper and coo in her ear. The crowd turned from the petrified Etyang' and formed a circle around them. Adeke cried louder and louder, and as her breasts rose and fell against his chest, he sniffed to stop his own tears. The crowd laughed, whistling and poking each other to make sure the people next to them were seeing the same thing they were seeing. They followed the two up the path toward the Mkokoteni Pusher's home and only stopped when along the way two men started quarreling over a half-smoked cigarette they found on the ground.

The Mkokoteni Pusher lived in a large homestead with eight brothers and three sisters, one of whom had been widowed ten years and had defied all her family's efforts to get her remarried. Being the eldest of his father's male children, his house was right at the entrance of the homestead. Beside his house was a hut that had belonged to his mother, and now belonged to the sister that had returned home after her husband died of alcohol poisoning.

His house was a three-roomed mud structure with a feeble wooden door and a rusted iron sheet roof that brought in intense heat in the afternoons. The largest of the three rooms was the living room. In it were two wooden chairs that were roughly put together by an amateur and an equally rough-looking table. The room also served as a kitchen. To the left was a room filled with multi-colored jerry cans and to the right, the bedroom.

   "I'm afraid it's not much," he said apologetically.

  "It's fine," she said.

He went out into his sister's hut and came back with a half-calabash filled with thick, sorghum porridge. Adeke hesitated when he offered it to her.

  "I'm not hungry," she said.

  "Eat a little," the Mkokoteni Pusher urged her, "My sister will be offended if you don't."

He did not offer her a spoon. Adeke took the half-calabash in both hands and lifted it to her mouth. She'd eaten porridge before, but that had been years before when she'd gone to boarding school. She craved it sometimes, but she would never prepare it, because it was considered the food of the poor. She was terrified of the thought that she might be poor. The money their parent left them had long run out. Now she and Etyang' survived each their own way. She went out to the bars every now and then and men offered her money in exchange for her body. They were mostly drunken men that went on about how "unlike their wives, she had so much skill", even though she hardly ever moved at all during the act. As she lay underneath her clients, she refused to let guilt eat at her, telling herself she had to survive.

She ate in silence. He watched her, tracing the bruises on her face with his eyes. He was enraged that someone should hurt this soft, delicate thing. She shook the calabash back and forth to cool the porridge, then slowly brought it up to her lips and sipped from it. The Mkokoteni Pusher watched as she did this, amazed by the slightest movement she made. He felt she was the reason he'd been born in this place. He'd prayed since she was a girl that she'd be his wife, and now that she was a grown woman sitting in his house, he was desperate to make her desire him in the slightest way.

  "I don't even know your real name," she said.

  "Ekrapa," he said, more quickly than he'd intended to, "Ekrapa Didimo Emaset."

They laughed awkwardly. The silence ate at him. He searched his mind for something smart to say.

  "You know, I've never really asked your permission to call you ‘the brown'." he said.

  "I don't understand why you call me that," she said. "I'm never sure if I should be flattered or insulted."

  "Adeke, the person to insult you is not me, can never be me," he said, "I call you ‘the brown' because of your skin color. You are beautiful, Adeke."

  "Alright, you can call me ‘the brown' if it pleases you." she chuckled, almost with mirth.

Adeke stayed through that night. People pointed at her and laughed when she went out to the shop the next morning. Although she stayed on at his house, she was restless. A few times she went to the bars and spent nights with different men, but in the morning she'd have nowhere to go. She went back to her house half a dozen times, but each time she came back to the Mkokoteni Pusher in tears, sometimes with fresh bruises. After this happened a couple of times, the Mkokoteni Pusher begged her not to go back, else he'd kill her brother and spend the rest of his life in prison. He did not ask about the nights he'd seen her with other men for fear he might scare her off. Instead, he bought a cheap ring from a hawker on the streets and asked her to marry him.

  "But I cannot be with you," she said.

  "Why not, Adeke? Don't you like me, even a little?"

   "You don't understand. I just can't. I'm a whore, not a wife."

  "That is what you were," he said. "You don't have to do that anymore."

   "I cannot be with you, is all," she cried.

He was sure it was because he could not give her the kind of life she was used to. He could not buy her new clothes and take her out to the bars for bottled drinks. Many nights he sat on his bed, head buried in the palms of his hands and thrashed himself for his failure. The idea of staging an accident to get insurance money haunted him. What else was there for him to do? He knew he could be crippled, he could even die, but he was certain nothing that happened to him could be worse than losing Adeke.

She stayed on. Sometimes she got out of the house for a while and passed the hours talking to the other women in the homestead. In the Mkokoteni Pusher's home, she discovered a world different from any she'd known before. People said good morning when they passed each other in the early dawn, they returned each other's smiles and shared food with each other's children; even when there was barely enough for the household. She did not understand their generosity. But she was glad they treated her well.

Published here is Part II of the Handcart Pusher.