Bengaman

By Okang'a Ooko

In 1975, as a man-boy, Otis Dinos makes a significant step into music when a guitar comes into his hands through quirky circumstances one sunny day in downtown Kisumu. He discovers he has talent for guitar. In the '80s, he finishes schooling and tries to fit in and find his place. But he is more an archetype than flesh-and-blood youth. Performing with Nico Opija and KDF in Kondele gives him a beginning and a journey into music.

 

As a guitar student hitting all the required notes, Otis is the haunted genius. And KDF in Kondele is a training orchestra for demonology. He is desperate to leave Kondele's dingy clubs to reach for the future. He seems to realise he is not accomplished until he moves to Nairobi. But the cold, cold heart of Nairobi's nefarious pop culture schools him into becoming a more spoiled artist. Returning to Kisumu with a new band, accompanied by queasy bandmates in the ranks of villainous neer-do-wells, he spirals down into the heart of Kisumu's darkness, encountering upsurging whirlpools of struggle, feuds, survival, greed, envy, competition, and exploitation. How does he wind down the hysteria; somewhat, and make a fairly good case for extraordinary achievement backmasking in heavy benga music? That's not the issue, the issue is that as famous as he is, Otis Dinos has more problems than a normal Kisumuan.

 

Providing a catharsis through comedy, lancing the Kenyan lakeside city's moral boil with satire, BENGAMAN tells the story of ordinary men and women trying to live the Kenyan African dream. It is a story of humble beginning, awkward and misdirected fumbling and miraculous accomplishment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oba Kunta Octopus
• Release date: May 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201186258

Okang'a Ooko

Okang’a Ooko is the author of Businesswoman’s Fault, (stories), and three mainstream novels, including Bengaman, When You Sing To The Fishes and the latest, Hunter & Gatherer mostly vivid accounts of scandalous vices, human folly, power games, and peopled by men and women struggling to succeed in the new African renaissance. He writes thrilling and intriguing character-driven fiction based on African characters and situations. His work presents a compelling narrative voice and a new way of seeing the world.Ooko is a very ambitious and hardworking writer for this generation. His three Must-Read cavalier bestselling novels are in categories that matter to him: history, politics, pop culture (especially music), love-and-danger, business, corruption, true crime, and self-development. Known as “Kenya’s new master storyteller”, Ooko epitomizes a new shift in African fiction and his books are mostly set in Kenya. He loves to dispel the myth that Africans don’t read, and incredible readers who have stumbled upon his books have liked them tremendously. He has been writing since childhood when his mother took him to the local library in his hometown of Kisumu to keep him out of the company of bad boys. As a serial daydreamer, it was nice to finally get the stories on paper when he started writing full time in retirement in 2017. He has not looked back since. He believes current African issues (pop culture, politics, business, corruption) make dramatic stories with or without a literary bent, and he knows there is a huge potential to create intriguing stories around these themes. No writer is doing it. With his new book, Hunter & Gatherer, he currently aims to shepherd his vocation as a writer of commercial African fiction.In addition to being a prolific writer, he is an artist, an acclaimed graphic designer and musician. He lives the life of an artist. He worked in the publishing industry as a designer and typesetter, community manager at a content development company, and book cover designer for fiction and non-fiction.When he isn’t reading or writing engaging stories, he’s probably singing, watching edgy black comedy on Netflix. He was born and raised in Kisumu, in Kenya. He lives in Nairobi with his wife and four children.In his spare time, he gives writing lectures, creates graphic arts, plays the guitar and draws things. You can connect with Ooko on Facebook at facebook.com/rd.ooko/.You can also visit his website, okangaoo.com, to sign up for emails about new releases.

Book preview

part one: 1975

I was thirteen when it happened. Father brought the loot— gramophone— in the company pickup and asked everybody to clear the sitting room while he maneuvered the pickup under the dwele tree with his usual pagan pride. It was an old Peugeot 404 belonging to the Indians. It was in need of paint, thrashed off-road and badly banged. Parts of the Pandpieri lakeland were good for off-road vehicles; other parts of Kisumu not so much; some worse. The pickup had mismatch tyres, small regular truck tyres with one big fat lorry tyre on the left of the rear and a regular mag wheel on the right. The basic colour was white but there were patches of differing shades of gray all over. It sounded tough, though; the engine was a massive beast and often was heard from far away ripping a cool one down one of the country roads.

Father worked for the Indians at the local fish processing plant—a small factory just outside of Dunga on the shore of Lake Victoria. He was the man in charge of the machines and the motors and the engines; the man who fixed the metallic parts, changed oils, spannered nuts, screw-drove screws, hammered nails in, jacked up heavy parts, riveted panels, rewound dead motors, welded metals together, grinded rough edges, changed belts. He wrestled large valves, pipes, boilers and other factory-related equipment. A man of metal and oil and grit and grease and dirt and heat and blood and muscle and sweat.

He bared his teeth and beckoned us. "Odino yo! Together with Ochieng omeru, come and help me. Saa ni saa ni. Now-now!"

We ran over, with the dogs wagging their tails and sniffing him out—a welcome routine. He climbed onto the back of the pickup and lifted the thing. Ochieng and I hauled ourselves up too.

Stolen? I whispered with a short laugh as I lifted.

Ochieng nodded and guessed that was it.

See, our father was always stealing things from Kavirondo Fisheries where he worked and saying they were thrown by the Indians. Our house was full of stuff like framed photos, wall clocks, books, flasks, toys, fishing gear, and even an old refrigerator thrown by the Indians. One December, we feasted on two cartons of biscuits and canned meat, a sack of sugar, and five crates of Tarino soda thrown by the Indians. To my father, it was not theft. Kama itiye ema idonde, he used to say. Where you work is where you gather.

Father—Wuora—Odundo son of Nyangao was Scrooge himself. His nickname was earned. If you asked him for smon (fifty cents), he’d give you otonglo (ten cents). Twenty if he was in a good mood. For the gramophone, a small price to pay (100 shillings, he lied) for a moment of lingering ecstasy music wise? Wasn’t it worthwhile? It was a solid stereo turntable with album and vinyl storage, with dents and scratches in the faux mahogany chassis because it had been thrown by the Indians. Nobody was fooled. Wuora loved music the way he loved himself. He bought the thing for his own leisure. At first he thought we didn’t know what it was. That was a laugh—there might have been people in Kisumu in 1975 who didn’t know what an aeroplane was, or indoor plumbing, or the name of the last Mau Mau general, but the general populace knew what a gramophone was, given that our town was a town of music. Like the loving father he was, Odundo taught the four of us boys to operate the machine so that we wouldn’t meddle with it in his absence and damage the needle causing it to make awful scratches on the vinyl. It was his pride and joy, and he kept it in the corner of the living room, next to his favourite sofa seat. It was there for his friends to see when they came over.

The next morning after Odundo had fired up the crappy 404 and motored off to work, my brothers and I worked the turntable. It had a fancy stylus. When the music ended, the stylus lifted itself and the arm clunked back into its resting place. It played 45 santuris and long play vinyl albums. In terms of today’s shillings, this player was pricey, and so were the vinyl records which our father bought. This gramophone brought into our young lives the likes of Owino Misiani and Shirati Jazz, Kallé and African Jazz, Franco and OK Jazz, Dr. Nico and African Fiesta Sukisa, Rochereau and African Fiesta National, Verckys and Veve, Miriam Makeba, and many more. In fact it brought music into my life. Father’s collection celebrated all things African. The singer Rochereau and the guitarist Dr. Nico were his royal idols. We kids, on the other hand, idolised Trio Madjesi, Osibisa and Fela Kuti. I was just one month into my thirteenth year of life and I was enjoying it to the fullest—I was already sexually charged (in manner of speaking) and had been since I heard ‘Sex Madjesi’ on the radio in 1972. The song seemingly rocketed me into orbit. You know, that record was made by Trio Madjesi. You know the guys: Matadidi Mabele ‘Bwana Kitoko’, ‘Sinatra’ Sak Saakul and ‘Djeskin’ Loko Masengo. Backed by Orchestre Sosoliso. But Fela Kuti knew the right things to say to make us feel like African men. His new record, ‘Gentleman’ was even better. He stated the philosophy that made us glad: I don’t want to be a gentleman at all, Africa hot, I like am so. It could have been a moonshine phrase but we adopted it. My brothers and I used to say: an African is not a gentleman. We wore vests and skibo shirts. Sometimes we went bare chested, with our feet dusty most of the time like normal Africans.

We lived two hours from the town of Kisumu. Our dala was in some shady acres of Pandpieri, near a small beach town called Dunga with a hundred or so other fishing-business-type people. Farmlands were all around; sweet potatoes, millet, maize, oranges, and sorghum mostly and mainly. A major highway was off to one side, connecting Pandpieri to Nyalenda, to Nairobi Road. It wasn’t too shady but there were bushes and shrubs and wild grass, unyielding black cotton earth called anywang’ and unfarmed tracts; acres and acres of virgin lands  rising and falling to the horizon, untouched by the hoe and apparently unoccupied. It was a semi-rural area covering several villages in all directions, rundown in parts by the slums of Nyalenda. Toilet business was commonly done in the bushes with stones and oboke leaves as toilet paper. Not a lot of trees and the area was a haven for hot sun and wild animals. There were some good homes, not all villagish; a few small general goods stalls selling millet flour, fish, greens, fruits and fresh or sour cow milk and ghee with exorbitantly high prices. One or two dirty cars—older model pickups and lorries. Mostly donkeys were used to pull carts and carry loads. It was a laid-back village with the cows farting, shuffling in their duol, the stench of their poo and pee filling the morning air. Outside in the grazing fields, the smell of cow dung defied the sweetness of sunshine and the fresh air.

I had two older brothers, four younger brothers and one  younger sister. Father, you know, was a tough no bullshit type man who looked stern and was seldom seen smiling and/or laughing. But he was actually a congenial man who was good natured. He did visit the local bars and more than once was involved in fist fights. Mama was a country woman and a strict churchgoer who routed the family into her way. The right way. The church way.

Dunga was actually a shopping centre that had formed itself, like silted sand, on the shore of the great Lake Victoria. It had two bars, two Kikuyu-owned general store dukas, one maize mill, the chief’s camp, a police post, one primary school, the post office, a Catholic church, and an open-air fish market with the ever-present sight of drying fish hanging lifelessly in the air. The stench of fish in the sun and fish warehouses, the stench of dried or smoked fish or fish by-products, the sumps, and diesel fumes, all mixed was sometimes unbearable. A pleasant little town, nonetheless it was. Kavirondo, where Father worked, was the very last one in the row of warehouses, right next to the lakeshore.

The railway line ran alongside the warehouses; the various fish landing beaches and omena drying fields were just beyond. During the hot afternoons, my friends came and we ran off to the lake to put our feet at the small waves lapping fast against the stones, and throw stones at the sheet metal surface of the lake and watch it fret with sudden cat’s-paws that showed a fleck of white as the stones hit the water. After our trek from the lakeland and an adventure in the trees in the lakeland, we moseyed back up to the school where we made excuses to our teachers to escape being caned. We could dodge the teachers, but it was always a bit of a rub; we’d have to keep on the outskirts of the school along the railway line, then cut across open land choked with huge tumbleweeds, post-Independence rural project debris, and then the cotton warehouse, circle around to the bus stop and then to the market, at Dunga. That was life. Long sunny days, all stretched, plenty of time, borrowed poverty. We could mosey along the lakeshore to the many fish landing beaches and take a different route along the narrow footpaths there, out to the main road and then sprint up to the front of the school and amble to our class and pretend we had lost our way. This little lie was becoming a nuisance; none of the teachers bought it. We ended up being punished, anyway. Always.

Back to the gramophone—it turned out to be a gateway drug. Like weed leads to sniffing glue, Trio Madjesi led us to Fela Kuti and Jimi Hendrix and Bonny M and Bob Marley & The Wailers and so on and so on. Bad to worse, as you can see.

Came the day. The day was not unlike any other August day in Pandpieri: hot-humid-and-muggy. It was fifteen minutes past noon judging from the Wimbo wa Taifa on radio. The news had just been read. It was a good hump to the beach at Hippo Point. But nobody dared go to Hippo Point. For being the middle of August, the weather for Kisumu was crappy. One day was nice and warm, the following day Satan would be looking for some place cooler. Kisumuans didn’t frequent Hippo Point unless there was a band playing and the bands only played in the evenings when it was cool. The place was deserted in the heat of the day. Best friend Witty suggested an early get together at Sosial to beat the heat and then we would walk all the way to Hippo Point in the evening and dance and sweat down to the ground to the music of this fresh new Zaïrean band called Bana Ngenge. Sosial—Sosi or Kisumu Social Centre, anyway, is the place to be to feel good. The juke box, the television, the seducing, the fancy, the dancing, the boys, the first taste of beer and cigarette—the beauty of pretty little sisters. Sosial, our Hall of Fame, in Kisumu precisely.

Oh, it was hot—and sticky! The air was uncomfortable, too. It was an evening matinee showing of Bana Ngenge, and there would be a long line. I had to endure it. See, I had a dream, self-consciously intimately born. 1975 was going to be a year of good fortune. I was curious. I spent the days gaping at people’s bizarre clothing, ridiculously ugly faces, hot-combed hairstyles and listening mostly to my father’s rocambolesque Zaïrean music.

The dream—well—I was going to be a musician. I was in form two, and I was wearing in-style preppy clothes. I was going to be a guitarist. I had practiced singing in the bathroom, and went to walk alone in the open fields of Pandpieri, and sing. I sang aloud. And I hated my singing voice. I sounded awfully bad... so awfully bad the ochongorio birds in the trees shrieked and flew away. Maybe I was a hopeless musical snob... perhaps I was fooling myself with this bad singing on the road to nowhere. I knew I would never be a singer. But guitar... I had a chance there. If I worked hard at it, maybe I could play like Bavon Marie Marie. Or Dr. Nico.

I knew it. I was going to create music here in Kisumu—good Africa music. I knew it; I could feel it deep down. And, nevertheless, inspite of this daring dream, I told no one. I kept it in my heart even as I moved in a blaze of self-congratulation. If I told people, no one was going to believe me. They would try to talk it out of me and rubbish it and tell me to go to school.

What triggered this dream? I don’t know. I think I was made this way. Last year I had gone with my brothers to the 1975 Kisumu ASK Show and saw this spectacular Zaïrean band playing. It was the most majestic thing I saw. They were something out of this world to me, the way they sang in this dazzling language called Lingala. Talk about love; they brought in a lovable new vocabulary:  bolingo. It’s was a freaking romantic word: bolingo na ngai. My love. Lingala was more than beautiful; it was mesmerising. It flew by very fast and had a lot of beautiful syllables, sweet nuances, and catchy phrases. I felt it go deep in me. My brothers and other kids watched them passively. I, on the other hand, was taken by it; was possessed. I seemed to reel. I felt a sensation of falling; and, looking around... these guys were singing and dancing and playing their instruments with passion as they beat rumba through ballads of cupidity. They were dressed in fantastic bell bottoms, tie’n’shirts, bell tassels on crouched sweaters and platforms. Giant Afros, beards, and bushy sideburns. Their dancing girls wore mini-skirts and tightish shirts and black knee-length boots.

To Hippo Point. At Hippo Point. It was half-term, and the only endorsement a school kid like me with limited money could offer his sorry self was buy a ticket worth 20 Shillings. We got there in good time, and I indulged in the glory of the instruments. I talked to the musicians. In the way of innocent adolescence, I glorified them. Their appearance exhibited them to be deep and their bushy Afros ignited my flame of inspiration. My mind was instantly changed upon hearing them practice, at which point I realised the preconceptions I’d built up based on stories I heard from Witty on the fact that Fataki Lokassa was not the actual leader were way, way wide off the mark.

The music burst out like a sonic boom—riveting guitars, riffling solos and pumping bass, thundering drums going thwaka-thwaka-thwaka, hissing hi-hats gong chakach-chakach-chakach; the sound of riotous bedlam, catching us by surprise. By the time Bana Ngenge came out I was pumped and primed, ready to immerse myself in this backwoods Zaïrean fairytale-world they created through rumba. The lights were set up at the side of the stage, rather than above, flickering across the band, shedding light and casting shadow in equal measure. Seeing an actual band on a real show was something of a revelation. Djo Djo Ikomo and Moreno Batamba whirled around the stage, throwing vocal hooks barefacedly. I couldn’t believe I was seeing live band action I loved, the gig was just one big wow and the musicians tended towards enthralling.

The star, of course, was Fataki—Afro love beads and a fringed vest rounded out the perfect showman.  His hair was blown up in a gigantic Afro like the Jackson Fives. Pinned to his jacket were dazzling things. His belt was large and had shiny metallic studs on them like little suns. I thought he was a riddle wrapped inside an enigma, all bundled up in enigma, which was surely what I was supposed to think. And his dancing style was energetic and hard like James Brown. Until then, I was used to seeing this slow dance where you held your partner close and whispered all the magic gibberish into each other’s ears, and when the rhythm changed and sebene took over, you showed what stuff you were made of by your feet and waist movements.   

Bana Ngenge were different. They were the glossy rockers, the perplexity, garlanded creepers who knew how to hold a crowd. Look at how well-clad they were: bell bottom jeans clinging hard and high on the tiny waists. Their playing was... guitars were... it was like three descending notes, unresolved and repeated. Cranky soukous riffs like Zaiko, ending on an unresolved chord. Then it burst into the strangest, uneasiest climax with Fataki flashing in and out of focus as the lights flickered around the band. The solo guitarist was a little guy who plucked a fire and made the guitar scream.

When their set ended, while everybody was soaking, I had a dream. I was going to be like them. Have you had one of those moments in your life when everything stops and you suddenly you understand everything? That was it for me. Falling in love with a group is usually a gradual process: you hear, you like, you hear more, you listen, and you start to love. A few times, it happens in an instant. My dream was first fuelled when I heard Ishmael Jingo’s ‘Fever’ and Air Fiesta Matata’s ‘Africa’ featuring Steele Beauttah on the VOK radio in 1973. I liked Ishmael Jingo. In fact, the first single I bought was ‘Fever,’ and then I bought ‘Africa’, then Black Savage’s ‘Koth Biro’, all groovy and funky. I bought ‘Africa’ on a trip to Nyanza Supermarket, just outside Standard Bank. I clearly remember the iconic cover of the 45 and Witty approving of the fact I was getting hung onto music. 

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2.

A guitar came into my life through a quirky circumstance. Here’s the story of how I got my first instrument. Being fourteen now in 1976, I was way-way too young to be contemplating a career in anything. Our world seemed too broad and enjoyable; the days long and sunny. Our only fear was waking up one morning to find Idi Amin had sent his troops to cross over the border to shoot us and bang our heads at will; the miasma that seemed to surround our minds sometimes turned to fear. Me, not so. I was a dreamer. 

A larger part of my year in form two, in Kisumu Day, was spent out of school because Odundo son of Nyangao had problems paying my fees. With many mouths to feed, a house to keep up, this and that and that and this, my parents were surely stretched. And try as our parents might, life’s problems had increased since the 70s. In the 60s, things were easier. But the 70s now brought in hard times and often led us down a path Mama attributed to signs of the End Time. The family was growing, for sure. Overstraining  applied to my parents. Mama loved her life of constant prayer despite life’s near-constant problems. There was always something and usually that something cost money. Mama made money. Father made money. But with the school fees, food and more, Mama often found herself over-extended at the general store.

The burden of paying school fees was squarely on our father’s tab, who was earning 150 Shillings per month. There were three of us in secondary school: Keya, Odingo and I. Ochieng was set to join form one next year. Even though my performance in school was average, it had come down to it no longer mattered even if I went and paid ten cents to a mganga in Kaloleni and morosely pulled a C out of his kienyeji dawa and aced the final exam—my school attendance was erratic, and I was destined to fail the end-term exams, and that was not good. Class subjects tuition tests and combined scores equaled C-minus. Extra-extra subjects including arts/craft and music with Good Behaviour, and overall pleasantness got me another solid C. Combined with my regular class exams, pop-quizzes and Try Hard attitude, all wasn’t going to cut me any slack in passing the end-term exams. I needed a C to stay on the Pass platform. 

I was in a spot. I tried being ingenious and started the habit of begging. Yeah, borrowing notes from my classmates and reading at home under our nyangile kerosene lamp at night. And the begging didn’t net me any Bs, so it was time for the ultimate extra-curricular activity. It was a last resort, but I was willing. I had been told that I was artistically gifted and usually didn’t take much stock into rumours. But then my close friend Pascal had the same dilemma the previous term; he was going to fail the class and had to spend his August holiday studying with four tutors—which was fine because his parents could afford to pay the teachers 20 bob each subject for thirty days.

Since my parents couldn’t afford to pay for private tuition, I had no option but to submit to the extra-curricular activity and take my future into my own hands. But still, it was a toughie. The extra-curricular activity was music, which people talked of as a stupid thing.

One day I was out of school, wandering with my dusty feet around in Kisumu town centre day-dreaming about the action I had recently seen in The Wilby Conspiracy at Nyanza Cinema and singing things inside my head and picking my nose. I wandered by Ojal’s store in a back corner of downtown. Ojal’s general store was a throw-back to those old general stores of the 1950s. It was a small store, the kind that sold used electric appliances, second-hand furniture, fridges, sports kits, household utensils, old books and newspapers, fishing gear... you know the kind. Ice chests filled with sodas, old fashioned odds and ends, antiques, aquariums, picture frames, collectibles, and general stuff from that era, but stuff for the modern-day times, too.

Ojal was a good-natured old mzee, a devoted Adventist, very nice to everyone—putting himself in a bind by extending credit to virtually everyone. Eventually, though, some people paid their debts.  Today I had wandered here and seen it. In the window was a pristine Yasuma acoustic guitar. It was worth a look-see. Our music teacher had the same type. No, his was a Yamaha. I’d fooled around with it once, strumming and plucking. I walked into the shop and asked Ojal the price. 120 Shillings, he told me. I thought the old geezer was nuts. Now in 1975, things had suddenly become expensive, but I wondered: 120 Shilling? One could go the jua kali mechanics at Kamas and get a used VW beetle in running condition for that amount. Not as good a deal as the 50 Shillings electric guitar Witty had seen at Victoria Music store a few weeks ago.

But... the thing was a little used, I had to have it. I said I could pay 100 Shillings and Ojal frowned because he didn’t want me to steal to raise the money. He cleared his voice. Son, he said, "do you know the eighth commandment and what it says? It says, Thou shalt not steal."

Turning around, I glared at Ojal and retorted. I’m not a thief. I went out and looked up Witty and Raga. These were my friends. Witty was Fourteen, a happy go lucky kid with his family being the only jodak (foreigners) in our village in Pandpieri. He was a witty boy; a little quirky, kind of weird, hence the nickname. A likeable kid; he got along with just about everyone. He was an average kid, got some A’s now and then, mostly B’s with a few C’s.  He played basketball, sucked at long jump, don’t ask him to join you on volleyball, but did all right on the football field. Evans Raga was from a very nice well-off family; he was shy, spoke softly and struggled to get merit badges due to his holding back and not overly friendly or outgoing enough. We had grown up together and graduated from playing gololi (marbles) to killing birds with feya (catapult).

We went to Dunga, fell into the sun-warmed Lake Victoria to cool ourselves. Witty and I had spent the day together, supposedly hunting wild hare, but our hearts hadn’t been in killing the lovely little mammals, so we’d digressed, peed on the grass and leaves, and spent much of our hunter/gatherer time telling the kind of stories young teen boys enjoy. We swapped lies about the number of girls we had kissed, each one of us trying to pretend he had been more frightened by the experience. It had been fulfilling, helping Witty master his poor swimming skills, because even in this new age after use of life jackets had gained notoriety, there was such a thing as real water men skinny dipping, and I had to be especially careful of making sure my friends didn’t drown. So it came with relief that we left the water, pretty safe, and found our clothes.  As we dressed, I told them about my problem.

They listened keenly, pulled their noses, wrinkled their eyebrows, and came up with ideas on how to raise the money: sell scrap metal. The only scrap metal dealer I knew in Kisumu was Njoroge operating three shops: one in Manyatta Flamingo, another in Manyatta Arab and a third in downtown Obote Road near Baharia Estate at the Railway quarters. Prices of scrap metal had recently shot up and were now in the following categories 1. Aluminum, 40cts paid for 1 pound of scrap aluminum. 2. 15cts for iron and steel, 3. 50cts for a pound of brass or bronze, and 4. 65cts for a pound of scrap copper wire, which was the most expensive.

I focused on buying the guitar and set about working at it. I slaved for six months collecting scrap and selling them and saving the money in a Cadbury Cocoa tin can. At the end of six months, money was still short. I had saved fifty shilling only!

Still pent up with some aggression, I decided to do the most hated work in Pandpieri. I walked to Dunga, sauntered to the other end of the warehouse building run by another Indian who had ready work because he paid poorly. His name was Athif (funny the way names apply themselves to peoples’ characters) and his store was running dried obambla fish—which was its usual business but also stored in its massive warehouse were omena, smoked mbuta, and other assorted or fish related food stuffs. There were the Front End crew who sewed the sisal sacks, the women on the line who sorted the broken fish, the Bulls who ran ninety kilogram sacks on hand trolleys into the awaiting train boggies; and way in the back opposite the warehouse, the stores. The dried fish came in one hundred kilo sacks, ninety kilo sacks, fifty kilo sacks. They also came in baskets, about thirty kilos. The baskets were stacked on pallets then loaded via forklift into the train cars. Fish remains, rejects, broken pieces of obambla and tiny omena, were scattered everywhere, and these the women swept, collected and took home to cook. Beyond the box area was another warehouse addition for the smaller bag industry, then the grading boxes, pallet and other assorted warehouse paraphernalia. There were fishes everywhere on the ground, the air was soiled with the stench of washed and unwashed fish. Big signs were on the warehouse walls inside and out, KEEP THE PREMISES CLEAN. It was a far cry from the rats and roaches that dwelt in the place and defied the most competent exterminators.

And there was the loading dock. There I got employed as a loading clerk for the two-week school holiday, sitting in a roach cube by the entrance filling out entries and dispatches on yellow forms, filling the daily reports, earning two shillings per day.

There were two loading docks; one was up front by the warehouse and offices. The second was in the box area where the trucks got loaded not with sacks of fish but boxes of animal feed. Athif the Indian owner and his fellow Indian men were forever in a you-stupid-African-don’t-fuck-with-me attitude when a trucker was pulling away with load or when a supplier was weighing in his fish because they believed Africans were thieves. But people still stole, I saw. Dark old men, who called me ojana, paid me pennies  to look the other way when stuff was slipped out and they made me write wrong figures.

At the end of the two weeks, I had made 30 shillings including overtime and bribes. Came pay day. Came the day to quit.

I went to the cashier, took my pay, signed for it and hit the pavement and hauled ass away-away-away. Away to my dream.  Before the dust had settled and before turning the corner back to my friends. From the warehouse there were as many as four ways to get home; the highway and then three other ways through Dunga. I often chose the highway, it was the quickest way—not always, but usually.  The trek along the railway line out of Dunga was another way and led to the other ways home, too.

At a little after 5:30pm that day, a truck sent the late warehouse crew home. I was lucky to get a lift. They saw me walking, pulled over and asked me to climb in the back among the stinking sacks.

That particular route (the primary school/punishment area) went several kilometres to another major roadway that was an indirect route home but went along Milimani housing estates and the slums of Nyalenda. It was a pretty good route, a few street lights newly installed by the municipality for the Indians who lived on the other side in Milimani. The other side was the sprawl. Nyalenda. The slums, the villages, the heart of darkness.

So I quit the crappy job and went to Ojal with 80 shillings, got the guitar in its mint condition. It was like Ojal never believed I could raise the money. He hastily packed the Yasuma in a tweed case propped against the wall, pushed it across the counter at me.

At home, I carefully studied the instrument. It was made (label stated hand-crafted) in Japan probably in the early 1960s. I worked at how to play it. Starting out seemed a bit tedious, without much instruction, because I wanted to teach myself. Knowing what to do was difficult—I had no idea. I started strumming. After all, I couldn’t really play anything, but at least I was faking it pretty good. It was a confidence booster.

The first day, I only practiced for about ten minutes, the second day probably less. I know that perhaps did not speak volumes of quenching my thirst to play the guitar, but at least I strummed for a while. Not to mention that I actually held the guitar much longer. My only support group was an old queer called Ajuma, an older neighbour who worked as part-time butcher and part-time guitarist. He taught me all I needed to know about chords. He had a battered box guitar which looked like he had made it himself and he used to move around at night playing in bars, at weddings, at parties, and at funerals. He had not made it to the top and was not a recording star, but he was a pretty good acoustic guitar player. He had a hypnotic, rhythmic, propulsive original style of deep benga. His solo work had always been my inspiration, characterized by foot stomping rhythm, and an intense, free and open improvisational approach.

He used to move around with his son who played rhythm on a bottle because in those days, percussion was provided by either scrapping a bottle or rattling cowbells which helped the dancers to know when to come in, and his youngest wife used to sing accompanying parts with him in a call-and-response style. Popular dances and styles were bodi, otenga, ohangla, and dodo accompanied by drums, orutu, onanda, nyatiti, ankle shakers, ajawa (gourd rattle) and bottle top shakers. Dodo dance, which Ajuma also performed, had remained popular for years and was danced to with accompaniment of a variety of instruments. Women wearing owalo, (sisal skirts) made slow and graceful steps known as nyono. It was a subtle dance involving the smooth shift of body weights from hip to hip and was the root of benga style which had just emerged with guitars introduced.

In the cultural melting pot of post-Independence euphoria in Nyanza province where many social changes were taking place, these dances were matched with the fusion of traditional rhythms with imported ingredients, eventually giving rise to benga, the Luo guitar dance music. It was the style Ajuma was playing, and it was the style he was feeding into my young mind. The shows he performed with his wife and his son were typically lively fanfares with authentic grooves. He provided me with basic lessons on how to tune my guitar. His guitar was always in tune, and he had his capo on the third fret which enabled him to stretch less, and it also brought the guitar tune with his vocal pitch. He taught me how to position my right hand, and he usually played with his thumb and the first finger. I used to play with my three fingers, but he strongly advised me to move to the finger and thumb style if I wanted to play the benga tunes right. I was made to place three fingers on the guitar’s soundboard and have my thumb and my first finger ready to play the strings. I found this awkward at first, but he encouraged me to persevere with it.

Then he introduced me to the chords which I struggled with for weeks and months. I never knew real pain until I realised that two out of the five fingers on my left hand were completely numb. They felt as if they had blisters on the tips (and they just did not go away!) It was painful and I’m not going to lie about it. It, kind of, made playing a little tricky. I soon learned that this was the formation of calluses. And Ajuma had told me to be prepared for them. I guess he wanted to say I was meant to be playing guitar. More like to say no pain, no gain.

Numb fingers? I had been warned. Pressing down on a little metal string that felt like it was going to cut through your finger took a lot of courage, and I reckoned this was not normal... at least not for a person who hadn’t played the guitar. Yet I knew that if I wanted to one day play a song on the guitar, I had to eventually do more than just strum. I started to tackle some chords. I started to pick. I quickly mastered the B, G and C chords and then the D chord. The E and the A followed. I didn’t know if it really mattered, that you learned one chord first before you could learn another. I guess I was impatient and burning to master it all in one gulp. But Ajuma told me this was a journey and that I needed to take it slow and practice, really practice, going step by step. So, based on his teaching, these were the chords I practiced switching between. Pretty soon I picked up a floating G. Then I took weeks and weeks working through the dreaded chord of all: The F.

Nursing numb or aching fingers most of the time, I could only imagine myself plucking away at some easy Franco or Dr. Nico. I was pretty sure I was going to play better than Franco, in time. My friends, my family... all were going to enjoy my guitar talents. My motivation was that big. I could only imagine the day I was going to play songs that adults were going to listen as well as dance to.

Father was happy that his son should flout the tribe’s treasured folkways in benga music. He said to me, Son, you have a talent. Use it to make money and get rich and famous.

I held these words close to my heart for the rest of my life. I started out with simple chord progressions. In our music, the style of finger picking and the rhythm is all we need. Typically, three chords are all you need to play something that makes sense, but the rhythm is what works. It comes from the heart. In our finger-picking styles, we add variations to sweeten the sounds. I used to watch Ajuma use his little finger to hammer on a string to create variations, and it was a style I loved. Well, I soon learned that the hard part of playing the guitar was changing between chords, not playing the chords. The bit about mastering the chords was really tough, and my fingers were sore? Yeah? But now the hard part was the realisation that I had to change between the chords. Ajuma asked me what style I wanted to play. He told me I had to use real music to learn. So I chose ‘Africa Mokili Mobimba’ which used the G, the E and the D. I watched Ajuma play it, and I saw he had a way of switching between the chords and leaving one finger on the fret. He called the finger anchor finger. To change from D chord to E chord, he lifted off his second and third finger and left his first finger down which he slowly slid back one fret and then he put down his other two fingers. The anchor finger gave him a kind of guidance on where his second and third fingers were placed.

I practiced until it worked. It depended on Ajuma’s definition of practising; the old guy used to drive me like a train. I would soon find out practising was actually doing something purposeful that pushed me closer to success. I practiced the thumb and finger style for weeks and switched between chords. I soon progressed, learned to get little lilts and play faster.

There was only one problem. Mama. She and Father were having their own conversation about the guitar, hard and sharp. You guess Mama was upset. She didn’t want to see me playing the guitar at all. She hated to see the guitar, said it had chaperoned me into Satan’s Lair. She embroiled me with long lectures of vices of being a musician. It was like Mama knew I was on the road to becoming a musician and was doing all she could to stop it. Call it parental instinct. She was, really, a paranoid hard ruler who read my every move towards independence as a rejection of her principles. I explained it was just a hobby, and my father and brothers supported me.

I don’t want you to make an issue over Owiro’s talent, Father proclaimed. He will play the guitar. That’s final.

Mama was greatly disappointed that Father could allow me to keep the sinful instrument. You could hear her voice through the walls. He’s a boy growing up, she argued, it might lead him into becoming a musician. This is not the way I want to bring up my children. This is a Christian home.

The guitar was probably saved when my brothers were all up in uproar against Mama. I think the fact that Father and my brothers appeared to support my guitar playing stopped Mama from either giving my guitar away or destroying it.

Let Owiro keep his guitar, Father said.

As you wish, Baba Keya, Mama replied in Dholuo, tsking.

But older brother Odingo, the boring pessimist, was not all enthused. Sounds like to me he needs discipline.

That’s the thing, Mama shot back angrily, unless he can play it in the church!

Father’s ruling was absolute, though. I laughed inside. Father, by now, was a man under stress who was cobbling together a life trying to work hard to pay school fees for his sons and working to get them on their own. To him, me finding my own path at such an early age was a big relief. Pretty soon I was playing ‘Africa Mokili Mobimba’ flawlessly. My brothers and the relatives staying in our house at the time were simply enthralled that I had talent. I now graduated from just strumming to finger-picking. 

––––––––

3.

Suffice to say I felt at odds about my new ability. It bugged me greatly. In some respects, it was familiar, but in others it was new.  Was I yet again evolving?  In some respects, I felt as though the guitar was a curse. A bane. In some respects, I wished that I had never laid hands on it; in the fact that I wondered how my life would be had I not discovered the instrument at Ojal’s. There was no way of knowing, not for sure. There were probably choices.

Kisumu was a different place now. The mid-70s had brought in urbanization that bolstered my fascination. I was a young man awakening to the world, chasing dreams. There were new things... new Bud Spencer and Amitabh Bachchan movies at Tivoli, new lifestyles, new music like D.O. Misiani’s new funky hit called ‘Isabella.’ Our vernacular was odd Dholuo, but there were people of Luhya and Kisii heritage, as new families were arriving from Nairobi and Mombasa, and Kisii and Kakamega and Kampala and they came to with new the new urban language, and spoke Kiswahili and a little English. They influenced us with their Kiswahili. They made us feel embarrassed about our Dholuo. And since they were so admirable, we wanted to be like them. But Kisumu boys and girls lingo was of a colloquial speech soon developed out of Kiswahili and English. Sheng was the new urban language that emerged and was spreading very fast and connecting young people. It involved the mixing of English words with Kiswahili. In Kisumu, we had our own version. For example, to say terror, we said otero. Names had been shortened. Onyango was Onyi, Otieno was Otii or Otis. Odhiambo was Odhis... all in that manner. Kusosi for eating, mathee for mother, fathee for father, sistee for sister, brathee for brother, chati for lies or pulling a prank, kutia dame dira for seducing a girl.

1977. Then 1978. We were growing up and finding our way. It was suddenly okay to like what you liked in terms of being trendy and talking Sheng and smoking fegi (fag). Our parents loathed this new distasteful language, but we were eager to learn it so we could say things they couldn’t understand. Sheng soon changed our lives and gave us freedom, and we renamed everything. Our identities altered and our names changed for better, I think. From Owiro, my name was sweetened to Owish or Owaya or Owinye. Or O’Weird.

I couldn’t stop listening to new music, and Les Mangelepa had just appeared from the woodwork and now were firmly in command. They ruled on radio and in bars. Great band! They had just broken up with Baba Gaston and were recording a lot. At one time, I only knew ‘Aoko’ and ‘Sakina.’ Then suddenly one day in early 1978, the VOK radio announced the arrival of ‘Embakasi.’ Before the year ended, they had two albums that took people’s breath away: Walter and Embakasi. One after another. Nobody could describe the feeling inside me each time ‘Nyako Konya’ was played on the radio: Freedom. ‘Walter,’ ‘Embakasi,’ ‘Maindusa,’ ‘Mimba’ and ‘Nyako Konya’ soon became the greatest chart busters, the best we could have! Great lyrics, great sound... excellent rhythms, excellent talking, and walking bass. Mangelepa was surely a veritable charm that threw my imagination into a tizzy. ‘Kasuku’ also came in 1978, a sequel to the chart bursting ‘Embakasi’. I attended their concert at the ‘78 Kisumu Show. They had huge Afros, swanky bell bottoms, and platform shoes and they danced their tiny waists till dawn. I was torn between crying for joy and mimicking their songs. Boy, oh, boy. Those wind instruments were breathtaking. With Mangelepa came to fashion. We had no money, so we wore omboto, those overworn imported second hand clothes also called mitumba, checked shirts, polyester bell bottoms. Our sisters straightened our hair with coconut oil, hot-combed them, dried them and styled them into enormous Afros.

Then the unthinkable thing happened. It was August 1978, and there I was in our bedroom jamming with tunes of a Nuta Jazz instrumental on the Voice of Kenya radio wishing for a Mangelepa song while doing last minute homework. The instrumental was very rich, with great saxes and trumpets, fine guitars and driving energy. My plan for the day included a few minutes of socialising with the gang at Sosi then a movie at Tivoli in the evening. The presenter at VOK interrupted the music. In came the shocker that our President Mzee Jomo Kenyatta had just died.

I didn’t believe it. I was a big VOK fan and could have sworn it was Norbert Okare on the radio, although it appears he wasn’t doing a morning slot then—but let’s say it was him because that was part of his work and he was the finest of the finest at VOK. Anyway, this announcement came in as if from another planet and drifted in under the blanket; hitting like a punch in the face, and segueing into an eerie, almost mechanical beat; and then bizarre, baffling disbelief. After it finished, there was dead silence.

Of course, nobody believed it; nobody ever believed Mzee Kenyatta would ever die. There was a commotion. Ochieng was sitting under the dwele tree in the garden his feet on the orindi stool, reading After 4.30. Suddenly he shrieked, Kenyatta otho, otho Mumbasa! He and other family members all ran into the house to listen to the radio. Mzee Kenyatta’s death swooped down like a dark, ominous cloud. It disrupted our lives and put an end to normalcy. I was in form four and a candidate for ‘O’ Level exams, so the one month mourning period for the head of state somewhat interfered with our learning. It was in the newspapers, on the radio, and on every lip. Funny thing: nobody ever imagined Kenyatta could die.

Kinda piny, thu! Owewa, Father said his farewell.

I recall Father saying that Kenya was not going to be the same without Kenyatta. It was like saying Kenya was Kenyatta. Mzee Kenyatta was the only president we knew, and he was a mighty man. I remembered seeing him occasionally on TV at Sosial, giving his harsh speeches. I remember catching a glimpse of him when he came to open Russia Hospital in 1969.

Pretty soon, life returned to normal and Kenyatta took a quiet retreat into our memories. Moi was our new president, and everyone seemed to love him because he promised to follow Kenyatta’s nyayo. Then at the end of that year, war broke out in Uganda. The President of Uganda, General Idi Amin Dada, was finally being forced out. You guess we could only breathe a sigh of relief. We only prayed they would get rid of him quicker.

One evening in December 1979, at the time Tanzanian soldiers and Ugandan rebels were pounding Amin and his soldiers (with the combined force of Libyan soldiers) out of Uganda, my career appeared to take off. I was just turning eighteen in two days and with my pubescent developing face and my soft palms and my crackling young voice and my skyscraping height, I knew I had my whole life ahead of me. My mind was feverish as I walked around Kisumu, looking for a job and singing things in my head and dreaming. I had passed my ‘O’ Level (barely made it with a school-fees-problem tag sticking on my back), got a strong division three which was enough to take me to form five, but I couldn’t proceed. Father was having problems with his job at Kavirondo, and I had to step aside for Ochieng to continue with his secondary as well. I made the realisation that no amount of good grades or college certificates could fill up a particular bottomless hole. I had baggage, and I was fighting to get a conviction that my life was now firmly in the hands of God. I came to that realisation, and made the decision to begin my journey.

For me, it was bye-bye to formal education. I started scuffing around for something to do on the road to nowhere. That’s how it felt. I went into survival mode and familiarised myself with that road; working for a year in a radio repair shop. I later worked part-time at Nyanza Bookstore arranging books and filling my head with more and more substance of things I did not understand. They laid me off after three months. Long spells on the dole followed a short, miserable spell in Rusinga Island General Store helping my mother. I spent the next six months wandering aimlessly around Kisumu, tired, hungry, and thinking things inside my heads. Nothing made sense, nothing was concrete. Was this Hell? Something was amiss in my mind. Where was I on the Timeline? Too many questions...

You have to admire my guts. As the 1970s folded over, I had only one pair of trousers, a green shirt, and sandals. Nothing in hindsight, and certainly not a little or nothing to look up to in the cloudless sky. Anyway, I was down to pennies and cents, feeling sorry that the reason girls didn’t love me was because I could not take them to Mona Lisa to drink Coca Cola in a classy hotel, and that really got to me. Man, I was poor. I knew in my head that I was made for great things, but Kisumu yobs had no time for dreamers like me, so my father’s decision to take me to go earn 15shs per day kneading dough at Koywa Superior Bread bakery with my distinctive haircut—all hot-comb-blown-up and hippy—seemed to me to be bizarre in the extreme. That job was going to be my first. If I got it. If I liked it.

Kisumu may have grown, but it was still a small-town burg—small town Africana. A typical post-colonial type town where virtually everyone knew everyone. There were get-togethers through special events like the yearly ASK Show, little league football matches at Stadi, Saturday night movies at Nyanza and Tivoli, disco at Action Centre, Beograda, Dark Room and Octopus Bottoms-Up w/o violence or sex—just the suggestion of it. Women selling things at the municipal market, big market days every Sunday at Kibuye, the rendezvous at Sosi and sporting activities at Kenyatta Sports Grounds were typical events. The social gathering were the places where people met and got chummy. Local Kisumuans were beginning to start enterprises, and Koywa was the first-first Luo-owned bakery in town and a focal point for the centre of bread supply and served multiple outlets including Kericho, South Nyanza, and Western Province.

Well, Father ordered me to report to the mill near Kibuye. The area was called Koywa, anyway... just somewhere along Ramogi Road near Shauri Moyo. A short swarthy man with a hackneyed Abandu face was washing a ton of dishes and cursing and smoking a thin filter-less cigarette called Kali. Collela Mazee benga blared out of a Sanyo radio nearby. Another big burly dumpy man with ill-fitting clothes and in pressing need of a bath, a chin shave, and a haircut, was whistling the Collela song while fussing with a big pot of something bubbling within. 

"Eei! Oloo son of Oywa yawa!" bitched the dishwasher.

"Aa? Eei! Stupid ther nyang Oloo son of Oywa yayee!" amended the burly beefy man in need of a bath.

Marrying a third wife while we work ourselves dead with no overtime! said the man still washing the dishes. 

Stuck here while he goes to Mombasa for a honeymoon and a good time! added the second man. He stirred the massive vat of bubbling Devil-knows-what. Making bread to meet deadlines with no raise! he sparked.

"Kwenda. We can make him close! Then we take over."

"We? How? Aa e tugo, bwana."

His wife trusts that thieving accountant from my village.

He’d probably blame himself if this bakery goes down. Imagine earning two hundred a month, and we are now in 1980!

"Yeah, and we break our backs while he changes cars and girls all the time ka gima Kisumo ni mare. Ouma, the thieving accountant, says this business won’t last the next year."

"Whatever. Serves him kuma-ya-mamake right for making us stay here and do these kuma-ya-mamake dishes and bake his precious kuma-ya-mamake bread!"

Kuma ya mama yake!

The men seemed upset, maybe crunched with stress. I hung lose for a moment. There was a black cat nearby noshing on something under the boilers. More conversation from the two men spewed forth. Next year I’ll be in Mayfair. My sister’s husband is working on getting me there, said the swarthy pudgy fella.

Add a dash of this—! smirked the tall goofy hunk. He dragged a sack with powdery stuff, scooped and poured a smidgen of whatever into the precious batch of devil-knows-what. Then he called his friend, and together they lifted up the sack and dumped the whole thing into the burbling stuff and tossed the gunia into a corner. The swarthy Abandu hoisted his trousers and spat.

The goofy hunk roared with laughter. What else?

The swarthy man sucked the last smoke from his Kali and threw the last bit on the floor. What else what? He blew a grain of tobacco from his tongue and dug yellow phlegm like clot from his left nostril and wiped it on his shirt.

What else to add to the perfect prize winning Koywa Loaf seven years in a row that would spoil it for sure...

The swarthy man perused a rack and through the various other accoutrements. Suddenly, he cringed and got the look of a woman in labour, Ei yawa! he cried out, my stomach! And he grabbed a piece of newspaper and dashed off into the darkness down a hall.

The goofy dumpy hunk shook his head and made a selection. He dumped another sack of whatever stuff into the batch of boiling stuff, gave it a rough-around, then spat on the floor.

His companion returned, smiling sheepishly. Thu! Yawa iya! he exclaimed, Don’t go in there! he warned.

Omunyololo! bitched his friend fanning the air, "Kwani what did nyar Nyahera cook for you last night!" as the noxious odour wafted from the toilet—and quite obviously from the swarthy man himself.

"Mbuta. Nile perch."

Omunyololo! coughed-sputtered the goofy dumpy hunk. He shook his head and returned to the dishes. "Go to Russia they check your stomach, bwana. Omera dhi Russia. Ani dhi."

What about Oywa’s loaves?

Omera, weri gi makati nyieni! scoffed the goofy hunk. Who cares for the loaves? You will die.

Well, I’m fine. Let’s get this shift done with!

I rolled my eyes, so did the goofy hunk.

Are you going to mop the messy floor, or do I do that, too!?

"Aya, aya. All right, all right!"

The swarthy man grabbed a nearby mop, and then—his eyes bulged, and he gritted his jaws, gnashed his teeth. "Mama yooh! Iya! My stomach!" He made for the toilet in great haste.

"Omera, to ok you go to Russia, bwana, bitched the dumpy hunk. How will we finish this shift and go home if you keep bugging out to dump wen in the choo every five minutes!"

I told you it’s no use! added the swarthy got-the-shits-man.

"Kwenda. Ai ka. Get out of here! Dhi kucho! Go away!"

"The way I keep piling wen there and coming back, Oywa would shit golden bricks if people ate his precious loaves and got the shits!" added the man in the bathroom down the short hall. More noxious odour came wafting down and filled the small back room.  The goofy dumpy hunk man coughed and sputtered, "Eei!  Omera close the door!  Close the door!" he shouted, fumbled about in the near darkness and flung open the screen door, propping it open. The cat noshing on its evening meal hissed.  Goofy Hunk stomped his feet and scattered the kitty.

Did you hear what I said? Swarthy Shit Man said coming back to the room, sweating and zipping up his ill-fitting jeans.

Then they all saw me.

Ma to ng’a? asked Goofy Hunk. Who are you, kid?

What do you want, kid? Swarthy Shit Man asked.

I said nothing. I walked out.

But I needed rent money so I asked around for work. One of my cousins told me he could get me a mjengo work putting down a foundation for a rental house in Manyata. My cousin worked for the landlord, a slum lord who bought cheap plots in the swampy areas of the village, drained the water into Auji River and hurriedly put up rows of rooms that he rented out to poor folk at exorbitant prices.

It pays ten shillings an hour, my cousin explained. I work there and I needed a helper. Just the two of us. It’s not hard. We just mix and pour cement to a foundation.

I never worked so hard in my life. First, we had to break up the ground to dig up the foundation and lay in stones. That wasn’t so bad. Mixing the cement by hand, that was hard. The sand and cement and water had to be mixed with a shovel, a slow, time consuming, arduous undertaking. We did the mixing on the ground and hauled the mixture on a wheelbarrow. It was supposed to be an eight-hour job for two men. But shoveling the mixture with our own