It Happened on the Way to War (14 page)

Afterward, my parents hosted a small lunch reception as a graduation gift. It was a gracious way of expressing appreciation to a handful of my closest advisers from the Marine Corps and college. One of my mentors, Colonel T. C. Greenwood, drove down from Washington to make the event. We had met through my dad, who had served with Colonel Greenwood's father in Vietnam. An infantry officer, Colonel Greenwood had a scrappy Irish look and the special blend of toughness and compassion that was the hallmark of great Marine officers. In his current assignment, he was a director at the White House National Security Council. He was the first active-duty Marine to encourage me to learn about nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), which he called “nonstate actors.” Colonel Greenwood believed that NGOs had important but often misunderstood relationships with the military. He thought that CFK would make me a better and more informed officer.

As my parents stood and offered a toast, I looked around the room and thought about how lucky I was to have such a group of mentors. It dawned on me that I had received far more than I had given. I hadn't begun to “pay it forward,” and I doubted I could ever give back anywhere close to the amount of wisdom and love I had received from these men and women. First and foremost in that group were my parents.

It wasn't until we were back at the hotel that my father approached me in the parking lot next to a forest of Southern pines. Mom was taking a nap. Dad opened the cargo hatch of the woody, my parents' aging wood-paneled Dodge Caravan, and turned to me. I braced myself for a lecture. Instead, he told me that it had been a special day for him, and that he hoped I would be able to keep a critical mind, wherever the Marine Corps took me. He hoped that I wouldn't allow myself or my men to be taken advantage of by others, no matter their rank or powers of persuasion.

As he turned to remove something from the cargo, a line from the Oath of Office flashed to mind:
I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies.
Our oath pledged allegiance to a body of ideas and a way of government, not to an individual or an ideology. I interpreted my father's advice as a way of saying that the nation commissioned us as officers to think and to be discerning with our leadership.

Dad faced me holding his Mameluke sword, palms-up, the flat edge of the blade resting against his heavily calloused hands. Derived from sabers of Ottoman warriors, the sword's silver blade glistened in the late afternoon light. I fingered its flat edge as a flood of emotions swelled over me. My father was not a warmonger. He even disliked the word
warrior
, which he considered to be “belligerent” and “self-inflating.” But I viewed him as a warrior. He was a warrior who loved peace and knew about unnecessary wars after having fought in one of them. Flawed leadership, however, did not take away from the need for a strong defense in a volatile world. Peace had to be guarded with a sword and citizens who would willingly put their lives on the line.

Dad's mouth was twitching the way it did the only two times I ever saw him tear up. He gestured to me with a nod, turned, and walked away into the forest of tall Southern pines. I sheathed the sword. He had done his part, and now it was time to do mine.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Things Fall Apart

Kibera, Kenya

MAY 2001

WE WERE ON OUR FLIGHT TO KENYA. Nate and I sipped gin and tonics, told tales, and toasted Hemingway, Kibera, and our future partners—Taib's KIYESA, Jumba's micro-credit program for youth, and Elizabeth's nursery school. We had funding, a board of directors, an office at UNC, business cards, and tax-exempt status from the IRS. We had a vision and a plan. We were good, I thought to myself, and flagged the stewardess for another round, real good.

“Ya know what? We need a motto,” Nate suggested on his third or fourth drink flying somewhere over the Sahara.

“Yeah, a motto. Good call. Maybe something in Swahili, like
tuko pamoja
, or somethin'.” I had liked that phrase, which translates to “we are together,” ever since the time I first heard it during one of my research interviews.

Nate wasn't feeling it. “It's okay, but how about somethin' edgier.”

“What do ya mean?”

“I mean, somethin' that describes what we're about, but with a punch to it.”

I leaned back and thought about Nate's challenge. What words could characterize what we were doing?

“Participatory development.” I laughed.

“Yeah, that's horrible. Good vision, bad motto.”

“Youth empowerment?”

“Lame.” Nate rolled his eyes and faked a yawn.

The stewardess delivered another round.
What if the motto was based on our style, the way we rolled, our “battle rhythm,” as we called it in the Marines? What words could capture that?

“I got it, man,” I came back after a minute of hard concentration. “I freakin' got it.” It was a phrase I had heard at OCS.

“Yeah, what?”

“This is good. You ready?”

“Well, you've set a pretty low bar so far. Send it.”

“Speed and intensity.”

“Hah! I love it.” Nate slapped his knee, “It's perfect. That's exactly it. Speed and intensity. It's like the story of your life.”

“Our life.”

“No, definitely not.”

“Well, for the next three months.”

“Yeah, okay, I can dig that.” He threw me a
gota
.

That was it. We had three months. At the moment, it sounded like a while. If we could do all that we had accomplished in the United States as students, I could only imagine how much we could get done with full-time “speed and intensity” in Kibera. At that point, the plan was simple. As I had done the previous summer, we would stash our gear at Oluoch and Elizabeth's place in Fort Jesus and use their house as a fallback when we weren't sleeping in the slum. After a couple days catching our bearings, we would reconnect with Taib and Jumba. We'd provide advice and a small amount of funding and help them develop their inter-ethnic youth empowerment programs. On the side, we could provide some funding to Elizabeth as she built her nursery school, which she decided to name the Carolina Academy. That was it. At the end of our three months, CFK would go away in Kenya and possibly remain as a small organization with an office at UNC to fund-raise for additional support for our Kenyan partners.

BY THE TIME the gin wore off we were in Fort Jesus. The first twenty-four hours on the ground was like déjà vu. Elizabeth and Oluoch prepared a feast of
ugali
,
sukuma wiki
, and beef stew. They asked Nate about his family, and they updated us on the soap opera of Kenyan politics. Only one politician ever did anything right in Oluoch's opinion: Raila Odinga, whom Oluoch called the leader of the Luos. By that time, Raila, who was known by his first name, had been the member of Parliament for the constituency that included Fort Jesus and Kibera for nine years. Oluoch sounded defensive when Nate asked if Raila had done much for Kibera: “Of course. A lot. They've even named a village after him.”

“A village?”

“Yes, that's what I said. A new village across the river. They call it Raila.”

“Across from Gatwekera?” I asked in reference to the village where I had spent most of my time the previous summer. I recalled seeing a few houses on the other side of the river, though it sounded as if they must have multiplied dramatically over the previous year. Each “village” in Kibera housed tens of thousands of residents.

“Yes, yes, that's right.”

“Have you been there?” Nate asked. “To Raila Village?”

“No, of course not. I've no need to go down there.” He swung his arm out toward the direction of the slum. Oluoch wasn't aware of how much his comments bothered me. I was having the same visceral reaction to him and his patronizing attitude as I had experienced the previous summer. I shifted the subject to soccer, which Oluoch always liked to discuss. We ended the evening without an incident.

The next morning we met Jane as she arrived to work. Jane hugged me as if I were a long-lost friend. “And this is Otieno. People call him Otis,” I introduced Nate.

“Then you're my brother,” Jane smiled, wide and full. “I'm Atieno, Jane Atieno. Welcome, Otis. Welcome to Kibera.”

“It's been too long, Jane. How's Kibera?” I asked.

“Kibera is Kibera. Not much has changed, but I can say we're pushing. Oh, it's good you've returned home. Omosh, you know, me, I knew you'd come back. Will you be staying with us down there again?”

“Of course.”

“It is good!” she exclaimed, reminding me of the visit I had taken to her ten-by-ten shortly before I left during my first summer. Her shack was neatly furnished, the walls covered by sheets. It had some luxury items, too, such as a black-and-white television, which was tuned to the World Wrestling Federation when I had stopped by. I had seen far poorer conditions in Kibera. Yet I was floored that Jane and her husband managed to raise four adolescent sons and a daughter in such a small space. In classic Kibera understatement, Jane acknowledged that it was “not easy” when I asked her about it. Then she laughed. Somehow, Jane could always laugh. There was something deeply uplifting in her spirit, something marvelous.

As we walked to Dan's house, Nate reflected on our brief encounter with Jane, “That smile of hers, it's unbelievable. She's unbelievable. I don't know her and I already love her.” His words captured the way I had felt when I first met Jane, and it was a feeling that would only grow stronger with time. Sometimes you can just tell when you're in the presence of a special soul.

Eyes followed us up Kibera Drive toward one of the slum's largest entry points. Adrenaline blasted to my head. I transitioned to my old style, quickly finding a groove: exaggerated arm swings, long strides, Sheng greetings to strangers. Nate was a natural. After a few minutes he, too, was in the rhythm. We were a duo. We didn't stop until we reached the entry point, and there, suddenly, Kibera was in front of us, the big brown salamander, a sea of humanity. I assumed my reaction would be different the second time around. It wasn't. I stood there with Nate, silent for a moment, awestruck by the sheer magnitude of the place.

“Wowsers,” Nate reacted, “there it is. It's even bigger than I imagined. This is nuts.”

“What do ya mean?”

“I mean, what we're doin' is crazy.”

I had never thought about it in such a way. Yet at that moment I felt the same sense of apprehension that I had experienced the first time I stepped into Kibera with Dan. What we were doing was not smart. Maybe I was just lucky to have made it out of Kibera in one piece during my first summer? We stood there, dumbfounded, looking like
washamba
, “farmers” in the big city.

“Nate”—I turned and looked him in the eye—“you ready for this?”

“Can't turn back now.”

“Let's do it.”

We stepped across the tracks, throwing out
gotas
and Sheng as I traced the route back to Dan's shack. The main routes hadn't changed, though the side alleys had shifted as new shacks swallowed old walkways.

I was feeling a high until I spotted the coffin maker.

Nate saw it too. “Is that what I think it is?”

“Yeah, man.”

“The coffins are so small.” He reacted.

“Watoto.”
It was easier to identify in Swahili the chilling reality that building coffins for kids was a good business in Kibera.

In a sump of sewage a short distance from the coffin maker, we spotted what appeared to be a bloated baby with bluish white skin. We stopped in front of it, stunned. On closer inspection, it was a dead puppy floating in the waste. Not far away a little boy played with a plastic bottle cap in the mud. I looked at Nate. His face had lost its color. We didn't say anything. Kibera. I hadn't expected to be so affected again, but there I was torn by a maelstrom of emotions: happy to finally be back, sad for the children, disgusted by the filth, and angry at the injustice.

We walked on, quiet and somber until we approached the Mad Lion Base. Snapping back into my Kibera act, I fist-bumped my way down the alley saying mindless things in Sheng with Nate by my side. The lines worked invariably: to the men hanging out in front of a butcher shop,
“Tunapenda nyamchom ya punda”
(We like roasted donkey), to the
mama
selling vegetables,
“Tunakula kichwa ya samaki tu”
(We only eat fish head), to the kid shouting
“Mzungu! Mzungu!”
(White guy! White guy!),
“Si wagoso. Sisi ni charlie wa mtaani”
(We aren't whiteys. We are Charlies—homeboys—of the street). Even the hardest, most drugged-out men laughed. Many of them, we would later learn, pitied us and thought we were insane.

Baba Chris welcomed us with a warm embrace at Dan's old plot. As soon as we entered Dan's shack, Nate and I collapsed on his sofa.

“What the hell just happened?” Nate asked.

“Yeah, I know, nice job. That was intense.”

Nate sighed. “Is that what it's always like?”

“Pretty much.”

“It's like we're actors, only our lives are on the line. I mean, I'm pumped, and at the same time I'm totally exhausted.”

Dan smiled as we spoke about our walk. He looked good, and he had reason to be upbeat. Dan was about to get married. He was earning enough money in his accounting job to “afford a wife” and move out of Kibera. After five years in the slum, Dan had stepped into a new economic class. He had held on to the shack, but he now lived in a ten-by-ten in Fort Jesus. It was a different world. He paid taxes and had running water, legal electricity, hard walls, and relatively quiet nights. Dan was the Kibera dream. He had moved to Nairobi as an eighteen-year-old in search of opportunity, and through hard work, luck, and skill, he was making it. Many youth had Dan's strengths, but few had his good fortune. Most never escaped the grind of hand-to-mouth existence.

Dan didn't forget his roots. He continued to lead a small community group to help other young leaders in Kibera, and he gladly offered to help Nate and me get started with CFK. It seemed like a good setup. Dan had secured his shack so Nate and I could spend the summer there for $13 a month, fully furnished. I knew the area and could trust the neighbors such as Baba Chris, although many were new, including the people in the shack at the end of the plot where Vanessa had lived. No one seemed to know what had happened to the stoic grandmother who had cared for her. One day she just disappeared, and a new family moved in.

Nevertheless, the familiarity of the place made it feel like the right fit, if only there were enough space. Nate, I learned on the flight over, was a loud snorer. Really loud, “like Homer Simpson,” he joked, referring to the legendary cartoon character whose snores rattled the walls. We couldn't sleep in the same shack. We needed to find a separate place for him, preferably with a youth leader we could trust and who didn't mind snoring. Dan recommended we meet up with an acquaintance of his, John “Kash” Kanyua, a twenty-two-year-old soccer star who lived in a shack near the river with a make-shift gym where youth liked to work out. Dan mentioned that Kash coached an under-twelve soccer team, had a good reputation in the community, and might know of a place where Nate could stay. Dan proposed that we meet Kash for chai at the Mugumeno Motherland Hotel the following morning. However, Nate and I were eager to get a workout.

“Let's just meet him at his gym,” Nate suggested.

Dan looked at us skeptically. He wasn't a lifter, so he didn't understand that there was nothing like a good lift to bond new acquaintances.

“
SUKUMA
, PUSH.
SUKUMA
, PUSH.” Nate spotted Kash the following morning.

“Humph-humph. Er.” Kash exhaled and forced the homemade bar with four slabs of cement off his thick chest. He had close-cropped hair, a chiseled jaw, and Hollywood looks.

Nate reached for the bar to guide it back to the rickety rack. It was Kash's tenth rep with more than two hundred pounds. Kash foiled Nate's attempt to relieve him, lowering the bar evenly back down to his chest for a final rep.