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

was.”
    â€œHow’d she find you?”
    â€œWhen the police cracked down on hawkers, we were separated from my grandmother. I was processed through the courts, and my grandmother, she was forced to let me go. She really hated it, and she fought. But how can a hawker fight the courts? The courts processed me to Mama Fatuma Goodwill Children’s Home, and my grandmother, she didn’t know how it was.”
    â€œYou became Muslim when you went there?”
    â€œThat’s right, but you know it was my choice. Mama Fatuma, she didn’t force that on me.”
    â€œShe sounds amazing.”
    â€œShe was. Let me tell you, she was amazing and tough. One day she interviewed me. I remember she asked me these funny questions. One question was ‘What is it you want to do with your life?’ I told her I wanted to find a home for all the kids in the streets.”
    â€œThat’s a big goal. How old were you then?”
    â€œAround ten years.”
    â€œWow,” I had fallen through the ice at my pond and dreamed of doing something with lasting significance when I was around the same age.
    â€œYes, and I still want to do that thing.”
    â€œIn Mathare?”
    â€œIn Nairobi.”
    â€œHow about Kibera?”
    â€œKibera, too, but that’s a conversation for another day.” He laughed.
    I had walked into Salim’s office without an appointment and taken up his afternoon. “Salim, I’m sorry, man, but please, just one more question?”
    He sighed.
    â€œWhy’s there no MYSA in Kibera?”
    â€œGood question.” He shrugged.
    â€œMaybe we can do something?”
    â€œMaybe. Sure.” He glanced at his watch. “If you come back, I can help.”
    â€œSo you’d be interested?”
    â€œMaybe, but now I’m tired, mista, so forgive me if I have some work to do.”
    SALIM AND ALI struck me as men of integrity whom I could trust, perhaps because of their deep faith, about which I didn’t know much but respected. They were somehow able to stay on righteous paths. I wanted to befriend them, to help them, and to learn from their wisdom. If I were in their situations, I doubted I could remain focused on anything except myself. Yet, they were making significant contributions to their communities. Through them and others I was beginning to realize that residents in places such as Kibera and Mathare had sustainable solutions to the problems they faced. With a few opportunities, many of which I had grown up taking for granted, young people could rise above even the most desperate situations.
    As I returned to Kibera that day, another of Salim’s comments from our long interview kept surfacing in my mind. We had been talking about Kenyan politicians, and I had remarked with the platitude that youth are the future leaders. “No,” Salim had objected, “Youth aren’t the future leaders. They’re the present and the future leaders.”
    *   The Kibera survey report by Deverell and Colchester, Kenya National Archives RCA (MAA)—2/1/3 ii, 1944, p. 2, as quoted in Johan de Smedt, “Kill Me Quick: A History of Nubian Gin in Kibera,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 42, no. 2 (2009).

CHAPTER FOUR

    â€œBecause I can”
    Kibera, Kenya
    JUNE 2000
    ALONE IN DAN’S TEN-BY-TEN, I CLENCHED my buttocks and prayed for the sensation to go away. If only I could hold on until morning. Then I would have daylight to help me navigate the muddy path, and I wouldn’t have to wake Baba Chris, my neighbor at the front of the compound who kept the key to the choo and was recovering from his bout with malaria. I might even make it to Fort Jesus to use Oluoch’s commode. I dreaded the choo I shared with Dan and his fifty neighbors and always tried to time my long calls to occur when I was outside Kibera.
    The sensation mounted. It could have been diarrhea, perhaps caused by bacteria