Lots of Tiny Stones

Not long after passing over the border into Kenya, we started having electrical problems...

We had Regina with us, a hitchhiker. A few miles earlier, at a police checkpoint, an officer with the largest machine gun I had ever seen had asked us to drop Regina at her home village on our way. We said no problem. She was actually the one who first realised something was wrong with the truck. Just as the sun was moving behind the horizon, she started getting anxious, saying that she could smell something burning in the front of the car. George pulled the front panel off the CD player and made me smell it.

“Does it smell like something’s burning to you?” he asked me, and I had to tell him that it did.

Smoke started to rise up from behind where the panel had been removed, and we pulled over and all of us got out. It was dark by this time, even though we said we’d never drive at night. Because we didn’t want to risk switching anything on until we knew what was burning, we felt that we couldn’t use the light in the cab. I held a torch while George dug around in the electronics behind the CD player, cutting a foot of smouldering wiring out.

We got driving again, but slowly the lights on the dashboard and on the front of the truck dimmed and then went out completely. Regina told us that her village was close and that we could stop there for the night, so we pushed on, me leaning out the window trying to light our way with the feeble hand torch. The light didn’t reach more than a half metre in front of the truck, but I hoped it would at least make us visible to any oncoming traffic. I remember thinking, ‘This is how I go.’

Regina called her brother on her mobile and he came to meet us in his car, driving ahead of us and lighting the road with his headlights so we could make it safely to the village. In the light from her brother’s car, I watched the road surface turn from gravel to scrubby grass. After around twenty minutes we reached a square brick building, white-grey in the moonlight, and a young man came out and greeted us. He was wearing an army uniform and had a shaved head. Regina’s brother shook our hands and left, and the soldier introduced himself as Simba. We left the truck and followed Simba to the back of what turned out to be a barracks, where four more soldiers were sitting in a circle drinking bottles of beer. We sat down with them, and they gave us each a beer. Simba was the soldier in charge and the most talkative.

“Where have you come from?” he asked.

“We were in Ethiopia this morning and crossed here into Kenya today,” I said, “but we started our trip in Sudan nearly eight weeks ago. The plan is to end up in South Africa.” One of the soldiers made a ‘Phew’ sound.

“It is a long and tiresome journey,” said Simba.

“It was today.”

Once we had finished our drinks, one of the soldiers collected money from the rest of the group and then vanished into the dark, returning a bit later with a few more beers. They wouldn’t take any money from us. We started talking about the safety of our trip.

“No one in England thought it was a good idea,” George said, “but if you listened to the news in England, you’d never do anything. What do people think about what’s on television here? Do they trust the news?”

“Here in Kenya, the news is honest,” said Simba. “It’s not like in some other African countries.”

“I don’t think we have the same trust of the media in the UK,” I said. “I don’t. The politicians, news organisations, big business, they all influence each other.”

Simba and a few of the others nodded.

“And what about your president?” asked George. “The few Kenyans we’ve spoken to so far seemed to like him.’’

“Yes,” said Simba, “he’s a good man. He’s actually the son of our first president.”

“Is this President Kenyatta?” asked George.

“Uhuru Kenyatta,” said Simba. “His father was Jomo Kenyatta.”

A little while later another man joined the group. He was tall and thin with long arms, and he held a bottle of Guinness in his hand. When he spoke, he threw his long arms around. Occasionally he’d shout a few words of his sentences without warning.

“Some friends, they tell me that people in England are really racist,” he said to us.

“Not everyone,” I said. “I suppose it’s there, but I don’t think it’s as bad as a lot of other countries.” Then he turned away from me without saying anything and began to berate Simba and the other soldiers. He pointed at them as he talked, calling them “boy” and “soldier” rather than using their names.

“My father is the boss of these soldiers,” he said, turning to us and slurring his words. “If you have any problems with them you come to me.”

“OK, OK,” said Simba softly. “We don’t need to worry about any of that.”

One by one, the soldiers made their excuses and went to bed. George and I said goodnight and went to set up our tent.

Three days later, the truck was still not fixed. The mechanic in Marsabit had been unable to give us even a diagnosis, but we had the address and phone number of a reliable mechanic in Nairobi, and George thought he could get the car started with a jump. We hoped that as long as we didn’t stop at all, the engine would keep running and we’d be able to get there. If we stalled for any reason, that would probably be it.

We set off for Nairobi early with a full tank of petrol. George drove for the first half of the day and then I took over. We moved through the dry savannah quickly, passing camels loping along the side of the road; they were so large that, at first, I thought they were young giraffes. At some point after midday the road turned to gravel, and with each manoeuvre we slid a little. The tiny stones moving under the car sounded like waves breaking. On one particularly tight corner, the car slid to the side of the road as if the ground was covered in ice. We only just avoided coming off the track entirely.

“I don’t know how to drive on this gravel stuff. It feels like I’m on ice,” I said.

“You’re going too slow,” said George. “You’ll get more traction if you move faster.”

I increased our speed, but at the next corner I slid far enough that one of the front wheels came off the gravel completely. Somewhere during the sliding, I had jerked my foot off the clutch. The engine made a choking sound, then cut out. After sliding along without control, the new stillness of the car seemed amplified.

“Try the ignition,” George said to me, and when I twisted the key, the truck fired up. “The battery must have had enough power for one more start,” he said.

We moved back onto the road and carried on, making our way to the capital through the flattest and most expansive country I’d ever seen. A carpet of low, scorched shrubs and grass spread out further into the distance than it was possible to see, until eventually it was blanketed by a white mist. In that far distance there were forested mountains, green lumps partially hidden in the fog.

We didn’t stop the engine once, and by four thirty that afternoon we had travelled the three hundred miles to the outskirts of Nairobi, where we hit thick traffic. For the first time, I was forced to put the truck into first gear. As we got closer to the city, the road widened into four lanes and the buildings slowly began to increase in size and number. They were square grey-and-brown constructions, many with busted business signs and adverts on the front. The buildings had an unfinished look about them, with exposed concrete and doorways that were empty rectangles with no door attached. Outside the buildings, people went about their business. Some hurried down the road, others talked to one another. Groups of children in ripped-up clothes asked passing people for money.

As the buildings increased in number, the traffic slowed to a standstill. The truck juddered, and beneath us we felt the motion in the engine slowly grinding to a halt. George was shouting, “CLUTCH DOWN! CLUTCH DOWN!” but I had the clutch to the floor and the engine cut out anyway. I tried the ignition and the engine made one slow gurgle, then went quiet. I turned the key a few more times but the engine stayed silent. I put the handbrake on, and we sat there, not speaking. Cars behind us began to honk their horns, then gave up and moved around us.

George got out of the car, opened the hood of the truck and started tinkering with the engine. He told me that we’d only get started with a jump, so I got out and tried to flag a car down. When it gets dark in Kenya, it happens in minutes, and I didn’t think we’d have more than a couple of hours until sunset. I kept an eye on my watch as I waved at the passing cars.

Finally, a sleek black car with a two-foot neon crucifix on its roof pulled in behind us, and two young men in smart black suits and sunglasses got out, asking if they could help. They tried to give us a jump, but their battery didn’t have enough power.

“We will get our friend to come and help you with his truck,” one of the guys said. “He lives near here. But this is an unsafe area.” He pointed to a mass of grey huts half a mile from the roadside. “That area over there is a slum. You shouldn’t be here when it gets dark.”

True to their word, it was not long before their friend turned up and got our truck started again. But after less than a mile, our saviours had left us, and the car cut out once more. We were stranded for a second time. It was nearly half five by this time. I asked George what time he thought it got dark.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Six? Maybe half six?”

On the road, children weaved through the slow traffic, begging for money at car windows. They had no shoes, and their clothes were ragged. Some of them were drinking from bottles of cough medicine. Others were inhaling solvents from plastic bags. A couple of them tried pulling on the door handles.

“Hey!” said George. “What are you doing?” They walked away nonchalantly.

We called our mechanic in the city, and he told us to get to a garage. He said we would be able to get a tow from a garage to his place, where he would be able to have a look at the truck for us.

“Just get to a garage,” he said. “It’s usually the safest place to be, because you’re in a dodgy area, you know. You shouldn’t be there when it gets dark.”

The concerned voice of the mechanic hung in the truck with us after the phone call. Between watching the children slowly gather around our car and glancing at the darkening sky, something inside me began to falter.

“They probably have older friends, George,” I said, nodding at the now sizable group of street children on the road around us. “They might be getting them now. Let’s go and get a bus. To a hotel somewhere. We can just leave the truck.” I never looked at George as I spoke. I kept my eyes on the street outside.

“I’m not leaving my fucking truck,” said George.

One of the boys was pleading with us through the window to give him money so that he could go to school. “Please, I don’t want to live here, I just need some money,” he said, his voice muffled by the glass. “I want to go to school but I don’t have money.” He had a bottle of cough medicine in his hand. His face was very close to the window, but his eyes weren’t focussed on anything.

“Let’s just actually think for a minute,” said George. “Don’t get stressed.”

“Maybe we should turn these kids into friends rather than make them into enemies,” I said. “They might know where a petrol station is.”

“Maybe they can help push us to a petrol station,” said George.

I started scrambling out of the truck and George said, “Make a deal first. Agree on a price first.”

I climbed out.

“Hey man, do you know where a garage is? For our truck?” I asked the boy closest to my door, the one with the cough medicine. “Where we can buy some petrol?” He said he did and pointed to where we needed to go.

“OK,” I said. “Do you want to make some money? If you and your friends over there help us push our truck to the petrol station, we’ll pay you some money. What’s your price? How much?”

He considered for a moment. “Fifteen shillings,” he said.

“OK, that’s fine. Fifteen shillings each, no problem.”

“No, thirty shillings.”

“That’s fine. Can you explain to your friends what we need to do?”

We all started pushing. George helped us get it rolling and then jumped into the cab to steer. As we moved into the city, the town got busier, and people walking on the pavement stopped to watch the spectacle: Two red-bearded white men manually moving their broken truck down a busy road with a bunch of street kids. As we moved, more kids joined in and helped us push, as well as one adolescent with a shaved head and an air of authority.

“What is the problem with your truck?” he asked me.

“We don’t know,” I said. “We need to get it to a garage. Are we going the right way to get to one?”

“Yes, we’re going the right way.”

The adolescent helped push the truck from behind and organised the younger boys around the truck, getting an even amount on each side. When we came to a junction, he shouted to me which way we needed to go, and I passed it on to George so he could steer the truck in the right direction. It was hectic, and amidst all the chaos the truck rolled over my foot, but I barely felt it.

The street was dry, and you could hear our feet scraping through the grit and dust that coated the ground. The row of four-storey buildings on either side of the road was overwhelming after the open savannah we had passed through. The front of each building had a coloured sign with a business name on it, and as we moved, the signs came together like a mosaic in the adrenaline that blended everything. The truck pulled us as much as we pushed it. On the winding streets it felt like we were a marble on a marble run. We took a sharp corner and the adolescent with the shaved head ordered some of the younger boys to move onto the side I was on to help make the manoeuvre. I turned around and looked at them behind me. The boy closest to me was probably only eleven or twelve. He was wearing an expression of absolute conviction.

We came to the top of a hill, and the road stretched out in front of us. Someone shouted that the petrol station was on the left at the bottom of the hill. We picked up speed as we descended, and I saw the opening of the garage and a few red fuel pumps. As we rolled in, two men dressed like mechanics came to guide us. We pushed the truck to the far side of the court and George got out of the cab. We both shook hands with a few of the boys who had helped us. I went back to the truck and dug around in the back of the cab to get some cash, then walked over to the office that sat at the back, behind the petrol pumps.

The office had a plush, red interior. There was a desk with a man and a woman sitting at it, both dressed in smart clothes. The woman wouldn’t look at me, but her colleague smiled and said hello. He looked amused. I asked him if I could change the three thousand shillings I had in cash into the smallest notes they could manage. He chuckled as he counted out the change. “They will have your pockets turned out,” he said.

When I went back outside, there was a crowd around George, and I could hear raised voices and George saying, “We only made a deal to pay three of you.” The adolescent with the shaved head turned to me as I walked over, his face screwed up in frustration.

“Tell your friend,” he said. “He says he won’t pay us.”

“What’s your name?” I asked him.

“Denis,” he said. We interlocked our hands.

“I’m Jay,” I said. “Denis, I’ve got some money for you, but you need to promise that you’ll share it with all the people who helped us, and make sure that everyone understands that there’s no more money.”

“OK, that’s fine,” he said, and I took the broken-up three thousand shillings from my pocket and put it in his hand. He looked at the money with raised eyebrows, and for a second the rhythm of his authority was disrupted; I hadn’t done it on purpose, but it was much more than he had expected. There was a moment of quiet while Denis considered the money and the group of boys around him. The boys all watched him.

“Jay,” he said, smiling, “let me be the first to share with you,” and he took the first note from the pile I had given him and slapped it back into my hand. The group of boys around us started laughing and talking to one another. It was almost a cheer. After a few more handshakes and a promise to return later to check that we were OK, Denis walked away, guiding the group of younger boys out with him.

One of the mechanics came over and told us that they had called a tow truck. George offered me a cigarette and I took it. We walked away from the petrol pumps to smoke. We lit our cigarettes and hugged, slapping each other’s backs.

“Fucking hell,” I said.

We started laughing, and I felt tears collecting at the bottom of my eyes. Abruptly, I was struck with a feeling of overwhelming love for George, and for Denis, and for all the boys who had helped push the truck, as well as the men who had given us the jump-start. I loved everybody. I grabbed George and hugged him again. When we let go of one another, George looked over at the truck and started laughing again. I did too. I couldn’t help it.

As I smoked, I looked out at the city and could see the sun setting behind the rooftops of the buildings in front of us, and together we stood watching the sunset that we had been so scared of just twenty minutes before, with its gentle fingers of orange and white spreading through the dust and the heat.

This story comes from my book, This is The Place, which is available in many places, including the store on this site and any major online retailer, like Amazon. If you live outside of the UK, it will be faster and cheaper to buy from a larger retailer.

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