The Cape Cod Bicycle War. Billy Kahora

senge pursuing a she-goat in heat would be deterred from entering the enclosure. He started a small fire and found the two walking sticks that his grandfather had instructed him to make for their forthcoming journey to the Constitutional Conference. Both heavy and strong, the two sticks were just about the right weight and firmness. He laid them back to harden against the small flame that came up. From inside his hut he brought out a long, hollow calabash container. He popped it open, holding it away from his face and nostrils to let the fermented porridge release its tang. He held it against the wind for a few minutes and soon enough there were yells of dismay in the neighbouring yards. Mama Kutula, their neighbour, appeared and shouted, ‘You, Komora! Is that how you treat the friends of your dead mother? You will make me bring a smelly child into the world with your nonsense.’

      Mama Kutula was heavily pregnant and complained loudly every day to the world about all the things that plagued her, including the increasing activity of butterflies, sparrows and swifts that were harbingers of the flood.

      Komora Kijana noticed two eyes watching him keenly through the hedge. An arm appeared slowly over the hedge and placed a large wrapping that steamed away in the morning air. It was Ukonto’s wife, Kerekani. His grandfather’s food was almost three hours late. Kerekani was not allowed in the compounds of most homes because of her husband’s lung condition. Most of the villagers feared their children catching germs from her that she, in turn, had caught from her husband. Ukonto had been predisposed since birth to a heavy lung that shed sputum and mucus all day long, especially in the wet rainy seasons. It was said it would have even been better if he had been born a mkabira in a land where the air is dry and there is no land to be tilled or river to be ridden. Ukonto now worked as a watchman at the government offices near Shirikisho because he could not farm.

      ‘There are no children here to be sick,’ said Komora Kijana, picking up the food. ‘You can come into the compound.’

      ‘Wewe, what about you?’ Kerekani said, with habitual irritation, appearing from behind the bush. ‘You think you are now a man?’ Komora Kijana thanked her for the food and she left muttering. He winced when he tasted the first mouthful. The millet maize was too soft. Ukonto, it was also said, had weak teeth from his condition. Komora Kijana sniffed at the stew and it had too much pepper. He also saw that the vegetables were too dry.

      Komora Mzee woke up with a few deep coughs. Komora Kijana waited for a few minutes and then went inside and they ate in silence. After the meal, the old man pulled the Book from the eaves above him and dusted off wasps’ eggs and handed it to Komora Kijana. Then the old man started talking in his quick breaths and Komora Kijana wrote it all down with the Youth pen he was so proud of, a prize that he had been given for being first in his fourth form class.

      A month ago the government delegation from Constitution and Water, Katiba and Maji, had come to visit Ozi village and invited Chief Mpango to the Tana People’s Constitutional Conference. The Chief then asked Komora Mzee Wito instead to represent Ozi and the Malachini. With the coming Constitutional Conference the finishing of the Book became even more important. His grandfather said there was no better way to show the people of Katiba and Maji why and how the Malachini lived on the shores of the Tsana. At the conference he planned to give the Kenyan government the Book of his life to explain everything about the Tsana and the Mbakomo, the Malachini, and Ozi.

      Over the last month they had worked till late in the night but when the Gasa started consulting every evening about the coming War between the Tsana and the Indian Ocean they started working till maghreb. Then, Komora’s grandfather would take his hand and they would walk slowly to the hut of the Wazee wa Gasa, near the kizio, and he would send Komora Kijana away.

      Komora Kijana had lived with his grandfather since his parents died ten years ago during the last War between Tsana and Indian Ocean, also known as the El Niño of ’97. Even when his parents were still alive Komora Kijana had gone into his grandfather’s hut every evening to hear stories about the River, his people the Mbakomo, the downriver villages, the Malachini, his own village of Ozi and his clan, the Komora. But that one morning changed everything. Komora Kijana’s father set out up the river to fish at Kau where the sea’s waves at high tide pushed the fresh water trout. The floods had been expected any day and his father wanted to do his last bit of trout fishing before El Niño ’97. But it was as if the Tsana had been waiting just for him.

      Days later his canoe came back empty as the sea tides retreated from the force of the river. Komora Kijana’s mother refused to leave her home till her husband came back. She was bitten by a snake washed out of its hole by the floods days later. When his father’s head was found upstream, the rest of him taken by crocodiles, Komora Kijana’s mother succumbed to the snake-bite. Komora Mzee was unable to speak at the funeral which was held quickly as the water climbed. And his sight and hearing started failing as the thick river spread over Ozi. Later, when the Malachini learned that the Kenyan government had panicked over El Niño’s rainfall and opened the Seven Forks Dam upriver, known as the Seven Stone Men by the Mbakomo, without warning, Komora Mzee blamed his brother, who was Assistant Minister for Water at the time, for the death of his son.

      Komora Kijana went to live with his grandfather. A year later, when he turned eight, he was sent to Ozi Primary School. When he learned how to write his grandfather told him that one day he would help him put down the old man’s life in a book as a way of the Mbakomo recording their lives by the Tsana and even what had happened during El Niño ’97. So, every evening, the old man told his grandson of his long life.

      When Komora Kijana finished primary school his grandfather called the boy to his hut to tell him all the things that young men are told when they leave home. Komora Kijana did not expect to continue his education after primary school after his father’s death but his grandfather sent Komora Kijana to stay with his brother, Komora Mzee Sazi, so he could attend high school in Ngao. After El Niño ’97 the two old men had stopped talking when Komora Mzee Wito accused Komora Mzee Sazi of choosing the government and Kenya over Ozi and his own people. But he also said that Kijana Komora was his brother’s son too when he sent him there.

      Once Komora Kijana arrived in Ngao, Komora Mzee Sazi, whom his grandfather had fallen out with over the Tsana, laughed at this small victory over his older brother and said at least the old fool knew the value of formal education. The four years of secondary school went by quickly and every holiday Komora Kijana went back to Ozi. By Form 2 his grandfather was asking him to write down the things he told him every evening. Just before he did his final exams, Komora Kijana went back to Ngao before that last term and found that Komora Mzee Sazi had had a stroke and was bed-ridden. His younger grandfather lay beneath thick blankets surrounded by several hovering women. The photos on the wall next to his bed were littered with Mzee Sazi’s wordly greatnesses – in one photo he stood with the first two Presidents of Kenya. One of the photos, with Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, had been taken at the site of the largest Stone Man, Masinga Dam, with the rest of the other Seven Stone Men in smaller photos. There was also a photo of a white man with his arm around his second grandfather. Another photo had Komora Mzee Sazi standing before a tall building that said: ministry of water headquarters. With a shaky hand and the smell of illness and lilies from the river, Komora Mzee Sazi scrawled a letter and asked Komora Kijana to go to Kipini Secondary School with the document and give it to the headmaster, Mr Fito. His younger grandfather also looked at him and said an odd thing: ‘Now you have been given the power to read and you must not stop.’ When he saw Komora Kijana’s incomprehension he laughed and then fell back to the bed coughing. He died a week later.

      After Komora Kijana sat his O-level exams he went back to Ozi. Two elders from Komora Mzee Wito’s Sinbad age-group had died within a week of each other and his grandfather was worried he too would be called soon. They started working on the Book every day.

      Komora Mzee Wito handed over an old brown-and-black diary with golden lining that he had been given by his brother when they were still close. The diary was embossed with the crest of the government of Kenya. At the bottom it said ‘Ministry of Water’. The dates inside were from 1990. This became the Book. That had been a year ago.

      Over this period Komora Kijana found some of the things that his grandfather told him strange but he wrote them down without asking questions. Mostly, they told of Komora Mzee Wito’s past journeys