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The bus station in Garissa is a huge open space crammed with everything that people think they know about Africa but have rarely experienced, except perhaps for a few minutes.
Before the enthralled eyes of the three kids, the following passed by in order: wobbly stalls with bases made of fruit and vegetable crates and roofs of corrugated iron, held up by wooden poles eaten away by termites; plump women wrapped in colorful khangas, chopping white cabbage and sukuma leaves on one of the sarongs gathered in their laps; other even fatter women dipping samosas into a concave pan filled with palm oil, balanced precariously on a charcoal stove, individuals trading goats, motorcycles, and umbrellas, young people with crackling radio sets, men bent over sacks of cement or potatoes that they were carrying from a truck to a small shop, girls walking quickly, wrapped in burkas or shamelessly smiling for money, tramps lying on the edges of muddy puddles, immobile elderly people, bewildered by the traffic and modern noises, busy and attentive sellers of everything, young people jumping off the matatus shouting “Nairobi Nairobi” or “Malindi Malindi.”

“Nairobi, Nairobi,” Kali repeated like a parrot.
“Calm down, we have to find ours... we've already booked,” Hussein silenced him.
The huge metal pachyderm called the Garissa Express was resting in front of a petrol station. The side doors of the luggage compartments looked like its ears, open as when elephants sniff danger.
“We have numbered seats,” said Moko, ”we can get on now, there's even a TV inside!”
“Aren't we going to eat anything?”
“Kali's right, we're rich... but don't tell anyone.”
They got rid of a few fifty-shilling coins, buying three chapati, three samosas, three bags of sweetened baobab seeds, and three small bottles of Fanta.
“Wow, this is the life,” commented Moko.

They showed their tickets and took their seats.
With samosas in their mouths, they revelled in the world from the elevated view of the Garissa Express.
None of them felt the slightest nostalgia for Wajir. Kali didn't think about his mother's huge, warm, protective breasts, Moko didn't think about his father's stable and whip, and Houssein didn't think about his bottle of glue.
They fell asleep with their faces red from food coloring and grains of sugar on their necks and T-shirts after a few minutes on the smooth asphalt road. Like little ghosts sucked in by the diverse humanity of the passengers, no one paid any attention to them.
When Moko woke up, the sun was painting the window orange and playing hide-and-seek behind the tall trees of a nearby forest.
“Wake up, Kali... look!”
On the horizon, a mountain surrounded by clouds stood out like a giant with a white hat.
“Look, look... it's Mount Kenya, sleepyheads,“ Hussein teased them. ‘This country is so named because that was a sacred mountain.”
“What does sacred mean?’ asked the illiterate member of the gang.
“Something like God,” said Moko.
“For the Kikuyu, God was the mountain,“ said Hussein.
“They can keep it, God is God, and I don't like the Kikuyu,” Kali concluded.

A thin, hunched man sitting behind them, wearing a curious Scottish cap and a jacket with fur instead of a collar, leaned forward and addressed them with leopard-like eyes.
“What do you have against the Kikuyu, kids?”
“Ah... nothing, nothing,“ Moko said instinctively.
“Are you Kikuyu?” Hussein asked.

“Yes, of course... and as you can see, I don't eat arrogant children.”
“You have a nice hat,” Kali said in a deferential tone.
“Are you traveling alone? Where are you going?”
“To my mother in Nairobi,” replied the ringleader.
The metal elephant pointed its wheels toward the center of Mwingi.
The man in the Scottish hat stood up and greeted the three.
“Be careful in Nairobi, never speak ill of anyone.”

The bus set off again, turning onto the highway to Thika and picking up speed in the deepening darkness, broken here and there by the lights of shops still open and houses along the road.
“Do you have a plan, boss?”
“Sure! As soon as we get there, we'll get a taxi...”
“A what?”
“A car, Kali, a car with a driver who will take us to Eastleigh. Then we'll find a guy who wants to earn a beer...”
“What do you mean?”
“You'll see.”

The highway was still very busy, the streetlights and headlights illuminating the road.

Moko and Kali were mesmerized by the number of vehicles, cars, trucks, pickups, and matatus whizzing by them and in the opposite lane.

All kinds of people, familiar and unfamiliar, were driving.

There were even a few women behind the wheel.

They passed Kenyatta University, saw the endless roofs of the Kahawa shacks and a series of industrial warehouses, fenced-in fields with black and white vehicles instead of cows, then something magical appeared in the chiaroscuro on their left.

“The stadium!”

“Where the Harambee Stars play.”

“Shall we go there sometime?” asked Kali.

“I don't know if we'll have time, but if there's a game on in the next few days, why not?”

The Garissa Express proceeded slowly, accompanied by a soundtrack of car horns blaring in different tones.

The air smelled neither of sand nor burnt trees.

It was like breathing paraffin fumes in a closed room.

“Now!”

The elephant stopped at the corner of the Outer Ring Road.

The three got out quickly, as if they were about to jump out of a plane with parachutes.

“Nairobi, Nairobi!“ Kali shouted.

“Your stuff, you idiot!” Hussein shouted at Moko.

“Nooo!!!”

Moko tried to cling to the Garissa Express as it pulled away and out of the corner of his eye he saw a woman who already had her hands on his backpack.

“How did you do that... don't tell me...”

“I... but you too, you warned us at the last minute...”

Sixty thousand shillings gone just like that.

Hussein took decisive control of the expedition.

He was the most mature, the most experienced, and he felt a certain responsibility.

“From now on, there are no more excuses for anyone, understand? You have to be careful, you're in a city and you're not used to it. Don't let anyone know you're from Wajir. From now on, I'm the only one who speaks, and I'm in charge of the money, understood?”

“Okay, boss,” the two shouted in unison.

They bought three bananas and three small bottles of Coca-Cola, then saw two matatus waiting to speed away, standing in a clearing at the foot of a cliff swallowed up by the night.

One of them had “Kariobangi-Eastleigh” written on it.

“Even better than a taxi,” thought Hussein.

“Come on!”

He paid for three tickets and the matatu slipped with them into the frenetic anarchy of the capital's suburbs.

In New Mathare, the matatu turned onto Juja Road.

Hussein recognized Mama Brian's Hair Salon, where his mother went at least twice a week to have her hair done and he waited three hours in the side alley, playing with other young victims of women's hairstyles, throwing stones at the wall.

Not far away, towards the Pangani neighborhood, was the apartment his mother shared with his aunt Rukia, who was a dancer, and with Kyra and Janet, two friends who in turn invited men, often drunk, to stay. Sometimes he saw some who had already been with his mother entering Kyra's room, or vice versa. Janet almost always brought home old or crippled men.

“You may earn more, but I can't do it,” she heard her mother say one day.

The gang leader decided to go at least three blocks further, so as not to risk meeting her.

The matatu stopped on Fifth Street, right in front of a yellow shack that smelled of grilled meat, enough to wake Big Tumbo from the coma he was in at the Red Cross hospital in Dadaab.

The kids made their triumphant entrance into the tavern.

The manager, a bald Somali with a buffalo snout, welcomed them anything but cordially.

“What do you want at this hour, you little rascals, get out of here!”

“Fiid Wanagssan,” Hussein greeted him in his own language, ”look, we've got the money, here's a thousand shillings, now let us eat, because my mother is making kashanga kashanga and she's waiting for us at home.”

“Yes, boss!” sneered the Somali.

In less than ten minutes, three plates of nyama choma arrived at the table, accompanied by rice, French fries, and kachumbari.

“Anything to drink?”

“No, we have our Cokes. Shukran.”

The manager watched them devour the meat as if they had never seen a piece of roast beef before and drown the potatoes in ketchup like a parliamentarian opening a bottle of champagne, looking at each other with satisfaction.

“They can't be more than thirteen years old, yet they act like adults,” he thought.

A loud burp from Kali seemed to confirm his intuition.

“That's 1,050... you're 50 shillings short, but I'll give you a discount,“ said the buffalo, dismissing them. ‘Say hello to your mother and tell her to come by... maybe there's work for her, so you'll have another nyama choma to eat!”

“Fuck you, shababu,’ Hussein wanted to yell at him as he left.

“Let's go,” he said to his friends instead.

They turned onto 18th Street and stopped in front of one of the many bars on the street.

Somalis, although Muslims, when they decide to drink, they go at it with gusto and almost always end the evening in memorable and even entertaining brawls, when knives don't come out. Hussein, however, was looking for a Kenyan, one of those quiet men who wander around late at night with a briefcase or a newspaper under their arm and strike up conversations with everyone, hoping that someone will offer them a drink.

“There he is,” he whispered to his young accomplices.

Elias had been out of work for five days.

After ten honorable seasons as an accountant for an old Indian man on First Avenue, with whom he shared masala tea in the morning and Famous Grouse Whisky in the evening, the Indian had died and the fabric and carpet shop had closed its doors.

All he had left was a pittance from the Indian's wife and his addiction to alcohol.

He had subsequently found a couple of temporary jobs, but he was getting older and it was becoming increasingly difficult to wake up early in the morning after a night of homemade brandy made with methanol.

That evening, he would have sold his backside to a Pakistani for a sip of Furaha.

“Sir, sir!”

“Three kids are calling you, Elias, no... I don't think it's possible. But I haven't been drinking... they're coming towards me... what can I get from three kids? Only trouble... there are baby gangs around here... what can they steal from me, my shoes with holes in the soles, maybe?”

“Sir... we need a favor... do you want to earn yourself a drink?”

“Angels! You are angels, not children. Did you read my mind? How can I help you, children? Have you lost your way home, do you need to find your parents?”

“Not exactly... we need to book a room at the Riverside Hotel, and you have to be our uncle... or rather, Kali's dad, he's the blackest of the three, and our uncle. My name is Hussein, and he's Moko. When we're outside the hotel, we'll give you the money for three nights, then you take us up there, we'll give you another 500 shillings, you pick up the document and say you'll come back to get us in three days, okay?”

“Let's make it 1,000 shillings.”

“Let's make it 600 or we'll find someone else like you.”

“Deal, 600 is fine,” Elias winked.

The Riverside Hotel, on 11th Street, occupies a five-story brown-tiled, damask-patterned building that looks like a soccer ball or a shower mat. There are thirty small rooms, three meters by two. On the third floor, there is one with four beds and a small bathtub. Room 313.

“That's fine, thanks,” said Elias in a professional tone. ”Here's the money in advance. Please keep an eye on my boys. I'll be back to pick them up on Saturday morning.”

Meanwhile, Moko jumped for joy on the real beds, while Kali looked out the window at the streetlight casting long shadows of the bar patrons where they would have breakfast the next morning with mandazi as puffy as the pillows in the room. Hussein was already in the bathtub, smoking a cigarette from the pack he had made Elias buy, leaving him a couple.

(end of second episode - to be continued tomorrow)

Photo by Leni Frau