Rafiki Man Guitar by Meja Mwangi

Author:Meja Mwangi [Mwangi, Meja]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HM Books
Published: 2018-11-07T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty

The tenants’ revolution happened one dark, moonless night, when some destitute tenants, facing ultimate annihilation by destitution, overburdened by over-demanding landlords and weary of running to hide whenever landlords were sighted coming to collect rent, made their desperate move. They secretly packed up their misery and quietly slipped out of Majengo along with their children, their chickens and all their belongings, and made their way to Liki River forest to start a new life. More people followed, sneaking out of Majengo on the next moonless night and the next and the next. Months passed, while those left behind waited to see what would happen to those who had dared leave. Nothing happened.

News filtered back that the exiles had found their promised land, a land with no landlords or chiefs and only the occasional policemen. Then the exodus started. Every night thereafter, a river of humanity left Majengo loaded with beds, mattresses, tables, chairs and other personal possessions, and snaked its way through the Asian quarters and across the Nanyuki River. It crossed the aptly named Lunatic Lane and, eventually, arrived in the promised land, an empty swathe of Government land along the Liki River. There by the banks of Liki River, the former tenants founded for themselves and their children a new life and a new town, an inner city to rival Mogadishu and Sector E in every way. They called it Liki Village.

They settled down to living their lives, much as they always had, except that this time they did not have landlords or policemen to bother them. They brewed and they drunk and feasted, in celebration of liberation, in a mammoth party that never ended. Ultimately, partying became a part of their daily life, their new identity.

They partied and sang so loud, and for so long, that they not only woke up the police station next door, but they also were heard by their blood roots miles away in Majengo. The brothers in Sector E instantly lit up in jubilation, and danced and partied and smoked so much that, for days, the smoke hovered in a cloud over Majengo and it eventually attracted the attention of policemen from across town. The policemen and the firemen who responded in alarm found no visible fire but, instead, they encountered an overwhelming haze, the strong smell of grass and a lot of happy people everywhere, dancing to ear-splitting reggae music and singing in wild abandon. But, while their rent-defying brothers across the river in Liki Village sang Oh Freedom all night long, good old Sector E danced to Black Uhuru and sang about their storks of sinsemilla growing in the backyard.

The police and the firemen renamed the place Jamaica Town and never set foot there again, not even when the happy people set off real fires to protest rent increases and, in the process of punishing the landlords, incinerated their own property along with the houses. The residents of happy Jamaica lived up to everyone’s expectation, and even bettered it, by making certain that no stranger left the place un-mugged.

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