Barbizon Ghettos
I had a friend that lived across town from me in Nairobi1, so I’d take a bus downtown and then take another to his home in Buru Buru. One Saturday I missed my exit.
I thought to myself that instead of panicking, I should just relax and wait for the bus to go back downtown. I would either take the same bus back towards Buru Buru or I’d take one home to Westlands. Buru Buru was a tough place, not quite a shanty but close enough: a mass produced housing estate filled with low income families. I remember on a stretch of highway into the heart of Buru Buru I’d see graffiti on the side of one of the homes which said Welcome to the Barbizon Ghettos.
The Barbizon School was a group of painters whose goals in part were to abandon formalism and draw inspiration from what was around them. Rather than orchestrated scenes with false backdrops, they painted what was around them, including peasants. Too often our eyes work to give our surroundings an imposed beauty. The graffiti artist asked me to really look and acknowledge the landscape. 
The bus went deep into the heart of the ghetto, and each stop seemed a little worse than the next. As rough as things had been, they seemed to be getting progressively more destitute, and my heart began to sink lower and lower as we passed shelters built from polythene boxes, rocks, and mud. I comforted myself with the feeling of movement and looked outside the window. It concerned me that it was late afternoon and soon it would be getting dark.
KBS (Kenya Bus Service) divided the work on the bus between a driver and a conductor. The conductor took your money and gave you a ticket. They had ancient machines that they’d use when you paid your fare. My Swahili was poor and I couldn’t speak English without my accent blaring so I would exchange my money for the ticket without saying anything. The conductor would usually look at my shoes and sneer; he had me all figured out.
Once, a student at my father’s school was taking public transport home on a crowded bus. The government was cracking down on the overcrowding by arresting passengers and this hapless West African was taken to jail along with some other people who were trying to get home. He disappeared for more than a week and I remember driving around with my father as he tried to locate him. His wife and children were, of course, desperate. He was eventually found and released. 
It was twilight when we stopped in Mathari Valley. Mathari Valley was the kind of place that took hope and dismembered it in the slow and deliberate way a lion tears off pieces of its victim with its jaws: slow, audible, bloody, gory. It is the place that comes to mind in moments with the metaphor: it sucks the air out of your lungs and stokes the fear in the bottom of your gut. In the brightest daylight, the place seemed dark and here, with light fading, the bus stopped. It was rumored that there was a mental hospital somewhere in Mathari, but the whole place seemed maddening: an ocean of desperate poverty, corrugated shacks, and brokenness. The remaining passengers were slowly getting off when a sound went off in the distance. I don’t remember what it was; perhaps a shout or a scream. People rushed off and began running towards it shouting in excited Swahili. The conductor and driver were right behind them and soon I was left alone, in the dark, in the back of the bus.
I thought it could be a mob justice.
Mob justice is not uncommon in Kenya. A panicked shout of mwezi (thief) is all it takes to have a horde of justice wield itself upon the accused. It’s a frightening prospect for anyone suspect: not only do you have time to defend yourself but your innocence is considered far after the fact. You might be burned, trampled, even stoned before the mob cross examines itself. Jonathan saw mob justice once. This was the closest I got, if indeed it happened at all.
There are moments for which no words can do justice and this was a powerful one. I remembered that neither had I told my parents where I was going nor had I told my friend I was coming. I remember waiting and waiting for what seemed like moments when I could breath several times for each ticking second that elapsed.
A different conductor appeared. He wasn’t surprised by my presence on the empty bus and grunted at me with his ancient ticketing machine, brandishing it with the sort of pride little kids do when they get pieces of candy. I gave him money for a ticket and he walked to the front. It took another 25 minutes for the bus to fill up and head back downtown.
Even today I can recall the moment well. It seems odd because I didn’t really do anything, and nothing really drastic happened. But I was moved through time and space to really know fear, dread, panic, sorrow, bleakness and a loss of hope at the same time. Maybe that’s how I feel when I think of Africa. It’s been so long that my memories are just essences, such as this one.
1Apologies for any inaccuracies related to Nairobi's geography; it's been a long time.
10:12:45 PM 
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