Walking Home Read Online Free

find work. I’d never been there, but I’d heard stories of big buildings, road crammed with cars and people on all the streets. The city was supposed to goon forever—houses, apartments, people, cars, carts and
matatus.
Sometimes my father had had to go there for business. He said he was always grateful to come home because Eldoret was paradise compared to Nairobi.
    For me, Eldoret was all I’d ever known. It was where I was born and raised, and where my father said I would eventually marry, have children of my own, take over the homestead and store, and someday die. All that talk about marriage and taking over the homestead just seemed like so much talk, it made me laugh. Little did I know how soon the store and homestead would be gone, and how close to death I almost came to be. Eldoret had changed from paradise to hell.
    Those in the camp who had been to Nairobi and were fortunate to find a job or a benefactor would come back with new cooking pots, thick blankets, warm clothing, a new mattress, or even a chicken or goat to be slaughtered. How long had it been since I’d tasted goat meat? We’d always had goats at our homestead, enough to milk and butcher for meat for holidays.
    If I were a little bit older or my mother a little bit stronger, one of us would have gone looking for day labor outside the camp. Now, all she could do was rest and all I could do was search for wood and fetch water.
    I felt a sense of relief as I stepped through the gate. I took a deep breath, hoping that the air would feel different. It didn’t. I looked back through the wire to allthe tents and all the activity. The crowds, the smell, the dust when it was dry and the mud when it was wet—it all drew me back. Part of me wanted to turn around and go back inside the wire. When I was inside I wanted out, and when I was out I wanted to be back inside.
    What I really wanted was to be home.
    Just outside the gate, sitting under the shade of a bush, were two girls and a boy. All three of them were about my age—maybe a year older or younger. They seemed to be waiting for something. It wasn’t wise to go out alone, so if they were going out for wood, they might be waiting for more people to join them. Maybe four would be enough. I walked over.
    “Hello, I am Muchoki,” I said, speaking directly to the boy, because it would not be proper to address the girls.
    The boy got to his feet. He was no bigger than me. “I am Jomo. These are my sisters, Kioni and Makena.” All three were dressed in clean clothing with no holes, although only the boy wore shoes. “We are from Webuye. And you?”
    “Eldoret.”
    They all took on the same look of concern that people did whenever my town was mentioned.
    “It was bad there,” Jomo said.
    “It was bad everywhere, but I’ve been told it was among the worst there.” I paused and offered a nervoussmile. Somehow it felt shameful to be from an area that had had so much violence. “I am going to find fuel for the fire and was looking for company,” I said.
    “As are we,” Jomo said.
    “Do you think the four of us would be enough?” I asked.
    “The two of us would be enough,” Jomo said. “We could send the two of them back to the camp to cook, but they both have strong backs.”
    “We could work together and split what we find in quarters, each getting our share,” I suggested.
    “You are fair. Do you have a knife or an axe?” Jomo asked.
    I shook my head.
    He pulled up his tattered sweater to reveal a machete hanging in a sheath around his neck. “We will use this, to cut the wood and to have—just in case it is needed to cut something else. Let us set off.”
    Jomo started off toward the highway and I fell in beside him. The two girls got up and trailed behind us. There were people—in ones and twos—extending over the hill ahead of us, marking the way. In the beginning we’d have had to only go a few hundred meters, but now, less than a month since we’d moved here, the walk could be