Author: Juliet Maruru

It was something between My Best Friend’s Wedding and Harper’s Island. The only difference was that my best friend was marrying the man I loved, and the decapitations were of people’s reputations rather than their heads.

Creekside was a really small town. It had retained both its name from colonial eras, as well as the same family names several generations down. Well, to be fair there was a steady migration of people from other parts of the country coming in to work in a recently booming tourist industry; beach hotels, time share villas, 4 star restaurants and hi-tech party clubs, as well as both marine and animal parks in the general coastal area, but most of them lived in the slum area generally called Mtomwandoni. The old families, however, lived along the creek in tracts of land that had been in their family names for decades, only separated by a long murram road called North Creek Road.

Still, everyone knew pretty much everyone else who lived on Creekside. That would explain why the mama mboga at the village market got word to my mum that I was hanging out with Gijo, Kalume and the ganja boys.

I think I had it easy, to be honest. The rumours could have been way worse. I was a tomboy, a safety mechanism if you ask me. Being tough enough to hold up with the boys served two purposes. It comforted me knowing that I was a strong, tough girl. I could hold out on a soccer team, and I had a mean right hook. But it also kept would be wooers at bay. No one wants the tomboy, not really. I’d be safe, I told myself over and over again. No sexual predator would come after me, again.

And so I was marked out as the ‘weirdo’ pretty much from the beginning.

That was fine with me. In the beginning.

The last thing I counted on was that when I finished high school, and took up a job at the North Beach Hotel, I’d meet Christine, and start spending more time away from the boys.

Christine was a rich kid. Her father owned the largest supermarket in Creekside. That was long before Nakumatt showed up at Nyali and became the largest Mall on North Beach. Anyway, Christine lived with her parents and brother on North Creek Road, their house was overlooking a particularly gorgeous part of the meandering creek. They even had a cute little motor boat.

The Bernards, a branch of the original Bernard family that settled in Creekside from France about 12o years ago, were the perfect nuclear family. Dad, white as could be, but very much a Creekside native was a big shot entrepreneur with holidings in hotels and restaurants all over the country and a bit more. Mom, from a Kenyan-African family, that had long been part of the local politics, used her position as the Principal at the Creekside Academy where Christine, her brother Michael, and a bunch of foreign expatriates’ and politicians’ kids schooled at as some kind of stepping stone to a major political career.

The only reason Christine and I met, was because her father had decided to teach her some responsibility before she went off to University. So he had talked to his friend Anil Shah who owned North Beach Hotel, and his precious little daughter had been offered an internship at the hotel – at about the same time I landed the job as a cleaner in the housekeeping department.

So I guess you are wondering how the rich white kid hooked up with the cleaning kid from the slum. Well…

A bunch of us guys were leaving the hotel when our 14 hour shift ended at about 10pm one night. There was a bit if a stretch of murram road from the hotel to the main road where there was a matatu stop, so we all waited up for each other in regard for safety.

And there she was in her perfect little Toyota Starlet with a flat tire. We almost didn’t see her because her car was dark coloured and she was on the other side, crying softly. Crying.

The guys only solution was to either escort her back to the hotel where she could get a taxi home, or call someone who knew how to change a tire. I contemplated between offering my help to change the tire and just letting the guys set up with whatever solution they could come up with.

But I knew how to change a tire, and she did have a spare tire, so I offered myself up eventually. I think I’m glad it was dark enough so I could not see the look on the other guys’ faces.

For a long time after I started working at the hotel, I found it quite hard to make friends with co-workers.

Most girls my age in Creekside were either married, married with kids, or single mothers. I was 19. But the culture in both the african and ‘other’ neighbourhoods was uniquely Creekside culture. Boys went to tertiary schools to get some training then they would come and continue running the family business. Girls would go off to a short term after high school course, if the money was available, to study hairdressing, tailoring or something like that. If the money was unavailable, then the girl in question was to get down to the uniform life goal for any self respecting creekside girl, find a man, get married, and have babies asap.

I considered myself a creekside girl, by virtue of being born here, playing kati and blada with the girls here, graduating to beach soccer with the boys here still. They called me ‘American Woman’. No, I did not have an accent, or an attitude. I was just… Different.

First of all, there was my tag; boyish girl, who played beach soccer, wore fade blue jeans, with rag tears at the knees. I did not carry any girlie stuff in my rucksack, just a couple of 450+ page novels, my writing pad, a pencil pouch and my soccer shorts.

Then there was the value my mother had placed on a good education. It was like a mantra my mother inculcated in us.

Knowledge is power.

Of course, there was the big stumbling block of finance. Money had over time proven to be a very powerful force that held dreams in leash. Although after passing my KCPE’s with quite a high grade, I was unable to go to High School I was called to, because my mother could not afford the entry fees. Instead, I first went to a local district high school that had more affordable costs rates until a private business man offered to fund my education at a private school that offered very good learning facilities and support.

I completed High School at 17 years of age, but unfortunately, I was forced to wait more than two and a half years because I could not immediately afford to join a tertiary institute. Which is why I went to work at the hotel as soon as I turned 18.

It seems that my ideals, to get an education, to be the best I could be, shone through. I was never quite concerned with the things girls my age in my neighbourhood were concerned about; dating, setting up home, being normal.

And here I was, changing a tire.

The only way I could have that kind of skill was if my dad ran the local auto repair shop, or I had access to a car in the family. Because everyone knew my mum, and was aware that she did not own a car, everyone assumed that my father, whom they did not know, was a rich Nairobian. They all knew that my mum was divorced, but everyone suspected mum of being a closet rich mama.

I am not certain I get the reasoning, but I suspect that my mother’s princess attitude helped a lot. Plus there was the fact that mum always sent us to Nairobi every single school holiday, April, August and December. Not too hard to make up stories about where we really went no matter what holiday-at-grandma’s stories we shared with their kids.

I think we got off pretty easy. The wagging tongues of Creekside were pretty vicious. I can actually concieve of them making up some nasty story to explain their certainties and perceptions, to the sound of serial killer mama who had to hide her wealth for some reason. Or maybe a story featuring ajini or two.

The simple truth of the matter was that I was pretty friendly with one of my cousins and during the holidays he would let me help at his autorepair shop.

Bottom line was, Christine was so grateful that she offered us all a lift back into the Creekside shopping centre from where we could depart our ways to our homes. Then, the next morning she picked me up and we went in to work together.

Next thing I know we are scheming and plotting, discovering that the only difference between a creekside rich girl, and a creekside slum girl, was just a whole lot of money, and a car. Other than that we got on so well that I confirmed everyone’s theory that I was a closet rich kid.

In January, which came about 4 months after the tire change, and a whole lot of times in between when I cleaned Christine’s car, covered up for her with her parents when she went off to Malindi with the boy her parents forbade her to see, and generally did her dirty jobs, Christine’s father paid for me to attend a 6 month course in Computing at a local fancy college.

It was not very easy hacking 9 hour shifts – Andre Bernard, Christine’s dad, negotiated with Anil so I got shorter hours and could make the four-hour night classes. The qualifications from that course are what led to my landing the job up at Administration, where I met him.

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