The Lubetkin Legacy

Violet: Karibu

The Nairobi night is warm, perfumed and full of stars so bright and close you almost feel you can reach up your hand and pluck them out of the sky. You only have to walk a few metres away from the low airport buildings to feel its immensity pressing down on you. Violet waits in the taxi queue, letting the smells and sounds of home flood in on her.

‘Langata,’ she tells the driver. ‘Kalobot Road.’

At her grandmother’s house there is a whole reception party waiting for her with hugs, tears and fizzy drinks.

‘Karibu! Karibu mpenzi! Ilikuwaje safari?’

All seven cousins are there and nine children, including three gorgeous babies she hasn’t seen before. The din of adults chattering, babies yelling, kids demanding attention, singing, clapping and the television on full blast in the background is overwhelming. She sits on a wooden chair and gulps down the 7 Up Lynette pours for her, though what she really wants is a cup of milky coffee and her bed.

After they have all gone, she follows her grandmother upstairs to the small mauve-painted bedroom which was once her mother’s. She is already missing her parents and the airy calm of their house in Bakewell. Her Grandma Njoki sits down on the edge of her bed and asks for news about her family. Through the waves of tiredness, Violet assures her that they are well and send their love.

‘When you getting married, mpenzi?’ Her grandmother always asks this. ‘Soon you be over the hill. How old you are?’

‘Only twenty-three. Plenty of time yet. And you, Nyanya, when are you going to find yourself a new man?’

Her grandmother laughs, the big white false teeth flashing in the pink cave of her mouth. ‘You’re a naughty girl even thinking on it. You think God will let me forget Josaphat so soon?’

She asks her grandmother whether she knows of someone called Horace Nzangu.

But Njoki looks blank. ‘He knew Josaphat?’

‘I think Babu Josaphat knew him.’

During her stay in Bakewell she’d shown her parents the copies of the Nzangu GRM re-invoices. They were shocked, angry and alarmed. But their attempts to dissuade her from following up this old story had only fired her sense of adventure.

‘Daddy told me Nzangu used to be a junior administrator in the Mbagathi District Hospital when Babu worked there. He left under a cloud, accused of rinsing and reselling used syringes and surgical instruments back to the hospital.’

‘Why you talking about this jinai, Violet?’

‘Nyanya, you used to say that Babu Josaphat was killed because he stumbled upon some corruption in the hospital, and went to the police.’

But Njoki shakes her head and says she can’t remember a thing, and Violet realises sadly that she probably isn’t saying this from fear, that she really is losing her memory. Her hair is completely white now and her skin wrinkled like Cadaga-tree bark, but her teeth still gleam like piano keys, she wears a flower-patterned pinafore over her dress and she still smells of coconut oil.

‘Mpenzi!’ Njoki holds her tight in her skinny arms. ‘You got so thin! Thanks be to God you have come home. Go to sleep now.’