I'm gettin' married!

The Facebook, A murder and Prison: A fictional story of true events

Pious Onyango Ombede awoke with facebook on his mind. Most mornings he woke up with chai on his mind, or school fees, or occasionally, in the life he left behind, it was the headache in his mind from the drinks the night before.  But unlike most mornings, the somewhat mysterious and coveted something, “the facebook” seemed to lure him out of bed with such curious intensity that he arose, dressed and left his house immediately. Although he claimed to know nothing of computers, he also knew that if he wanted the facebook, a computer would not help. The closest internet café was all the way in town, which is an unreasonable distance for a reasonable man. But phones on the other hand, were a common commodity. Everybody had some kind of Mobile. How else would someone “MPESA” money to their family? How else would someone “Flash” their friend to say hi? Having a mobile was a must. It made up for all sorts of woes in the world.

Alice, his wife, stood bent over the fire blowing at the milk to avoid a spillover. She glanced upside down at his blue sandals shuffling his feet along the freshly swept dirt. He was shuffling right past his breakfast and she wondered what he was up to.

Although he felt a quickening in the usual pace of his heart, there was no change in his perpetually relaxed way of getting from one place to another. At 5 feet 8 inches he looked precisely his age, and his face possessed that rare quality of precisely portraying his life. This morning he looked decidedly well rested with a hint of apprehensive curiosity. “Will I really find a mobile with the facebook for 2,000 bob?” he wondered as he pressed on.

As he reached the roadside he wove purposely through the regulars who were setting up their wares for the day. Godfrida with her pastel wash basins, Mama Martin with mounds of clothes spread in disarray over old feedbags, Boaz straddling a stool selling nothing but trouble and a radio. As Onyango thoughtlessly avoided a chicken and her entourage, he came to the conclusion that yes, the facebook would be a bigger investment than just the cost of the phone. Connections, a whole other world, a better life awaited him.

Ah! At last. “Eh! Oyoure?” he called a good morning over at Isaac, the fat phone dealer straining his old eyes over the padlock. Owning a shop next to the mandazi dognut maker is too much a temptation for anyone to bear and he had given up the resistance long ago. “Oyowre a enya…..Sema?” he asked, finally standing up with difficulty and a deep grunt from the arduous opening of the lock.

As Onyango explained his pressing desire for the facebook, Isaac shook his head in dismay…”Ah, bro…you  don’t need one of those! Look here, what I have, if you need a new phone I’ll give you the best price. You and I have been friends a long time, don’t worry, I’ve got something for you.” “No Isaac, I have a phone. I just want to see this here, the facebook. You don’t have? Kweli?” A sudden stab of disappointment hit him in his chest and his face reflectively cringed. “tss tsss…Aye buana, sure?”

The fat man nestled his body comfortably in his shaded stall and pointed his lips and his eyes in the direction of Boaz, still slouching on the stool. “You know, I saw Boaz trying to buy a mobile with the facebook from a guy just the other day. Couldn’t pay you know? 2,000 bob for that thing. But kweli, that is cheap. It must have been broken.”

Now that sounded promising. And after further inquiry, the man in possession of the facebook mobile was still willing to sell for 2,000 shillings! Boaz gave the directions somewhat jealously and followed him with a mouth chattering away on Onyango’s shoulder until at last he was distracted by a woman garbed entirely in purple heading to town with a suitcase on her head, a purse in her hand and a high heal stuck in tangled barbed wire.

Onyango sidled slowly into the compound and looked around to detect any signs of life. All was still and even after he wrapped on the wooden door, it took several minutes for anyone to answer. Just as he began to walk back, the door opened and a man with glossy eyes looking far away stood there expectantly. Onyango tirelessly explained for the third time that morning his desire to have a mobile with the facebook and this time, there was an affirming smile spread over the blind man’s face. “Ah!” he said. “ Come in. I have just what you are looking for. Will you take tea?  Yes, of course you will, and bread? I have bread.”

The mobile immerged from the back room, sleek and dark as a black mamba, and just as poisonous too. Onyango unknowingly held and carelessly caressed the venomous thing, easily imagining how casually he could whip it out of his pocket and possess all the good things that could come of it. His motives were honest, pure, innocent and harmless, yet he knew not its sly power, nor where it had come from.

The deal was made and the phone was monetarily half his and wholly in his hands. He thanked the man, taking his phone number to MPESA him the other half of the bill when his own pocket would allow.

Two weeks passed with no detection of the evils awaiting him. The phone sat in a drawer, waiting for the last payment to be made. “I better not use it until it is completely mine, then I will feel right to use it” he thought. On the very day he made his last payment he came home from work early. He had been welding at Nehemiah, feeling that the day was normal. His face was bland, a bit sweaty from the bicycle ride home, and his lips stuck to his teeth with dry, viscous saliva. He called for Diana, his daughter, to fetch some drinking water. He sat down with his head lowered to his chest, resting outside of his house and waited.

He awoke from a doze by the sound of footsteps, and thinking they were his daughter’s, he cheerfully looked up at her. But it was not Diana he saw, nor Alice, nor anyone familiar. A policeman armed with an AK-47 and duplicated 7 times behind approached with hand cuffs and a frown. Onyango’s eyebrows pulled together in puzzlement and his bewildered cheeks rose in honest protest. “Are you Pious Onyango Ombedde? You are under arrest.”

“Why did you arrest me?” Onyango retorted fiercely.

“Where’s the phone?” the policeman stabbed back.

“The phone? The one with the facebook? Inside.”

All 8 of them marched inside tearing the house apart and taking anything of consequence. His tape measure which Boyce gave him, his leatherman knife, his new grinder, all supposedly stolen, as was the receiptless phone they found in the drawer. Onyango, the thief, no, the murderer they said as they filed him passed his wife, passed the overthrown table and into the car.

The black mamba bore his teeth, and pierced him. “What is my crime? “ he wondered. “How did they know I had the phone?”

The police customarily took him to the elder counsel for a background check.

“No,” the elder said firmly. “Onyango is not the sort to do such things. I have known him many years.”

His crime was described to the elder as follows: The man who stole this phone killed the original owner.  Because of the high technology of this phone, we were able to track him to Mamboleo.  We will take him to the prison in Siyaya to be tried for the theft of this mobile and the murder of so and so, that one politician’s son.

The murder of a politician’s son? Mobs, political violence, theft and murder….Onyango never dreamed that this would be the new world of connections his new mobile with the facebook would bring. But there he was, handcuffed in the dark of night, travelling to his needless imprisonment. “I have made a mistake, I admit I made a mistake, the worst mistake….I didn’t even have a receipt.” He moaned hopelessly to himself, half confessing to Jesus, half pounding himself for not being smarter.

Eighteen of the longest days he ever spent went by, his face sagged along with his foggy mood and the horrors of life inside with the inmates were too unspeakably burdensome to the mind as to cause him never to tell of them again and therefore will remain unknown to us.

However one of those 18 days held an unexpected surprise which saved him. One of the Kenyan Nehemiah board members made a phone call.

-Put him on the phone, I want to speak with Onyango.

-Unheard of. You can’t speak to him.

-I’ll speak to him

The details of the bail are uncertain. But one thing is true: Kenyans know how to take care of each other in a pinch. The anti-venom for the black mamba facebook phone took Pious Onyango Ombede by surprise, shook him up and put him flat on his face in awe of life, and of God (“I would never have made it out of there without God.”)

Pious Onyango awoke with the facebook on his mind. Still curious. Humbled, doubtful, and more than ever aware of the fragility of a day. He shuffled again across the freshly swept dirt in his blue sandals and sat with Alice, sipping chai.