food drop

My apartment here is across the street from the UN High Commission on Refugees, and across the street from that is a ditch, and in that ditch live about 30 displaced persons, mostly kids. I'd avoided talking to them for the first couple months. Not out of fear, nor ignorance, but just following Biggie's dictum: "Never sell no crack where you rest at."

But inevitably my curiosity got the upper hand. My initial contact was Marcel, a charismatic "preacher" from the Congo. He showed me his papers, confirming his official refugee status, then hit me up for money for his parishioners. When I declined, he asked me to send a letter to his "prophet", some two-bit messiah in Tennessee. I declined that task too, and that was when Marcel offered to baptise me. I told him I was already baptised, but he assured me that two baptisms were better than one.

He took me aside, arm over my shoulder, and showed me some pictures of his ramshackle church in the Congolese bush. He showed me some pictures of his parishioners too, and his village. Then he showed me his baptism pool, a concrete box that looked like a horse trough. He looked around then lowered his voice and looked me in the eye.

"I've baptised sixteen hundred and eighty-three people." He made it sound rakish and crude, like an old man in a locker room tallying his sexual conquests.

I made other friends among the refugees over time, especially Ndjeni (sp?) a Burundian mechanic who, unsolicited, told me his favorite poet was Baudelaire. I asked him why he was living here in a ditch. "Better than the camp," was his reply. I got him a job doing automotive electrical wiring with my friend Amousze, but he stopped showing up after a little while.

There were also the kids, young and small, their growth stunted from malnutrition. Over time, my heart softened a little, and as the pleas for food became more shrill, I caved.

Uchumi is the downscale Nairobi supermarket, and in the back you can buy 25 kilo bags of maize and 10 kilo bags of beans for about 5 bucks each. The beans are in clear plastic bags, which is useful, since you can check them for bugs, as about 10% of the supply is infested. I bought about $75 bucks of staple food, plus some bananas, mangoes, lollipops for the kids, and high-nutrition baby porridge for the little ones. Then caught a taxi back to the ditch. The driver asked me if I intended to give the food to the refugees, then laughed, then clucked, then shook his head.

The crush started before I even left the car. When I opened the trunk I had to literally push some people back so it wouldn't hit them in the face. The kids took the suckers and distributed them according to some complex and doubtlessly unfair scheme. Then they started grabbing, and shoving, and yelling and punching. Then the adults joined in. I had to do some crowd control, but fortunately I've got a loud voice.

"KNOCK IT OFF OR NOBODY GETS ANYTHING."

They calmed down a little, and looked at me expectantly. So, think fast.

"OK, CONGO!"

Marcel took control of that, distributing the food to his countrymen.

"RWANDA!"

A fat, pushy lady scoped up two bags and a bunch of bananas. She looked as likely to starve to death as I was.

"BURUNDI!"

Ndjeni and his friends.

"SOMALIA!"

So easy to recognize with their high foreheads and almond eyes.

"SUDAN!"

Beautiful, statuesque woman, black as coal, with about eight kids.

"ETHIOPIA!"

I was running out of food. Had I forgotten anybody?

"TANZANIA!"

No takers, but there was still a diminuitive lady with like six kids looking at me expectantly.

"Uganda?"

No.

"Eritrea?"

Of course not.

"Chad?"

She laughed, then exclaimed, "Mozambique!"

"Mozambique!" This surprised me. "Voce fala portugues?"

"Kidogo."

I laughed and gave her the last of the food, feeling chuffed, and maybe a little messianic myself.

Then deflated, as I watched the fat Rwandan waddle over with the bag of corn, and stack it next to the four other sacks she'd already managed to wrangle out of my neighbors.