Log in
1
By the year 2021, it had become a familiar sight to see Chinese construction workers building this and that in Kenya. One such project was the thirty-kilometre stretch that ran past my home to the main tarmac road, whose tender to install culverts, sewer lines, and tarmac had been awarded to a Chinese Construction Company.
There had been debates in the international papers with some saying that such jobs should have been left to the local companies. I had no problem with the Chinese construction companies getting the jobs as long as said tenders were won fairly, the contracts made agreeable to all the concerned parties, and the jobs delivered in an efficient and timely manner.
My view being that what was more urgent in my country was fast infrastructural development to open up rural areas to development and urban markets. Where tarmacked roads existed, electricity followed. Where electricity followed, opportunities for self-employment increased. Where all three existed; access to services and products improved and the rates of rural-urban migration reduced.
And it seemed that the government of the time was of the same opinion.
More Chinese contractors kept coming in.
But it was a strange relationship; between us and the Chinese. There had been cases of racial abuse and there had also been cases of blatant discrimination and demeanment of Kenyans by some of the Chinese arriving in the country.
But it was also a double-edged sword. Kenyans also looked at the Chinese with general suspicion. Their purpose in the country was known, but as to who they were, their culture, their lifestyle, and even their language were all too foreign.
Every once in a while, I’d read of a dispute between local traders and some of the Chinese who had started competing in the second-hand clothing business in Kenya as well as in the electronics businesses. Local traders often questioned why the Chinese government was not helping in the creation of jobs locally but instead allowing its citizens to compete with local Kenyans for local jobs. I’d also wonder in the same lines and, held the opinion that the Chinese government could open up more opportunities for skills development and technology transfer, and as well help in the establishment of local industries.
But overall, I only looked on with a welcoming attitude towards the road development projects, while being nonchalant about the Chinese arriving in the country.
As did many Kenyans. But for the women and men who sold fruits, food, water and other necessities to the Chinese workers, as well as the traders who engaged with them, most of everyone else did not pay them much mind. Kenyans more or less received the same treatment from them. Not only did they live in their own campsites, and their own communities which they would establish wherever they went, but also, they’d began bringing their own supplies, which further limited their interactions with the local communities.
It did not help that a huge wall in the name of a language barrier existed between Kenyans and the Chinese.
Overtime, the presence of the Chinese construction workers somehow faded into the background of my mind, but I’d always wait with curiosity to read about the projects that had been completed. If I ever paid any attention to the workers, it would just be a glance, and then I’d be on my way.
Until that day.
2
The building from which I had rented my single room received water supply on a ration basis. Usually, one day in a week, specifically, on Saturday mornings. We, the residents, would then wash our clothes and our living quarters, and then we’d store enough water in buckets, drums and in any other water storage equipment that we could find. That is all the water that we had for our personal use until the next water day. If one missed fetching water on the set date, then one would be forced to buy expensively priced water from vendors who usually sold their water from donkey carts and water trucks.
In the early days of renting the room, I had more often than not been away on Saturdays, so I more than not know the frustrations of missing out on the Saturday water supply. After learning from the mistakes of my novice days, I had graduated into a water-storing expert who filled every nook of space in her room with water-storage equipment. For instance, 5 Litre water jerry cans lined up all the way from my door to the depths of the spaces beneath my bed. And still, that water would only ever be enough to last me a week. It was not ideal. But joblessness meant that I had to live within my means, and that meant renting a single room whose rent I could somehow afford. This said affordability, unfortunately did not come with either storage tanks or a water borehole.
Sometimes, I would stand by the roadside and look in awe at the high-rise apartment buildings that neighboured the single-story rental apartment that I lived in. I would envy the residents living in those high-rise apartments, certain that given the enormous water storage tanks on their rooftops, they would most definitely have flowing tap water from Monday to Monday.
It was, in fact, not uncommon to see such expensively priced high-rise residential buildings bordering low-cost single-story buildings such as the one that I lived in. As the peri-urban areas of Kenya had opened up to accommodate the large influx of people moving to urban areas, the need for varied-cost houses had grown, and the previously seen cases where residential areas would be separated by income levels, as was the situation in posh residential areas such as those of Muthaiga and Lavington, had drastically reduced.
But now, faced with a Chinese man, I did not know whether to use English, Swahili, my mother tongue, or, suddenly conjure some Chinese fluency.
On that specific Saturday, I had packed a whole week’s worth of dirty clothing in my laundry bag which I planned on washing, and I was also planning on cleaning my room. Not to mention that after un-braiding my hair from the thick braids that I had been spotting, it also needed a thorough washing. After applying for several jobs, a fairly positive response from a job interview had finally come through, but I was still strapped for cash so I saved it whenever I could. That meant washing my hair, and braiding it on my own rather than going to the salon. Usually, I would put it in large cornrows or large braids. That had been my plan; wash it, let it air dry as I washed my clothes and cleaned my room, and then blow-dry it with a hot comb before braiding it.
And so with my to-do list for the morning already set, I put my red comb in my un-braided hair, and carried my water buckets to the water fetching common area. Some of my neighbours had already started queueing and we chatted about random this and that. But as time passed, we started getting anxious when we noticed that water was not coming from the taps as scheduled. Still, we continued waiting for an hour or more, and still, the taps were running on dry.
“This kind of situation has never occurred before,” said one of the neighbours who had been a long-term resident in the building. The water company’s water pumping hours were always set. By eight in the morning, we could almost always be assured that water would start flowing from the taps.
One of us visited the landlord’s house, a three-bedroom maisonette which was just a stone’s throw away to find out if the landlady had any information regarding the water situation. She came out and assured us that she had already paid the previous month’s water bill, so there was no reason for the water company to cut the water supply. She gave them a call, but no matter how many times she tried calling them, no one would pick from their end. We couldn’t even fault them for unreliability as they had always been reliable before.
The water company that supplied our water, constituted of elderly local area residents who’d had the land for at least a generation or two, and who had come together to dig a borehole that would be used to solve the incessant water challenges that the area had been facing. In time, as the area developed, a larger population began swarming in, which forced water demands to grow in tandem. The water company realized an opportunity in the new demand and added one more borehole so that they could acquire contracts to connect the emerging buildings to the borehole water and thus increase their revenue. But to ensure that water levels in the boreholes did not reduce too drastically, the water company would only supply water on a ration basis.
We had already deliberated on what the issue could have been and we still came up empty. Until, suddenly, someone pointed out that the road repair works that were happening in the area could have somehow interfered with the water supply pipes.
That, had to be it! I figured. I did not wait for anyone else to add another comment before marching out of the building gate, uncombed hair and all. As I walked, I secured my leso tightly around my waist. I was heading towards the area where the construction company workers were doing the road repair works, but somehow, it felt like I was headed to the battlefield.
3
I couldn’t get there fast enough. It was a roughly two-hundred-metre walk but it felt like a two-kilometre walk. If they had interfered with the water pipes, that would have been catastrophic. The worst-case scenario would have been for that assumption to turn out to be correct.
One of the issues that Kenyans had with road construction companies was the seemingly inevitable interference with water pipes. Whenever this happened, it would often take a very long time to get the water pipes reconnected back, as usually, the contractors would leave them in their state of disconnect even if they had been damaged in the course of their work, while the water companies would wait on the contractors to give them a compensation before agreeing to reconnect the water pipes back. What ensued was sometimes weeks long and in worst case scenarios, months long wait before water supply was back to normal scheduling. Just imagining such a scenario made me shudder.
In my version of demanding to see the restaurant manager, I asked the first Kenyan man that I encountered at the work site to point me towards their site manager. His eyes widened. It was not every day that someone walked up to him demanding to see his manager. Especially not someone with a leso tied across their waist while their dishevelled hair bounced in and out of every direction of the compass. But that was the least of my concerns. All I could think about was going straight to the head. If the construction company had anything to do with the water problem, the person to be talking to had to be the manager.
Probably not wanting to linger around my scowl for any longer than he had to, the Kenyan man who was visibly younger than myself, pointed me towards a man who was standing in front of a construction truck.
Said man was intensely focused on a tablet or some other device that was in his hands. His back was turned to me and I could not see his face clearly. On his head was a large round bucket hat, on his feet a pair of black boots, on the rest of his body, a blue striped shirt tucked inside a pair of blue faded jeans.
I walked towards him, and as though sensing my presence, he turned his face towards me. That was great, because I was more than ready to query him about the water pipe situation. But no sooner had I opened my mouth to speak, than it occurred to me that in front of me, was standing a Chinese man, and I did not, for the heaven of me, know the language that I was supposed to use in order to communicate with him.
Only moments prior, I’d spoken to the young Kenyan man in Swahili and he had naturally responded to me in Swahili. My rant, and follow-up arguments if needed, had also been mentally readied in Swahili. But now, faced with a Chinese man, I did not know whether to use English, Swahili, my mother tongue, or, suddenly conjure some Chinese fluency. I opened my mouth, and then shut it, then gave another try, before giving up.
How did one even say hello in Chinese? Never before had I bothered to look up anything about the Chinese language. I didn’t even know what it sounded like.
Once upon a time, I had so enthusiastically planned on learning languages. I had hovered between learning either Spanish or French. Spanish because growing up, Mexican films had been very popular in Kenya. French because, well, everyone else said that they wanted to learn French and so it seemed like the language to learn. However, my enthusiasm for learning languages had died as soon as it began.
And now, in front of a Chinese man, who more than likely was the culprit behind the water problem that we were facing, I found myself going mum at the uncertainty of the language that I was supposed to use. And so I did the only wise thing that I could think of. Which was to make a quick U-turn and head back to the direction where I had come from.
But before I had completed the U in the turn, I remembered that there was still the young Kenyan man who I could talk to about my problems. Seeing though as to how he had already borne witness to my failed attempt at speaking to his boss, and also aware that I had also attracted the attention of the other workers, I suddenly felt rather embarrassed at having to approach him again.
But thinking of the bigger picture, I swallowed whatever pride I had, and approached him once more. I explained to him that our building, which was roughly 200 metres away from the road, was supposed to receive water supply on Saturdays, but for the first time since any of us could remember, the taps were dry. I finished by telling him that we held the suspicion that in the process of repairing the road, they, the constructors, had interfered with the water pipes. I said the last statement with a conviction as though a lawyer daring him to deny the statement.
Unknowing to me, as soon as I had started rattling my issues to the Kenyan man, the Chinese site manager had started approaching. He asked the Kenyan man if there was a problem. Only after he had asked that question did it occur to me that he had spoken in English. We had a common shared language, albeit foreign to both of us, but still, it was a starting point! And just as soon as that information registered in my head, I turned to him, and started explaining what the problem was. But he did not bother listening, instead pointing me to the Kenyan man before leaving me mid-conversation.
I was rattled. And peeved that he could just so easily wave someone away while they were speaking to him. But I had to keep my composure. Of critical importance was getting information about the water issue.
The Kenyan guy indeed admitted they had disconnected some of the water pipes to allow them to do some dredging works or something around that statement. ‘But why had they not given us a notice?’ I was exasperated. Turned out that they had spoken to the water company in advance to warn them not to pump any water as they had disconnected the water pipes. It seemed then that the water supply company was aware of the situation, but had both failed to inform the construction workers that residents relied on the once a week water supply and also, had failed to inform those who relied on the water that there wouldn’t be water supply come Saturday.
I was frustrated. But there was no one else to complain to. The water company offices were quite a distance away, and further complaining wouldn’t exactly help me out of my predicament since after all, the water pipes were already disconnected.
That morning’s encounter left me with such a rush and I suddenly felt so exhausted. I walked away from that site, but not before giving the Chinese site manager one final glare.
Had he always held that kind of attitude? Or was it only directed towards certain people? The certain people in my assumption obviously being Kenyans. I was obviously irritable and I figured that the best thing for me to do was to go back to my room and lie on my bed.
Someday, I told myself, I’d drill my own borehole and have my own endless supply of water. I let that pleasant dream sweep me into deep sleep.
4
I woke up a few hours later to my neighbour knocking at my door. She was telling me to wake up so that I could fetch water. For a moment, I assumed that I was still in my dream of endless water supply, but when the knocking became incessant, I realized that indeed water had finally started running, I woke up and rushed out with my buckets. That would only have meant that the construction company had finished doing whatever it was that they had been doing, fixed the water pipes back and called the water company to pump the water.
It was good. Really good. Instantly my mood lifted. Maybe whatever had required them to remove the water pipes did not require as long of a time to get done. That was certainly a relief. I wouldn’t even have begun to imagine how I’d have manoeuvred the rest of the week without water. I’d have had no choice but to go back to my pitiful savings and use some of the money to purchase water from the vendors. In my kind of situation, where income was unpredictable, every coin mattered, and buying water, had certainly not been in my budget.
The rest of the lunch break would be spent teaching each other random words in our languages, or rather, that had been the plan before we quickly abandoned it.
Monday morning, I was freshened up, dressed up, clear-headed, and ready to take on the world by the storm. Or at least, that had been the idea. Until walking towards the road, I was suddenly reminded of the Saturday morning events. The springs that had grown under my feet, fell flat.
It was not that I regretted questioning the site manager and the Kenyan constructor on the water issue, it was just that, now that the issue had been resolved, I was back to wishing that I hadn’t had to inquire about it in the first place. Because now, I was left to deal with the awkwardness of having to walk the long road, cognizant of the fact that the people working on the site were suddenly somewhat conscious of my existence.
Before, I’d just been a mere stranger like everyone else passing through and the workers had been mere strangers to me doing their job. Now, we were somewhat in a familiar bubble that was making me feel just that little bit awkward. It was also very probable that they had forgotten of my existence, and all the overthinking was just being manufactured in my head.
Still, I would have felt much better walking down the road with a big cap on my head, and some eyeglasses. And as luck would have it, as soon as I exited the rough road that connected to the road that the construction workers were working on, I happened to encounter the young Kenyan man who I had spoken to on Saturday morning.
Our eyes locked, and I momentarily found myself in the position of wondering whether I should say hello to him or walk on straight ahead as I had always done. The water situation had obviously been the trigger point for our conversation, but after that incident, there was no manual guiding us on how we were supposed to continue with the relationship. Was it better to turn back to the normal default mode of mutual silence, nod at him, or go for the casual Swahili greeting, Mambo? The only thing that I was certain of, was that a handshake would have certainly been too exaggerated.
The more I hesitated, the more awkward it became, and ultimately I decided that I was too grown up to be overthinking things. And so I said hello to him, and at the same time told him that the water issue had been fixed.
Talking to him actually turned out to be much easier than I had assumed. He even told me that he already knew that the water issue had been resolved.
In fact, he surprised me, by telling me that it was the Chinese site manager who had instructed them to fix back the water pipes so that we could have our water supply as scheduled. Apparently, they’d had to work on a different section rather than the one that they’d been planning on so that we could have our water. It certainly caught me off-guard. Said manager had not seemed to care when I had tried talking to him about the issue. What had prompted him to make that decision? Plus it was not unusual for construction companies to act all high and mighty whenever they were working on a site.
Whatever his reasons, I knew that I owed him a thank you. The universe might not have come with many guidelines on when to graduate from silence to hello, but from what it came with, on when to say thank you, it was quite clear. And such, was one of those whens.
But still, I had my pride hurt on Saturday morning and so I had no plans of making grand thank you gestures. I figured that I’d just make it a quick thankyou statement, probably in the lines of, ‘thank you for the water thing’ and then be on my way.
Both Tuesday and Wednesday passed by uneventfully, with me leaving home early in the morning, and getting back late in the night. While I had been jobless, I had contacted a local hair salon owner to give me gigs whenever she had more hair clients than she could handle. Those three days had been such occasions. An honest part of my brain though kept reminding me that I hadn’t had to arrive so early at the salon, or leave so late.
Thursday though found me at home, sprawled on my bed as I waited on a phone call from the organization that had given me a favourable response from my job interview. While I had already completed the physical interviews, there was still the final interview phase that did not require my physical attendance. I’d chosen to take the phone call from my home, rather than from the salon, so that I could give it the single-mindedness that it deserved. When it finally came through, the phone call went on without a hurdle, and by lunch hour, I had completed the interview and was starving.
I decided to visit the local kiosk to buy a packet of milk as well as some maandazis, a Kenyan version of fried bread. I was so hungry that I planned on buying six of those maandazis. Each cost five Kenya shillings, so six would cost me thirty Kenya shillings. I would use the milk to make Kenyan tea. Most Kenyan households make their tea by boiling milk, then adding water and finally putting tea leaves and sugar. Months prior though a friend who lived in the Coastal side of Kenya had told me that if I added a little bit of pounded cardamom to the boiling milk, as well as a tiny little pinch of pounded hot chilli, the tea would taste heavenly. She’d been right. I’d never, since then, tasted a better milk tea recipe. And nothing went better, with such good tea like maandazis.
Unfortunately, the kiosk closest to my home was out of milk, and I was forced to go a little bit further ahead to buy it. I was nonchalantly heading towards the next kiosk when I noticed him.
Sitting under a pink flowered bougainvillaea tree, a large bucket hat on his head, and a book in his hand. It was the Chinese construction site manager.
5
For a second I considered walking straight ahead to my destination, but I could not ignore the long overdue thank you.
‘Might as well get done with it.’ I thought to myself as I walked towards him. And just as I was about to give him my previously prepared thank you statement, I noticed the title of the book that was in his hands.
It was Wangari Maathai’s The Challenge for Africa. I somewhat froze on the spot. A few years prior, a friend had commented that I’d get overly excited whenever I encountered someone who shared the same interests as I did. But I knew that I wouldn’t have been so exaggerated, had I not been reading the same exact book back in my room. Were coincidences so coincidental? I’d always had the book, because I greatly revered the author, Wangari Maathai, plus the content was very informative. Which is why, as part of my interview process, I’d begun re-reading it, to help me strengthen my arguments on development issues in Africa.
“Another complaint?” The Chinese site manager asked when he noticed that I’d been staring at him without talking. I certainly did not miss the smirk on his face, but I was too fixated on the fact that we were both reading the same exact book to be bothered by anything else. My copy of it was still lying carelessly on my bed.
“That book,” I pointed at it while walking towards him. “What about it?” he asked while resuming his reading. “It is one of my favourites. As far as matters development in Africa are concerned.” I added.
And then as if to emphasize just how committed I was to the said book, I went on to add that Wangari Maathai was one of my heroes.
“The one who inspires me the most,” I said. “The book and the author are.”
He chuckled.
“Which one is?” He asked while still focusing on the book. “Is the book your favourite or is the author your favourite?”
Now that the matter concerned my favourite topic, literature, I found myself a spot beneath the shade of the bougainvillaea tree and sat down. He seemed a little surprised but still, he did not look away from the book. Maybe the fact that he had helped with the water issue made me a little bit too comfortable around him.
“I like both. The author and the book as well as her memoir.” I answered in response to his question.
“Do you like reading?” I asked him.
He nodded. Then added, “A lot.”
Why this book though? I wanted to know as to why he had picked that specific book. He finally closed the book and looked at me.
Henceforth, our conversations began. Later, when he asked if I knew of any Chinese authors, to my embarrassment, I did not know of any. It had not even crossed my mind that I could check on Chinese literature. And wouldn’t it all be written in Chinese? I thought to myself. Then he asked me if I liked poetry. I told him that I did. Very much. Among some of the poets whose works I had been reading was Ben Okri. I asked if he had heard of him but he hadn’t.
At a later time when we saw each other again, he surprised me by saying ‘habari’. He was sitting under the same pink flowered bougainvillaea tree. Habari translates to hello in Swahili. It is seemingly a small thing, but it always brings a certain type of warmth when someone who is not familiar with your local language suddenly says a few words in it. The fact that he’d been the one to greet me first did not escape my notice.
Abandoning my lunch hour plans, I joined him to sit under the bougainvillea tree. The rest of the lunch break would be spent teaching each other random words in our languages, or rather, that had been the plan before we quickly abandoned it. ‘Poa sana,’ had been my response to his habari. Meaning that I was very well.
“And how do you say hello in Chinese?” I’d asked him.
“Mandarin.” He’d corrected it.
“Mandarin?”
“The name of the language is Mandarin Chinese rather than just Chinese.”
“Ahhh.” Maybe my asking how to say hello in Chinese was akin to someone asking me how to say hello in Kenyan?
“Ni hao. That’s how you say hello in Mandarin.” He told me.
“Nihao?” I asked.
He laughed before repeating in a much slower pace, ‘Ni hao.’ Was there really a difference between how I’d said it and how he’d said it?
“You see—” he began, “in Mandarin Chinese, words have something called tones. There are four tones. The word Nihao has two of the same tone, referred to as the third tone.” He paused when he saw the bewilderment on my face. And then in the most adorable expression that I had seen him make, he hid his face with the palms of his hands and started groaning.
“This is so difficult to teach!” He complained.
I laughed. I simply hadn’t expected that a simple word such as hello would have been translated into something that would have taken the rest of my afternoon to master. In the end, we just laughed it off and gave up teaching each other more words. “Read anything interesting lately?” he asked me.
I had. It was the fictionalized true story titled ‘My Life in Crime’, written by one of Kenya’s famous robbers John Kiriamiti. In the book, Kiriamiti used the alias Jack Zollo to recount his life, literally, in crime, from the years 1960s up to the beginning of 1970, when he was arrested moments before his wedding. The book had been very popular when I was growing up, but somehow, I had all but forgotten about it.
As the road’s repair works went even further away from my area, I noticed that despite the distance, he never failed to return to sit under the pink-flowered bougainvillea tree.
When we’d begun discussing Kenyan literature, I’d retrieved it from the bottom of my bookshelf and began re-reading it. I’d already meant to share it with him. He found my overview of the book quite interesting and asked me to bring him a copy on our next encounter. I already had it in my sling bag and so I gave it to him.
“It is one of the best fictional books, as fictional as it can get, that I have read by an African author. Albeit, I’ve not read a lot of fictional African literature, but comparing it with the few that I have read, this one gave me a different feeling that the others did not.” He said of My Life in Crime when we met again.
I was not at all surprised by his feedback. My Life in Crime stood out to me because of its simplicity and as well because it had an air of independence around it. At the time of writing My Life in Crime, the modern day publisher requirements that in my view strangled much creativity out of African authors had yet to take form.
“If you look at calls for publishing opportunities,” I told him, “You’ll see authors bound by publishers to write about African experiences, or write using the African voice, or write in what they call the African language. While the African voice in literature is very important, unfortunately, what most publishers have is a narrowed idea of what African literature should look like and sound like. In my view, it should be left as just literature by African authors, unbound.” Binyavanga Wainana, another Kenyan author, had of course spoken about the subject quite widely.
If John Kiriamiti’s My Life in Crime was his second-favourite fictional book that he had read by an African author, then what was his number one pick? Unsurprisingly, he said One Day I Will Write about this Place by Binyavanga Wainana. If he’d fallen for John Kiriamiti’s My Life in Crime for the reasons that I had, which were simplicity and an air of independence, then I was not too surprised that he’d liked Binyavanga’s style of writing.
“But One Day I Will Write about This Place is a memoir, not a fictional book,” I told him.
“Ah well, maybe, then—” he said after a while, “I should leave the number one spot open until I have explored more African literature.”
I told him to check out Chinua Achebe, one of the earliest, if not the earliest published African author of fictional novels.
“I’ve been listening to all the songs by Brenda Fassie after Binyavanga Wainana mentioned her in One Day I Will Write about This Place.” He said after a brief silence. So had I after I had finished reading the book.
“Which of her songs would you pick as a favourite?” I asked him.
“Most of the popular ones.” He said. “They are really good. Thola Amadlozi for instance is a stand-out, but I will pick Vulindlela. Both because the song is captivating but also, because of the way Binyavanga captures that moment in history.”
Brenda Fassie defiantly releasing a song that was all done in Xhosa, her language and the song going on to become very successful was a momentous moment. We continued discussing the rest of her songs, even though neither of us could pronounce the titles of the songs correctly.
Later, I regretted not asking him to share with me a list of his favourite Chinese artists. I meant to bring it up at our next meeting, which, it occurred to me, was happening more frequently, but he seemed more bent on discussing literature.
“I don’t have with me any translated Chinese works—” he told me as he rummaged through his bag, “But I have translated a few poems by Li Bai for you.” From his bag came three crumbled sheets of paper, each containing handwritten poems.
His handwriting was impressively readable. “I don’t know why, but I had imagined that your handwriting would be in (for me) unrecognizable cursive Chinese-English font.” I joked as I skimmed through the poems.
He laughed. Whenever he laughed, his whole face would come alive, the ends of his mouth lifting and the corners of his eyes crinkling. It suddenly occurred to me that he was a very handsome man. But as soon as the thought entered my brain, I pushed it aside and re-focused my attention to the poems at hand.
“Read one for me.” I suddenly told him, while pushing the poems back to him.
“Huh! Now?”
“Now.”
He was flustered.
I’d merely said it as a joke and had not expected him to actually do it. “Fine.” He said. “But I am going to recite it in Mandarin. “I figured that his choosing to recite the poem in his own language, was him reinforcing the fact that even though he was giving in to my request, he was also doing it on his terms.
“It is a poem by Li Bai,” he said. Then went on to give a short backstory to the poem. He told me that as Li Bai was travelling, he’d come upon Du Fu, another poet who was also famous during the Chinese Tang Dynasty. I had no clue what the dynasties were, so looking at the expression on my face, he skipped on talking about them.
“Anyway,” he finished, “Fans of both poets get a glimpse of their meetings, because both of the poets ended up writing about their encounters. In this poem that I am going to recite, Li Bai is bidding off Du Fu at a place called Stone Gate Road.”
And so I listened, as he recited the poem in a language so foreign, so musical, and so captivating.
It was the first time that I was hearing anyone speak in Chinese…Mandarin. Maybe, in choosing to read the poem in his language, he was choosing to let me into his world, rather than, as I had presumed, to shut me out.
“Imagine two people,” he told me by way of explaining what the poem meant, “completely opposite of each other, but who share a common interest — in the case of Li Bai and Du Fu the interest being poetry — crossing paths. They end up enjoying each other’s company but sadly, their meetings are also filled with partings and so they have to keep saying goodbye to each other. In the poem that I have read for you, Li Bai is seeing off Du Fu and he mentions that none of them knows when they’ll be seeing each other again. But what makes it particularly beautiful,” he told me, “Is that in the last line, Li Bai asks Du Fu to hang out with him for one more hour so that they can continue being in each other’s company for just that little bit longer.” At his description, I was enamoured.
“They must have had a strong friendship,” I told him.
“Mm. Their encounters, though limited in count, certainly were sufficient to form a beautiful bond.”
That evening, I lay on my bed reading Li Bai. I found myself wishing that I had more of his translated poems so that I could continue reading them. I also found myself wishing that I was reading the poems whilst sitting atop a mountain filled with pine trees, with the moon spread out before me, and a bottle of wine lying beside me.
“Right! Reading Li Bai’s poems will certainly give you that sense of atmosphere.” He said when I told him of the mountain, moon and wine thoughts that had crossed my mind when reading Li Bai’s poems.
“For me—” he added, “He inspires me to travel. Or maybe when talking about him the correct word to use would be to wander.” He leaned back such that he was now lying on the ground, his hands resting at the back of his head.
“The one that caught my eye—” I told him, “Was the one where he went to visit a master, only to find that he wasn’t there.” I didn’t have an explanation for it, but I’d found the poem to be so mystically captivating. I’d read it over and over again.
“If you read the rest of his poems—” he told me, “You’ll find that Li Bai is good at creating an atmosphere that feels mystical.” I’d certainly gotten that feeling.
“He is a poet whose poems linger in the mind long after you have read them, transporting you into a distant land full of longing and adventure while guiding you to see the heavenly in the ordinary world.” He said.
“What did you think of Quiet Night Thoughts?” He asked me. “It is quite the popular poem in China, so think carefully before you give me your answer or forever find yourself in trouble.” He joked.
I laughed, and then told him that growing up, I would often sit on a stool inside our kitchen as I waited for my mum to finish preparing breakfast, usually pancakes and hot black tea mixed in with a tonne of milk. Reading that poem had brought back those fond memories especially because just as the pancakes and the tea would be getting ready, the sun would also be rising and through a gap between the wooden wall, it would cast its frosty like silhouette on the kitchen floor and then later, as it made its ascent in the sky, the frosty like silhouette would also climb on the kitchen walls, such that it looked like a piece of moving art.
“So in my view—” I told him, “Quiet Night Thoughts was a poem that brought back fond memories and that evoked feelings of longing.”
“Phwecks! Your interpretation makes the cut. You are safe, you are safe!” He joked. “But since you have switched the moon with the sun,” he added, “Maybe you should write your own version of it, and probably call it… um, Quiet Morning Thoughts?”
I thought about it and then decided to indulge him, quickly composing my own version of Quiet Night Thoughts, or as he called it, Quiet Morning Thoughts. When I had strung together some fairly acceptable sentences, I began reciting them.
“Eating a piece of dry bread, the sun lands on my kitchen floor.
Lost in the shimmering light, I forget my breakfast and reminiscence of hot pancakes, wooden kitchens, and rising silhouettes.
When I finally pull myself together, the sun has already left.
With whom shall I share the tales of my fallen years?”
When I was done, he began clapping. He also demanded that I give him a handwritten copy of that poem. “It is about reminiscing and longing, isn’t it?” He asked after a brief silence.
“Mm. Something like that. But really—” I was startled when I noticed that he was actually paying attention to what I was saying. “Ah, never mind. Ignore me. What do I know about writing poetry?”
6
Once I’d asked him why he did not sit together with his crew during either his lunch breaks or his tea breaks. “I use the time to read.” He’d responded. “And anyway—” he added, “No one in this world, or if any, very few in this world, would like to have their supervisor sitting with them during their break time.”
“Giving them time to trash-talk you?” I joked.
“Maybe.”
As the road’s repair works went even further away from my area, I noticed that despite the distance, he never failed to return to sit under the pink-flowered bougainvillea tree. He’d taken to using a motorbike to enable him to move back and forth much more easily. If he was to find the tree cut down he’d probably throw a fit.
“I am moving.” I announced, one afternoon. I’d gotten a job offer in Nakuru, a County in the Rift Valley of Kenya. “I’ll be working with local communities in education programmes.” I told him. Then added: “It is the job that I have always wanted.”
He congratulated me. Then told me that since the road repair work was almost coming to an end, he would also be moving back to China. Acknowledging the surreal nature of either our meeting or parting would only serve to make me feel emotive. We sat in silence for a while uncertain of how to proceed with the rest of the conversation.
“Linger for another hour?” I finally asked him. He smiled and then nodded.
“It has been lovely getting to know you.” He said after the silence had stretched on for a long time. I took a branch of the bougainvillea tree that had fallen on the ground and drew some incomprehensible letters before throwing the branch away.
“It has been lovely getting to know you as well,” I told him. And I sincerely meant it.
“I was talking to the bougainvillaea tree.” He joked. I gave him a scowl.
“How will you remember us?” He asked after another stretch of silence.
Was there? And us? And so I asked him: “Is there? an, Us?”
“Isn’t there?” he responded.
“But we don’t even know each other’s names.” I reminded him.
“Then I’ll come back, so that you can tell me your name. And then you will visit, so that I can give you my name.”
–
*This novella has been awarded Honourable Mention in the category of fiction in the First Global China-Africa Writing Competition (2024) held by CASIN (China-Africa Shanghai International Network). The competition is managed by Dr. Flair Donglai Shi (Shanghai Jiao Tong University), under the directorship of Dr. Jodie Yuzhou Sun (Fudan University). The judging panel of 2024 consisted of Dr. Cheng Ying (Peking University), Dr. Ignatius Suglo (The University of Richmond), Dr. Mingqing Yuan (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg) and Dr. Zhang Yong (Zhejiang University). The Elephant is granted rights to publish this work first by both CASIN and the author herself. For more details about the competition and CASIN, contact us at casinwriting@gmail.com.
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