We alighted in Mishomoroni, which is outside the Island. The last thing on mind that day enroute was seeing Nyali bridge. The rest of the route was not lit by street lights.

I found some woman at Pats residence. She kept coming and going in and out of our room, then later brought us supper, a big meal of Ugali and some pieces of meat. I kept wondering why so few. One could actually count the pieces of meat. The Ugali was ok, but the meat, no. They few pieces were flooded with a lot of soup. She came back to sit with us to eat. She was around forty years, black with a bigger bum than our average village women folk, big breasted that I guessed she was nursing a baby. She was a little humorous, which helped to hide my dislike of the deluge that suspended the pieces of meat. Hey forgive me, at the village when we eat meat, we mean it, plenty of it, though its rarely available because we have no butchers. The woman kept referring at me as shemeji, meaning brother in law, though I could not believe she was married to Pat at that time.

Pat took me to another house to sleep that night. There I met, again, his male friend. I was to spend the night together with this stranger.
The room had no Tv unlike Pats so I joined the dude in bed as soon as Pat left. My lower limbs ached from fatigue. My room mate put off the bulb so we could sleep in darkness.

I was awoken by the sound of mwadhini coming from the mosque. Not one but one was particularly louder enough to distract a new comer like me. The last time I heard the call to Muslim prayers was in high school, a time it was welcome because it would announce time. I tried to sleep again but as usual my brain was programmed in high school to stay awake during that time, something I was discarding though. I would have stayed in bed had my bed mate not been snoring loudly that morning. Louder than I had heard before in my life then. I stepped out of bed.

"Why so early," Mwashigadi spoke peeping from the bedsheet.

I have no sleep, I replied as I sat on bed.

The smell of charcoal burning jikos and kerosene stoves being lit hit my nostrils, I went to the window pulled an old dirty curtain. It was drizzling outside. It was May, a time for the long rain season. Back home was cold but here it was warm. Mwashigadi was soon snoring leaving me to wonder what lied ahead in my job seeking mission. Whether coming to Mombasa, was a good move. I located a plastic chair eventually and sat down.

The intensity of the light rays increased in the room and my room mate was up at some point, it was at this point that his phone rung.

"Pat is at the door," he told me. I went outside to join him. Pat led me through several Swahili houses and alleys with pools with water, to his rental room where we took breakfast together. No sooner had we finished than he left, giving me a fifty shilling note for lunch and water. Water that I was told to fetch to fill several jerricans that were on the corridor outside his door.

I realised I was smelling like a he goat, so having not taken a bath since my arrival in town. I took a bath and watched TV till at around 3 PM I got outside. Outside, I found a woman seated on a plastic chair on the shadow cast on the eastern side of the building, who smiled at me as if she knew me. She was around thirty something, of brown complexion tall and slender. I asked her where I can get food.

"Tembea hivi, hapo mbele left utakuta kibanda ukule." (Just walk and take the left turn you will find a food kiosk.) I did that, got two chapatis and a plate of beans which I washed down with three cups of water.

I spent thirty five bob for lunch, after which I hurried back to complete my assignment before Pat arrived. There were nine empty jerricans which I filled that day from a tap that was some fifty metres away. I was referred to several taps on the way as I asked for water from owners of the taps that were outside houses but which were dry, before reaching the tap which had running water.

My shoulders and back ached by the time I was through. This is the spirit of brotherhood helping each other I thought. I was helping with searching for water as Pat was at work. Only women and girls fetched water in my village so I was not used to ferrying jerricans of water.

Pat arrived at at the seven PM news bulletin

"Hey how is you?" Pat greeted me.

"Fit and you?"

"Fit----"

"Hey Patoh!" a woman at the door greeted

"Ooh Saumu, am Fit" Pat replied cheerfully.

"And Shemeji?" Saumu enquired

"Is fine too?" Pat answered for me.

Pat went out at that moment had some conversation with the woman near the door and returned.The woman returned in no time bringing a thermos flask with tea. She was the lady who brought us food the previous day. We took tea with her.

"Shemegi is cool!" she started

"Yea he is fine" he replied

"He finished all the classes at school?"

"Yea he did, like me."

I laughed then responded, "I only did twelve"

"Ooh, lucky you I only did eight, father did not see the need for me to proceed, so I ended up doing dress making"

"Lucky still" I said

"Lucky? she laughed. Pattoh thinks otherwise"

"What does he think?" I asked, faking amusement

"That am too illiterate with a class eight certificate to for an educated man with 12 classes in his head"

"You are adding salt Saumu. When did I say that?" Pat defended himself

"Need you say it." She laughed turning her head to him then squinted at me. I did not know how to react, I smiled instead.

"Pat, get Shemegi a job, before he gets influenced by bad company."

"I will," Pat replied.

She left afterwards with the thermos after we finished taking tea. Pat asked me for assistance after she was gone. "Do you have any cash bro, I need to sort something in this house"

"Yes some bit of cash"

"Can it buy flour"

"Yes"

"You go get flour"

"Ok, let me go to the shops"

"Buy some vegetables too"

"Ok"

As I left for the shops. Pat stood and took a basin, poured some water at the corridor and left for the bathroom.

I bought two 2 kg maize flour packets, a kilogramne of sugar and some fried fish which I found being sold by several women seated outside the shop with wooden boxes and lit tinlaps.

I must have spent some some fifteen minutes or so. On returning I found the that Pat's door was closed from inside.

I stood for some time by the door before I tapped gently, no one answered. I went outside the house found a place to sit on a septic tank that was near the main door. I stayed for quite some time, before going back to see wether Pat had opened the door. It was still closed. I pushed. The door didnt yield. Rock still. I felt as if I was dreaming. This is not happening to me! Could he be inside! What if someone was killing him inside? But he is a man, he could be having good time, but has he forgotten about me? Let me wait a bit, I told myself. I was leaning on the side of the door, in a dark corridor, only lit from the few rooms that had their doors open with the curtains blurring the light from inside the rooms.

My instint had me check the bathroom, Pat could be there still cleaning himself? I was at the bathrooms in no time. They were two bathrooms with one toilet. The basin of water Pat had taken there was outside the first bathroom door. No one was inside. The two bathrooms were open, only the toilet was closed. I pushed the toilet door slowly, no one was there!

I found myself seated on the edge of the septic tank, seated again in waiting. A man greeted me as he went inside the house.

"You getting some breeze," he asked

"Yes some breeze" I replied, thinking if I should tell him to check on Pat. That I was stranded.

"Latch the door then when you get inside."

"Ok"

It was a metal door where one could open from outside, so they preferred it latched I thought.

A silhouette of a human being approached the compound in the dark. He was walking slowly then stopping as if looking for something, he was a man by my judgement. I became apprehensive at the thought of being mugged. My muscles tightened. The man, came closer to where I sat, raised he leg slowly to get to the doorstep but missed the entrance with a wide berth. He hit the wall on the side I was seated with his head. He attempted again. He succeeded this time, lunged inside the door as if someone had pushed him from the back

I realised I was not the alone outside there that evening. Mosquitoes. The little insects were not giving me peace, a horde of them trying to get a bloody meal for the evening. The more I stayed there the more they increased in number.

The packet of maize flour, and sugar lie beside me, the fish were wrapped in an old newspaper which I had in my hand all that time, my palm was wetting the wrap with sweat. Two hours I guess and I had somehow given up on my defence against the small insects but not on the fish, for the hunger pangs were growing strong every few minutes, all that time fighting the temptation to eat them up.

I had dozed off by the time it happened that someone called me as he tapped at my shoulder. It was Pat. Jesu!

"Come we sleep."

" How about supper? I bought the flour and some sugar." He did not answer me.

"There, there is some rice and fish." He said pointing to the table where a hot pot was placed.

The smell of fish aggravated my hunger. The rice had been scooped and only a small amount like a quarter was there. The fish was Ok in size, very delicious but the rice was too little. I attacked it fiercely and cleared the plate in minutes. I took two glasses of water and supper was done. Pat spoke little all the while so did I.

After taking a bath, Pat asked me outside, on the corridor he used some keys to open another room, the room he said I would spend the night. There was one room between his room and the one I was to sleep. It was dark inside. Pitch darkness but he closed the door nevertheless.

"Is there a light bulb?" I asked

No, the power was disconnected on this one. Pat whispered.

"Let me get some light," he said

She called over the phone and soon someone came, as we were inside with the door closed.

Someone got inside. "Hey Pat" she whispered.

By the click of a matchstick, the devilish darkness got pushed to the walls. She directed the flame to a tin lamp on a wooden table. The room was lit.

A a stale smell hang on the room. Of dirty beddings and other clothes not aerated, it emanated. It seemed nobody has been around for a long time. I didnt believe they were deporting me there. They did. Pat and the slender young woman in a red patterned khanga left hand in hand.

There was a three by six bed with its longer side against a wall, with mattress and a dirty cold blue bed cover. Also in the room were two blue plastic chairs, two jericans, a clay layered charcoal jiko, a plastic bucket half filled with floor, a blue plastic jug and plastic cups. A pink basin with clothes was beneath the bed.

The walls were white with a blue skirting, the paint which had started to peel off on some places had made some debris on the foot of the walls.

I dreaded making up the bed, so I don't know how I got into it. I dreaded touching it. I woke in up darkness to find my back of torso on the bed with my legs out of the bed. The window on the western side of the wall I had seen when the room was lit was nowhere in the dark so I knew it was still dark outside.

Mosquitoes had ganged up on me, my arms, legs and face were itchy from their bites in that darkness. The tin lap must have starved of kerosene. Jesu!

I groped for the mosquito net that I had seen above bed and brought it down, tacked it in on the sides while on the bed and resigned to my prison. I tried to sleep again, sleep was to be my analgesia, a way to escape my out of that room, besides the thought of how dirty the cold sheets must have been was to be avoided at all cost.

I was meandering on the edge of slumber land when I had some sounds, distant at first then louder. I cocked my head, someone was giggling on and off. A feminine voice started calling a name, as if in protest. They kept coming, grownig louder in minutes amid moans it went, "Johnny Johnyyy ooh ohhh, yes yes yea yea" then over and over again.

My neighbours wife was louder, than necessary in the dead of that night. That these rooms had no ceiling she must have known