“You’ve become so fat!” she said.
“Fat, eh?” Roy laughed. “A man needs a man-sized appetite.” He turned toward the kitchen. “Which reminds
me...where’s that other beer?”
No sooner had the words fallen from his mouth than Kezia came up with a beer in hand, smiling happily. “Barry,” she
said in English, “this is the eldest son. Head of the family.”
Another woman whom I had never seen before, plump and heavy-breasted, with bright red lipstick, sidled up beside
Roy and put her arm around him. Kezia’s smile subsided, and she drifted back into the kitchen.
“Baby,” the woman said to Roy, “do you have the cigarettes?”
“Yeah, hold on....” Roy patted his shirt pockets carefully. “Have you met my brother, Barack? Barack, this is Amy.
And you remember Auma.” Roy found the cigarettes and lit one for Amy. Amy took a long drag and leaned forward
toward Auma, exhaling round puffs of smoke as she spoke.
“Of course I remember Auma. How are you? Let me tell you, you look wonderful! And I like what you’ve done to
your hair. Really, it’s so...natural!”
Amy reached for Roy’s bottle, and Roy went to the dinner table. He grabbed himself a plate and bent down to smell
the steaming pots. “Chapos!” he exclaimed, dropping three chapatis onto his plate. “Sukuma-wiki!” he shouted at the
collard greens before spooning a heap onto his plate. “Ugali!” he hollered, cutting off two big wedges of cornmeal
cake. Bernard and the children followed his every step, repeating Roy’s words at a more tentative volume. Around the
table, our aunts and Kezia beamed with satisfaction. It was the happiest I had seen any of them since my arrival.
After dinner, while Amy helped the aunts wash up, Roy sat between Auma and me and announced that he had come
back with big plans. He was going to start an import-export company, he said, selling Kenyan curios in the States.
“Chondos. Fabrics. Wood carvings. These things are big over there! You sell them at festivals, art shows, specialty
stores. I already bought some samples to take back with me.”
“That’s a great idea,” Auma said. “Show me what you’ve got.”
Roy told Bernard to fetch several pink plastic bags from one of the bedrooms. Inside the bags were several wood
carvings, the sort of slick, mass-produced pieces that were sold at quick turnover to the tourists downtown. Auma
turned them around in her hands with a doubtful expression on her face.
“How much did you pay for these?”
“Only four hundred shillings each.”
“So much! Brother, I think you’ve been cheated. Bernard, why did you let him pay so much?”
Bernard shrugged. Roy looked a bit wounded.
“I told you, these are Just samples,” he said as he folded the carvings back in their wrapping. “An investment, so I will
know what the market wants. You can’t make money unless you spend money, eh, Barack?”
“That’s what they say.”
Roy’s enthusiasm quickly returned. “You see? Once I know the market, then I will send orders back to Zeituni. We’ll
build the business up slowly, you see. Slow-ly. Then, when we have a regular system, Bernard and Abo can go to work
for the company. Eh, Bernard? You can work for me.”
Bernard nodded vaguely. Auma studied her younger brother, then turned back to Roy. “So what’s the other big plan?”
barré
(Barré)
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