I peeped out of the window just as the matatu came to a halt. The door hissed open and people spilled out, voices rising, bags swinging, feet already on the ground before it had fully settled into place.
This wasn’t part of the plan. I groaned as I alighted carefully, gathering my buibui as I jumped over a shallow pool of muddy water. Rain droplets landed softly on me as I looked up and noticed the sky, dark and clouded, hanging low over the city.
I hurried down the stairs of the Buxton underground tunnel. The stench of urine and waste hit my nose instantly, and I picked a corner of my hijab to cover it as I walked past two men lying on opposite sides of the tunnel, their presence half-swallowed by the dimness, with huge sacks resting beside them like silent companions. Wrappers, rugs, banana peels, and worn-out slippers lay scattered all over, while the walls were scribbled with fading insults and indistinguishable letters, layered with torn posters promising jobs worth a thousand bob per hour. I smirked.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out just enough to see the caller.
Aisha–Poly calling…
I looked up and met the gaze of a short, skinny young man in rugged clothes staring at me. I slid the phone back into my pocket.
Near the exit, a middle-aged albino woman sat tucked beneath the shelter at the end of the stairs, an umbrella beside her and a wide hat on her head, quietly holding out a plastic container with a few coins. A small crowd had gathered, pressed together in shared hesitation as they waited for the rain to ease. I paused just long enough to glance at my watch, then back at the grey downpour. “Nah,” I said to myself as I took the stairs two at a time and stepped into the drizzle.
Water slowly seeped into my shoes and socks as I moved forward, and when I glanced down, I froze. Two crows lay still just steps apart, their bodies stiff and drained of blood. A shiver ran through me, and I hurried past them only to find a third a few steps ahead.
“Audhubillah!” I muttered, jerking my gaze away from the crows as a chill crawled up my spine, my eyes scanning for a boda but finding none.
So I resorted to my posh Footsubishi.
I ran between kiosks, ducking under makeshift shelters as the drizzle turned into a soaking rain, my fogged-up spectacles making everything blur slightly, but I kept moving anyway, half-seeing, half-feeling my way through.
A man with built-up arms ran towards me at full speed, and before I could fully move aside, I felt his arm slam into mine.
“Ouch!” I exclaimed, almost in disbelief, rubbing my arm as I made my way toward the university gate.
When I arrived in class, Betsie was already seated by the window, her hot pink headphones over her dreads, and soon after the small talk of “Hiii’s” and “mambos,” Lewis and Juma walked in.
“What’s up, what’s up!” Juma beamed, filling the room with his usual energy.
“Who’s missing?” Lewis asked, skipping greetings entirely.
“Aisha, Henry, and Kassim. Aisha and Henry are almost here.”
I stood at one corner, wringing the rainwater from the hem of my buibui. I remembered Aisha’s call. I have to call her back when I’m done with this.
“They better be. Tumalize hii kitu fasta fasta,” Juma said.
“I don’t even know why we are here. Kassim should have handled this matter, he best knows how,” Lewis grumbled.
“Do your assignment, that is?” I rolled my eyes.
“Mh mh. OUR assignment. Mostly his…” Lewis grinned.
“We mzee! Ain’t you ashamed? He’s been handling all your group assignments since Year 1.”
“And who asked him to?” Juma laughed. “Si amejitakia mwenyewe.”
“Eh maze… let him finish what he started,” Lewis added.
“Kijana mwecheche!” Henry exclaimed as he walked in, breaking into his familiar wide grin as he shook Juma’s hand.
“Kijana mwecheche mwenyewe!” Juma shot back, grinning as Henry went around the room shaking hands with everyone else.
The gents soon drifted into a heated debate about the Man U and Arsenal game from the previous night.
“Why don’t we start the discussion as we wait for them?” Betsie suggested.
“I can’t even remember the topic. Kassim wrote it down. Where is he anyway?” Henry asked.
Silence settled.
“I guess we wait for Kassim then,” he said.
Just as I smoothed down the fabric, a vibration cut through the room.
Aisha – Poly calling. I picked it up.
“Uwi! Uwi! Guys, mmeskia?” Aisha’s voice cracked through the speaker.
“Aisha? What’s wrong?”
“Uwi… Kassim amejinyonga.”
My throat closed instantly. “What… what do you mean?… Which Kassim?”
“Kassim.. Kassim.. Our class rep.”
The phone slipped from my hand.
“It’s Kassim…” I whispered. “He killed himself last night.”
The room froze.
Henry grabbed the phone. “Where is this information from?”
“I’m at his house. His cousin called me. It is true…” Aisha wept.
Silence filled the room. Betsie bent forward over the desk, her shoulders shaking quietly, and no one seemed to find their voice. Even breathing felt heavier than usual.
“We need to go,” Juma said finally.
Henry grabbed his bag from the floor. “Aisha, send us the location.”
Slowly, we began gathering our things. The silence stayed with us as we left the room.
By the time we arrived in Mshomoroni, the drizzle had turned into a heavy, relentless rain. Muddy water and a thick, airless grief filled the compound, as a crowd gathered outside a small mabati house. The rusted roof rattled under the weight of the rain, as though trying to drown out the cries from inside. Three policemen stood nearby, their dark raincoats glistening as they spoke in low, muffled voices.
Aisha spotted us and came over quickly.
“Mungu akusamehe mume wangu! Mungu akusamehe mume wangu!” a young woman cried out, her voice breaking as she stood in a two-piece leso, eyes swollen and bloodshot, while two older women held her as though trying to keep her from collapsing into the ground. They guided her slowly inside the house.
“Mume wangu?” Juma said under his breath.
We exchanged looks.
“Kassim was married?” I asked quietly.
“Yes…” Aisha said.
“Man… how didn’t we know that?” Betsie said, her voice low, still shaken.
“Why is she saying ‘Mungu amsamehe’? What did he do?” Henry asked.
“Suicide is a sin in Islam,” I muttered softly.
“Does that mean he’s going to hell?” Lewis asked.
The question lingered longer than it should have.
“Life is not black and white,” I said after a moment. “We don’t know what he was carrying. We don’t know what he was fighting.”
My voice softened.
“In the end… only Allah knows. Only He can be the judge.”
Silence followed, not empty but heavy, as the rain continued to fall without pause against the mabati roof and Kassim’s wife’s cries rose again from inside the house.
“There’s more,” Aisha said.
We stared at her. More?
“Kassim has a one-year-old son with sickle cell anaemia. He’s been in the ICU for a month. They have a debt of 1.5M.”
“Gai!” Betsie exclaimed.
A lump formed in my throat.
For a moment, I thought of the crows again, lying still in the rain, and how easily I had looked away.
“1.5 million,” Juma’s shoulders sagged, his usual spark gone.
More people filled the compound as women in buibuis moved inside the house and men gathered under the veranda in kanzus, while we remained under a small shade across the house, suspended between both spaces, not quite belonging to either side.
The rain had not stopped.
If anything, it fell harder, as though it had been building long before we arrived.
“We should do something… we should create an M-Changa account for his son,” I said.
Everyone nodded. For a long moment, we all just stood there, waiting for the familiar voice to assign roles and take notes. But the only sound was the rain hitting the mabati.
“I’ll go to Safaricom,” Lewis said. “I’ll get the paybill set up today.”
“Thank you, Lewis,” I said.
“We need to go in. The burial will start soon,” Aisha said.
We moved slowly toward the house as the crowd separated into sections.
My mind stayed on the boy who had just lost his father and the mountain of debt he had inherited.
We had one final assignment left to do.
***
