He was an outlaw at heart. Being born into a family of 6 kids, he was the youngest, and the most loved by his parents and his sisters alike. He was a boy with a keen eye for details. He could see things that were not even there, and maybe that is what messed up his youth. He could tell his mother about the small scar on the back of the neck of that homeless guy near the grocery store, the blush on his sisters' faces when they were in the company of boys they liked, and even the first wrinkle on his father's face. It was fascinating at first, but you know what they say about power, great responsibility comes knocking.
Watching the local marijuana dealer with his goons enjoying their happy hour beers, he had smoked more than 40 cigarettes in 3 hours. He was a man of many vices, especially after he came to Kenya. Looking at Lodi, he was amazed at how a man who had never set foot at any school could command such a large group of men. In one way, this fact far enhanced his hatred for school even though he was one of the smartest in his class. He had especially hated the fact that schools were designed to limit the thinking of anyone who was unfortunate enough to spend their early years going through the system. At any educational institution, nobody dared to think the extraordinary, the rules were there to turn all students into academic machines.
Lodi and his men finished their drinks, and two of them stormed out and took a bodaboda, which is the name of a motorbike that ferried passengers to different destinations. Against the desire of his entire being, he decided to stay back and keep his eyes on Lodi. He opened another pack of cigarettes and lit one. Being a white handsome man in the middle of a small town full of black people, he stood out like a sore thumb, but this was the least of his concerns. He had spent five years of his life on the run, from one African country to another, but had managed to piss off some very influential people in almost each of the countries that he had grazed with his presence. He was a man who elicited mixed emotions with every human he met, men or women, poor and rich, powerful and powerless, and this made it very hard for him to blend in. Now in Kenya, his most obvious move is to visit Uganda, a neighboring country, but for some strange reason, he had not had enough of this rugged country.
"Hey mzungu, jambo?" a street boy asked him, jolting him back to reality.
"Yes, jambo." He answered. Jambo is a Swahili word for 'hi' and mzungu was a Swahili word for a white person.
He gave the street boy a fifty-shilling note, and the boy went on his way after muttering something like 'Asante.'
For some reason, he was so deep in his thoughts that he forgot to keep an eye on Lodi and he lost him and his crew.
"Fuck!" He cursed, as he threw away the last piece of cigarette from the new pack. Starting off his bike, he waited for the Presidential campaign brigade to pass so that he could go back to his hotel. It was 5 pm in the city of Nakuru, which was about 200 kilometers away from the capital city of Nairobi.
Back at his hotel, he asked for his house key at the reception. he had learned not to move around with his keys because of the local goons, and of course because of his drinking behavior. As he was taking the stairs to the third floor of Marlin Guest Resort, he meets the same young woman again. Chocolate, with brown eyes and a thick ass, he was amazed at how she did not even bother to look at him; which was strange because all over Africa, no woman has ever refused his advances. Anyway, he decided that it was best not to find out. He went up the stairs, two at a time up to Room 307 where he took a cold shower to cool off the heat. He put on some music, then opened another pack of cigarettes and poured some whiskey into a glass, and then he retreated to thinking.
So, Lodi was the local marijuana dealer. The Kenyan law was against the use of marijuana for recreational purposes, but marijuana was in plenty in the region, and there was no shortage of users. He had thought of confronting Lodi, then striking him a proposal, asking him to let him help him make the operation at least regional if not national. Growing up in the heart of the streets of London, he had learned a thing or two about drugs. In honesty, he had never really cared about getting riches, all he cared about was a few hundred of dollars for gas, food, booze, and of course to buy some condoms for the endless women. This time, though, he felt a weird sensation, he wanted more. It was not really weird, it was a dream, and for the first time in his life, he chased something. And it kind of pissed him off, but that was not enough to make him stop. With that money, he can maybe purchase land near Masai Mara which is famous for wildebeests migration, and maybe spend the rest of his days drinking booze and watching lions and elephants. Who knows?
A disturbing noise at the door brought him back to the land of the living, and he broke his glass in the process. He cursed as he went for his gun at the table and proceeded to the side of the door, waiting for the potential intruder to come into the picture. Then everything was silent for a moment. He counted to 5 then opened the door, and to his utter disbelief, a man and the woman he had met earlier were on the floor kissing like starved teenagers. He wanted to assume them, but the look in the eyes of the man when he saw him was so tempting, and he decided to stand there.
"Who are you?" The man asked with an undermining tone.
"Nobody. Have fun." Reid said, making for the door to his room.
"Wait!" Said the woman. Shit, she has a voice for days, he thought.
"Please don't tell Jane! She does not know about this." Jane was the receptionist at the front desk.
"Look, this is none of my business, you guys go on with whatever is it you were doing." He said and headed for the door.
"I am the Governor of Nakuru County, so I will appreciate it if you keep what you've seen here for yourself."
What! Governors in Kenya are at the highest level in the political food chain. An idea struck him.
"I'll think about it." He said as he banged the door behind him.
He smoked a few other cigarettes and headed for his Harley Davidson, fired it up, and went back to hunting Lodi. After watching him closely for about three months now, he had memorized all of Lodi's moves, and he knew that being a Thursday, he would be at 911 Fast Foods taking his daily dosage of junk. So he decided to make the first contact with him.
Entering the fast food joint, everyone was looking at him in awe. It is not common for mzungus to mingle with the local people, let alone at 911 Fast Foods. Most tourists would be found at KFC, Chicken Inn, and Java outlets across the city. He ordered a soda and took a seat a few meters from Lodi. They made eye contact for a while and Lodi stood up, and in long majestic strides, he came to Reid.
"I know you mzungu?" Uttered the giant.
"Hapana nijua(You don't know me)" Reid answered in Swahili considering he already learned that Lodi doesn't speak English. After a few here and there, they found a translator. They had a serious conversation. For 3 minutes straight. And Lodi denied his offer. He knew that if he is to be recruited in the deal, he had to bring something to the table.
He stormed the joint and headed to his room and made a phone call to the Governor, blackmailing him with the information he had, and after a very brief session, they arranged for a meeting. In the meeting, they came to an agreement that Reid will be allowed to deal with small-time recreational drugs with most regulations. With that information, he rushed to Lodi's shanty and stroke a new deal. He will be the manager of the entire operation.
Weeks pass by and the operation is increasing rapidly, so they are forced to expand their operations all over the city as long as the protocol is kept private and the proceeds are shared equally among Reid and Lodi. For once in his life, Reid enjoys riches first hand and just like everybody else who gets a taste of wealth, he is hooked into the cult of consumption. He buys another Harley Davidson, and shortly afterward, he finds a 50-acre land in the rural area of Ngong' near Ngong Forest and he pays a deposit towards the purchase of the land.
On his usual rounds in the city, he meets the girl again, and this time the girl says hi to him. He engages her in a conversation, and the girl admits that it was over between her and the Governor. They meet a few times afterward before Reid goes in for the kill, and they end up having sensual sex. Against his better judgment, they have sex countless times and before they knew it, they were falling for each other. Around this time, Reid cut off contact between them but it simply never worked because Nakuru was such a small city especially now that Reid was a drug lord of some sort; they were bound to meet in one way or another. After a few sex encounters again, Reid decided to start dating the woman for good. Around this time, he had already finalized the purchase of the land, and plans to build a simple structure were underway.
After a year, Reid and Chebet moved into their new house in Ngong' and after 6 months, he quit the drug business, collecting his proceeds which amounted to more than 50 million Kenya shillings. In terms of US dollars, this amount was only around 450,000, but considering the Kenyan economy, this was enough to last him a lifetime. Things were starting to look out for them and even Chebet got pregnant with twins, but you all know what they say about the silence before a storm; the more the silence, the deadlier the storm. And it hit him properly, shattering him to pieces for the rest of his miserable life.
So, Reid and Chebet always enjoyed taking their 4-month-old babies to Masai Mara National Reserve, where they would watch all kinds of animals from lions, snakes, hippos, elephants, leopards, and so forth. On this particular day, everything seemed different, from the way the morning coffee tasted, the morning sex with Chebet, the smell of his bike's engine heating up, and something that seemed to convince him to not go. But just like everyone else, his ego got the better part of him. At the gate of the reserve, the watchman looked at him with suspicious eyes as if to tell him, 'Run!', but he brushed it off. The universe has a way of trying to keep us from trouble, doesn't it? He got into their Mobius, which is a Kenyan manufactured car designed for rural Kenya and it is as rugged as they come. Towards the river at the end of the reserve, which is River Mara, and the one that separates Tanzania and Kenya, he saw a group of white people, and a few meters away from them, he saw a woman and a man who seemed to be in love. Upon taking a closer look, he was flabbergasted to see that the woman was none other than her own sister, Sheryl, who was married to a CIA agent, and suddenly all his past came flooding back to him.
While in his hometown, he killed two people, one by accident, and one by self-defense. Both of them were police officers. The first one he killed was because he had found out that the police officer was cheating on one of his sisters with another one of his sisters. Anger engulfed him, and he decided to teach him a lesson, one thing led to another, and he killed him. Another police officer found out about the issue and tried to confront him, which led to another back-and-forth of bullets, and the officer died on the spot. This is where it gets interesting; the only witness to both murders was Sheryl, and she did not hesitate to testify as a witness to seeing his only brother committing murder, and it was then that Reid's deal with the devil started, he was in the run for 5 years, until he landed in Kenya. He was more than sure that he would never see his sisters again, and he was fine with it, but here she was.
"Reid! Those two are looking at us. Do you know them?" Said Chebet in a cheerful tone.
"What!" Reid came back to his senses, confirming the truth of the statement. Sheryl was coming towards him, with the husband by her side. Reid tried to keep his cool, but then the husband just had to ruin the reunion when he flashed out a gun.
"Hands in the air, Reid! And this can end very quickly without any fuss." The husband barked.
He looked at Sheryl's eyes and there was no hint of love in them, just resentment, and then he looked at his two sons, Venis and Idris, and he came up with a decision. There was no way he is going back to the United States. Within a split second, he flashed out his gun and started shooting at the husband, but it was already too late. Sheryl had jumped in front of her husband and took the heavy fire, and lay down, bleeding profusely. It did not require an expert to know that she was never going to make it. The husband was still standing, with his guns pointed at Reid's family, and that was a deadly mistake. He picked up a rock and with a mighty swing, he threw it at the husband, hitting the gun to the floor a few meters away, and before the CIA agent could decipher what has happened, Reid was already on top of him, throwing punches all over. In a matter of exactly 4 minutes and 54 seconds, he had punched the agent to death, and once his killer instinct had deserted him, he now had to deal with the fact that he just killed his own blood, unleashing the animal in him in front of his wife and sons. And this shattered his entire being too miserable pieces.
The police officers at the reserve were starting to head towards the scene, and so he had to think, and fast. He started the car and drove like a madman towards the entrance. Considering the poor reception at the side of the river, it will take some time before the police officers at the front gate are alerted of his misdoings, and by then, he would be far gone. He headed back to his land, and he started watching the news, and to his relief, the story in the news claimed that the couple had been in a disagreement that turned fatal. They were probably doing this to avoid scaring off the tourists. At least he was safe. But was he, really?
Something that Reid did not know he had was a conscience, and he definitely had no idea how a conscience works. The death of his sister took a toll on him, he imagined the tears on his mother's face if at all she was alive, the desperate cries of his other sisters, all because of him, and this broke him down to his knees, rendering him lifeless with emotions. He couldn't eat, all he could do was smoke countless packs of cigarettes and drink a lot of whiskeys. He even started smoking weed, something he had never done. At the age of 28, he looked like an old homeless man with all kinds of chronic diseases, and then he zoned out.
He comes back to his senses, and he finds out that he is 46 years old, his two sons are almost 19, one of them is pursuing law at the local university, and the other is fascinated by his father's Harleys, so he has started hitting the road as well. The African outlaw gave birth to a real African outlaw. All he could think about is how his life would have turned out to be if he accepted his scholarship to Yale University to pursue Medical Engineering. What if. What if. It is all he could think about as he awaited the day he would take his last breath.
Watching the local marijuana dealer with his goons enjoying their happy hour beers, he had smoked more than 40 cigarettes in 3 hours. He was a man of many vices, especially after he came to Kenya. Looking at Lodi, he was amazed at how a man who had never set foot at any school could command such a large group of men. In one way, this fact far enhanced his hatred for school even though he was one of the smartest in his class. He had especially hated the fact that schools were designed to limit the thinking of anyone who was unfortunate enough to spend their early years going through the system. At any educational institution, nobody dared to think the extraordinary, the rules were there to turn all students into academic machines.
Lodi and his men finished their drinks, and two of them stormed out and took a bodaboda, which is the name of a motorbike that ferried passengers to different destinations. Against the desire of his entire being, he decided to stay back and keep his eyes on Lodi. He opened another pack of cigarettes and lit one. Being a white handsome man in the middle of a small town full of black people, he stood out like a sore thumb, but this was the least of his concerns. He had spent five years of his life on the run, from one African country to another, but had managed to piss off some very influential people in almost each of the countries that he had grazed with his presence. He was a man who elicited mixed emotions with every human he met, men or women, poor and rich, powerful and powerless, and this made it very hard for him to blend in. Now in Kenya, his most obvious move is to visit Uganda, a neighboring country, but for some strange reason, he had not had enough of this rugged country.
"Hey mzungu, jambo?" a street boy asked him, jolting him back to reality.
"Yes, jambo." He answered. Jambo is a Swahili word for 'hi' and mzungu was a Swahili word for a white person.
He gave the street boy a fifty-shilling note, and the boy went on his way after muttering something like 'Asante.'
For some reason, he was so deep in his thoughts that he forgot to keep an eye on Lodi and he lost him and his crew.
"Fuck!" He cursed, as he threw away the last piece of cigarette from the new pack. Starting off his bike, he waited for the Presidential campaign brigade to pass so that he could go back to his hotel. It was 5 pm in the city of Nakuru, which was about 200 kilometers away from the capital city of Nairobi.
Back at his hotel, he asked for his house key at the reception. he had learned not to move around with his keys because of the local goons, and of course because of his drinking behavior. As he was taking the stairs to the third floor of Marlin Guest Resort, he meets the same young woman again. Chocolate, with brown eyes and a thick ass, he was amazed at how she did not even bother to look at him; which was strange because all over Africa, no woman has ever refused his advances. Anyway, he decided that it was best not to find out. He went up the stairs, two at a time up to Room 307 where he took a cold shower to cool off the heat. He put on some music, then opened another pack of cigarettes and poured some whiskey into a glass, and then he retreated to thinking.
So, Lodi was the local marijuana dealer. The Kenyan law was against the use of marijuana for recreational purposes, but marijuana was in plenty in the region, and there was no shortage of users. He had thought of confronting Lodi, then striking him a proposal, asking him to let him help him make the operation at least regional if not national. Growing up in the heart of the streets of London, he had learned a thing or two about drugs. In honesty, he had never really cared about getting riches, all he cared about was a few hundred of dollars for gas, food, booze, and of course to buy some condoms for the endless women. This time, though, he felt a weird sensation, he wanted more. It was not really weird, it was a dream, and for the first time in his life, he chased something. And it kind of pissed him off, but that was not enough to make him stop. With that money, he can maybe purchase land near Masai Mara which is famous for wildebeests migration, and maybe spend the rest of his days drinking booze and watching lions and elephants. Who knows?
A disturbing noise at the door brought him back to the land of the living, and he broke his glass in the process. He cursed as he went for his gun at the table and proceeded to the side of the door, waiting for the potential intruder to come into the picture. Then everything was silent for a moment. He counted to 5 then opened the door, and to his utter disbelief, a man and the woman he had met earlier were on the floor kissing like starved teenagers. He wanted to assume them, but the look in the eyes of the man when he saw him was so tempting, and he decided to stand there.
"Who are you?" The man asked with an undermining tone.
"Nobody. Have fun." Reid said, making for the door to his room.
"Wait!" Said the woman. Shit, she has a voice for days, he thought.
"Please don't tell Jane! She does not know about this." Jane was the receptionist at the front desk.
"Look, this is none of my business, you guys go on with whatever is it you were doing." He said and headed for the door.
"I am the Governor of Nakuru County, so I will appreciate it if you keep what you've seen here for yourself."
What! Governors in Kenya are at the highest level in the political food chain. An idea struck him.
"I'll think about it." He said as he banged the door behind him.
He smoked a few other cigarettes and headed for his Harley Davidson, fired it up, and went back to hunting Lodi. After watching him closely for about three months now, he had memorized all of Lodi's moves, and he knew that being a Thursday, he would be at 911 Fast Foods taking his daily dosage of junk. So he decided to make the first contact with him.
Entering the fast food joint, everyone was looking at him in awe. It is not common for mzungus to mingle with the local people, let alone at 911 Fast Foods. Most tourists would be found at KFC, Chicken Inn, and Java outlets across the city. He ordered a soda and took a seat a few meters from Lodi. They made eye contact for a while and Lodi stood up, and in long majestic strides, he came to Reid.
"I know you mzungu?" Uttered the giant.
"Hapana nijua(You don't know me)" Reid answered in Swahili considering he already learned that Lodi doesn't speak English. After a few here and there, they found a translator. They had a serious conversation. For 3 minutes straight. And Lodi denied his offer. He knew that if he is to be recruited in the deal, he had to bring something to the table.
He stormed the joint and headed to his room and made a phone call to the Governor, blackmailing him with the information he had, and after a very brief session, they arranged for a meeting. In the meeting, they came to an agreement that Reid will be allowed to deal with small-time recreational drugs with most regulations. With that information, he rushed to Lodi's shanty and stroke a new deal. He will be the manager of the entire operation.
Weeks pass by and the operation is increasing rapidly, so they are forced to expand their operations all over the city as long as the protocol is kept private and the proceeds are shared equally among Reid and Lodi. For once in his life, Reid enjoys riches first hand and just like everybody else who gets a taste of wealth, he is hooked into the cult of consumption. He buys another Harley Davidson, and shortly afterward, he finds a 50-acre land in the rural area of Ngong' near Ngong Forest and he pays a deposit towards the purchase of the land.
On his usual rounds in the city, he meets the girl again, and this time the girl says hi to him. He engages her in a conversation, and the girl admits that it was over between her and the Governor. They meet a few times afterward before Reid goes in for the kill, and they end up having sensual sex. Against his better judgment, they have sex countless times and before they knew it, they were falling for each other. Around this time, Reid cut off contact between them but it simply never worked because Nakuru was such a small city especially now that Reid was a drug lord of some sort; they were bound to meet in one way or another. After a few sex encounters again, Reid decided to start dating the woman for good. Around this time, he had already finalized the purchase of the land, and plans to build a simple structure were underway.
After a year, Reid and Chebet moved into their new house in Ngong' and after 6 months, he quit the drug business, collecting his proceeds which amounted to more than 50 million Kenya shillings. In terms of US dollars, this amount was only around 450,000, but considering the Kenyan economy, this was enough to last him a lifetime. Things were starting to look out for them and even Chebet got pregnant with twins, but you all know what they say about the silence before a storm; the more the silence, the deadlier the storm. And it hit him properly, shattering him to pieces for the rest of his miserable life.
So, Reid and Chebet always enjoyed taking their 4-month-old babies to Masai Mara National Reserve, where they would watch all kinds of animals from lions, snakes, hippos, elephants, leopards, and so forth. On this particular day, everything seemed different, from the way the morning coffee tasted, the morning sex with Chebet, the smell of his bike's engine heating up, and something that seemed to convince him to not go. But just like everyone else, his ego got the better part of him. At the gate of the reserve, the watchman looked at him with suspicious eyes as if to tell him, 'Run!', but he brushed it off. The universe has a way of trying to keep us from trouble, doesn't it? He got into their Mobius, which is a Kenyan manufactured car designed for rural Kenya and it is as rugged as they come. Towards the river at the end of the reserve, which is River Mara, and the one that separates Tanzania and Kenya, he saw a group of white people, and a few meters away from them, he saw a woman and a man who seemed to be in love. Upon taking a closer look, he was flabbergasted to see that the woman was none other than her own sister, Sheryl, who was married to a CIA agent, and suddenly all his past came flooding back to him.
While in his hometown, he killed two people, one by accident, and one by self-defense. Both of them were police officers. The first one he killed was because he had found out that the police officer was cheating on one of his sisters with another one of his sisters. Anger engulfed him, and he decided to teach him a lesson, one thing led to another, and he killed him. Another police officer found out about the issue and tried to confront him, which led to another back-and-forth of bullets, and the officer died on the spot. This is where it gets interesting; the only witness to both murders was Sheryl, and she did not hesitate to testify as a witness to seeing his only brother committing murder, and it was then that Reid's deal with the devil started, he was in the run for 5 years, until he landed in Kenya. He was more than sure that he would never see his sisters again, and he was fine with it, but here she was.
"Reid! Those two are looking at us. Do you know them?" Said Chebet in a cheerful tone.
"What!" Reid came back to his senses, confirming the truth of the statement. Sheryl was coming towards him, with the husband by her side. Reid tried to keep his cool, but then the husband just had to ruin the reunion when he flashed out a gun.
"Hands in the air, Reid! And this can end very quickly without any fuss." The husband barked.
He looked at Sheryl's eyes and there was no hint of love in them, just resentment, and then he looked at his two sons, Venis and Idris, and he came up with a decision. There was no way he is going back to the United States. Within a split second, he flashed out his gun and started shooting at the husband, but it was already too late. Sheryl had jumped in front of her husband and took the heavy fire, and lay down, bleeding profusely. It did not require an expert to know that she was never going to make it. The husband was still standing, with his guns pointed at Reid's family, and that was a deadly mistake. He picked up a rock and with a mighty swing, he threw it at the husband, hitting the gun to the floor a few meters away, and before the CIA agent could decipher what has happened, Reid was already on top of him, throwing punches all over. In a matter of exactly 4 minutes and 54 seconds, he had punched the agent to death, and once his killer instinct had deserted him, he now had to deal with the fact that he just killed his own blood, unleashing the animal in him in front of his wife and sons. And this shattered his entire being too miserable pieces.
The police officers at the reserve were starting to head towards the scene, and so he had to think, and fast. He started the car and drove like a madman towards the entrance. Considering the poor reception at the side of the river, it will take some time before the police officers at the front gate are alerted of his misdoings, and by then, he would be far gone. He headed back to his land, and he started watching the news, and to his relief, the story in the news claimed that the couple had been in a disagreement that turned fatal. They were probably doing this to avoid scaring off the tourists. At least he was safe. But was he, really?
Something that Reid did not know he had was a conscience, and he definitely had no idea how a conscience works. The death of his sister took a toll on him, he imagined the tears on his mother's face if at all she was alive, the desperate cries of his other sisters, all because of him, and this broke him down to his knees, rendering him lifeless with emotions. He couldn't eat, all he could do was smoke countless packs of cigarettes and drink a lot of whiskeys. He even started smoking weed, something he had never done. At the age of 28, he looked like an old homeless man with all kinds of chronic diseases, and then he zoned out.
He comes back to his senses, and he finds out that he is 46 years old, his two sons are almost 19, one of them is pursuing law at the local university, and the other is fascinated by his father's Harleys, so he has started hitting the road as well. The African outlaw gave birth to a real African outlaw. All he could think about is how his life would have turned out to be if he accepted his scholarship to Yale University to pursue Medical Engineering. What if. What if. It is all he could think about as he awaited the day he would take his last breath.
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