A story of how my dearest friend, Lillian, and I grew up with the Busia Malaba road. It all begins in our childhood when as girls we would race cars whilst ridding her dad’s black mamba bicycle.
Growing up, I had a friend from Alupe, a university town neighborhood in the vicinity of Busia town. We were what they today call family friends. This meant that I would often travel down to visit her over the holidays. In our play, we would ride her father’s “black mamba” bicycle up and down a stretch of dusty road. My friend, Lillian, always had this thing about this road one day being tarmacked. She’d say that were it not for the state of the road, she could cycle as fast as the few cars that zoomed past us. Looking at what was then more of a footpath than a road, I found her re-imagination of the Busia Malaba road quite wishful.
Childhood Dreams
However, even with my less fertile imagination, I like all children loved drifting away into the world of fantasy. I found this world painted by my friend Lillian spoke to me. In particular, I found her fantasy of a tarmacked Busia Malaba road quite appealing. You see my home was somewhere in the ‘lower end’ of Bukusu land. Therefore, heading down to Lillian’s meant a rough ride behind my father’s motorcycle through village dirt roads. Our journey often begun a week earlier with father inquiring around our village on the likely state of the two routes there.
Connecting Families: A Ride Down Memory Lane On The Busia Malaba Road
One contact once offered that their in-laws from Nambale had come visiting just the other week. The said in- laws were said to have come and left through the Musikoma – Mateka- Buyofu route that ‘pours’ at Mungatsi. Given that the source was speaking of his in-laws, he would urge father to trust his judgement as a man of his stature knew better on how to treat in-laws.
Another source some other time urged father that he should just use shortcuts and make find his way to the Busia Malaba road. His reason is that it was always wise to pass through villages especially when travelling with children. Further, he added, the discomfort of village paths would be short lived as once we made it to the Busia Malaba road, its flat geography — with only one river to cross — made for better riding. I tell you, quite a decision it was, especially during the rainy seasons.
Therefore, albeit for different reasons, I willingly shared in, and helped build up, Lillian’s fantasy. For I thought a tarmacked Busia Malaba road would be much help to father. As much as I saw a hero every time he had to get his hands dirty and repair yet another puncture, I wished better for him.
Work Begins
Possibly some six years ago, I faced a similar decision — even though it couldn’t have be more different as the choice was whether to use the back route that branches from Busia town or to use the Busia Malaba road from its start near the area known as roadblock on the Busia Kisumu highway — when I went visiting at Lillian’s. Decades had lapsed since I last made that trip. However, the excitement was no less fervent.
Lillian and I were both expectant. Myself with a second and her’s was the first. I was further along the journey whilst Lillian’s was just starting to feel the heaviness. Ever the generous host, Lillian’s mum made us a dinner party as she always had. Needless to say, the katogo and kienyeji engoko were just as we remembered them.
More delightfully, now that we were all grown up, Mama Lillian opened chapters previously untold of a story we always loved to hear. The Bonnie and Clyde- esque life she lived with Lillian’s departed father as they struggled to make a honest living at the height of the black market trade between Uganda and Kenya, is the stuff of Netflix.
We drank tea, laughed and reminisced some more. But once again, the damned road made into our conversation. My japloy had gotten stuck in the mud on my way there. This was because the government was finally embarking on tarmacking the Busia Malaba road. Thus, the civil engineering works that were ongoing then during the rainy season had occasioned quite a lot of mud.
The Busia Malaba Road, An Artery Of Importance
I remember we joked how the children we were both carrying would get to live our dreams. Maybe unlike us, for them it will be about skating down the road. Lillian was convinced that my daughter will have such a hip ‘ushago’ when her son married her. Despite my protests that I would instruct my husband to put the enganana (dowry price, Lubukusu) so high that we’d bankrupt them, she persisted with her fantasy.
According to her, my daughter would undo our efforts by eloping as ‘town was coming closer’ with tarmacking of the Busia Malaba road. Never mind that we had not even sexed our unborn. We laughed so hard over such girl stuff that her mother, just as it used to be so many years ago, had to threaten us to put out the lights; unless….
Road Of Life
Unless someone went into labor, and yet the road to Busia was so bad. How would we get to hospital? She wondered. Besides, her back was gone she wouldn’t be able to handle a mini epidemic of women in labor. More importantly, she added, that herself and her husband hadn’t worked so hard to make a honest wage in the midst of a thriving smuggling economy for their grandchildren to be born by a mkunga.
Under a year later, I was back on the Busia Malaba road. With Lilian alright. Only that my good friend wasn’t reminiscing as she used to whenever we went down the road that had defined our childhood. The road’s journey had just begun with bulldozers moving earth about. On her part, Lillian’s journey had come to an end. To reunite with earth was all that remained as she had succumbed to her life long battle with Leukemia shortly after giving birth to her son. Recently, as I drove down the almost complete Busia Malaba road, I could’t help but think of the many lives intertwined.
Lives Intertwined
It was humbling to realize how our lives connect with the things of this life. I wondered about the women who now have a quick and comfortable ride to hospital. I smiled when I remembered Lillian’s joke of my daughter having a hip ‘ushago’ as ‘town had indeed come’. It was raining heavily thus I couldn’t see today’s version of Lillian and I racing cars with bikes; but am pretty sure that’s a given.
Towards Malaba, some seven or so kilometers, work on the Busia Malaba road was still ongoing. This incomplete section was possibly the reason why I saw no evidence (heavy trucks and the likes) of business moving; but I can picture the modern version of Mama and Baba Lillian eking out a living out of cross border trade thanks to this road. At the section of the road that passes in front of the gate of the renown girls high school, St. Monica Chakol, a bustling town is emerging. This tells me that girls, just as I did so many years back, will be travelling down to these sides to commune with their sisters from other mothers.
Rest well, Lillian.
