- Gasoline
- Plastic bags
- Starter fluid
- Acetone hydrogen
- Gunpowder and guncotton
* * *
This place is dry and dusty; and I don’t like it one bit. It’s six pm in the evening but the temperatures are getting out of hand. 30 degrees, is what. Do you know how crazy that is? A woman in a bui bui passes hurriedly by and I almost shout at her to tell me what her secret is for surviving the insane heat dressed like that. The women in this place are beautiful, extremely so, but I still don’t understand how they manage to fully cover themselves in black day in day out. It’s been a few hours already and I would gladly give an arm to get out of this place. The town looks almost like a ghost town, everyone is indoors and I can feel rather than see the eyes eating into my back. Most of the houses – houses that are far in between- look freshly deserted. I can hear the whispers and I know it’s a matter of when and not if; someone would come knocking, wanting to know who I am, where I am from and what my mission is.
El Adde, Geddo. Somalia. That is where I am.
I get to the little room I have rented for the night and fall on the bed in an exhausted heap. There is a little radio on the table but I don’t want to turn it on. Finding a station that communicates in English would be a hustle in itself, plus I’m not sure I am ready for any more bad news. Because it seems like that is all that ever comes out of this town, all that ever comes out of this country. I look at the ugly wall clock; I have exactly 4 hours to start my mission. My little weapons of terror are set and ready, hidden in the large bag under the bed. I pray that when that knock comes, wanting to know who I am, I will already be out here.
So, I lay carefully on the bed with my arms crossed on the chest and think about how I got in this situation. I think about him – my dead husband of a soldier. By the time I was leaving Nairobi, only four bodies had been brought back in the country. Four! The news doing rounds was that quite a substantial number of soldiers had been slain. It is worth noting however that everyone has their own version. The information coming in is quite conflicting and after a while you don’t know whom to believe anymore. Four bodies and my husband wasn’t among the four. Meaning he was still somewhere out there, lying in a bush. I am doing this for him. Someone has to avenge his death. You agree, don’t you, that someone has to take that responsibility? What better person to do that other than myself? Please understand that this is not who I am, but circumstances are pushing me to places I did not know existed. What would you have done if you were in my position? The pain is too much and I have come to terms with the fact that not even time will heal my wounds. And wounded I am, but lord forbid that someone else gets to understand. Because to understand you must undergo the torture first…. I have chosen myself to be his avenger, to be the angel of death. Back home, the bickering goes on. Our president is in the coast, where he has been for the past 2 weeks. Or more, I seem to have lost track. I like it; the idea of him being in the coast that is. I don’t know why his being there is beginning to cause such uproar. I think the president should spend less time in Nairobi and more time in other provinces. He is the president of the republic of Kenya, for crying out loud, not the president of Nairobi! Why do Nairobians love whining so much? If he wants to stay in garisa for a month, let him do so! If he wants to set base in kisumu for a year and run the country from there, let it be so! This mentality of crying when the president stays in another province other than Nairobi for a while is what is wrong with this country. At least he is in the country, not out there touring the world, a passionate hobby of his.
There were polls all over the news. Should the president have been there to honor the fallen soldiers when they landed at the airport? Accompanied by videos of US presidents receiving dead US soldiers. Which is fine, but tell me again why are we comparing Kenya with the US? Personally, I believe it would have been nice to see him there receiving those fallen heroes, but what does it matter? Does it change anything? No it doesn’t. My husband is dead and we don’t even know where his body is….. He could be lying in a trench somewhere with flies swarming over him. I honestly can’t deal.
I don’t want to think about politics; I am here for revenge.
I chuckle as I think about how I duped the airport officials with my little weapons of destruction. None of them suspected me, a young pretty woman capable of doing anything significant. How I despise them for that! If only they knew! If only they knew what I was planning. I wouldn’t deny however that a small part of me wanted to get caught, for the whole world to see my face and remember me as the woman who wanted to avenge her husband’s untimely and wrongful death. A bigger part however, wanted me to actually go ahead and carry out the act. And so, here I am.
When the news came, after I had grieved enough, I fell into my husband’s notes like white on rice. I regretted not ever listening to him talk about his work but now was not the time for regrets. My husband was an expert at making explosive devices you see and I smile at the irony that with his death I would carry on his legacy. The thought of his body lying lifeless somewhere made my blood boil and heart race. I was over the edge now; it would take very little to topple me over. I, a simple housewife, turned into an avenger. A simple lady who couldn’t hurt a fly, turned into a murderer.
I look at the clock again. It is Time to get moving.
* * *
The night is so dark I can’t even see my own hands. Perfect. I am confident in the fact that the terrorist camp is a bit disorganized at the moment and careless because they are still taking in their “success.” Turns out I’m right. I don’t see anyone guarding the route. I heave in a sign of relief. I know that tomorrow first thing in the morning those guys…..those guys who have killed hundreds of innocent Kenyans and soldiers will be evacuating that camp, going to another base. From my estimate there are hundreds of them. They surely do not know what awaits them…my heart flips in triumph because at this minute I am the only one in the whole world who has that information. That is all the push I need. Slowly, I set out to work, planting the landmines. It is a tedious job, but an unseen force keeps pushing me. When they start evacuating, hundreds of them in their Toyota pickups, the amount of pressure they’ll apply to the ground will be enough to trigger the explosives. Ka Boom! In the blink of an eye they will be no more. I shut my brain from thinking about their families….about their wives. It’s a long vicious cycle this. A cycle of death, revenge, anger, misfortune…. And children who grow up with parent issues. Oh blimey.
Tomorrow, a time like this, I’ll be in my house waiting for any news of my husband. By then, media houses all over the world would be awash with how hundreds of terrorists fell right into a trap and were blown into pieces. It would be a frenzy and the KDF army as usual, will take credit for it.
