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When he stumbled into bed to sleep, the night was dark and cold. His bed, unmade for four days, was a narrow wooden abode that he adored. The mattress on it felt thick and fluffy even though it was narrow and hard. The blanket felt warm even though he often shivered when the nighttime breeze lambasted his tin-walled house.
Mutiso was a twenty-four year old high school graduate who lived in Sinai slums, just a few feet away from major oil pipelines that transported oil continuously.  He had been living there for two years now and had no intention of shifting anytime soon. For the 10 by 10 feet one-room tin shack, he paid one thousand five hundred shillings (15USD) per month. The bed was the only furniture in the house. Next to it was a cooking stove that he rarely used since it was cheaper and easier to eat in any of the dozens of open air restaurants that were scattered all over the slum.
Somewhere from a faraway place, he heard the merry voices of school children as they passed by his shack on their way to school. That must be Oti and Ken, he thought dreamily. They were naughty brothers who lived with their single mother a few doors away from his. They shared the same washrooms and whenever they took a bath, it was because their mother had dragged them to the bathroom, screaming and kicking. She was in her late twenties and earned a living from selling tomatoes and onions.
A pig grunted right outside his door and hit his tin walls repeatedly, as if eager to demolish the hapless shack. But Mutiso didn’t hear the noise. It was nine o’clock and he was deep asleep. He was jobless and often woke up whenever he felt like. After two years of roaming the nearby industrial area in search of work, he had given up on employment. Security guards in every factory gate that he knocked always told him the same dreadful two words, ‘hakuna kazi.’ No work. Every time he heard these words, it was as if a knife had been pierced into the hope that still stirred stubbornly within him.
But two years of hearing those two words – no work – were sufficient to finally deal a final, fatal blow on the hope within. He gave up on employment and didn’t have the minimal capital needed to start a small business like some of his neighbours. Neither did he have the reckless bravado to flirt with crime. So he lived from day to day, never really sure where the next meal would come from. Or where the next rent money would come from.
At 10AM, he woke up with a start and jumped out of bed. The rumble in his stomach pushed him towards the door and the washrooms. Luckily, there was no queue as there normally was. But just as he was about to begin his toilet business, a casual glance through the hole beneath him revealed a thick layer of oil floating above the sewer. Great! He thought. This meant that there had been an oil leak.
The rumble in his stomach disappeared as he rushed back to his shack and grabbed a twenty-liter plastic container and an aluminum bowl. He pushed his head into the toilet hole, ignoring the stench. Carefully but speedily, he scooped the oil in the aluminum bowl and poured it in the plastic container, which he had placed right next to the hole. After a few scoops, he began feeling dizzy and took a short break. In several drainage trenches all over Sinai slums, dozens of people were also doing the same thing.
A burst oil pipe had gifted them with free oil and they were not about to shun the gift. For Mutiso, the oil in the twenty-liter container would fetch him money sufficient for two-week meals. So after the short break, he continued scooping.
Maybe it was a cigarette butt. He would never know. All he knew was that as he was pouring yet another bowl of oil into the container, he heard a loud bang that was followed by shrill screams. Instinctively, he knew that the oil had caught fire. His adrenalin took over and he leapt from the toilet only to remember that the half-full container was still in the toilet. He couldn’t leave it behind. And so even as a fire spread rapidly from a nearby trench into the toilet he leapt back and grabbed the container. Then he took to his heels and ran for dear life.
He ran past his shack and ran past two open air restaurants. As he ran, he kept screaming for people to run. Oil fire was spreading. He kept shouting at them to run from the fire.
Within minutes the fire had spread all over dozens and dozens of shacks with a ferocious sizzle. One hour later, more than one hundred charred bodies lay strewn all over Sinai slum. Three hours later, dozens of people found themselves at Kenyatta National Hospital, with severe burns all over their bodies.
Some of them had been scooping the oil when the fire came. Others had been in their houses, fixing breakfast, washing dishes, spreading their beds, spreading butter on bread for their children, saying a prayer for the day to yield hope and help. Then the fire came and snuffed out their lives.
They became charred bodies that couldn’t be identified.
Charred bodies that couldn’t finish spreading their beds or feeding their children.
They couldn’t defend themselves when ignorant people kept wondering on radio shows, blogs, pubs or salons why Kenyans never learn a lesson. Why Kenyans keep scooping spilt oil, indifferent of the danger that lurked within the slimy flow.
They couldn’t defend themselves and say that they had been in their houses minding their business, living their lives, when these lives were burnt beyond recognition.
As he surveyed all the death, carnage, injury and destruction, Mutiso refused to let go of the oil container. He was still alive and he still had to eat. The container in his hand was the only meal guarantee that he had.