Ndinda

She liked the silence. It meant the freedom of an empty house. She read letters then, letters not addressed to her, perused pictures then, pictures not even intended for albums. It gave her a taste of their world, a taste for their wealth.

So she waited for those silences to don the Madam’s jewels, to scrutinize the Mkbwa’s receipts, to behold what they had hidden. She was in that stillness the master of the house and the owner of those secrets.

She listened to their points of discussion, listened to their rants and their gossip. The mkubwa increasingly suspected an uninvited audience. So one day, feeling her presence behind the door, opened it abruptly so that it hit her, outright. But the warning only caused her to dig deeper and to play with her role in that house like the way children play with fire.

Like a jealous third wife, Ndinda found comfort in stirring up trouble, and it was easy to dispense it to the company around her.

‘Hakuna chai,’ she denied the askari when he asked for tea. ‘Hakuna stima,’ she refused him again when he asked if he could charge his cell-phone inside. ‘Hakuna Ndinda,’ he humoured himself when lunchtime came around and Ndinda was nowhere to be found to serve him.

But even the most patient of people had a threshold for Ndinda’s insolence. One day, the askari asked of her, “Please, if the mkubwa comes, open the gate for him. I’m going very quickly, to the kiosk, to send mpesa. I’ll be back now, now. Here are the keys.”

And like a fool handing over his money to a thief for safekeeping, Ndinda went for the kill.

“Askari?” she feigned ignorance, “I don’t know where he has gone. I don’t have any keys,” she lied to mkubwa as he waited at the gate. Incensed at the askari’s seeming irresponsibility and having to send and wait for someone to deliver a spare set of keys, the mkubwa  threatened to fire the speechless askari when he returned.

Ndinda must pay, the askari decided to himself as he threw himself at her.

“Aiee!” she screamed, as she fled from his angry fists. “He wants to kill me!” she cried, appearing bewildered and desperate.

Then, in complaint to the other househelps, “It’s not even my job to open the gate!”

Naively sympathetic, they held the askari from beating her and pacified him with assurances that he could leave the keys with them if he ever needed to leave his station again.

But like the hide of an old beast, Ndinda remained thick-skinned and not long after the askari had chased her to her room and the other househelps had saved her from a beating, she found reason again to start another fire.

Setting out to do so, she bought herself ten sim cards; one for each of her fellow househelps’ boyfriends she designed to text. And true to her intention, she succeeded in spreading bad-blood like you spread hysteria.

An uproar ensued in the estate when it was finally discovered that the only possible culprit, the common link between the househelps and their boyfriends could have been Ndinda. They rallied now to charge at her door. And this time, they came with knives.

“Wacha tuingie!” They screamed at the askari who now oddly found himself responsible for her life, “this is not your business!”

“Please, the family is here,” he pleaded, “even the children are home.”

“Haiya, we don’t care!” They persisted, stung by her betrayal, “Ndinda has been disturbing our men. Telling them we are prostitutes. Let us pass. This girl needs to be taught a lesson she will never forget!”

“Violence will not solve anything. Please go home, forget about it and don’t talk to Ndinda anymore. She is only doing childish things,” he reasoned with amusement at the reversal of roles.

“Yah! She is disturbing us! Buying sim cards to disturb us! Her money is useless, look how she is spending it. You know, we pay school fees, we pay for our children... Ndinda is just buying sim cards to disturb us! What for?!....” they blustered, slowly becoming placated with the realisation that violence would not repair the damage done to their relationships.

“We have never met a devil like her and we never will!” they concluded as they walked away.

Ndinda remained in her room after that, only leaving it to bring the askari his tea, his lunch and to return his cellphone after charging. Her demeanour was like that of a sullen child and the askari was glad to have it for he knew that this cooperation would only last as long as it would take for her to fan another fire.