Plight of the Barber from Congo

I was on a rush that Sunday morning.

We had agreed to meet at the barber shop at 7am for a quick haircut. Valence, my barber was on time, but Munyao his colleague who had keys to the shop wasn’t.

We waited for what seemed like eternity, with my phone buzzing every two minutes, as my adorable wife kept reminding me not to be late. We had a big church and family event that day. Any hint of lateness to my time-conscious wife, would simply spoil the mood and day.

Valence, my preferred barber had a way with his hands. He immaculately used to trim my hair and beard to size. His hairline cuts were painless, especially when white spirit was applied after the shave, by the self-trained masseurs.

Beyond his cutting my hair we didn’t have much interaction. Waiting for Munyao gave us prime time to chitchat. In that ad hoc conversation, I was startled to learn he wasn’t Kenyan, but an immigrant from DRC.

Whether DR Congo, Congo-Brazzaville or Congo-Zaire, it’s like telling a Maasai herder that Harry Kane is the top scorer in the 2021 EPL.

He had been in Kenya for 17 years. Initially, he landed in Kakuma refugee camp, before securing the highly coveted UNHCR-issued civilian pass. With this pass, he was free to mingle and do business with Kenyans, and live outside the camps.

Kenya stopped this privilege mid 2000s due to rampant insecurity and the awkward dance with terrorism. By the strike of the President’s pen, half a million refugees remain restricted in the sun-scorched, make-shift refugee camps.

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Securing the civilian pass was only but a minuscule victory considering the insurmountable stress of not having a national ID in Kenya.

Without an ID, Valence, his wife and six children couldn’t access any government social services. Whether getting a birth certificate, school or college admission, compete for formal jobs or even vote. As a result, to access any social service, he had to bribe.

Listening to him, a national ID is highly desired among the refugees. Without it, Valence was always on the run from the Police, Government and killers of his father.

Police wouldn’t listen to his story of not being registered, more so considering his Congolese-Swahili. To survive, he quickly aped the Kenyan-Swahili language, culture and mannerisms. Fortunately, his looks didn’t betray him as much. Standing at the barber shop’s entrance, we looked like disheveled fraternal twins.

His narrative was long and intriguing. I had the time, as we waited for Munyao.

After leaving Kakuma, he says they stayed in a Protestant church in Mwiki, in the outskirts of Nairobi. Before long the local Pastor made him a caretaker. His assignments included cleaning the compound and furniture, while his wife prepared tea and snacks for church staff and visitors.

In an equal world, can men make tea, while women do manual work? I digress.

This they did for two years, before an acrimonious church split rendered them homeless and jobless. How he switched to being a barber is story for another day. He is accustomed to being on the run. Having escaped the murderous gangs in DRC and fleeing in the forest for two full years.

He tells me, experiences in the forest were not for pupils attending Group of Schools!

While fleeing in the forest, he had four of his seven children, not knowing where the other three children were. Later, he was reunited with his two children at Kakuma refugee camp, each with a tale of how they survived the convoluted journey across Rwanda and Uganda, before reaching into Kenya.

While we spoke a dark, tall and slender gentleman approached us. Perched on his back was a semi torn rucksack, sagging under the weight of phone accessories. Dangling from his forearm were all sorts of phone chargers, screen protectors, earphones and USB data cables.

Approaching us, he asked if we were interested in buying Airtel 4G sim card, which had an offer of Ksh. 100 free airtime.

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Before, I could muster a response, Valence spat on the ground and looked away. The gentleman took the cue and walked away. I was puzzled at the coded language between them. On prodding, Valence said the guy was a Tutsi – the people who killed his father in a refugee camp in Goma, some 30 years ago.

In his recollection, after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, his Hutu family fled with others, crossing Lake Kivu on a makeshift boat to Goma, in Eastern Zaire. At the time, he was a budding youth, barely in his thirties.

On this ride, he naively thought they were on a boat ride to explore the unchartered territories across the lake. On the contrary, this was his family’s escape from the murderous and bloodletting brothers-turned-foes, Tutsis.

Their less than one year stay in Goma, was rudely disrupted by an army commandeered by Laurent-Desire Kabila, whose singular mission was to mop out the fleeing Hutus.

Annals of history record that more than 100,000 people were murdered, buried alive, mutilated or raped, with those surviving killed by starvation.

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After spitting, Valence wiped the remaining saliva on the edge of his mouth with the back of his hand. I saw a huge scar on his left arm, running from the forearm to the triceps at the back of his hand. He had survived the worst. The atrocities left him with horrific physical, mental and emotional trauma.

Given this history, he couldn’t look at a Tutsi twice without spitting or surging with rage. The hatred is deep-seated, even when both are living in the same host country.

My naivety wouldn’t tell the difference between the two races, so Valence schooled me on that. He said, “Before civilization, Hutus were peasant farmers while Tutsis were cattle herders. Both ethnic groups co-existed peacefully.”

Consequently, as refugees, “Majority of the Tutsis take merchandise for trade, while their Hutu compatriots naturally pick the less entrepreneurial, employee positions“.

An explicit indication that their risk appetites were in stark contrast.

In Kenya, part of this animosity surfaced in 2014, when the government rounded up and forced all non registered migrants back to refugee camps. Ethnic shadow-boxing emerged between the two groups in Kakuma.

Rwandan history tells that the physical and socio-economic differences were propagated by a false anthropology created by their (German and Belgian) colonizers and missionaries, who favored one race over the other. They capitalized on and exacerbated what divided them, rather than embrace their diversity.

To advance their selfish interests, colonizers and missionaries propagated the belief that Tutsis, often called the giants of Africa, migrated over the centuries from Ethiopia.

In their rationalization, this is how the tall, slender, haughty, aristocratic Tutsis began the second conquest of Rwanda. Reputed to have come from Ethiopia or the Nile Valley, the Tutsis were the outer fringe of a great southbound pastoral migration.

It is purported that this false anthropology climaxed in the genocide in Rwanda, with the appalling exhortation to ‘send the Tutsis back to Ethiopia by the Nyabarongo River!’ But, I digress again.

Munyao was taking too long to arrive.

He was a poor time keeper. A great inconvenience. He refused to pick calls and kept us second guessing his arrival. I was getting impatient and wanted to leave, considering I had reassured my wife seven times that I won’t be late, by then.

Valence continued his river of life story to keep me hopeful and quiet his nerves that had been jostled by recounting these memories.

After his father’s tragic death, he was separated from his mother and siblings, as everyone ran for dear life during that near holocaust experience in Goma. He joined other young men escaping into the forest, not knowing where they would end up.

Local intelligence advised them not to follow the marked out forest tracks. These were dreaded to lead people directly into the hands of forest inhabitants who were renown for cannibalism and human sacrifice.

Allegedly, the Tutsis also waylaid run-away survivors to perform the ‘final rites’.

If the Genocide against Tutsis never happened in 1994, would Valence be cutting people’s hair in Nairobi, as a refugee? I pondered as I listened to his horror-filled story.

At 8.15am, Munyao strode in lazily as if the universe had stopped spinning and was waiting for his stage entry. He didn’t greet us, but walked past, as if we were signposts by the roadside. Valence whispered, “Because you aren’t his client, he cares less.”

It is cut-throat competition in the barbers’ world.

Each barber is paid approximately 20-30% of the revenue they generate. To earn Ksh.10,000 in one month, in a barber shop that charges Ksh.200 per cut, one needs to shave at least 170 heads!

Can barbers work from home? With the mid 2020 work-from-home government directive, Valence and Munyao were but a statistic of those whose livelihoods were cut off. Valence stayed home for two months, with his six children. Life was hard. With little interaction with the outside world, they slept hungry countless times.

Whereabouts of their seventh child is yet to be established. A wound they live with.

His wife suffers from chronic migraines, and during the lockdown season, she had multiple recurrences. In their risk averse approach, they tried selling groceries, but were elbowed out by the enterprising Kenyans.

For them, there are no savings. They live from hand to mouth. When schools opened in January 2021, he couldn’t raise school fees even for one of his children.

He moved his children from one low cost private school to another, with little luck.

It was a gracious and God-sent official from the MOE who wrote a memo instructing the local primary school headteacher to admit all their children, without asking for fees.

According to MOE, all children in Kenya, have the right to basic and quality education.

We hastily walked in after Munyao. Valence covered me with the shaving gown. He says, his hope is firmly hedged on voluntary repatriation to Canada. A UNHCR program that recognizes resettlement as one of the durable solutions to the refugee issue.

Half an hour later, I was clean shaven. He wiped off my lose hair with a soft brush. Before taking the highly sensationalized head and neck massage, he told me how he was swindled Ksh.300K by a woman who promised to expedite his family’s repatriation. To him Canada is heaven. Depending on his luck, he will have free housing and access all government social amenities. His children will be spoilt for choice of public schools, in either Ontario or Alberta provinces.

In the wash and massage parlor, Valence’s cousin was at hand to give the service.

She didn’t speak much Swahili but relied on Valence’s instructions and translation. As I paid my Ksh.200 for the service, I was inundated by the refugee story I just heard. I fished out my national ID and for a moment, realized it was precious and priceless, especially to refugees and other stateless individuals.

My morning rush came to a screeching halt as I pondered the privileges I have growing up in a country not torn down by war or persistent conflict.

I said a prayer for Valence and his family. I wondered if it was better for him to live in the heat of refugee camps in northern Kenya, relying on lifesaving packages from UNHCR or struggle to make a living among competitive and highly advantaged Kenyans.

Valence would rather escape to Canada anytime, though it remains an elusive dream.

This is a true story. Names and details have been changed to protect family privacy. Views expressed on this article are my own

Joseph N. Mungai is inspired by people’s life experiences. Do you have an intriguing life story and need a ghost writer? Email: j.mungai@hotmail.co.uk