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The Story

In the hustles of Eastlands, nobody wins. One dame is desperate and calculatingly manipulative. The other is a gash who just makes hash of the arrogant male romantic interests through her offhand sexuality. This is a story about misfits. An ugly woman who is a wall climber, a cripple in a wheelchair who calls the shots, a pastor who is a big con, a shylock who wants to be an MP, a ghetto thug whose only dream in life is to own a matatu.

Atieno Mary Bella is a troubled enterprise owner whose struggles with her work, doubts about her talent, and complicated relationships often puts her at odds over affections associated with men. Working for her is Akombe Bosibori, a backstabbing marketer who has designed a campaign for a multi-million national disability project that will utilise government funds to raise awareness in the low income areas of Nairobi. However, the whole thing is orchestrated by a man in a wheelchair, the flamboyant Tutu Kulundeng, a mastermind and organiser of grand schemes for the cartel-run government. He wants an existing advertising agency to use to siphon millions from the government. Using the scrawny underdog, Kiprotich, he knows how to manipulate Bosibori.

Atieno and Bosibori place their bets on four unreliable characters in their power struggle: Atieno on Papa Gachietha, a shylock and grand thief, and on Ojuku, a ghetto thug. Bosibori places hers on Kulundeng and on Pastor Otodo, a greedy two-timing preacher who brainwashes with intent to take over Atieno’s company and add it to his wealth as an asset of his church.

Kulundeng, Otodo, Gachietha and Ojuku think they know the ropes; and women. Maybe they do. But they don’t know Atieno too well, otherwise they’d have realised that they are just flies stumbling into the deadly web of a woman whose danger comes from her waywardness and instability, heightened by the hard life of Eastlands, with which she was fatally touched.

REVIEWS

Power Struggles and Deception in the Heart of Eastlands

GABRIEL DINDA,   WRITERS GUILD-KENYA

WAYWARD EASTLANDERS is a gripping tale of power, manipulation, and survival in the harsh underbelly of Nairobi's Eastlands. The story follows Atieno, a fierce yet troubled businesswoman, as she navigates treacherous alliances and personal demons. With a cast of morally ambiguous characters—from corrupt politicians to scheming pastors—the novel explores the dark complexities of human ambition. Atieno's inner conflict, juxtaposed with external power struggles, keeps readers on edge, delivering a narrative rich with tension and unexpected twists. A thrilling read for anyone drawn to tales of intrigue, betrayal, and resilience.   

 LAKE VICTORIA READERS GROUP, KENYA

CHAPTER EXCERPT

One

HORNS BLEAT and a covey of uproarious matatus and bodas hurtle down the bleak road from the direction of town with a vulgar scramble. The Hustlers is a silvery blue nganya with chrome highlights that shimmer in the sunlight. The wide wheels and burrr-ing sound of the exhaust leads one to believe that it is some sort of hot rod. In the hustle and bustle of the African throbbing city of pulsing energies, this glittery matador, this menacing manyanga, is cutting veronicas implacably with the weather sunny and warm, in the high twenties. Seriously, with these marauding PSV things, Kenya’s youth could easily become a mobilised Gen Z army. There is an insidious charm, a fey decadence—you’re really in another world inside these metaphorical theatres which reverberate with the wacky beats of genge rap music, drawing everyone in a cadence that buffet them, the garishly intriguing fluorescent interior with large LED screens, looking as if they are made for immoral purposes, and you wonder how come everyone around you looks so beautiful. Colourful, flashing hairdos, studied gestures, stylized voices, enchanting smiles, and perfume flooding the air. It is an odyssey in a fantasy trip in which you lose yourself and your mind is drugged and lulled to a sweet slumber. It’s a parody of the unreal imagined and sanity asunder and private lives and love affairs.

The Hustlers twirls, jerks and jolts in the blazing sun, roars like a demented buffalo chasing a lion in the scorched Serengeti. It screeches its brakes and blares its horns, kicks up dirt and dust, then hoots more. A sweating policeman stops it, checks its licenses on the wide screen with pictures of a smiling Barack Obama. The driver hands him his driving licence booklet. He opens it, plucks out a one-hundred-shilling note, waves it on. The driver meshes gears and noses the minibus down the turbulent thoroughfare with a high-pitched labouring of the engine. Then, holding the beast on the road with a barbarity of manner and custom, he works his right hand furiously on the horn buttons to blare the trumpets while the manamba, a tall, thin, sneer-faced, chicken-breasted boy wearing dreadlocks, yanks open the door, swings his frame out like a monkey and, while hanging on the rails, whistles manically and squeals furiously, his hand fluttering in the air like a broken wing. The Hustlers kicks a storm of dark exhaust fumes and slews off the road at 100 km.p.h. like a tailspin, and pulls down everyone in it and around it in the avalanche as it cranks to a stop at a stage near the culvert, a few inches beyond the culvert on the roadside where nonchalantly sits the roadside mama mboga women—women of toil bogged down on the primal mudflat of survival, brazenly done. Weary commuters alight, and the manamba bawls out—“Beba, beba!”—and ushers in new ones. Matatus roar past like Safari Rally cars, and their backwash hits the hot rods with solid blows. Taking people to Eastlands. Eastlands.

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