Caught in a deluge after driving down to Mombasa

The Bolt car that my late Aunt Cecilia had leased out as a Bolt was a black Suzuki Wagon, 2014 model; and the one that was being used as an Uber, a sleek purple Mazda Carol (2018).

“I think we can get at least 600K for the Suzuki,” Safari said, “and 700K for the Mazda. What do you think, Mike?”

“I think after paying mall tycoon Li his one million for our share of ‘Safara Mascara’, we ought to split the 300K on top fifty-fifty,” I said.

That got my cousin Safari laughing, and I joined him in the laughter, marvelling at how genes worked. Our fathers, the Safaras, are brothers.

And here we were, one generation down, with similar broad brow features, big square jaws, and the same brown eyes — down to the teeth.

“Spoken to Li lately?” my cousin asked me.

“He had to fly back to Guangdong yesterday,” I told him. “There was a tornado in Guangzhou, and guess he’s gone to check if all his extended family is safe.”

“But mostly,” Safari said, “to ‘bling back cheapie goodies fur Guan Dough More’.”

That set us off merrily chuckling again, Safo and I.

No sooner had Safari put up the car pictures on one of the Mombasa-centric advert websites than there was an immediate reply from a Mark Mutua of the Ports Authority, asking us to drive the vehicles down.

“Are you sure this guy is on the level, Safo?”

“How would I know?” Safari shrugged. “I know you once got bitten, but there’s no need to be shy about this deal …”

“I’m not shy, just suspicious,” I told Safo. “And I am sure that’s not how the saying goes, senior man.”

That night, I dreamt we were driving with Safari in the Suzuki into the warehouse where I had been robbed of 90K last October.

Men in flowing black robes materialised out of the woodwork with guns in hand to rob us. As I jumped out of the car and fled, I heard a gunshot as they shot Safo — and woke up shouting into the night.

In spite of my premonition, I didn’t say a word about the dream to a cheerful Safari as he jumped into the Suzuki (he was a fast driver) and me into the Mazda.

He honked his horn, leaned out of the window, yelled: “Here we come, Mombasa.”

It was an uneventful trip that took us just six hours, from 7 am to 1 pm.

Our potential car buyer, Mutua, turned out to be having lunch at the Severin Sea resort, a serene place with a seaside restaurant and an efficiently professional manager, Mr Tuva, who welcomed us, and led us straight to where Mutua was sitting.

Mark Mutua turned out to be an amiable fellow, with a pleasant brown round smiling face, and as we enjoyed a delicious lunch of seafood, the hotel proprietor, a handsome young German called Sebastian, passed by to ask if all was well.

It was, except that Mutua turned out to be a pretty rigid bargainer, who basically offered us a million bob for both cars, and in hard cash, if we did the car deal right away.

“You mean we sign and go to the bank for the funds right now, man?” Safo asked.

Mutua grinned and opened the duffle bag at his sandalled feet, and pulled out transfer forms. “Weka kidole,” he said, “and walk away with this mfuko right now.”

He opened the bag wider, and with round eyes, I saw wads of cash wrapped with rubber bands.

“Hiyo ni milioni moja,” Mutua said, “ama laki moja. Sign, and n-go!”

Safo leaned over to me and whispered: “Cuzo, go to the loo and count the cash. If it’s a mita, text me and we wrap this shiznit up, my homie.”

It was odd sitting on a toilet seat in an air-refreshened lavatory of the Severin, door firmly bolted, counting out a million bob in one thousand notes.

When I emerged from the bathroom, from what must have seemed like the longest long call ever north of the Limpoopo, a sudden thought overtook me.

“What if the money is fake?”

Going back to the loo, I randomly picked out 50K from the duffle bag, from separate bundles, and went to the reception to get it verified by their money machine.

“It’s fine, sir,” a sweet smiling Swahili receptionist assured me.

There was only one thing left to do to close the deal – Mark Mutua wanted us to drive back either one of the cars to his wife in Nairobi, “hand hi will come with the other one when ham done with mbiashara here hinn ha day or two …”

It was 3pm by the time we left Mombasa, Safari on the wheel of the Mazda.

There was a drizzle that had turned into a steady downpour by the time we got to Mariakani, then a roaring deluge an hour later as we crawled in the Carol past Samburu.

“I can hardly see the road in front of me, Mike,” Safari said, stating the obvious even as the wipers whacked furiously away at the rain. “Think we will have to sleep in Voi?”

“In the style of kings,” I said, trying to sound light, as I threw an eye at the light blue duffle bag in the back seat, as I had nervously been doing since Mombasa – as if it was a magic bag of money and could disappear back to Mutua (after all, he had mentioned he was originally from Kitui), leaving our hustle high and dry.

Suddenly, as we got to that road dip in Maungu, a sudden flood of water came roaring at our Mazda out of the hills, and I felt the wheels of the car turn into rubber paddles.

“Mike,” Safari screamed. “We are being swept away!”

Reflexively, I climbed into the back seat, grabbed the duffle bag, and strung it like a noose around my neck and chest. Instinctively, I shoved open the back door of the car, and with muscle memory, swam away from the Mazda Carol, 2018 model.

Only when I was panting away, wet on high ground, the rain pouring down with fury did I realise, as in a terrible dream, that my cousin Safo, buckled into his seat, had been swept away with the car.

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