Bikozulu’s new book mirrors our struggles

“Letting go, in HR parlance, means they don’t need you, you are of little to no value to them… I had joined the ranks of men who had been let go. How do you let your wife in on that personal humiliation? How do you tell her that your income will no longer be part of the family basket? That you will require her to carry her weight, your son’s weight and on top of that, your own weight? …

“Sure, she might love you but love can get heavy and burdensome. There is no easy way to tell her that going forward, for Godknows how long, only one hand will remain on deck — her hand. I grew up knowing that women’s hands are very delicate.

“That’s why they have manicures done while we simply bite our nails… I don’t know what one does in such circumstances, I had never been fired before,” so writes Jackson Biko (also known as Bikozulu) in his new novel, Let Me Call You Back,.

In Let Me Call You Back, Bikozulu, the master of the subtleties of Kenyan life, writes resonantly, putting into words the human drama of Kenyan life — giving expression to feelings and situations, articulating our musings and disappointments. In this book, he writes a simple, devastating narrative about a man (the narrator) facing an uncertain journey in the corporate world and reaching the end of it as a defeated man — sad, tired and broken when he loses his job.

The loss of a job is a deep spectre — an abruption, like a tearing away to an ever-grimmer reality — a study into when it all falls apart. Unfortunately, with the shilling depreciating, steeper taxes, a depressed economy and some investors shying off from investing in the country, some Kenyans are finding themselves in this grim reality of losing their jobs (being “let go”).

Life is an interesting proposition and Bikozulu lets us into the life of the narrator, a wandering soul whose fortunes take a downturn.

As the English neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks once wrote, in the experience of life, “One has seen triumphs and tragedies, booms and busts, revolutions and wars, great achievements and deep ambiguities. One has seen grand theories rise, only to be toppled by stubborn facts. One is more conscious of transience…”.

Through the narrator, we are privy to what happens when one falls on hard times, remembering the good times like the way one fondly remembers what’s left of once-love. Nairobi, like many other modern cities, breaks one’s heart again and again and again. It can damage one’s soul.

Known as shamba la mawe (the concrete jungle), Nairobi has its fair share of sad tales of people who have lost jobs, wandering up and down the streets of Nairobi, crying. Meeting friends for lunch, crying. Sitting forlornly on the grass at Uhuru Park, crying.

For the narrator, the loss of his job was a scary journey into the unknown like way one takes a lonely path through a wilderness, a land of howling jackals punctuated by the terrifying squealing of hyenas — the traveller hurrying towards the nearest inhabited village and encouraged only in his way by memories of the last farewell exchanged beneath a sky full of stars and urged on by the hope of meeting other people soon.

Like many Kenyans, the narrator grew seeing poverty. He says that, growing up, “the shadow of poverty had gathered around me like an old storm and handed me a jaundiced pair of eyes from which I saw the world around me”.

That’s a statement most Kenyans (hustlers) can identify with: poverty affects their perspective, colouring everything. These hustlers suffer many pangs of hunger just at the thought of the opulence in Nairobi suburbs where windows look onto open areas ablaze with sunlight and other windows open to the lush sanctum of gardens or open into wet lawns merged in a blur of green plants. And always, there is a breeze — rustling quietly through the suburbs. It’s like a world outside the Kenya most hustlers know.

One of the most touching parts of the novel is how the narrator struggles to tell his wife that he had lost his job. It seems that his whole identity as a man (like most men) was built around providing for his family. “I grew up knowing that women’s hands are very delicate,” he says.

When he loses his job, his identity unravels. However, he does something that most Kenyan men reportedly hate — he takes his mental health seriously and visits a therapist for counselling. He seeks help. That’s a message every Kenyan man should take to heart.

They should seek help especially when they hit rock bottom instead of resorting to homicide, femicide or suicide. Bikozulu has hammered this from the beginning of the novel: men, take your mental health seriously and seek help. It’s not a weakness or “unmanly” to do so. It’s okay not to be okay.

- The writer is a book publisher based in Nairobi. [email protected]