Title : Going Down River Road
Author: Meja Mwangi
Publisher: Spear Books
Reviewer: Samson Kirui
When the first case of the Covid-19 was reported, the government put businesses to stand still, curfew was declared and people were advised to stay at home.
For a country that boasts of the most dynamic publishing landscape, people resorted to books as a pass time activity.
As a way of coming to terms with the monster in the country, Mwangi’s humorously, creatively, persuasively, critically and satirically written text, Going Down River Road is a great friend that keeps you laughing even in the trying and tiring times of financial impotence.
It was first published in 1976 but Meja Mwangi’s Going Down River Road is still relevant as it will be for centuries. It is a text that made Meja King of Kenya’s popular Literature.
Set in Nairobi City, the text facsimiles human conflict centralized on universal economic rifts and rife in the city. Reminiscent of an emerging nation grappling with newly found independence, the text remorselessly paints a grim picture of the life led by the downtrodden in the sea of the haves.
The text undulates around the exasperate life of Benjamin Wachira who is fired from his prestigious job as a military lieutenant after entangling with hoodlums and his disheveled buddy Ocholla.
The two are cynic characters who have lost touch with themselves living each day at a time doing mundane jobs at the construction site for Patel and Chakur Contractors.
It is a demeaning job that reduces the casual laborers to objects who can be hired and fired at the whim of the employer.
Frankly, bitingly and bitterly, Ben describes their identity in the eyes of their employer at the site as the hands and bemoans. He said that if the contractor would make hands, he would never need laborers. The contractor subjects the laborers to dehumanizing conditions reason being that it is their only way of eking out living.
Ben and his contemporaries in the text inhabit back streets, slums and other poor tenements where moral decay has taken toll of an upright life.
Going Down River Road posits unbridled urban growth that has stripped its occupants of morality and humanity. The moral fabric of the society described in the text teeters on the verge of disrepair.
Women in the text are taken as objects of sexual gratification and source of entertainment for men. Ocholla blames his wives for his torn and miserable life. He describes his family as comprising of two beastly wives…and the devil knows how many brats.
Meja paints a life full of bitterness, vengeance, violence and prostitution. While drunk, Ocholla says that all commercial sex workers in the Eden Pub are his and the reader is privy to the many occasions where women are willing to sleep with men in exchange of a coin or two.
Prior to meeting Winnie, Ben is spotted scouting for a quick lay and long after Winnie abandons him and her child, Baby, Ben deteriorates to blindly engaging prostitutes to quench his sexual desires.
Ben’s deterioration hit the ceiling when he engages a fifteen-year old lady whilst her one-month old baby is innocently tucked in a carton in the same room.
The text paints a succinct picture of urbanization in a country facing turbulent times economic-wise although through Ben and Ocholla we are able to glimpse shreds of hope and sense of humanity.
Albeit, healthy trust and human relationship is hard to build, the genuine and stem bond between Ben and Ocholla serves to give text a sense of hope. Towards the end of the text, Ben chooses to educate Baby and Ocholla on the other hand welcomes his rural family to the city.
Through his text, Meja Mwangi spins a fascinating tale of the City’s most dreaded lower side, popularly known as, “River Road”.
Going Down River Road is indeed a page turner that never disappoints especially in ones lowest times.
