Presage of Downfall Chapter 1 – 1

He stopped working suddenly and looked up. After placing his right hand on his lower back just slightly above the hip, he made himself straight with a great effort and there was that sound of tired bones creaking.

Muscles and tendons snapped trying to re-arrange themselves back to their normal positions. He was a tall middle-aged man who had great strength though it was in his bones. It was not a matter of having a lot of flesh but energy stored in the bones.

But it was evident that if he continued with the kind of work he was doing at the moment, it would drain him of all the energy he had within a few years and leave him an empty shell of a man. A skeleton only fit for a High School Laboratory.

The tall dark man wore a pair of patched trousers and a tattered grey shirt. The sparsely bearded man dropped the three-kilogram sledgehammer he was using to crush the quarry stones onto the rocky ground.

He wanted to blow his nose but before doing so, he wiped the dripping salty sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. Then he took out a soiled white handkerchief and proceeded to blow his nose noisily adding more obdurate stains to the already grubby handkerchief.

He looked at the contents that had come out of his nose in disbelief. It was a mixture of darkish mucous and dust.

The Fine Dust Would Eat into His Lungs

He knew that if he stayed here for long, the fine dust would eat into his lungs making him produce bloody sputum and that would be a one-way ticket to hell or heaven. Then he crumpled his kerchief and put it back into his trouser pocket.

“Why are you not working, you lazy man, you have started building castles in the air?” A harsh voice chided him from behind. “I will sack somebody today!”

Though Karume turned slowly and saw his boss watching him with contempt in his blue snake-like eyes, he had already recognized that shrill and inhuman voice.

Mr Ting Shark, the owner of the quarry Karume was working in was a man of average height. His face was thin and he had a strong beardless jaw.

He had deep-set eyes and a rather long nose that was so flexible that it danced as he talked. A wild moustache grew on his upper lip and it seemed to be attempting to block his nostrils.

He wore a black suit and he had glasses with a thick frame all around making him have a rather funny look.

In the Quarry, Work Varied Like Seasons

Karume picked up his sledgehammer and continued crushing the stones. He did not realize that Ting Shark was watching him, admiring his great strength and energy.

He would roll a great stone to his own desired side, and then bring down the heavy sledgehammer again and again as if punishing the stone. The stone would crumble into small pieces.

Those small pieces were money to Ting Shark. The best thing was he was getting all that money without sweating; he had hands to do the sweating for him.

Ting Shark grinned evilly.

This quarry situated in a remote area had a rough murram road connecting it with Mukuri town. It produced building materials such as stones, gravel, and construction aggregate. The quarry had over thirty men.

Work varied like seasons; sometimes they were digging up stones, shaping them, loading them into the waiting lorries while at other times they were crushing them to small bits.

It was dangerous work since Mr Ting Shark did not provide them with protective clothing, but still, they had to work to endure the economic hardships the country had fallen into. This is after a few greedy leaders plundered it.

All around a group of about ten men was a dull rhythmic metallic clink as their heavy hammers kept on hammering the stones hard to disintegrate them. There was the distant sound of heavy machinery drilling and blasting the rocks to be turned into building materials.

Karume Was Uneasy

Without stopping, Karume looked to his left. His comrade was hard at work.

“Mugo,” he called softly.

“Yes”, his friend answered quickly without looking up. Sweat was dripping freely from every pore of his body.

Karume kept quiet for a while. Then he licked his dry cracked lips.

“What is it?” Mugo enquired before Karume had opened his mouth to speak. “What’s bothering you?”

“I am sensing that all is not well at home.” He said bringing the sledgehammer down rhythmically on the hard stones.

Perplexed, Mugo asked; “What do you mean?”

“I have a nagging feeling that all is not well at home.”

“What hunches do you have in your mind? Are you thinking of your wife entertaining other men? Or is it that you are thinking your children are hungry? Maybe you are imagining how they are moaning by the fireside, sprinkling ashes on their faces.”

It was not abnormal to have such a rude joke where people were almost of the same age and bound together by the harshness of life and its challenges. Again coupled with the realization that they would die poor at a tender age. But the mention of the word ‘children’ touched Karume’s soft spot.

He looked up at his pal.

“You seem to have forgotten that I only have one child: a girl who has finished schooling.” He continued pounding on the stone he was working on.

“I am sorry,” Mugo said feeling that he had offended his friend. “But why on earth do such risky family planning?” He asked as a matter of fact.

The men who were eavesdropping on their conversation broke out into a burst of short forced laughter.

The Monotonous Bang! Bang! Continued

After a moment of awkward silence broken only by the monotonous Bang! Bang! of the sledgehammers, Mugo asked: “Why not ask for a leave of absence and then go home? Then you can check if everything is okay.” He cleared his throat and waited for an answer.

“I think that’s what I will do.”

“The boss was here just a moment ago and you didn’t approach him,” Mugo replied.

“I am still here,” they heard from their behind and the man cleared his throat. “I will not allow you to go home until maybe your day off.”

Both men were startled. So the man was still around all that time listening to whatever they said? They returned to their hammering and worked in silence.

A man coughed amid the choking dust. He coughed again more loudly. Then again several successive times violently like he was going to have a seizure. He managed to contain himself and there was that sound of sputum being forcibly drawn from deep within clogged lungs.

He turned backwards looking for a safe place to expectorate. He hurled the phlegm about three meters in an unoccupied area and turned back to work.

Ting Shark, took out a white handkerchief and blew his long, flexible nose. He did it so carefully as if he was afraid of breaking it. Then he moved on, walking leisurely around his quarry, harassing his overburdened workers.

You could have thought he was the richest man in the world by the way he carried himself. He started moving towards his office but stopped to watch the quarrymen as they worked.

Most of the workers were burly men with immense chests, muscle-bound arms and drowning will of living in their eyes. The hot sun blazed down on their frequently bending backs covered with tattered clothes baking their skins mercilessly.

Others had decided to work without their tattered shirts. The odour of their hot sweat emanated from their sun-baked bodies and mixed freely with the dust from the quarry. The mixture then wafted slowly into their noses down to the lungs.

A Man Would Sneeze and Cough

Now and then a man would sneeze, cough or blow his nose violently. The sky was lovely blue, with not a single track of cloud. There was only a clear sky with the blazing sun being the predominant feature.

There was no wind blowing to this mine thus making the place hot like an oven. And whenever there was wind, it blew small particles of sand into their eyes irritating them.

Sometimes Karume used to think that they were working in hell for each day was a punishment where their bodies and souls were tortured beyond endurance.

Mr Ting Shark stood for a moment at a heap of well-shaped building stones. They were ready for market and out of them he would fetch millions of shillings. He stepped on a nine-by-three stone with his left leg and removed his spectacles.

The curt man wiped his specs carefully, cleaning them first on the inside and then the outside. He rubbed his eyes with the tips of his fingers before putting on his eyeglasses and moving on to stop again near a big heap of 10mm graded aggregate.

Next to it was a 20mm graded aggregate. He took a handful of the crushed rock and gave it a greedy look. The way he looked at the crushed rock, you could have thought he was an expert in petrology.

However, the truth of the matter was he could not tell apart igneous, sedimentary or metamorphic rocks that formed the earth’s crust. All he cared for was the amount of money he got each day as profit from his investment.

Then he dropped the crushed rock back on the heap and clapped his hands to remove the dust and walked on. This time he stopped by the side of a big heap of crushed limestone.

The Two Men Came From the Same Village

He just stared at it calculating how much it was worth with his greedy eyes. From that site, he walked briskly towards his office located near the entrance.

“Will you try to ask him?” Mugo inquired pointing at the disappearing figure.

“No.” Karume shook his head violently.

“You know his attitude towards us. We are only good to him when we are making money for him. The man cannot help you even when you are in dire need, or worse still, when in trouble. He doesn’t even want to part with all our salaries; something that we have worked and sweated for.”

Mugo cleared his throat. “Never mind, my friend. One day we will get out of this mess, if I may call it so – poverty mess.” He spoke in an almost consoling tone. “By the way Karume, how many days are remaining before you go on your leave?”

“About three, I think. Will I be able to wait?”

“You will make it. You see, what you have to do is stop worrying. Everything is okay at home.”

Karume and Mugo came from the same village. Debo village – that was its name. Mugo, whose hut was just a few steps from Karume’s, had ten breathing children. Not only Mugo but also other villagers had such big families.

The village could hold the World Cup soccer since nearly every family could present a team. And in that way, each family could represent a specific country from a given continent. It seemed as if all the villagers cared for was making babies!

Each time either went home; the other sent him to take a letter or something else. The two men shared a rented single room in the quarries. Not that they found it good but because Ting Shark could not give anyone a room by himself.

In a desperate bid for privacy, they had tried to modify the room but the attempt was no good. To add to the list of the things they shared, the men had a small piece of shamba that they cultivated during their free hours to supplement the food they received from their boss.

This part of the country being hot and dry, they had to water whatever plants they had in their small shamba. They drew water from ponds in the defunct quarries using old metal buckets.

These old quarries had turned out to be reservoirs of rainwater and a menace since it was a major breeding ground for mosquitoes. It was hard work but at the end of the day, they were even able to get a little cash through the sale of their farm produce.

In this way of working together, the two became firm friends. Mugo had helped Karume to secure a job in the quarries.

There was a Sudden Guttural Cry of Terror

As they worked in silence, there was a sudden guttural cry of terror from the bowels of the open quarry. At first, all the workers listened trying to determine the exact location of the distress call.

Then pandemonium broke as they rushed down to what could have been called the basin of the quarry. There was noise, shouting, screaming and confusion in the quarry.

As Karume and the other workers descended, loose rocks prevented them from hurrying but in no time they were at the base of the quarry. What they saw was horrifying.

A part of the hanging rocks had caved in on the men who were working there. Two men had been crushed severely by the fallen rocks. Their co-workers began the rescue operation immediately by hauling away the heavy rocks to free the trapped men.

It was an awful accident. One man had his hipbone crushed while the other had his leg trapped under the tumbled rocks.

After the heavy work of lifting the rocks, the two men were rescued but they were in a bad shape. They were both wriggling with intense pain. There was blood on their clothes. The scene was ghastly.

The Two Men Were Given First Aid

The quarrymen were horrified and as they made a make-shift stretcher they were all silent perhaps each wondering what if it had been them. Ting Shark rarely visited these deep parts of the quarry.

Mostly he sent his foreman as he had done now. The two men were given first aid before they were raised onto the stretchers. The stretcher-bearers now struggled with the groaning men taking them up from the base of the quarry.

This accident could not have happened had Ting Shark been a careful man, but he was a man of shortcuts and he never followed the norm of doing things.

There was no safety procedure or precautions as long as the money was flowing in, and with no proper follow up by the government, things had turned from bad to worse. At last, they moved to Ting Shark’s office and summoned him.

The injured men were put in one of the lorries used to carry sand and rushed to the nearby hospital. The quarrymen were left standing with sullen faces. They knew of the sad fate that had befallen the two men.

If they were lucky to pull through, then they would never stand on their two feet. What was even worse was the fact that Ting Shark would not compensate them for their bodily harm. In short, it would be as if their lives had come to an end.

Check out Presage of Downfall Chapter 1 – 2 here