Kill Me Quick is a story about Meja and Maina, two boys from the rural parts of Kenya who come to Nairobi with bright-eyed expectations about their future in the big city. It, however, becomes immediately apparent that these dreams are unattainable for their ilk. Instead of clinching the well-paying government jobs that would catapult them to a life of affluence, they are forced into a life of crime, drugs and soul-sucking sorrow.
When I first picked up this book about a week ago, I was very open-minded. Together with a fellow book-lover Lexa Lubanga, we are running a Meja Mwangi readathon. Lexa loves his writing and that got me excited to get started. Kill Me Quick was the first book I picked up. Because I knew Mwangi is a prolific writer, I hoped I wouldn’t be disappointed, but the experience of reading this book was something else.
Though set in the 1970s (it was published in 1973) the story could have been penned this year and I would be none the wiser. The story begins when Meja, who is freshly new to Nairobi, meets Maina, an already seasoned Chokoraa or street boy – so much so that this is his nickname throughout the novel – who becomes his first friend in the city. Like Virgil guided Dante’s spirit through the nine circles of hell, Maina quickly disillusions Meja from the convictions Meja has held about Nairobi since he was a young boy living in the village. For this Nairobi, the only Nairobi they have access to is indeed a hell-scape similar to the one depicted in Dante’s Inferno.
The demons of unemployment, hunger, police brutality, no access to water, sanitary conditions and food run rampant. The name Kill Me Quick comes from the moniker given to chang’aa which the main characters often indulge in to numb the pain of their reality. Main Street, a major highway in the book that separates the rich and the poor stands in for many real highways that do the same in real-life Nairobi. But it is also symbolic of the larger theme of the book; the line between being treated like a human being and being treated like less than a dog lies in the weight of one’s wallet. And as the story unfolds, the two friends, who become more than brothers to each other, are drawn even further into the whirlpool of crime and murder – with heart-breaking consequences.
This book made me confront the privilege I have enjoyed being born into a middle-class family. For many others, this is their reality even today as the injustices in the country have raged on ever since independence. In 150 pages, Meja Mwangi weaves his words with mastery and pulls no punches. ‘This is Nairobi’, he seems to be saying. ‘This is your green city under the sun.’
Ever since reading Kill Me Quick I have read two more of Meja Mwangi’s work, The Mzungu Boy and The Cockroach Dance and his strength lies in painting the dirty underbelly of Kenyan society. Through his fiction, he is able to put in plain words the vastly different worlds that are inhabited by the haves and have-nots.
I definitely recommend picking up this book and any Meja Mwangi books you can get your hands on. You can find his books in most Kenyan book shops and please check if there are discounts in any boobshops before buying.
Soila Kenya is a journalist, content creator and book lover. You can find more about her on her website soilakenya.com.