Wewe umeshindaje

The words popped up on the screen.

She looked at it again, reading it out slowly ‘Wewe’… ok think. is that ‘you’? or is that ‘we’? It looks like it should be

‘we’ but then ‘dada’ means sister so who reallly knows.

The timer went and her 12-year-old grandson jumped out from the behind the sofa.

‘Tiiimes up! Let’s see how you did, I bet I beat you’.

She clicked ‘end’ on the screen and knew the answer before it popped up.

SCORE – 40%. YOU HAVE FAILED. PLEASE TRY AGAIN

He peeked around her and looked at the screen.

‘Bad luck, I got 88% maybe you just need to practice more. I can cook this evening for you if you want and you can keep going? Remember I did a whole course during last month’s assimilation training and the teacher said my ugali was the best in the whole class. ’

She looked up wearily and gently smiled.

‘Well in that case yes please, that would be lovely. Why don’t you ask your sister to help you too.’

And he scampered off screaming his sister’s name. She heard a responding ‘leave me alone’ and thought that at least they would be occupied for a good 20 minutes bickering. She always thought that it was good for the two of them to talk even if they were at each other throats.

She glanced back down at the screen. It was now only five days until she had to do this assimilation exam in real life and there was no way she was going to pass at this rate.

—

She was lucky to have the children with her.

She’d been lucky too, in a way, being old (or ‘extremely old’ according to her grandson) when the war had finally broken out. At 74 she wasn’t sent to the front line like her daughter and her son-in-law but was young enough that she didn’t need a carer. They had even sent her grandchildren out to stay with her in the countryside. At the beginning it was a bit of a thrill being able to have the children around for so long. She’d got used to the routine of being alone, nevertheless she couldn’t help but enjoy having a bit of company, particularly that of people she loved.

But for the most of it she couldn’t quite believe it was happening. The war had never gone nuclear, something that she’d been terrified about as a child. But what had happened didn’t exactly seem much better. She remembered the first bombs hitting London. First, they took out the government buildings. She had seen it on the news, these giant holes surrounded by rubble where the houses of parliament had stood and the face of Big Ben peering out with the tip of its twisted minute hand. That’s when she had known this war would be different. Centuries of history wiped out by a tap on a screen and the Geneva Conventions thrown out of the window. And of course, then the bombs just kept going and going and going.

Each day there was a new government announcement popping up on her phone accompanied by these nice, interactive graphs.

1.5 million people displaced. 25,532 confirmed dead and 76,780 wounded.

There was no list of the missing, of course.

The children were only 9 and 11 when this happened and at the beginning, she had managed to distract them with tales of the 1900s.

‘But I don’t understand this Landerline thing Granny. Your mum could listen in to your conversation by picking up the other phone! What happened if you didn’t want them to know your plans? Did you make up a secret language?’

Then, not content with pulverising each other’s cities and citizens, the northern powers decided to take out each other’s satellites and suddenly it was as if time had shifted and they were really in the 20th century.

It was still a novelty for the children in some ways. She taught them to write with pens and pencils.

‘This is so, what would you call it again? Oh, so Vintage Granny. I can’t wait to show it off to my friends at school, I feel like I’m in a novel.’

It was almost disarming how quickly the country was working again. The digital infrastructure had been wiped out, along with half the population, but the 21st century craze for self-sufficiency and preservation meant that people just got on with it.

Everything was taken out of the museums: the radios, the gas cookers, the pens and pencils and scavenger groups appeared, made of people going into the rubble to get whatever material was needed to replicate these items. The household renewable energy systems kept working so life seemed almost normal.

But of course, it wasn’t normal, at least not for them. Living without running water was fine at the beginning, they had made their own water tank and they were the lucky ones with enough savings to be able to buy food. After a while though, the filtration tablets were running out, her grandson got sick and for a minute she thought they might have lost him. The war had now finished but there was no way that she could look after them alone like this, so she applied to the international community for resettlement. She didn’t know anyone in the government, and we all know how it works, so she just assumed it wouldn’t happen.

When the letter arrived saying they were on the list for resettlement she couldn’t quite believe it, but it happened, and now here she was in Nairobi, staring at this stupid screen.

—

She was lucky to have the children with her.

It was three days before the exam, and she was standing in the queue for the bank with the children waiting to collect their weekly stipend. Of course, her granddaughter had passed her assimilation exam with flying colours within three months of their arrival. She knew that she should have been proud of her, and she was, plus it was useful that she could come and sort out with the translation when shopping. The government had decided that refugees needed to have passed their assimilation exams to be able to access services themselves. However, she couldn’t help the jealousy and frustration welling up. She’d always thought she was good at languages and now, when she actually needed it for something more than ordering at a restaurant or watching a film she seemed to have a complete block.

She looked up at the building, ‘Kipande House’ they called it. The first time they got off the bus to the bank after their registration process, she had laughed out loud. At least the Kenyans still had their sense of humour.

The last time she had been in Kenya was in 2024 was a holiday with her late husband. Their daughter had gone away to university and it was their big ‘Empty Nester’ trip. She’d always loved history so the first day they had done a historical city tour, and after visiting the National Museum of Kenya they had stopped by Kipande house. Following the First World War, Kipande House had been used to process the identity cards of Kenyans. These ‘Kipande’, the Swahili for identity cards, were small red boxes worn around the necks of Kenyan men containing their documents. Well, her Kipande was her small plastic card, also red and not only used as an ID but also as her banking card, yet another 20th century relic.

She remembered being taken aback at the time by the fact that the city was so much more modern than she had anticipated. This building was already surrounded by high-rise buildings but standing as an example of re-using their colonial past for their own future – their own independent bank. Looking around her 35 years later it was even more dwarfed by the buildings around it, it was like being back in the City of London. Before it all went to pieces that is.

They reached the counter and her granddaughter said:

‘Bwana mtu wa benki’. Hello Mr Bank Man.

—

She was lucky to have the children with her.

True to their words they actually had been cooking and seemed to be enjoying it, so she had more time to keep practicing her Swahili exam which was now only two days away.

She had decided to take a different approach to this studying this morning. She’d brought all her writing equipment with her from the UK and was making flash cards. This was the way she had managed to get an A in her A level French exam after basically never listening the whole year so maybe the old fashioned way would serve her again.

She turned over card number 45. It was light green.

Ninyi hamjambo?

She repeated it to herself out loud three times, trying to visualise the back of the card.

She had colour categorized all her cards. Light green was introducing yourself, light blue was jobs, dark green was hobbies, red was shopping.

This one was at least easy: ‘how are you? (Plural)’.

—

She was lucky to have the children.

It was now the day before the exam and they were helping her again. Sometimes they played along, enjoying their roles as Quizmaster. They, of course, were using the tablet the Kenyan Government had given to each family. Supposedly it was also to make sure that the refugees had contact to the outside world and could keep in touch with their families. Given that there was no internet she suspected that it was really because there had been a significant stockpile sent over from China before the war had started and it was a nice way of getting rid of them. Whatever the reason the children were thrilled to have their screens back.‘Okay now we are going to do our rapid-fire history round. Let’s see if you can beat your last score. ’

Well at least this was one thing that she knew that even in her old age she could ace.

‘What year was Kenyan Independence?’

In the end, in 9 minutes and 43 seconds she managed to answer all the questions, without even breaking a sweat.

She had always been competitive so that was at least satisfying. Maybe she could try and find some extra informal work tutoring other refugees in English even if she failed the dreaded Swahili exam.

—

She sat down at the desk and looked around the room, all ‘over 75s’ just like her. She took out her note paper, her pens and her water bottle and set them in a line on the right-hand side of the desk. The administrator came around with the tablets and headphones and then went back to the front of the room.

‘And the time starts now, Bahati njema!’

The introductory text popped up on the screen.

Thank you for taking the Kenya assimilation exam. You have one hour to complete these questions.

She put on her headphones and clicked Start

—

It was still pouring when she got off the bus. One thing that did remind her of home was the rain. Kipande house loomed down at her. But at least there was no queue and the children were in the house so they would make sure there was a bucket under the leak in the kitchen. It looked like everyone else had not bothered to come with the storm.

She showed her card to the security card who glanced at it quickly and opened the door.

‘Karibu!’

She picked up her ticket, number 59. The number flashed up – Counter No. 4 and walked over to the bank teller.

‘Bwana mtu wa benki’ .

May 21, 2025