WAYWARD EASTLANDERS by Okanga Ooko

In the hustles of Eastlands, nobody wins. One dame is desperate and calculatingly manipulative. The other is a gash who just makes hash of the arrogant male romantic interest through her offhand sexuality. This is a story about misfits. An ugly woman who is a wall climber, a cripple in a wheelchair who calls the shots, a pastor who is a big con, a shylock who wants to be an MP.

Atieno Mara Bella owns AMBA Advertising. She is an artist and designer whose struggles with her work, doubts about her talent, and complicated relationships often puts her at odds over affections associated with men. Akombe Bosibori is a backstabbing marketer who wants to take over the company. She has designed a campaign for a multi-million national disability project. Funds are given through pre-qualified advertising agencies to raise awareness in the low income areas of Nairobi. However the whole thing is orchestrated by a man in a wheelchair, the flamboyant Tutu Kulundeng, the beetle. A genius with a reputation as an organiser of grand schemes for the cartel-run Government. And in Nairobi, Kenya, corruption is king. He wants an existing advertising agency to take over and use it to siphon millions from the government. Using the scrawny underdog, Kiprotich, he knows how to manipulate Bosibori.

Realising that they are each losing, Atieno and Bosibori place their bet on four unreliable characters: Atieno on Papa Kamande, a shylock, a shark—a money lender, auctioneer and broker, who also runs a matatu cartel, and on Ojuku, a ghetto thug. Bosibori places hers on Kulundeng and then on Pastor Otodo, a fake two-timing preacher who runs a church in Jerusalem, Nairobi, who sees her as a way out of poverty and brainwashes with intent to get her to take over AMBA and add it to his wealth as an assets of his church. Kulundeng, Otodo, Kamande and Ojuku think they know the ropes; and women. Maybe they do. But they don’t know Atieno too well, otherwise they’d have realised that they are just flies stumbling into the deadly web of a woman who is beautiful to look at but lethal to mess with.