Years later, she would remember his smell more than his face. A pungent sweaty pong masked by a sickly-smelling perfume. He had grabbed her arm just as she was entering the Machakos Country Bus Station and demanded to know where she was going.

“Nowhere!” she had replied curtly, suddenly noticing his big, round belly. He had on a fading red nylon Manchester United T-shirt that emphasised the large folds of his stomach.

There were patches of sweat around his armpits, which had formed dirty rings. His face was wide and a gold-coated incisor tooth glistened when he spoke.

“Madam, I need to know where you are going,” he said firmly. 

It turned out that he was a bus broker, who had put himself in charge of the bus station. Getting passengers into the buses was his main task and Sophia was making his job more difficult.

“I told you I am not going anywhere,” she said trying to sound firm but panic set in when he started coming towards her in a menacing way.

She wondered if he intended to hurt her because of her rude answers.

She was on her way to Kitale in western Kenya. She could have gone to the smaller, less crowded Railways bus stop and taken a shuttle earlier on in the morning, but her sister had insisted that taking a bus in the evening would work just as well and it was cheaper. It had been months since Sophie had seen her sister.

She had always felt uneasy about coming to Machakos Country Bus Station. It wasn’t just the crowds that suffocated her, but the smell also. She found the combination of the smell of roast maize, boiled eggs, groundnuts and body sweat as unbearable as the hawkers selling them.

“Why do you want to deny us business?” asked the sweaty, pudgy man.  

Before she could respond, he walked directly towards her and shoved her to the ground.

She quickly reached for the pepper spray tucked in the front zipper of her bag, oddly pleased at how fast it had come to mind. Dina Morgan, an American missionary, had given it to her as a gift months ago. At first Sophia had laughed and asked her what she was going to do with it. 

“I have nothing else to give you, and you may need this one day,” Dina had responded calmly.

Sophie had put it in the front zipper of her bag and forgot all about it, until a few seconds ago when she was lying on the ground, her head throbbing in pain.

By now the sweaty, pudgy man had been joined by three other members of his gang.

“This is not going to end well,” she thought, but she mustered the courage to aim the pepper spray at the sweaty, pudgy man.

He recoiled and screamed like a wounded dog, gasping for breath. Moments later, he limped away while still screaming and pointed at her: “Bomb! Bomb! Bomb,” while rubbing his eyes furiously.

Sophie looked around. There was an old woman sitting nearby, weaving a mat, watching them silently.

“Help me,” Sophie pleaded with her.

But the old woman turned her head away.

Sophie looked around and spotted a police post. She got up and ran towards it. She found a portly policeman at the customer care desk, idly fiddling with his phone and writing in the Occurrence Book.

“What is it?” he asked her.

She turned and saw the sweaty, pudgy man and his men were already at the police station.

“She is the one with the bomb! She is the terrorist!” he shouted.

“It’s pepper spray and I used it on you because you attacked me. I am not a terrorist,” she said, trying to remain calm.

“Where did you get it? Do you know that it is illegal to carry around pepper spray?” the policeman asked her.

“You don’t understand. These people attacked me. I used the pepper spray to defend myself. Why should I be punished for that?” she asked hysterically.

“Young lady, do you want to be a smart-mouth or do you want to be helped?” asked the policeman, finally putting down his phone and lifting his eyes to face her. His eyes were brown and kinder than his words. He told the men to leave so that he could take her statement.

“I will deal with her,” he told the sweaty, pudgy man.

Sophie’s heart sank as she pondered about how much trouble she was in. She sat down on the dirty brown bench and rubbed her throbbing head.

“Start from the beginning,” the policeman told her.

She opened her mouth but her words turned into tears. She folded her hands, rocked back and forth, then blew her nose on her dress. She tried as best she could to tell the officer what had happened. She even told him about her sister, where she lived and how she had just had a baby. When she was done, she searched his eyes and asked:

“You believe me, don’t you?”

“You still have not told me where you got the pepper spray,” he said gruffly.

She did not say a word.

He sighed.

“My dear, the people who tried to robbed you are a criminal gang called Ma Shifta. They pose as bus brokers, but they are just scouting for their victims. By spraying them with that pepper you have humiliated them and if I let you go right now, they will be waiting for you to take their revenge,” he said. 

******

She later learnt that the officer was called Michael Opondo, and he had a wife and three daughters and a son, who lived in the village. Sophie and Officer Opondo spent a couple of hours talking over a cup of coffee at the police canteen.

When they finished, he went out with her to make sure it was safe for her to leave. He confirmed that the gang had gone back to their base.

“You never told me where you got the pepper spray,” he said, smiling as she made her way out.

“I can’t do that, otherwise you will have to arrest me,” she said, smiling back at him.

She bade him goodbye and left hurriedly, still clutching the pepper spray can with her right hand in case she needed to use it again.

“Oi madam,” a voice called out to her.

She turned around to see the old woman from the marketplace walking towards her.

“I see you survived,” she said.

Sophie remained silent, holding the pepper spray even tighter.

“Don’t come back here, you have been marked,” the old woman told her as she turned to walk back.

Sophie briefly considered going back to the police station, but there was nothing concrete she could report. She flagged down a boda boda and directed the rider to take her to the Railways bus stop. The rider’s pungent smell reminded her of the sweaty, pudgy man.