The Kenyan Magnet

The day Keletu lost everything, it was raining. Not the soft village rain she grew up with, and which left the smell of soil in the air. This was Nairobi rain-hard, cold,merciless. It soaked through her thin sweater as she stood outside the restaurant she had been working for the last 5 months, holding a small brown envelope that contained her entire life. "Sorry, Keletu. We have to let you go," her manager had said without even looking at her. "Business is slow." Three months rent unpaid. Her small room in Kasarani was locked by her landlord that morning. Her phone dead. And now she had lost her job. She was twenty-six, a waitress, pretty, capable, but in this city, that meant nothing. People walked past her like she was invisible. Keletu wiped the rain from her face, but her tears mixed with it. She thought of going back to the village. She knew what her mother would say, "I told you city life is not for girls like us." Her friends would laugh at her 'too-soon downfall'. She clenched the envelope harder, it contained her last salary of 4500 shillings. Not enough for rent, but enough for one week. One week to prove that she could make it. She told herself that she would make it, she would not be defeated. "I am capable, I am confident, I will rise, like the proverbial phoenix. Just watch me!" She did not know that across the street, a man in a black SUV black car had been watching her for five minutes. A man who would change everything. But first, she had to survive the night. What will Keletu do with her last meager salary of 4500? Will she survive Nairobi?