1 PROLOGUE

Onika City was one of its kind, and was the second largest of its own in its third world Kenyan country. From its semi-paved white-stoned roads to its hot humid wind, Onika was serine. The city acted as the port city for the country and was immensely considered the second largest as it dwarfed in a third size in comparison to its capital, Nairobi. But it was not like Onika could be second-bested by any other city in the continent. Her land was purely flat, with not a lump, not even a hill in close sight. Onika was the pride of the Coast. Her beaches were adequately magnificent depicting a flat white-stoned mass of land collapsing calmly yet gradually into the Indian Sea. Onika City covered an area of approximately 300 square kilometers though this wasn't really known to its people. Her people; they were the second reason as to why Onika couldn't ever be seconded. The people of Onika were often mocked by the people south of the Kenyan border and ultimately despised the people of Nairobi. Reasons being that perhaps the Onika people despised difference, that they despised perhaps people that strutted into their city of 2 million, claiming to know its alleyways, its gutters, its secrets. However, there was truth in that Onika had her secrets. She had been keeping them for over a millennium. And some of her people fell prey to her secrets, others may have even kept them. But it was the 'mainlanders' (as was referred to anyone beyond the makupa by the Onikans) that invented and perceived such secrecy. Tales of how Onika was home to witchcraft and supernatural phenomena were coined by mainlanders. Stories filled with peculiarity and vast arrays of strange things about this weird place. And some of these things came true. And some of the residents of the city felt their duty to urge visitors of their peculiarity. But others did not. For apparently, it was said that 'Onika will feed herself'. Feed herself in wealth; in heritage; in secrecy; and yet too, in peril.

The City of Onika comprised of the Island: that was the main business district, and home to many people strange and un-strange alike; and its mainland suburbs which were divided somewhat according to social class and heritage, somewhat according to infrastructure: Malu, with its ever-towering mansions and mansionettes accompanied with her star-studded well-paved roads at each and every corner of its very locale; Vamvuli, with its middle-class average bungalows that lie across the Malindi highway; Lamani, that thrived off of Malu's residents in providing entertainment with its cinema-duplex and also its highly attractive hotels and spas built alongside simple houses; and Bulubulu, that was the stain of Onika, its largest slum and home to miscreants and vice and filth of all manner and kind. The four locales were independent of each other, each spewing secrets and mysteries of their own. And they all shared in the secrecy, and they all shared in the mystery. So they all shared as four peoples, yet too they shared as one Onika.