The Nightmare

 Last night, I was a person of interest in a murder case. The whole incident scared the wits out of me because I kill small insects for fun – people who know me wouldn’t even have the privilege of saying “we know him, he wouldn’t hurt a fly.” And that, my good friends, would have thrown any lingering doubts of my innocence out of the window. It would further throw these lingering doubts down an abyss of oblivion if it were on a Monday or Thursday as they would meet manually propelled projectiles.

We (suspects) were filed into a room for interrogation. It wasn’t really an interrogation but to take a lie detector test. I knew it because I am a true crime enthusiast and I have watched numerous documentaries where suspects are strapped with those strange-looking objects that measure even the slightest change in your heartbeat, skin moisture and even your thoughts.

I knew I would fail the test even though I couldn’t identify the victim in a photo lineup. My heart would be beating like isukuti drums when asked whether I killed the victim. I knew the machine would scream ‘liar’ upon which I might have been executed on the spot. You know how our police work – kill suspects and find investigate later whether they were criminals or not. It takes guts to be a criminal who does not even have an ambition to vie for a political office. I don’t and the lie detector test would definitely pronounce my guilt in a crime I did not even know the victim.

But strange things happen, as they tend to happen in dreams. This was one of them. A mutura seller rescued me. He entered the room and spilled his merchandise, angering a couple of cops idling around the room. They clobbered him like nonsense, ignoring the fact that one of his legs were shorter than the other. He ran away in a pitifully comical way.

Instead of leaving him alone, the police decided to have fun by giving a discernible head start, hopped into their vehicle and gave chase. At this point, I stopped being a suspect and became an observer in the ensuing slow police chase.

The limping mutura guy popped into a chuom. One officer alighted and gave chase. Moments later, the officer emerged from the chuom running for his dear life, followed closely by the limping mutura guy had seemingly gained superhuman speed considering his locomotive impediment.

I stood there wondering what was inside the chuom. My curiosity was satisfied when I saw a monstrosity nibbling the behind of a white guy emerge from the chuom, which had then turned into a cave. Then I woke up from the nightmare.

 

Poverty Is A Sin

What if, pray tell, we discover one day that poverty was a sin all along? Well, it will be too late then but just think about it. As for me, I do not want to wait until it’s too late. An ancient Greek philosopher said ‘mapema ndio best’ and these words couldn’t be any truer now than it was back then. 

I have thought deeply about this like any man capable of thinking reasonably from time to time. For that matter, I expect myself to make myself filthy rich with the least amount of effort and within the shortest time possible. You do not have to have a particularly high IQ to reach such an intellectual conclusion. Me, I have purposed to be rich for the past three years or so years. Somewhere along the Adulting Road, I realized that my obsessions cost a lot of money. And just like the next person, I could use a million shillings. 

I do not believe that money cannot buy happiness. Or love. Anybody who tells you that money cannot buy happiness has more money than he ever needs, is terminally ill, or is dead. You must have too much money to make certain conclusions about money. As broke as I am, I am 93.27% sure that money will set me on the path toward happiness. Think about things money can do. Point of correction; think about things a lot of money can do. You could be a complete moron and people will still applaud you. In some extreme circumstances, you might even believe them thinking that you are a “person of the people.” However, when election results are announced, you realize that even your close family members pretend to like you. I think that’s the worst way to use your millions. 

It saddens me to think that there are people who still think that money cannot buy love. I do not blame them. Again, this is a rich-people problem, and they should never ever think that we subscribe to such nonsense. It has been proven scientifically that money can actually buy love. According to Dave Barry, a humor scientist who specialized in a branch of science known as ‘making things up,’ money can buy love – it can buy a lot of high-quality fake love. If you can buy fake love, what is the point of buying low-quality? 

Your worldview does not matter. Money makes life a whole lot better and easier. When you have money and you are bored, you could hire a hitman to kill boredom. And that’s not even the best part – the best part is that you can afford a lawyer (for purposes of this article, a lawyer is anyone who can throw a cocktail of big English and Latin words and wears suits). 

There are so many ways to make too much money and quickly. However, most of them are either illegal or scams. I have lived long enough to know this. There is no point in having millions of money and constantly hiding. It is the main reason we elect people with questionable characters to lead. They have been out there doing ‘shady business deals’ and when they cannot hide anymore they offer themselves up for election. It is the surest way to being untouchable and making even more money quite effortlessly. Pablo Escobar tried it but failed. 

I have tried gambling, only to realize, dismayed, that I was contributing diligently to someone else's next luxury toy. A job works the same way. I have also realized that schools indoctrinate people to accept slavery as the perfect way to live. They no longer have to forcefully enslave you - you willingly accept to be a slave, sometimes you even beg them.  

I know that I do not possess the right gene to create something as big as Microsoft or Facebook. I’ll settle for what has already been invented – religion. The last time I checked, no other brand has ever outsold Jesus since the five-day workweek. I plan to start a church, preach, and people will give me money on behalf of Jesus. And the best part of it is that I can keep it. Why, because poverty might just be another sinner they forgot to include in the bible. Living a good life isn't a sin, it is what you do when living a good life that might be sin. Like making others feel poor about themselves. 

Mollie's Irony

I may act alright, but deep-down Mollie’s words grate my mind in quite an unsatisfactory manner. I knew that she was predisposed to be strongly opinionated. But I also know, like anyone that knows, that extremely opinionated people cannot take strong opinions, nor even facts that prove that their opinions are nothing but hot air. When you are stupidly in love, you can ignore strong opinions because that would mean getting some action when the lights are turned off, or getting that unwelcoming cold shoulder. 

Mollie is the sort of person who will be quiet and then randomly says things. Often, what she says has no preamble. She can begin a story in the middle and fill it up with facts later. I remember that day we were just chilling, her absentmindedly making her nails while I read a paragraph or two of whatever story caught my attention. Mollie said, in a way a prophet might say, that ‘githeri, omena, and matumbo’ are symptoms of poverty. I turned her words in my head and concluded that they could only be words that come from someone named after the first cloned sheep. 

It did not bother me then. Mollie’s presence intoxicated me. Or, to put it more precisely, made me a remarkable fool. Being in love can make a grown man look like a fool because love was designed to look that way. Picture that tough man in your life and chances are that he looks and acts a fool in the presence of a female with whom he has no qualms about losing his inhibitions. It is one of the requirements of loving. 

Now that I am no longer stupid, I can turn Mollie’s words in my head and try to analyse them like a specimen on a scientist’s table. For a start, Mollie claims that she is a sapiosexual. I did not know what that meant at first but I got enlightened when consulted google. You can’t really think highly of a person who thinks so lowly of other people’s favorite foods. Because she was my favorite person, I nodded to her words and sought no further explanation as that would have made me a participant in her opinions. After getting past the talking stage and then into the intimate zone, you learn to stop being a participant in certain things. 

As I sit now, I wonder about the kind of research Mollie used to conclude that certain foods were a symbol of poverty. For instance, what was her hypothesis? What problem was she even researching? And she had the audacity to claim that she is a sapiosexual. Now that we are not together anymore, I can also say that pizza and fried chicken are symbols of ill health. 

Money is Funny

it's funny, 

money is funny my friend 

it changes people 

it changes a friend to a foe 

but does it really change people?

or does it amplify their character? 

Lord, do not give me much of it

Give me enough

to support my obsessions 

and my basic needs 

make me a model man 

money has changed people 

money is funny 

money comes and goes 

people change and become normal again 

people's character's are determined by 

the amount of money they have 

The Meticulous Drunkard

 At exactly two in the night, Onjivo swaggered into Club Datura. For those who have been to Datura, one thing is certain – it exclusively for people who do not give a damn about aesthetics. For one, there are concrete pillars that someone stopped halfway, as an afterthought, while in the process of destroying it. It leaks when it rains. It is not a place where you would gladly have fun destroying your liver or lungs or even libido. Onjivo did not care about having fun, neither the aesthetics. He was in for business.

Even with the absence of aesthetics, Onjivo still manages to be meticulous. Despite the cold that seeped straight to the bones, Onjivo wore only a basketball vest, and a Chicago Bulls cap. He sat on a Guinness branded plastic chair, and near a socket. Nobody knows that a socket is there, for it looks as though you could be risking electric shock what with the wires all naked and hanging. Once seated, he dives his hands into an orange reusable bag and retrieves a tissue paper. It is weird for a man but Onjivo is a man who is meticulous about everything. With a gloomy yet serious face, he gingerly wipes the table, but only the area he projects to use.

Once done with the cleaning, Onjivo dives again into his orange bag and retrieves three smart phones from the entrails. He also removes a charge, plugs it into the dangerously dangling socket and turns it on. A blue light emitted by the socket bathes a few centimetres of his table. Then he plugs USB cables into the various orifices that came with the charger. Meticulously, he charges each of his three phones. All this while, cigarette is dangling on the corner of his mouth. He stops, takes a deep puff, and places it on the table.

A recently hired waiter walks to him and greets him jovially. She knows him which means that Onjivo is regular at the club, which is not typically a club. The first moving drinks here are the cheap third generation liquor and keg popular with boda boda guys and casual laborers. For the latter, however, you would be hard pressed to understand what casual thing they do at night. Onjivo is not a casual laborer, neither is he a boda boda guy. He orders two Guinness bottles and settles on his chair like a boss.

With the cigarette dangling at the corner of his mouth, he again dives into the orange bag and takes out a jelly. He scoops a huge chunk of it and proceeds to oil himself. It is for mosquitoes; he says to an inquisitive patron who has just come to sit next him.

The plump waiter brings him his beers. At this point, he is checking his merchandise, jaba. The waiter marvels at how much they are. She is intrigued by him, or by his money. Before long, customers go to him, one by one. Onjivo measures them and puts them in a tiny plastic bag. They part with their money and take their leaves, perhaps to chew cud.

She Shot Herself

She stood there pointing a gun at her assailant with such menace that could have boiled githeri for an entire four-stream high school full of hungry and adolescent boys. She had killed her husband, and as she put, took her life in the way only women who’ve lost their husbands can tell.

‘You don’t know how long I have spent dreaming of this day,’ she tells her assailant, who had burgled her way into her house. ‘I have dreamt that you’d show up so that I can have the pleasure of killing you one more time.’

The killer lady looks at her with those looks that tell you that she’s not going get even a single inch size bruise on her body. She’s also pointing a gun at the good lady, a teacher of languages. It could have been better, you think, if it had been those asshole mathematics and science teachers who made those subjects harder than they should have been. But no, on top of killing her husband, she is pointing a gun at her, a blameless soul, a soul that just wants to teach students about rhymes, and onomatopoeia. And  oral literature.

The conversation goes back and forth between the two ladies for a tad longer than you expect. She is here. She killed your husband. What more reason can you have to pull that trigger? Then she suddenly puts the gun at the base of her chin and pulls the trigger. She sprawls carelessly on the floor. She is dead.

It’s a movie anyway. That’s how you convince yourself. She couldn’t have done so in real life. It simply is impossible to wait for such long for someone who killed your husband, only to give her the luxury of triumph by committing suicide. The writer of the scene was a sick bastard who does not understand how the real works. You kind of liked the lady, her Russian accent was out of this world. You have a thing with accent, learn. It is not a bad way to conclude a year, you think.

But then the killer lady is the lead villain in the movie series. She dies and the story comes to an end. But at least the writer should have found a way of keeping her alive. She should have been captured and even tortured. You could tolerate her screams, knowing that she alive. Only her face, and butt should be interfered with. And her hands, and legs, and boobs…gosh…she should just have been left alone. Intact is how you wanted her to be. WHOLE. You are a whole kind of person. You have a fetish for anatomically complete people. Wasn’t killing her husband more than enough.  

She Left in a Huff

She left in a huff, leaving a trail of her displeasure. She couldn’t hide disgust, and/or frustration at me. Stacy had been sort of meticulous in her plans to put me in the most uncomfortable of situations; a pile of soaked laundry, a kitchen floor that looked like an after party of chickens after prowling through muddy puddles and most of all a blocked kitchen sink. She left the toilet unflushed and the stench that emanated from it was way too putrid. Of all, the unflushed toilet stuck a sore thumb in me, something I am more than willing to stake my life to testify against her in heaven ( should she land there anyway). I can’t even wrap my head around it….how can a completely sane human being…..maybe I should done a background check if there was any history of retardation in her family.

She’s gone. Stacy is gone. It seemed her scent didn’t even hang around any longer. It is like she coaxed it to leave with her. She left for every other reason girls leave; unfounded infidelity claims. Stacy is gone. In a huff. She said I should grow up then banged the door as she left. She never even asked for fare, even though the previous week she had spent almost the entire second reiterating how a church mouse is richer than her. Whoever programmed girls to constantly whine about their lack of money in presence of men should be hanged for mental sabotage of the fairer sex as well as treason on fundamental rights and freedoms, if such a thing exists.

As I paced up and down the living room getting accustomed to the silence, I resolved that following her up and apologizing will be futile. In itself it would admission of guilt. I am not guilty. I subscribe to one man one woman kind of philosophy and to be accused of contravening my own doctrines is another matter all together.  A part of me also knew that it would be hard to adapt to the absence of her hearty laugh, a laugh that stilled echoed at a distance, filling every empty space inside the house.

Stacy will sober up. She will. I thought as a consolation. When she does the relationship would be on my own terms not hers. I can even go against my doctrines and cheat on her so that the next time she goes berserk it won’t for no reason at all. Then I will have known where the meat is sweet, a basis for my apologies if need be.

I am also paranoid of the fact that she may have already moved on immediately she stepped out that house. You never know with girls. Or maybe she doesn’t have transport and a dude will offer to pay and she ends up in his bed. I can only imagine me calling her a week or so later, having immensely missed her.

“Hallo,” I will say after she picks on the fifth try.

“Hallo, who is this?” I can imagine Stacy saying, a curdling in the stomach takes shape, seeking an outlet in the rage I will feel. I mean for all the resilience, calling more than five times only for her to ask for introductions? Jesus.

“I am the guy who will be stamping you ticket to heaven, “I will solemnly reply.

“Sorry?” she’ll retort and the disgust in her voice is palpable, you know the kind you can knead and make small balls of IDGAFs? Yes that one.

“I am the guy who will be stamping you ticket to heaven, “ I will not resist the temptation to repeat even though I know she heard me right.

“I am sorry I am not interested in heaven right now, it’s not a destination of my craving,” she will say again, without actually hanging up. A cue. You know those kinds of girls who will tell you they don’t want to talk to you yet they actually picked the phone, and they are not in any hurry to hang up?

“I know someone who might be of help…might actually know where you…..” bleep bleep! She hangs up.

That’s the kind of shit you just weren’t build for.

The Bullfight

He met me all grown up, a man by virtue of having undergone a minor surgical procedure on a very influential organ, rekindling my childhood. David. That was his name. He worked as our shamba boy. The details are all blurry now but I think it broke my poor little heart when he left, albeit unceremoniously. Without reason. Without good byes. It is hard to think highly of such a man.  

At the time, adults seemed like creatures sent from another planet to rescue us from our happiness. As children, we never asked too much: we wanted to play, eat, and sleep. And then we longed for Christmas, never birthdays, for our births were remarkable enough not to warrant unnecessary annual celebrations. There were chores, here and there. When there weren’t, mothers would invent them. ‘Watch that sufuria,’ she would say. That sufuria would be on the fireplace, containing a sacred liquid namely: water.  

I would escape to the farm to be with David. We would dig, him telling me stories or me telling him, none of which I can remember now. David might as well been the only adult who was not keen on reprimanding a child. Given the chance, I would accompany him wherever he went especially when he was on duty. My favourite days were weekends where we’d take cows to a cattle dip approximately 247 km away. We crossed two rivers to get there. Nevertheless I enjoyed them.

The morning would begin early, with a ritual David had cultivated over time. He would go and fetch the finest cypress branches, cleaned to a baby-ass smoothness. He would fetch two of them: his and mine, although mine was a little smaller. Those days, mother would milk the cows a little early, and we’d set of at six thirty latest. We would drive the cows, and cows being cows were always ready for mischief. They would stray into people’s compounds as if they sensed that some of their relatives lived there. The fine cypress branch came in handy at that moment, where David would whip the cow into submission. Not only would the errant cow submit, it also did download the map to the cattle dip, where it proceeded to guide the rest.

When he left, that responsibility became mine. But then mother wouldn’t allow me to handle a panga, I made do with twigs or if we were lucky, picked branches from pruned trees along the way. The cows would always be a mess, so much that I dreaded taking them to the cattle dip. Calves would always want to explore farms with densely covered indigenous trees. I was with a cousin, who was older but belonging to the other gender, who, for lack of a better term, I will call female.

Because cows and rowdy cowboys didn’t respect us that much, we had to stick to a plan: maintain a schedule (every other Saturday), and get there neither too early nor too late. Like any other plan, it is bound to fail one time or another. That’s when we learned the importance of sticking to a schedule. One time, just before we got to the cattle dip, a huge herd of cattle emerged from what seemed like a forest cover. It wasn’t huge at first but then, slowly by slowly, the cows trickled one by one until the filled the road. Ahead of the heard were finely built bulls, billowing with unspeakable horniness. They heard to be restrained by the herdsmen.

Speaking of bulls, they always got charged in presence of too many cows. It is either because they are overwhelmed by the fact that they can’t get the chance to sniff all the private parts of cows at their disposal. I imagine them having bull thoughts such as: All these cows, man there has to be one on heat. I gotta get laid. When their frustration gets to a certain threshold, they decide to go with whatever cow that’s near them. Sometimes other bulls. As a tradition, experts on bull psychology recommended that the bulls have bull rings in order to restrain them. Some risk their noses for a chance to get laid. As a result a lot of unwanted pregnancies would result, leading to many cases of abortion among cows.

As a policy, we never let our cows mingle with the rest. They would be infected with strange venereal diseases. No, that’s was not the reason. They would get lost especially calves. So we waited for this large cloud of doom to pass. We waited. We had to wait also when it got to the cattle dip.

Another time, we encountered a hard of indigenous cows just after ours had swum in that filthy insecticide ridden pool. The best part of this exercise was that cows would have these mournful faces, as if wondering what crime they had done to be forced into a pool of filthy water. For that matter, they always knew their way home. This is the time grow boys and girls took to flirt with each other. We had a ferocious bull at the time: small and stocky. If it would have been a human being it would have been a Mexican drug lord.  And this is how I knew it.

As we approached the indigenous herd, which also had an indigenous bull, the bulls began getting charged.  A small boy, I stayed close to barbed wire fence ready to escape to avoid being trampled upon. The adults taking the indigenous cows had brain capacities the same as used condoms. They spectated rather than drive away their bull, which was seven and a half times bigger than our bull. The odds staked against our bull would be similar to the odds given to Gor Mahia when they face a Barcelona: 2000 against one. The bulls charged at each other, the other fellows cheering and I cowed on the other side of the fence since I had long decided that the match was going to be completely unfair.

If that bull had been listening to me, it would have also cowed. It charged the zebu breed with all its might, making maximum use of is centre of gravity, which the other bull lacked. Fearlessly, (our bull didn’t have horns so I can’t use the term locked horns) the two bulls locked heads. As I waited for our tiny bull to be pinned to death against the fence, thereby being converted into meat albeit prematurely, a strange thing happened. It pushed the other bull almost effortlessly, and pinned it against the fence. The zebu bull whimpered away with barbed wire marks and its ferocious billowing whimpered away too. If the herd boys hadn’t stepped in, it would have been turned into mince meat. And we have demanded a share.

At that moment, I may longed David had been in charge instead of me.

FRIENDS AND FOES

We make acquaintances along the road of life. Some we decide that they are going to be our friends without any rational reason as to why, may be because they look good on camera or something related to it. Then you are friends, just like that. And because nature is a good teacher, it brings misfortunes to these people called friends to taste their loyalty, or lack of it, to rid us of inconveniences that comes with the bs that’s friendship. But then again, in the course of our lives, nature tags along people who remain aloof, mysterious and detached from what insane people consider normal. Some of them however reveal a little about themselves, that when we sit in the middle of the night when lovers have decided not to be lovers anymore, and you try to find out why you may deserve that kind of life, you are relunctant to imagine the cards life dealt to some people. Your mind cannot help but conjure unsavoury images such as them waking up from trenches if they ever did anyway…

One such a man is Kipketer.

He often sat alone in a corner, silent. He seemed a man deep in contemplation of course of the inconveniences caused by living. Judging from his nonchalance, a half cut exercise book, or sometimes an upgrade, folded foolscaps that he seemed to have picked from a trash can, I knew he was experienced in matters academics. He knew the uselessness of taking notes in a serious manner, and even more important, he knew the importance of not doing his assignments at all. Sometimes he came to class smelling cheap alcohol. Almost always, he often left with the lecturer, as if they had important matters to attend to. He of course the finish up the bottle of Jebel he left, and the lecturer to silently note the effects.

And because our names share a prefix, people often wanted me to talk to him or rather talk sense into him. I did, and now I am one of his students, the few of them to have ever graduated. Sometimes I do go to the hospital worried why I am not drinking as much as I should. Unlike most people, which no one does anymore, I am completely uninterested in intruding other people’s worlds. People may see chaos in other’s lives but to them there is perfect order. People may see ruins but to others that’s where they thrive. There were many ‘maybes’ to leave him alone, until one day, drunk on cheap alcohol, I ventured into his unchartered world, a world where every sane person wanted to be in and probably make the sun rise from south.

He had just emerged from a brief sojourn into his world of stupor, drunk as a kite. Kipketer was not the type to stagger, and with a loosely hanging pullover, we met by chance; teacher and student. The sun was blistering as if someone had abused it. Drops of sweat gleamed on Kipketer’s forehead, either unsure where to go or because they were waiting to swear in their president then troop down his face. We exchange greetings in our language.

We trudge along Baricho Road, I heading to my shithole, and he to meet a friend at the Baricho-Uhuru roundabout. Because Kipketer had no phone, I assumed that they had devised a language of their own, that they would communicate over long distances without any technological aid. Pride welled in me because Kipketer would teach me that language in the near future. As at then, we were still stuck at basics, like where to get cheap liquor. He carelessly gesture with his hands as he talked, as if words were not just enough. And that’s when I asked him what inspired his lifestyle.

“You need to find what makes your happiness, “ he said curtly.

I looked at him, urging him to go ahead.

“Sometimes, in this world, people will struggle to understand what makes you tick. They want to control the way you live your life. That wasn’t with me,” Kipketer launches his monologue. “When I joined campus, I asked my parents to reserve a room for me when we closed for long holidays. The hustle of getting a room in this part of town is akin to a villager hoping to land in the moon. Even though the rooms dilapidated, they scarcity makes it worrying. For their denial, I vowed to revenge. “

At the roundabout, the guy he was to meet was there waiting. He did not even reprimand him for being late or something, and that was amazing. Or maybe Kipketer was on time. The guy urges him to talk to him, to take education seriously. I think they shared blood. I leave them and head to by sheethole, may be catch some forty winks or type away random words that I would later call poetry. He asks if we have class the following day. I don’t remember if there was. And so we part.

Life goes normal, I stranded with the normal routine and he trying to spice up normalcy. He showed in class rarely, and when he did no one even noticed he was around. Time flies. Before we knew it we were sitting the last paper, a handful of us who had decided that there was still something beautiful in the newspapers. Kipketer was there. I was pretty darn sure that there were missing marks on his name but he showed dutifully. That takes guts, if you ask me.

One time, I met him at the gate. We talk briefly, but in that moment he told me that his friend, the one I had a chance of meeting, was dead. He had been knocked by a speeding car. What was remarkable about the tragic news was the way he said it. He didn’t seem emotional at all. He struck as a man who had made acquaintance with death, and the two would strike a perfectly normal conversation.

‘Aha! My friend,” death would say.

“What’s going on? I can see you are on an errand buddy,’ Kipketer would may be say.

‘Kama kawa. I should keep the world’s population manageable,’

‘Okay. When it’s my turn, do not be sentimental buddy.’ 

‘I have never employed such nonsense since I was born.’

‘By the way when is your birthday? Maybe I can invite you to celebrate your service to humanity. I hear you just took my cousin?”

‘The bastard crossed the road carelessly when I was rushing to take one of your politicians.’

I was really thankful for him. No emotions at all. I don’t know how I would have condoled with him. That’s just not my strength. I can’t stand human emotions, and suffering. Every time I see beggars with indescribable deformities and scars, I feel like shooting them to end their suffering once and for all.

I do not know where Kip is now. But I do hope everything is okay with him. I do hope that he never drowned in one of his drinking expeditions. I do hope that one day he sobers up and goes to fetch his degree, even though it is yet to bring tangible benefits to some us, a year down the line. We are stuck with hawking our credentials from one office to another, hoping that lady luck shall smile upon us one day. She never seems to be in a hurry though. Maybe she’s been bribed by politicians to smile at the first. Here, we hold on to hope.  

THE CIGAR SMOKER

He makes a point of ringing the bell, before he slots the key to open the door, as to warn whoever is in the house of his entry, and perhaps finish any mischief before he enters. He then straddles in, with a newspaper and a black plastic bad, places the newspaper on the table and removes a coca cola bottle from the bag and places it on the table as well. All this time he doesn’t say a word to anyone, not even a hello. It’s fine. After all everybody is fine, except street kids and no one bothers to ask them how they are doing anyway.

The rest of the contents, he goes to the kitchen counter and drops them like one would do to trash. With this done he heads to his bedroom, changes into a shuka, then back to the kitchen where he fetches his ash tray. He proceeds and sits on his usual place, a designated chair where no one dares to put their bum, not for the fear but for the reverence he seems to have bestowed on the chair. He reaches out for the remote and switches to Citizen TV that is if someone switched to other channels, a rare occurrence.

He lights his cigar and smokes casually, without a hurry in the world, oblivious of the warning on the packet, SMOKING KILLS. He reads the newspaper in the process as thin wands of smoke find their way into the air, choking fresh air into submission.

Once he stops and gives me a lecture on how it’s important to talk to people. He says its important to talk to people because we learn from interacting with others.

“Don’t stare at your computer all the time. You could be hiding valuable information people would use,” he says. “You see, with me, the computer knowledge I have is archaic.” I nod. Truth is, I don’t find anything worth sharing about the computer. I am not a wizard. Most times I am just typing away my thoughts or indulging Pablo Neruda’s poetry.

I thought he was trying to show care. He even rose and gave me bananas and a bun, which I didn’t need but I remember staring at them and wishing they’d to be eaten. He was suddenly being too nice, an unusual thing for him.

But when the doorbell rang and a fine lass entered the room, I understood the message he had been trying to send to me. She would be the second girl in a span of week, but less pretty than the first. He orders her to make tea, and she boldly says hi to me. From the dressing, black tights, a brown flowered dress that flattered her and a stocking on her head, I deduced that she wasn’t a sophisticated girl; she could pass either a basic whore or a mboch.

She made tea, drunk and they went to the bedroom. When the dawn broke, she was nowhere to be seen. She might have slithered into the darkness to wherever gave her the most discomfort. 

And because I dream in series

I haven’t yet found someone to try my new insult on, preferably a woman. It’s mainly for the type of women who fall asleep too quickly, as if they dream in series and can’t wait for the next episode to begin. Knowing about this system of dreaming, it involves thorough intellectual skills such as sleeping all day and expecting to be a millionaire in a year. Through sophisticated research, I have discovered that you can perfectly dream the same dream, in continuous form if you sleep in on a Sunday afternoon. At exactly 4.37 pm, your mind will start by replaying the last scenes of the previous episodes. You should read the findings, I have pasted them on all public toilet walls. Pop into one and have a bliss.  

It’s perfectly normal and easy to dream the same dream as I have stated above. I am the authority in this field that’s why you should read my peer reviewed journal. For those who would rather empty their bowels in familiar toilet bowls, I am going to explain a few things so that you can make progressive political decisions henceforth.

The dream begins a long time ago. As young man, barely into my teens, I doused in gasoline a grass thatched house back in the village. It served as village drinking joint, an equivalent of your favourite joint, say Kiza Lounge or 1824. It had no name but it was perfectly useful so long as people would find it. As it turns out, three drunkards did not make it out alive. If you value progress like I do, you wouldn’t be bothered by the fact that the world was less of three drunkards. As fate would have it, I made away with the murder. Life went on normally; I ate and shit normally, breathed normally, and of course I will die normally in my sleep and in old age. People don’t do this anymore but that’s what is in my script which is being reviewed by god. Except for my transgressions, he may….I don’t want to make suggestions yet.

I may have lied that life went on normally, because I would dream being pursued by petite ladies who were on the trail of the bizarre and shocking murders. It think you can agree with me that there was something wrong with the ladies because we often ended up making out until the passed out but then I would wake up scared stiff that I may revealed that I killed people as men sometimes brag in when they let passion override the faculties. The ladies would show up. We would go through the same sequence again and again. For ten years. Until today. Fourth of February twenty eighteen.

And so today came. A call came through.

“Hallo, are we speaking to Kipchirchir Rop?” the caller asked

“Yes, that’s exactly me,” I said boisterously because that’s the name I would love to be known by when I become a famous author. I thought that may be someone one had spotted my writings somewhere and decided that I was good enough to be awarded a contract for my debut novel ‘The Sound of Invisible Things.’

“We are calling you in connection with murders that happened ten years ago,” the caller said.

I tried hanging up. It wouldn’t. I had to remove the phone battery. I hurriedly packed my clothes in a sack and left home. I had the idea of fleeing, to a country like Kenya where fugitives usually hide. 

When I opened the gate, I found a large number of soldiers with their guns trained on me immediately I stepped out. In shock, I dropped the sack that had the best clothes but instead rats squirmed out. In shock I woke up. I think in the next episode I will be in jail or Kenya. The later seems more likely.

GHOSTS WATCHING TV

Photo:Courtesy

He loved a life, where many sane people, even those who harboured the most-wicked intentions in their darkest of minds, would frown upon, and without imploring their own dark souls, conclusively declare him a Satan incarnate. Eric loved being on the periphery of things, wicked things, cheering bloodied bodies, headless human bodies freshly beheaded and most importantly the wail of people, deeply affected by the atrocities inflicted upon their loved ones. It sounded deeply romantic, and he enchanted, danced like he was hypnotized under the moonlight. He loved humans writhing in pain, he adored when they couldn’t take it anymore. He loved their stillness, their breathless bodies sprawled on the cold floor. He loved when they couldn’t protest anymore, the moment before plunging their damned souls into an abyss they called eternity, which to Muslims masked as heaven and the rest hell.

He kicked the bucket, like every other mortal, though with seriously obstinate hope that he’d live forever, that he would see the world end. But it wasn’t to be. Every passing day he got closer to his death, like a lover stalking and asking for a date. Sometimes he would think about him, after his mother warned him that he would be cursed by the Turkana’s whose kids he loved to bully/torture. That had sent a precedence of fear and he’d wake up in the middle of the night sweaty. There was no light to switch on, no electricity, except a paraffin lamp which always ended in his mother’s bedroom. One time he was too afraid that he slept in his mother’s bedroom, having been too scared to sleep alone. Then he was a young boy aged 10 and that was fifty years ago.

Eric now is immortal having conspired with evil underworld forces to return back to earth to haunt and act the hand of god. He had pleaded his case, of how it had ruined his childhood, robbed him of happiness and he had been chosen to return back to earth because of sympathy and because other aspirants of the envied role had been murderers before checking into the underworld. He had been coronated in one big ceremony, where human skulls and blood donned the place. Some were hoisted upon long thin sticks, some were laced with gold, silver depending on their seniority in the underworld. These were witnesses to his reincarnation as a ghost, who would roam the land of the living, and act the hand of God.

And he loved to roam, dear Eric. Sometimes for fun, sometimes to conduct prefeasibility studies. His ceaseless wanders, as the air, always took him to an apartment in Hurlinghum, called Mursik. He loved to visit house number A7, where he’d slip through the gate as silent as the wind, pass by the ever unconscious watchman and up the stairs. Sometimes the aroma of food would hit him and he’d wish to join the owners in partaking the meal. But then it would past mid night, maybe he would risk the ire of a fellow high ranking ghost. Protocol had to be strictly adhered to or else he would be cast among those who have been eternally damned-child rapists, sodomites, politicians, drug dealers and a few doctors. Those would never be reincarnated into anything beyond street mongrels, to be kicked about by everyone, and cursed by their own names. Then they will die a slow painful death and misery, and therefore, eternal damnation.

Eric rushes up the stairs with lightning speed to house number A7. Its 2 am in the morning, a time when everybody is asleep. The scantily furnished room, two single seater coaches, one three seater coach and a table. A small TV stands low at the corner. There’s a residual smell of cigarettes in the air. A newspaper spread is on the table, which had acted as the ash tray. He can also detect a faint smell of perfume, which leads him to conclude that a woman is in one of the rooms fulfilling a man’s most basic need-sex. He can hear the heaving, the sighs and the moans but that’s not what he is interested in. He just wants to pass time in front of this small JVC TV. He switches it on.

Previously someone had walked up to switch it off. Twice in fact. He heard him curse in his thoughts. The next day he switched of the sockets on the wall and he didn't have a reason to be there anymore. He didn’t want to leave finger prints on the wall. 

Ravaged Village

One day you’ll get to walk through the paths, dusty and beaten, of this village in a remote part of Uasin Gishu County. On that day, there’ll not be anything except orphaned children, neglected mud-walled houses, lands that have been permanently left to fallow and young men wallowing in the fate that has befallen them.  They’ll be chewing miraa, while fondling plastic Coca-Cola bottles with clear liquids inside if you peer closely. They (these young men) will be fathers to their own siblings and would be mulling about the day their parents went wrong. Today I’ll do you a favour.  I’ll walk you through half the journey. I’ll walk you well in advance before that day comes. Be warned though that this is subject to exaggeration on my part and it would have been really great if you walked it by yourself. Let’s begin the journey.

Here, you will catch a glimpse of lands with cypress trees grown on the edges, pruned to the tip. You will wonder how this is possible and give up when you realize that it is a vanity. ‘There have pruning drones, ‘I‘ll lie to you. ‘Haven’t you seen them?’ I’ll ask to rouse your amusement.  Mud-walled houses with rusty tin roofs and many of them grass thatched line haphazardly along the dusty road. Maize plants on these lands speak of neglect. Weeds have choked their growth and most are have very thin stalks with barely anything to harvest. You’ll notice the road painted white from chewed maize stalks. It’s a delicacy during this time of the year.

On the east of this village lies a more affluent village. Large trucks of land where wheat and maize plantations stop your eyes. If it’s your first time, you will find it delightful and you will give in the temptation to take selfies to brag to so many people who don’t know you on social media. Lonesome bricked houses stand solitarily either in the middle or at the edge. There are those who let reason prevail and found it worthwhile to construct their houses close together, but still on their farms. It’s called Chebaon. It would qualify to be a leafy suburb. Let’s call it a leafy village. Yes, Lavingtone.

To the west of Chebaon is Kaoni, where my story is set. A river separates these two villages. Here you will access Kaoni through a dilapidated bridge, constructed when there was still very little difference between the two villages, when Chebaon had very few residents and those who had settled found it worthwhile to have neighbours who they would occasionally borrow each other salt when it became extremely impossible to get to the nearest Kiosk. And they needed a proper bridge. Who would walk through a wooden plank in the dark?  The present doesn’t allow that. Chebaon is almost not a village. A village is rather a backward word that denotes a people who are clueless about civilization. People here upgraded their television sets to pay TVs while the other village still is clueless about television. The other village supplies labour to Chebaon. And that’s the biggest difference.

The kids of Chebaon parents attend the best schools that could be found in the region. Kaoni kids attend local primary schools and in Chebaon, the only school which hosts kids from other villages but its own. Chebaon in very simple terms is a home of people who don’t live there.

Across the river, you’ll find grass thatched houses standing like they’ll collapse any minute. Some even have poles placed to support the leaning houses. The mud-walled houses reveal a sorry state. You’ll see kids dressed in rags, which mostly entail an adult’s shirt or sweater, playing innocently outside these houses. They care less, just relishing in their innocence. One will lend a wail to the rather quiet village, having exhausted means of winning a contest against another who apparently is stronger than him or her.  An older kid will prevail on the young ones and soon the games go on. They will be engrossed till pangs of hunger cannot be contained anymore. Luckily you won’t be here to see that. I’m just being too generous by telling you this.

One of those mud-walled houses belongs to a village elder. He has many children some his own, some not. The extraordinary thing is he doesn’t care about them. Everybody knows he flogs his wife thoroughly yet they will rush to him with domestic cases.  Everybody knows he doesn’t contribute a penny to his children’s upkeep. Their mother can send them away for ages and he won’t badge an eyelid. He could be tempted to ask where they are and the wife’s stern reply would be, “is there anything you want to give them?” He spends all his time away from his home except in the mornings when he milks his cows, (he trusts no one when it comes to his cows.) and when he’s surveying his inherited piece of land, scavenging for something to sell. He is a father, but this title is largely ceremonial. Once he beat his wife senseless, leaving her unconscious and went to tell his kids to go and pick their dead mother.

This elder runs the village. He solves the issues that are way below the scope of the sub-chief. He solves small squabbles that family heads find too tasking to tackle like when the wife wants a more sober approach to their persistent squabbles, sometimes over the excess amount of tea leaves in his tea.     

As you walk through the dusty paths, you won’t fail to feel something ominous in the air. People here seem lethargic. They portray a picture of a people who’ve lost hope such that they view strangers with contempt, like they’ve been sent to take away what’s left of them and for them. They seem like orphans. They seem they are scared more by what they know than what they don’t. Their greetings are hurried, like one is a bearer of bad news, of death perhaps.

The animals too, tethered by the road side, have that look of their owners. Cows are herded along the roads. Trees sway sensually to the wind, almost often against its will. Young men will be sitting aimlessly along the road, waiting vainly to ogle at a girl’s posterior. Here girls are mothers, their innocence taken away at the earliest opportunity.  Their eyes stare at something invisible, the hands clutching impalpable pain. You will be tempted to look at what they are looking at, may be stretch your hand to feel what they feel when their hands are tightly folded. Nothing will yield more disappointment when all you feel is a rough hand born of many hours foraging for food, for their kids.

The disease is in the air. No one wants to talk about it. I feel it every time I inadvertently stroll through this village. There are people am afraid for, the guys we played football together before I left for where it would be easier to cross to greener pastures. The journey is almost complete. A few days and I’ll be done. I’ll show the homes of my childhood enemies. One time they beat me and ran away. I spent almost all my lower primary break time trying to revenge. It’s been ages since I last saw them. I want to meet them and ask them if they still remember the source of our squabble.

That little squabble is among the minor things I remember. Even the day I was flogged thoroughly for a mistake I’m still trying to fathom to date doesn’t rank highly-part of the minor memories. There was this day when the fight against AIDS was in full swing. It was in the curriculum. It was around 2003 and 2003. The head teacher would gather us at random times and tell us about this disease that doesn’t have cure. There was a song she’d sing.

Tell them about AIDS slowly

So that they don’t say they didn’t understand.

And she did spoke of it at lengths. And more importantly slowly. It got me scared, I don’t know how it struck the rest. I stayed off girls as much as I could. One day the school organized an HIV/AIDs awareness day. We all trooped to a neigbhours house to see for ourselves what AIDS could do to a human body. We saw gory videos, of very thin people whose bones were about to escape from their bodies. Effects of AIDS. We also saw of other sexually transmitted diseases. They were equally gory. Unsightly. Nauseating.

All that and my friends didn’t take it seriously. I wonder what happened to their brains. Now they are chewing miraa, staring at their futures fade away. Like they want to salvage, they clench their fists, gnaw their teeth. But it’s too late.

Tell them about AIDS slowly

So that they don’t say they didn’t understand.

I hope your regrets have this sound track. Wait for your fate. Or guide it to a more favourable ending.

THE MERCY OF FREEBIES

It’s Friday. No one recognizes it more or better than a jobless Nairobi lady, a hooker and university students. They all are of the same mettle, all with the some needs. It’s not an ordinary Friday. The month is approaching its final quarter and many wallets have been excessively worked out. Some are malnourished. Some are but a mere burden. It’s cold, a typical July weather. Tracy lay on the couch alone. Her boyfriend Geoffrey should have been around to cuddle had it not been for her niece‘s unprecedented visit. The last thing she wanted was to be a bad example……. no, an inconvenience to her niece−she was grown up. May be she even knew more than her aunt, she turned on the couch.

Tracy had her Samsung Galaxy S3 smart phone in her hands, both the television and home theatre remotes resting on her belly. Westlife music wafted through the room. She would occasionally sing along. It calmed her. It made her feel in control of her thoughts. She would imagine Geoffrey singing to her ear in his rough and rugged voice. She loved to hear his distorted rendition. Pleasant ripples went through her body at that very moment. She smiled to let the memory go away.

She checked her phone again and again. All she could see were messages her girlfriends inquiring if there was a party they would get crash or she’s been invited. She hated replying back with a negative. She has always been the girl they looked up to when it got to having fun−drinking and dancing till dawn without parting with a single cent. They would admit that it was dangerous but would brush it off with ‘we have only one life’ or ‘soon we will be married.’ The only had one chance and it was while they still studied. Tracy, like most of her friends, was post graduate students at the University of Nairobi. Her niece, Stacy was also a student at the same institution.

At the very instant of thinking about Stacy, she knocked on the door with a smile on her face. She couldn’t recall a day she wore a frown on her chubby face.

“What kept you that long?” Tracy asked, just to talk to her. She was not interested in her answer.

 “I met some friends who kept me long, regaling stories of what they’ve been up to…..by the way they invited me to a party that they’ve invited to………”

“Where?”  She cut her short.

“Renault Apartments, rumour has it that a prominent politician will be in attendance,” Stacy said with a blush.

“Can I…..”

“Will you accompany me?” Stacy jibed in with a giggle that revealed a dimple on her left cheek.

The process of making up their already good faces began. Tracy hated it. She hated staring at herself in the mirror applying chemicals on her face. She hated the rigour that accompanied choosing attire for a night out. But she had to look good, perhaps better than any lady in the house that night. It came with many goodies: spanks, stares, complements, cheers and the most coveted of all, drinks from the richest and handsome.

At the end of the evening she had settled on a tight fitting black polka dotted dress that went way above her knees. Her niece had settled for a pair of jeans and a purple top. They were all ready went a cab pulled into their apartments parking lot. It was deserted, silently proclaiming that the tenants were already out having fun.

“Good evening hookers?” The cab greeted them in a heavy Kikuyu accent.

“Were you sent to insult us?” Tracy fumed.

“That was not an insult. It’s a whole world of truth. Do I suppose you are the Mheshimiwa’s daughters, eh? Beauty will ruin you girls.” He said as they settled uneasily into the back seat. Tracy looked into the mirror and caught him staring may be her thighs.

“Shut up and drive!” a visibly agitated Stacy fumed.

Quite moments ensued as the black saloon car eased into the light Nairobi traffic−people had been forced by brokenness to take their cars off the road. Everybody seemed engrossed in their thoughts, desperately hoping that somebody will break the silence. Tracy stared at the tinted cars wheezing past them. She felt like asking the driver to press the gas pedal much harder but checked on herself when she recalled the sneers they had to contend. She seemed to be the only lady who loved speed. Her friends had joked about her being so early for her own funeral days before she died. Stacy sat silently. She was calm and seemed unbothered. She loved her life the way it was. She was busy on her phone, sexting perhaps as Tracy observed they way she would broadly smile periodically before hitting the send button.

The cab pulled up in an exquisite parking lot of the Renault Apartments. Everything spoke of affluence: a beautifully manicured lawn, expensive cars parked and a certain kind of fragrance that had a close affiliation with wealth. This is where sinners converge to multiply their transgressions. This is where married men sought solace in the ever open arms and legs of university students without worrying of cameras and their hawk eyed wives. This is where married men regained their masculinity among university lasses. It was secure too: there was no chance of being blown up by terrorists as had become the norm in this part of sub-Saharan Africa.

They alighted. Tracy adjusted her dress. A uniformed guard rushed to their side and asked them to register before proceeding to where they’d be hosted. Tracy tried to protest but her niece exhorted her to comply with the directive. They strutted to the miniature shelter that housed the watchman. Tracy was visibly annoyed by the idea and she didn’t hide her anger.

“We are not about to blow this place or make away with anything. Kwani where do you have to register to have fun?”

The guard entered their names and identification numbers in a register. It was new and their names appeared third and fourth in the register. Tracy peered and noticed that all the names were feminine. It still safe now, she thought as Stacy took directions from the watchman as she texted. Tracy was all of sudden bored and she seemed to contemplate why she had hoped into a party which she wouldn’t even explain without arousing suspicion. She fell low on the list. She even failed to understand how they would be chauffeured into a party where a friend invited a friend who invited a friend and that friend asked her to come along. Now they were are in Renault Apartments, earlier than those who asked them to come along.

Aunt and niece took the steps one at a time. Their stilettos struck the marbled stair case in unison. Tracy kept quite. She seemed she hadn’t gotten over the altercation between her and the watchman. Stacy on the other hand looked more composed than her aunt. She seemed older and more mature, from the dressing to the facial expression. On the first floor they met a young woman out to hang clothes. She looked at them with spiteful eyes. It wasn’t anything new. Both of them had gotten used to such stares from the fairer sex –their fellows. Those who perceived themselves in the higher class looked down upon those who were the lowly and the lowly despised those in the higher class. A woman is an enemy of her own. Gender parity is a thing that should start with the women appreciating themselves first and working together to tame the men, or at least have the remotest ability to.

They reached the third floor and turned right as they had been instructed. Slow music welcomed them from afar. House number three hundred and four was the destination. A slim young woman in her mid twenties ushered them in. She was clad in a cheap black skirt that went slightly above her knees and a floral filled purple top. She shopped in deplorable places such as Gikomba or Muthurwa, Tracy thought as they settled on white leather couch. Tracy pulled her dress. It showed too much of her thighs and they were no men around to admire them. There were only four ladies in the spacious living room; two others and them. Stacy sat on her right. Everything spoke of opulence: diamond encrusted chandeliers, thirty two inch plasma television, a home theatre (the origin of the music), leather seats and artifacts that hung on the wall−they were souvenirs from around the world. A picture and a calendar hang conspicuously at one end, dwarfed by the artifacts. The decoration would surely make a lady to go on one knee and beg the owner of the house (not the landlord but the tenant) to marry her. It was awe inspiring and breathtaking.

The lady who welcomed them came back. It seemed she was satisfied that they had made themselves at home. Or had had the opulence exhibited by the owner of the house sink into them. She came with a request that had become too familiar to them.

“Whisky or wine?” She asked with a contempt filled voice.

“Wine,” Tracy answered. She didn’t bother to know what Stacy preferred. It wasn’t her who had the same problem. Many have always assumed collective preference for drinks wherever two people sit. Stacy would have loved to complain had it not been her choice too. And they being strangers invited by third parties.

Minutes later she appeared with a tray. She carefully placed two glasses on glass table. They looked at the drink, each waiting for another to pick it first. The silence that ensued, save for the Michael Bolton sounds coming from speakers placed at the corners of the room, was disturbing. Tracy took a sip from the glass. Her niece followed suit before her glass embraced the table. They sipped slowly at long intervals. They didn’t want to get tipsy before the party started. 

As the clock chimed at nine, people started streaming in. Majority of them were girls. Slim. Fat. Light. Dark. Happy and sad. All trooped in bubbling with contagious excitement.  Tracy would spot only two men glad in black suits. Their eyes darted from girl to girl desperately longing to frisk them. May be they were part of the security detail belonging to the dignitary they were to entertain. How would ten of them or more entertain one man? There sure were his friends and psychos who hang around him like a moth to source of light. Most of the girls were half clad. They dresses desperately clung to their bodies in an attempt to conceal the areas around the loins. The furrow on their breasts ran until it disappeared in their stomachs. Their faces were heavily made up. It outshone the bulbs that hung on the roof. Tracy and Stacy looked like they were headed to church. Judging by the precedence set by the other girls; theirs was decent by astronomical proportions.

The party started immediately. The girls chatted animatedly, giggling and clapping, toasting and ordering more. Tracy and Stacy were joined by another girl, a friend of Stacy. She was the one who asked Stacy to come along. They were the silent ones. They watched the lone waiter struggled to cope with their unruly behavior. Drinks flowed swiftly from where they were stored. It became apparent that soon men would have a good time without effort. They hadn’t even arrived except the two men in black suits who were already trying to resist erotic glances from the drunken girls.

Tracy and her company were busy discussing the latest trend in the fashion world that they hardly noticed a man join them. He was clad in a loosely fitting pair of blue jeans and a white shirt. He was clean shaven. He enchanted them with compliments before asking to share the table with them. They obliged. He then called the waiter who hurried to their table. Judging from her posture this was ‘the’ man. He called the shots. The lady went back as the drunk girls escorted her with slutty insults. Obeying the master was worth all the insults. She came back with a bottle of whisky and four glasses. She wanted to pour it into the glasses but the man excused her. He poured into the four glasses and requested a toast. All the girls lifted their glasses and then took a sip simultaneously. Tracy noticed more men in the room. All were busy groping the drunken girl’s breasts some even their loins. They didn’t show any act of resistance. All forms of it had been drained by one too many drinks. She knew it would escalate and soon they would strip and quench their concupiscent thirsts right under their glare.

One more toast….and another. She tried to resist and the man gave her that ‘I said so’ look. All of them obliged begrudgingly, before stupor gave away their inhibitions. Tracy began shouting for more alcohol. She rose, staggered around breaking glasses and hurling expletives at any one that tried to stop her. She was very unruly and had extraordinary strength. Stacy tried to calm her to no avail. The man that they had been drinking with (they didn’t even ask his name) was visibly angry. He mumbled something into the ears of one of the men in black suits then disappeared. No one saw where he went to.

The men in black swiftly approached Tracy. They grabbed her and forced her out. She screamed as kicked but her resistance was no match to the muscular men. They shoved her out of the door and came back. They sighed having executed their master’s orders successfully. Tracy and her friend rose and headed for the door. They were aware of the dangers Nairobi posed especially at that hour of the night. The men in black told them point blank that the boss had said they were not leaving. Stacy begged tears welling in her eyes. It met a resolute no from one of the men. Stacy asked them to consider the safety of their friend at those wee hours of the morning. One of the men told whispered into the ear of his colleague.

“The boss wants one of you. We are going to bring her here and the remaining two of you belongs to us for the night.”

They quickly agreed. They opened the door and locked from outside Stacy wanted to ask why but the thought of her aunt restrained her lips from parting. They hurriedly descended down the stairs. In no time they were done. The watchman at the gate told them that Tracy turned right and went retreated into his shelter. There was no figure or even a silhouette of a woman in the flood lit road. They ran a few metres before the men asked them to stop.

“She isn’t around and the boss will be furious if he finds us missing. We can’t go any further,” one of them said in a deep solemn voice.

“Please lets go just a little distance, she might be around,” Stacy pleaded.

“NO! Let her be a meal to starved Nairobi savages. You must honor our deal,”

“But…”

“Shut up young girl!” she was cut short. One grabbed her and the other her friend. Both were similar in appearance, from the mode of dressing and their facial features. They well built with muscular arms and broad chest. They grabbed them and dragged them into the ditch which wasn’t well lit and had their way into them. It was more of a quickie and the men buckled up their trousers and zipped them and asked them to rise. Tracy had a difficult time pulling her tight fitting trouser up her thighs. Her thoughts were on her aunt and not on their rape. At least they were safe in their arms or so she thought. At last it made through and she zipped as they made their way back into the den.

They stepped back into the room to a cigar stained air. It was smelly when they left. A furious ‘boss‘greeted them at the door. He demanded to know why he was deprived his status as a very important person to a deplorable prisoner and worse still in his own house. The security aide cowered under his breath. Though they were more muscular than he was they dared not challenge him and suddenly one blurted:

“These sluts tried to escape…we….we captured these two but one managed to escape…..”

“What!!!??? You mean after taking my expensive liquor you try to run away? What’s your name?”

“Stacy.”

“That’s not a name. Your second name,” he thundered.

“Jeptum,” Stacy cowardly replied. He pointed at her friend by elongating his lips.

“Chebet,” she barely whispered.