CHAPTER THREE - Nairobi Cocktail, The Sleaze

         

The village rapist was at it again.

Kanja was an only child with casual labourers for parents. They, the parents, were perpetually upset with life. It was Kanja's normal, he knew no other way. They never made jokes, never laughed and when they did, usually in company of outsiders, the laughter came out as muffled sounds, like they were embarrassed of laughing. As a grownup, Kanja would wonder if the lack of jokes at home was because of the misery or because they just did not know any jokes. Kanja was not perpetually miserable. He was a happy boy, especially when he was in school or playing football with his friends. He, however, knew how to match his parents’ miserable moods in their presence.

The three left home at the same time, at six AM in the morning. He went to school, his parents went to work. He was the first to return at four PM. They would saunter in an hour later, minutes apart, dog tired, and demand for warm water to soak their tired feet. By the time they arrived, Kanja would have washed his school uniform, collected dry twigs to start a fire, started the fire, filled a sufuria with water and placed it on the jiko and start preparing dinner. If he worked faster, he would a few spare minutes to kick a ball around with his friends.

Only when his parents came in did he start doing his homework in the dusk light. As his mother finished preparing dinner, he would wipe his body. He only had a full body wash on Saturdays at the river with his friends.

 And so, it was one evening as he collected dry twigs in a nearby tea plantation, one of many his parents worked in, when he was brutally grabbed from behind. He was too surprised to scream immediately and by the time he thought of screaming, his mouth had been covered by one big, rough, smelly and dirty palm. He remembers the smell of the hand; a mix of different types of dirt. Somehow, he had noticed the orange sun that was beginning to disappear into the horizon.

When the same filthy hands turned him around, he found himself face to face with red, crazed eyes. “If you scream, I will sneak into your house tonight and kill your mother.” His attacker’s bad breath registered before the threat. The smell coming out of his mouth reminded him of a time a rad had died in the house, and they had almost moved out because of the smell. Kanja whimpered like a stressed puppy, nodding in quick succession.

It happened so fast that Kanja was having trouble processing. As far as his young mind was concerned, he should have been collecting dry twigs. Like he had done for as long as he could remember. He had never had a reason to be afraid of anything in the plantation. Often, he bumped into stray dogs that were more scared of him than he was of them. But this was not a stray dog. It was a human being, and he knew him. He lived on his own, just five houses from Kanja. He kept to himself. Often, Kanja and his friends would throw stones at him from the bushes.

Kanja was again roughly turned around, and his torn shorts pulled down with a single move. He didn’t know why he thought so, but he did wonder why the man bothered to remove the shorts, they had enough holes anyway. “Lie down…no, not on your back, on your tummy!” He was ordered. He did as ordered.

Because he had his faced pressed against the earth, he did not see his attacker coming down on him, but he felt him. He felt the sharp pain as his little body was abused, pain like he had never imagined possible. It felt like his behind was being cut up with a sharp knife, over and over. It was the kind of pain that required one to scream but his need to preserve his mother’s life was greater than his need to scream. He stayed quiet and started counting, one…two…three…one hundred…one hundred and...

He did not know how long he was subjected to what he later learned was sodomy, he had accepted his pain so much so that at some point had relaxed in resignation. After what seemed like eternity, the stabbing in his buttocks stopped, and he was being reminded that if he ever told on him, his mother would be killed.

He had remained on the ground for what felt like eternity, crying and refusing to think about the pain. Eventually, he made himself get up, looked around for his torn shorts and wore them. He registered blood trickling down his legs, he wiped it off with soil, picked the twigs he had gathered and clenched his buttocks as he walked home.

Kanja did not know this then, but he was not the first victim. What was different about his case was that he was the first boy victim. There were hushed stories of girls who had been raped, stories he had never heard. The rapist’s name was whispered among the adults but none had said it loudly. They continued to mingle in church with the suspect, at the shopping centre and at every corner of the village. People knew, but they buried their heads in the sand. People knew, but they feared him. All his victims were young children below the age of ten, they all lived within five kilometres of his house. Their parents kept the dirty secrets, afraid of the shame, afraid of the blame, just the way the village rapist liked it.

“One day I will kill that man”. Kanja whispered to himself as he collapsed on the floor of the house, where his mother found him.

 “What is wrong with you? Why is there no fire? Haven’t you prepared the sukuma wiki, you lazy boy? Wait until your father comes home and finds no warm water…you will have a good beating.” His mother threatened. Kanja did not respond, not physically, not orally.

“Anyway,” his mother said with a shrug. “If you have decided to be like those naughty boys who never help at home, that is fine. Just know I am not including you for dinner.” Then she went around doing what Kanja usually did before they arrived.

“What’s wrong with him?” His father demanded as he entered the house. “Why is he sleeping at this time? Is there no water for my feet?”

“Your son has decided he is man enough not to help around the house. He is not even talking to me…”

He stood over his son, looking down at his immobile body. He frowned a little. He knew his son to be a good boy. With one foot, he gently nudged Kanja, just to make sure he was alive. He was. “Are you unwell?” He asked. Kanja did not respond.

“He will be fine.” His mother said quickly. Getting unwell was a thought that scared everyone. Their budgets did not allow for anyone to be sick. Going to see a doctor was as luxurious as having sugar in their tea.

The father gave son one last look, shrugged, then used cold water to scrub his feet.  

Their one room abode was as basic as anything could ever be. There was one bed at the far corner, his parents’ bed. Kanja slept on a thin mattress, one that was stored under the bed at day time. Often, he heard muffled groans coming from his parents’ corner at night, sounds he knew, for some reason, he should not have been hearing, so he always pretended to be fast asleep, feigning a snore once in a while. Somewhere in the room was the disorder of a paraffin stove that was responsible for the constant smell of paraffin in the house. There were two foldable wooden chairs that looked two hundred years old, one had a wobbly leg. They owned three plates, three spoons and three aluminium cups that were in urgent need of replacing. Then there were the few clothes.

There was consolation; their immediate neighbours lived as squalor as they did.

Before the rape, Kanja had his future laid out. It was something he and his friends discussed. Some wanted to be doctors, others lawyers. There was even one who wanted to be a policeman because according to him, policemen could never be broke. “My father says all a policeman has to do is arrest anyone and accuse them of something and then get bribed. Policemen can never be broke.” Kanja did not want any of that. His academic head was weak, but he was good in sports, especially football. He planned to play for Gor Mahia, the best Kenyan football team in his opinion. He would play for the national team Harambee Stars, and the scouts would spot him and pick him for one of the English Premier League teams, hopefully Arsenal.

Kanja had devised a clever way of watching all English Premier League matches. He had befriended the owner of a village movie theatre that screened pirated movies and football matches. Kanja cleaned up the theatre every Saturday and he got to watch whatever he wanted. He could name all the players of Gor Mahia, he knew the names of all the Harambee Stars players, he knew even the names of the bench team of both Gor Mahia and Arsenal. It was not strange to hear older men ask him when the games would be screened and what he thought of a particular game.

For two hours, Kanja lay in the same position on the floor. His parents would step over him when they wanted to get to the other side. Apart from the small radio, there were no other sounds in the house. His parents would exchange bewildered looks now and then, shrug and step over him.

Until it was time to eat. “Kanja get up…unless you want to sleep hungry?” His mother said. Her voice had changed from the tough voice she had threatened him earlier with.

Silence, but a slight movement.

“If you do not want to eat, it is your problem. Your hunger will wake you up in the middle of the night. Just make sure you do not wake us up, your father would be upset…” She served two plates of ugali and sukuma wiki for herself and her husband. They ate in silence, staring at Kanja as they chewed. With each chew, their worry increased. They shifted more on their seats. They cleared their throats more. He was still motionless, but if the lighting in the house had been better, they would have seen the tears running down his face.

“I have no memory of you not eating, even when you are sick. What is it this time?” His father asked, putting down his near empty plate.

Silence, no movement.

“Are you dead?” His father suddenly asked, too loudly. He knelt next to Kanja and bent over his face. That was when he saw them, tears. “Why are you crying?” He asked in sudden panic, shaking his son as forcefully. Kanja mumbled incoherently.

“My son is dying!” The mother screamed, throwing down her plate. The father did not scream, but he groaned as he picked Kanja up, ran outside, followed by a screaming wife. They stormed into a neighbour’s, two compounds from theirs, he had an old car that more often than not had no fuel, or needed jumpstarting, but he was the one everyone ran to when there was a medical emergency.

His father laid him on the electricity lit corridor at the neighbour’s house and started banging on the door, ignoring the barking dogs, dogs that should have attacked them but they had not.

“Uuuuuwi! He is bleeding!” His wife screamed as she turned over Kanja. “He is bleeding from his bottom! Oh my God, oh my God, who has done this to my son? The devil is a liar! What have they done to my child?!”

           

***

The neighbour’s car had fuel, and it had not needed jumpstarting.

The doctor confirmed what everybody knew but had refused to accept. Kanja had been sodomised. The parents had joined their son into the mute state. Neither had cried. Their silence had lasted a day, Kanja’s lasted years. At the hospital he only ate when he was force-fed. He only moved when he was moved. He stared unblinkingly at the ceiling, at nothing. His dreamy and cheeky eyes had been replaced by a glassy look, like someone had placed a reflective mirror on the eyes to keep in the secrets of the soul. The eyes are the windows to the soul.

At the hospital, the medical staff whispered among themselves, worried about the boy never sleeping even when under sedatives. His eyes remained open, staring at one spot for hours, until someone moved him then he would stare at the next spot straight ahead. They brought psychiatrists, he refused acknowledge them, even when they sat right in front of him.  “He is not ready,” they all declared in resignation.

The physical wounds took two weeks to heal. He was declared physically well enough to be discharged. The same neighbour who had driven him to the hospital drove him back home, in silence. The mental wounds, the doctor had told the parents, would take longer. Or they may take forever. It depended on many factors. They were encouraged to take him to a psychiatrist. They did not know what a psychiatrist was. They did not ask because someone with a title like psychiatrist sounded like they needed to get paid. They did not have money to pay for a psychiatrist, or anyone for that matter. The hospital had waivered their bill because it did that for rape victims.

Kanja, in his silence and glassy stare, registered everything that was said. He heard the doctor’s pessimism about his mental wounds. He knew better. He knew exactly how his mental wounds would heal. The man who had raped him had to die. Only then would he consider accepting any kind of healing. He did not want life to get back to normal, yet. His normal was gone. He felt dirty. One could not be normal when they felt so filthy. The smell of the man’s hands and breath still lingered on Kanja and as long as he could smell him, he would not heal.

Like the other village rapes, Kanja’s rape was only whispered. Such shameful acts were not loudly spoken. Even before he cut himself off from the society, Kanja had already been ostracised. His friends were warned against playing with him. He did not care; he no longer wanted to play. Or talk to any of them. On the road, people pretended to be busy with other things whenever he turned up, or when his parents turned up. Kanja no longer watched football, or played it. He did not want to. He just wanted to kill the brute and every waking hour was spent planning on the most painful way he would kill him, and kill him he would. Every breath he took, he took only because he wanted to preserve himself long enough to outlive the rapist. Every meal  he took, he took not because he was hungry but because he needed to be strong enough for the kill.

For an entire school term, he stayed home, mostly indoors, lying on his parents’ bed at day time and his mattress at night, staring at nothing. Sleeping was a torturous affair because the rapist's face  tormented him.

He returned to school the following school term and became the official loner. It may have been that nobody wanted to play with him, or the fact that he did not want to play with anyone, but he always found himself solitary. Places cleared when he entered. Faces turned down or away. Even his teachers ignored him. They did not ask questions, they did not check his homework, they did not punish him even when the entire class was being punished. Kanja had turned into an invisible human. Once in a while, he believed he was invisible – it was the only explanation on what was happening to him.

His grades improved, but his new sceptic-self wondered if he had really improved, or the teachers were too afraid to fail him.

***

           

Kanja’s silence was consciously calculated to mislead people. The first weeks after the rape, the trauma had helped him stay mute but as soon as he realised people got careless in talks around him, like they thought just because he could not speak, he could not hear as well. That was how, two years after the rape, he overheard his mother discuss with another villager about a little girl, one who was two classes behind him in school, had been raped in the tea plantation. The same coffee plantation he had been raped in. That conversation had caused his buttocks to remember the pain of two years ago. He clenched them and fought nausea. Sweat dripped down his brow to the rest of the body.

He had regained control before the two women, only a few feet from where he had been sitting while soaking on the sun, noticed his discomfort. He stood up to get into the house just as his mother and her friend went down on their knees to pray to God to remove the scum from this earth. Kanja had a better idea; he would do the removing himself.

He knew just how to do it. For two years, murder thoughts had dominated his brain. He dreamed about nothing else in his sleeping hours except being tormented by the rapist and trying to strangle him. He felt ready and if he was not, he would die trying. He was tired of waiting for the right time.

It was a warm August evening and the darkness had already overpowered the light at six thirty PM. For two years, he had acquired a new habit of taking a walk just before total darkness engulfed the village. Rain or cold, he had been faithful in the walks. Initially the walks had worried the parents, but soon they had fallen into his routine. The walks would take half an hour, he would be back just in time for dinner. It was six forty five PM when he left the compound as usual. With his natural athletic stealth and determination summoned specially for the day, he walked five compounds from his. 

What earlier he had eavesdropped on his mother and her friend, he had made a snap decision. And so, like he had done countless times for two years, he walked to Kimakia the rapist’s gate and hid in the bush, a bush he had identified at day time and one he had hid at night as he waited for Kimakia to stagger home.

The twelve year old settled in the bush and offloaded his rugged school bag. From it, he fished out a plastic bag. From the bag, he removed a knife. He looked up at the skies and just like the sunset had peered at him when he was raped, the near full moon was peeping through cloudy skies. He implored it to be on his side, unlike her sister the Sun.

He ran his finger over the knife and thought about the many days he had spent honing it against a stone outside the house whenever he was alone. He would then hide it under his parents’ bed, at the farthest corner. No one ever went there. It was the same corner the dead rat had been discovered after three days of searching. The two inch wide knife had been stolen from his mother’s limited collection of cutlery. Days over days of sharpening it had reduced it to a width of less than an inch. It was perfect. From the same bag, he removed a folded paper he had torn from one of his books. It had writings on it. He couldn’t see the writing, but he knew what was written. He had done the writing. He unfolded it and patted it. Village dogs barking with excitement, he hoped they would keep barking to muffle the noise he was making with his tools.  

He sat. He thought of abandoning what was starting to look like a stupid plan. He shivered, not from the cold but something more intense. He allowed himself to be nervous and let in a little bit of fear. Fear, he had read somewhere, was good because it made one more alert. He needed to be careful because if things did not go according to plan, he would be as good as dead, but then again, he had been walking dead since the rape.

For two years, he had studied Kimakia’s habits. By now, he knew Kimakia the rapist arrived home between seven and seven thirty PM, always drunk. Kimakia the rapist always stopped by the gate to piss and loudly spit phlegm into the bush. A couple of times, piss and phlegm had almost landed on him, taking extra strength off him not to gag.  

Tonight was no different. Kanja did not have a watch, but by somebody’s watch somewhere, it was seven-twenty-two PM when Kimakia staggered to his gate. Kanja was tall for his age, perhaps even physically stronger than Kimakia’s alcohol ravaged body. Over the two years, Kimakia had stopped looking as imposing as he had on that day. He was confident that he could handle Kimakia. As soon as Kimakia unzipped his trouser, Kanja sprang up and before he could change his mind, drove his sharp knife into Kimakia’s shoulder blade and hoped it would not be the stab that killed him. He did not want him to die, not yet. The knife went in again, and Kimakia screamed. Kanja ordered Kimakia to shut up, just like he had been warned two years ago. The dogs increased their barking.

 The first time the knife pierced Kimakia, he was too shocked in his drunken state to realise he was being brutalised. When he didn’t go down, the twelve year old drove the knife again into the thigh; Kimakia went down, mourning rather than screaming.

Now he was on adrenaline, Kanja was. He worked fast. Any moment, someone may pass by before his work was done. He had near cat-like night vision and the clouds had cleared way for the moon. The moon was on his side. He looked on each end of the road; nothing. A dog nearby barked viciously but did not approach. Kimakia was groaning, too loudly. Kanja stuffed a piece of cloth in Kimakia’s mouth. He removed a rope from his plastic bag and clumsily tied Kimakia’s hands and legs, ignoring the wounded man’s muffled pleas.

Kimakia the rapist thought he was being robbed and repeated over and over how he did not have money. His words were however distorted by the cloth in his mouth. Kanja worked fast and silently. Once Kimakia was clumsily tied up, Kanja stood up, took a deep breath, looked around, glad they were still alone. There were two dogs now, they were growling, from a distance. Then he dragged the older man into his compound.

Just like it was done to him two years ago, he pulled down Kimakia the rapist’s torn pants.

“What the hell are you doing? Help!” That was what Kimakia said. The words did not come out.

Kanja punched Kimakia the rapist’s jaw, then the other. With his hand, he scooped soil from the ground, removed the piece of cloth covering the mouth and stuffed the soil in Kimakia’s mouth. Kimakia the rapist choked.

After a quick deep breath, Kanja grabbed Kimakia the rapist’s exposed penis. It was wet. With piss. That did not stop him. With precision that would have impressed a chicken butcher, cut off what he thought was half of it. The relief he felt with that single brutal act was so huge, he groaned. Then smiled, for the first time in two years. He stood up, held up his price through the darkness and chuckled.

Kimakia the rapist did not scream. Not at first. The pain took long to hit him. So did the realisation of what had just happened to him. The shock blocked his voice chords. He could not see, but it dawned on him what had been done to him. He knew he had peed on himself earlier, but the new type of warm liquid was not urine but his own blood, running down his thigh, like a calm river on a sunny day.

Nobody knew better than him why this was being done to him. Only he knew the tens of little boys and girls he had raped. Only he knew how he threatened them if they spoke his name. But Kimakia the rapist, as powerful as he felt had always feared that one of his victims would either tell on him, or hurt. He just never imagined having his penis cut would be part of the punishment.

He still could not scream, mostly because he was in shock, and his tormentor was still around. He knew it was a boy, he just wondered which one of the four he had raped had the guts. He tried to roll over, but his tormentor kicked his head so hard, he blacked out.

Someone was passing outside the gate. Kanja paused and forced more soil into Kimakia the rapist’s mouth. The dogs were going crazy, coming closer. He threw a stone towards them, they retreated, just a little. Kimakia’s one goat was bleating somewhere in the compound, nonstop. He needed to work faster. He dragged Kimakia back to the road where he would be spotted by the next passerby. He placed the paper he had written a message on and placed it on Kimakia the rapist’s chest. His work was done. He stood up, wiped his hands on his shorts. With his rugged backpack on his back, he walked home, with a bounce, whistling all the way, the barking of the dogs fading the further he walked from them.  

His first stop was the pit latrine where he threw his weapon. He washed his hands with soap in the karai just outside the door.

He opened the door to the house and looked at his parents. They were both holding cups, definitely with black, sugar-less tea, and they both paused to look at him. He smiled at them and said, “I am hungry…”

His mother’s cup fell to the floor with a force that should have made people jump. Nobody jumped. The liquid poured from the fallen cup, making several tributaries to nowhere. Nobody looked at it. His father slowly placed his cup on the floor, over one of the tributaries, then lifted both his hands to the skies. His mother broke into tears. It was the first time she was hearing her son’s voice in two years.

They were ten minutes into their supper when the piercing screams cut through the night. For the second time that evening, cutlery was forcefully dropped to the floor. The father grabbed a panga and the mother a piece of wood. When they rushed outside armed, they thought they were answering a distress call for thieves; recently there have been incidents of thugs attacking people in the area. In their panic, neither of the parents noticed that Kanja’s near stoic pose. He did not stop eating. It was the first time he was enjoying a meal in two years and nothing was going to spoil it for him.

When his parents disappeared into the night, he smiled – his parents did not close the door behind them, Kanja did not bother to close it. At that moment and time, he felt invincible.

The parents found a chaotic scene. Somebody had produced a torch and kept shining it on where Kimakia’s penis was meant to be. The men would groan emphatically from the sight and instinctively cover their groin area. Somebody had retrieved the piece of paper from that Kanja had left and was shining a phone light against it, reading it aloud.

“Salala…listen to this. THIS IS THE MAN WHO HAS BEEN TERRORISING VILLAGE CHILDREN WITH RAPE. NOW HIS DAYS ARE OVER….salala….”

Let’s stone him to death!

No, let us take him to the hospital first.

Why did they not cut off the entire offending organ?

Who could have done this?

Let him bleed to death.

I always knew he was the one.

Kanja’s father held his wife’s hand, pulling her away from the crowd. They silently walked home with joined hands.

They found Kanja as they had left him, eating. They paused at the door, the boy looked at his father defiantly, his father nodded and smiled. His mother started crying. The father studied his son, feeling both pride and fear for him. The wife took a broom and started sweeping the scattered food. None of them said a word.

They all slept peacefully.  

***

Kimakia the rapist did not die at the scene. The police had taken him to the hospital, but he lived his remaining short life with half his member. There was no evidence to prosecute him of the alleged rapes, even after the chief called a baraza to urge his victims to come forward. Kimakia the rapist was released from the hospital two months later. A day later, he hung himself with an old rope he used to tie his lone goat. The goat had taken advantage of the freedom and taken off. No one ever wondered where it had gone.

No one claimed his body.

He was buried, in a sack, by the government, in a shallow grave at the public cemetery. The dogs dug out the body and fed on his body for two days.  

Kimakia the rapist rotted in pieces.

________________________________________

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