I don’t want to
be ‘catchy-feely’ about these two past weeks, but it’s impossible to stay
objective. It has been a societal nightmare, from women getting stripped and
molested in broad daylight to fucking babies – NO! DON’T excuse my language
because that’s what it WAS.
UGLY and
totally unwarranted.
…. and GOK
downplaying the massacre of half a bus load of Kenyans in Kenya.
Our Men Have
Gone Mad.
What’s ailing
us as a society?
We need to
really begin TALKING TO EACH OTHER.
It’s so damn
filthy underneath the carpet. We’ve been sweeping and sweeping and sweeping all
the dirt and bits of food, chicken bones and curdled milk underneath the
carpet.
NOW (at this
present time} as a Society, we’ve moved, oh yes we have, we’ve shifted from the
old house to the new Mansion but… wait.. WHAT THE FREAK IS THIS?
You lift the
carpet and it smells under there… Ugliness was hidden, sheer incompetence, a
maggot lack of responsibility, an attitude like the pastor who was photographed
kissing asses in public – that’s what KENYAN men have evolved into. Collective
Ass Kissers.
Coast is on
Fire. Yet advertisers are making a killing hyping the benefits of ‘cheap air fare and domestic tourism’.
Pause: What’s
wrong with that picture?
We call in and
say I think my neighbor is Al-Shabab. It’s ignored. A month later when the
bombs go off our security forces go and kill cells that should have been zapped
a-long-time-ago.
Places of
worship SHUT DOWN. Police shot dead.
Yesterday I
spoke to a Matatu Driver on route 44. The first words out of his mouth were:
‘Kwa hii matatu hatutolei wadada nguo zao’.
I hadn’t even opened my mouth. Which made my BRAIN SCREAM in horror… HAS
THIS BEEN GOING ON, BUT WE’VE BEEN SILENT? Is it only because of these Viral Videos
that this madness has come to light? Are the video takers, as nasty as they
are, dong us a favor by videographing and
spreading a horror that’s been ongoing - The truth?
Can I say this?
That in these situations, when one person intervenes, they get attacked by a
hostile mob.
Wewe – acha- nita kuchapa, hii sii vita yako.
It’s safer to
walk away.
If you find an accident
victim on any Highway and take them to hospital, you’re arrested. If you go
report a crime to the police, you’re thrown in. Members of public have learnt
to watch in horror as 1 and 2 do ‘their thing’. It’s not stopped. We watch - then
turn away, Praising God ‘it wasn’t me’.
If you go to
any police station as a woman to report a rape, the cops say you’re the cause.
Many rape
victims cannot speak, and only whisper, but they’re shouted at and told to stop
mumbling and speak up…. It’s so demeaning, so dehumanizing, so UGLY, that we
women simply don’t report a crime.
S m h. Ask
around, don’t take my word for it.
Going back to
my question, is this something that’s BEEN HAPPENING? What are the mathematical
probabilities? If we have been treated to, let’s say - 8 FREE videos – in a
week - how many more women have been violently violated?
From a
Grandmother in Nyeri to a 3 year old, to a young mother who went to report a
rape in Kiambu, was locked up by the Policeman on duty and repeatedly raped, and
on her return home 12 hours later, found her baby dead.
No, don’t talk
about Nairobi Womens’ Hospital and their data.
Let’s slum it
and find out from looking into the horses mouth.
And this I
know. .. what we’re looking at is the tip of a Boil.
Where we see
the tip of the ice-burg, we know it’s far deeper, right?
When we see
smoke, we know there’s a fire somewhere…
When we spot a
leak, we know there’s a crack further down the piping…
When you feel a
boil on any part of your body… you KNOW it’s worse underneath. When that thing
is squeezed, the amount of putrid white mess that oozes out is so much more
than you bargained for – that’s because there’s usually a whole lot more puss under
the skin.
I REMEMBER, we
prayed for our NATION. And we’re moving. And in that movement we’re stumbling
because of the horrors we’ve been sweeping under the carpet.
SO.
THIS IS A
HORROR THAT HAS BEEN GOING ON.
The victims and
witnesses have all been keeping quiet, now they’re screaming. We’re leaking
from the edges, our Ebola is showing, we’re hemorrhaging critically from
internal wounds.
Those of us who
Tweet and Facebook and You-Tube behind the safety of gated communities, sheer
curtains and cool tiled floors, with sleek laptops worth thousands of euros on
our laps, listening to strums of soft rock music while we surf, 100 times removed
from reality, are now shocked out of our muteness. Suddenly, this horror can’t
be ignored. The crap is on our faces. We can’t wash it off and the more water
we add, the more it smears and stinks.
In reality, our
girls cry ‘Nakupenda, Nakupenda’, to our men while being violated,
singing the words as a mantra to save themselves from worse indignities,
crawling home to drunken louts masquerading as husbands who, despite wearing a
wedding ring, stuff their fists, and bottles into their neighbours daughters vaginas
in a public bus.
What type of
mind is that?
I don’t want to
know.
The same one
that will look for a sheep or a goat, cow, donkey or chicken to insert their
penises into, then spend hours doing the
same to a child who barely knows herself? Have we as a society become so inhuman to
screams that we shrug and walk away - not asking ourselves, why is that child
screaming? We’ve become silent and therefore we’re part of the problem.
I try and sleep
at night, but gory images from those viral videos sent to my profile pages have
resulted in me black-listing untitled video content and using my TrueCaller to
block unwanted texts and phone calls. If
you’re not on my phone list you’re not getting past that.
I just don’t
want to see these images any more. I have a choice, but thousands of women in
Kenya don’t. They have to use matatus daily.
I switched off
Social Media for 72 hours, but it didn’t help me one iota.
Truly, I’ve ‘caught
feelings’.
And I’m
desperately hurt, wounded and bleeding, as I am sure a few of us are.
I’ve been raped
by my own relative and my innocence is shattered and gone to hell. I’m swallowing pieces of broken glass shards,
they are cutting up my soft insides as
they go first through my mouth, then the soft tissues of my throat and stomach.
I’m belching
blood.
I don’t know
where which hurt is more.
Not a stranger,
not a foreigner, no. My neighbor and relative. Foreign men, the Ugandans and
Tanzanians and Nigerians and Cameroonians are shaking their heads and admonishing our brothers in accented English, ‘you men,
brada, you dunno how to look after your women Ohh’.
Can we really
look at Kenyan touts the same way again? Can any of us venture downtown again? Should
we be very afraid for our sisters, daughters, mothers AND GRANDMOTHERS? Are we going in to a Dark Age where Fear
rules?
Mortein Doom
costs less than 300 shillings or thereabouts. If you press down on the nozzle
of Mortein Doom, the pressurized spray will connect with an attackers eyes and
face from as far away as 5 feet. It’s
pure poison and may blind the attackers. It works better than Pepper Spray and
is readily available in any of Kenya’s supermarkets….. but….
WAIT….
Who am I
kidding? When I mentioned this randomly,
I was told to remove myself from that path of thought, as it would probably
blind the poor man forever. “That’s inhuman!” was the gasp of shock..
POOR MAN who wants
to push a bottle in to my vagina?
Anyway - WHO AM
I KIDDING? You, who is reading this will never need to stash a can of Mortein Doom
in your handbag. And unless we all buy cans to give to our Housegirls, we don’t
venture into those areas, work late shifts in factories thus ensuring our need
to be in a matatu at 11pm, or walk the streets at night. No. We are home by
8pm, or 9 or 10, cocooned behind our beautifully painted textured walls.
WHY do people
talk to me and vomit their thoughts? Yesterday the BodaBoda guy I pass daily
pointed out a girl and said – see, she looks okay now…. Referring to a the lady
who was almost stripped and molested/raped early that morning. She screamed her
lungs out, and eventually the police arrived, shooting in to the air to disperse
the crowd. A housegirl coming to work, but attacked because of walking ‘alone’.
The Bodaboda
man said to me – YOU WOMEN are getting some of us to protect you against us,
then you wear what you want. But, we’re also getting OUR SECURITY with you women
– Not you you – [Meaning me}– but these other women… we’re stripping them
because that’s our security, our defense, because, when they walk like that
we’re not secure’.
Blank.Me. As in
totally. And if you get that don’t bother explaining it to me..
Somewhere deep
in that mans brain, with his wedding ring, because he knows himself, will he
caress his wife and not think of WHAT they do?
Do they, like Pontius
Pilate, ask their wives for some hot water in a basin and wash their hands off
the smell of female interiors and blood?
Do they go home
with words of, ‘Hi Honey, I’m HOME. I’ve had a terrific day, how are YOU?’
Do such men
have children?
Let’s do a take
your child to work day, THIS IS HOW WE DO IT… sing along with me… THIS IS HOW
WE DO IT…
How can I look
at my husband and not wonder if he
molested a girl on the way home….. but offers me words of endearment?
Is there pride
in the bars and lounges across Kenya? Like, friends meet and talk - Hey, DUDE,
wassup! Today I stripped a mathee… wah wah wah…. Let me buy you one I tell you
that storo…’,
Ama…
‘…. Cheeeeezi…
My boy, heheh… whazup, whazup! He he he…let me ask you, what’s the youngest
pussy you had? Man, listen, you gotta do 3…’
You say Nyakio
that’s sick? You want to cry, or close this page, or call me and insult me and
tell me to delete this article?
Yes, we’re a
sick nation. Let’s admit that, we’re good with platitudes but uh, uh, that’s
not gong to work any more. Instead of throwing stones at each other, let’s put
the stones down, and get into the business of TALKING to EACH OTHER. Not
because the person next to you might be a brother, or sister, or mother or father,
or son or daughter, NOPE.
LET’S TALK TO
EACH OTHER BECAUSE WE’RE HUMAN.
I watched the
clips - in the office - over a young mans shoulder, and he said, ‘it’s okay,
she’s laughing and saying ‘Nakupenda’, so it’s okay’….
IT’S OKAY TO
LISTEN TO SCREAMS AND SAY IT’S OKAY?
LET’S STOP
stripping and DEHUMANIZING OURSELVES. Because that’s what we’re doing.
Share wildly.
#16days of
activism, #16Days4Women, #WeMenForWomen, #StripMeNotKenya, #VAG, #StateOfTheNationKE
Nyakio J.
Munyinyi for the XpenSieve Report© 2014
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