..she cried, Nakupenda, Nakupenda....

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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