A Society that Eats its Own: Tracing Cannibalism in Kenya’s History

Strait Times, October 10th, 1924

On 10th October, 1924, the Straits Times of Singapore reported that an elderly Taita man had killed and eaten one of his two sons. The two boys, as the accompanying screen grab reads, had ‘allowed the cattle to stray….the father decapitated the other, stripped the flesh from the bones and hung it inside his hut to make biltong. After eating some portion, he intended devouring the remainder.

Fast-forward to 2008 and Enter Godfrey Matheri, your every day lower class worker who lives in a mud hut and does his best to get by, like everyone else. Only Godfrey Matheri has a dark secret, at night he turns into the stuff of legend, akin to dark stories that should only exist in the mind of a deranged crime and horror writer. The Naivasha Vampire brought to light a previously unknown phenomenon in Kenya, that of cannibalism. His was not exactly cannibalism, hence the Vampire tag, because he used to cut open his victims’ veins and drink their blood (shove over, Dracula). He had buried one of his victim’s beneath his bed, both a symbolic and a deranged act.
It is likely Matheri had shown a streak of such vile crimes earlier in his life but in our society that tends to stigmatize everything, went seemingly unnoticed until he became Kenya’s first known serial killer and vampire.

Will the world be overrun by Kenyan Zombies? Are we evolving?

The ‘Mteita native’ in 1924 and the most recent cases of cannibalism have similarities that include some kind of spontaneity that makes one wonder whether the signs were there all along. What is the difference between the Kenyan government, 50 years after independence and 89 years since the Taita Case, that is any different? Any man found to have eaten another would be sentenced to ‘…imprisonment for life because his mental condition was abnormal’ (The Strait Times, 1924) which is exactly what would happen now in 2013. Although a psychiatric examination would be mandatory, there is virtually no information, no statistics, no psychological studies into why there seems to be a sudden hunger for human flesh, with some even taking the time to cook and roast organs and body parts.
Matheri was known as Foko, or Khalif if you were his accomplice. He removed his victims organs after butchering them and then buried their bodies in shallow graves.

Matheri, seen here totally not gurgling a virgin’s blood.

• He drinks it. He taps it into a cup, then transfers it into a flask and sips it in intervals. He kept his victim’s underpants, and the organs as trophies. Like the young victim who says he drew blood and when it was not enough he cut her up in some other place and drew more until he filled a cup. The he proceeded to drink it.
• On June 2nd 2012, Alex Kinyua, a naturalized US citizen born in Kenya, admitted to eating Kujoe Agyei-Kodie, 37. 
• On November 29th, 2012, Caroline Gatwiri was killed and eaten by her 23-year old husband, Morris Gituma Mutegi. He “…was said to have also forced his two-and-a-half- year-old son to drink his mother’s blood…In the morning, the couples child still had his mother’s blood smeared all over his face, oblivious of the shocking incident that took place hours earlier.

Does this sound eerily familiar? If it does then you might remember it as the plot in Dexter, the series about a psycho/vigilante/serial killer who is covered in his mum’s blood when she is murdered by a local gang.

The making of a Kenyan Dexter?

• The trail led to Kemeria’s house, where blood stains were on the ground and door. The smell of freshly cooked meat come from the house. The search team broke into the house and found a sufuria full of meat. Another group broke into the poultry house where they saw two polythene bags containing flesh and wondered why the herdsman was hiding the raw meat. “In the house, we saw clothes belonging to Mr Lodoket, so we hastily formed teams in search of the herdsman,” said Mr Tarkus. At last one search party arrived with the bad news — Mr Lodoket had been killed, his body sliced open and various parts cut out to provide boneless flesh. It was covered with a light blue bed cover after it had been cut open in the middle starting at the neck, down the chest to the abdomen. The left leg had the upper leg had flesh cut out, apparently to provide Thursday evening’s roast meat.
  

  Dramatisation

• On January 2nd, 2013, an unnamed man in Malindi killed and ate some parts of his five-year-old son. After committing the act, the man removed his son’s heart, liver and private parts, which he wrapped in a polythene paper bag and stored inside his house.
  The man later drunk his blood before wrapping his body in a white cloth and dumped it in a shallow pit about 400 meters from his house.

To the utterly stupid…

The stupidly funny…

All the people who eventually ate someone or sucked another’s blood had displayed some related characteristic prior to committing the crime. Kimeria, for example, “He warned us about it. At one time he nearly sliced open a 10-year-old’s belly when he tried to use the path at around 6.30pm,” says a neighbor, Mr Francis Tarkus Loket, of the man villagers claim is a cannibal. On Alex Kinyua, The previous month, Kinyua had attacked and fractured the skull of another man within the university campus. In February, Kinyua had posted on Facebook asking other students whether they were “”strong enough to endure ritual HBCU mass human sacrifices around the country and still be able to function
as human beings?”
His behavior had been noted much earlier, in December 2011, when an instructor told the police that Kinyua was ‘Virginia Tech waiting to happen.’
Although not always, Morris Gituma was said to have “… never raised his voice, not even at a child…”

Alex Kinyua’s crimes are relevant to this discourse partly because his Kikuyu name ‘Kinyua’ means ‘drinker.’ Some actually tried to link it to some genetic effect carried down from the Mau Mau who were often portrayed as being “wild, bloodthirsty and cannibal black terrorists.” This version of the story did not take into account the hunger and the misery that had driven the Mau Mau to the bush. Rather, it focused on providing a simplistic description of cannibalism for the barbarism it represents. And some historians claim that Kenya’s Mau Mau  fighters  engaged in strange ceremonies that involved eating of human flesh and drinking their blood.

Imperialism in KE Maoriland Worker, Volume 13, Issue 29, 18 July 1923, Page 5

The Mau Mau cannibalism angle has been explored extensively, even as recently as 2003 by non-Kenyan media. In this article, Adrian Blomfield claims :
The young son of a chief who refused to join was cut in two by Kimathi’s men, who drank his blood before flinging the two halves of the body at the boy’s mother who was then killed
After being forced to drink human blood, semen and urine, recruits would in some cases be ordered to eat human brains, sometimes of their relatives, as well as the flesh of recently exhumed or murdered babies.
While the words carry the old-colonialist perspective that focuses on the suffering and deaths of white Europeans and makes little mention of events such as the Lari Massacre of 1954, the elaborate description of ritualistic cannibalism is interesting. It came up again after the Kinyua case, as the outside world tried to find a genetic link about why one African would eat another in a ‘civilized society.’

Could it be, also that in the concentration camps where millions of Kenyans were herded to prevent them from supporting the Mau Mau, had undocumented cases of cannibalism? There is a high likelihood, especially because we know the detainees were grossly underfed, overworked and psychologically tortured.There have been several documented cases of people being forced to eat the dead to survive. The most famous, the Survivors of Flight 571 in 1972, ate the dead before they were rescued a month and a half later.
In truth, cannibalism, like the Murder of the Innocents, is not a new phenomenon in Kenya. It is just that with digital media and a more news-hungry middle class, such stories now make it to the limelight. Ritualistic cannibalism existed even before the 21st century, with rumors of ‘devil worshippers’ killing and eating various body parts for ritual purposes. Most of the victims were children who were kidnapped and killed, their bodies discovered later missing certain organs such as the genitalia, the heart and the tongue.

A pattern in most of the recent cases of domestic violence, including other cases such as Samuel Wanjiru’s case has been that the spouses involved are both very young, often in their early 20s and 30s.

In the Murder of the Innocents, the pattern is further compounded by a low socioeconomic level and three or more children. Without comprehensive scientific research, it is likely this will not mean anything, but it indicates there might be some correlation between the age where people marry, their socioeconomic status and family planning (or lack of).

Peter Nguli posits: Therefore, the urgent issue is rather finding out the root cause of this disease called cannibalism. Is it an alien zombie from the cosmos that has invaded our countrymen to cause an apocalypse, as seen in Hollywood science-fiction horror movies? Is it a contagious zombie virus, psychological problem or a drug-related apocalypse?

While we focus on votes and politics, a man with at least one confirmed kill and one very gory witness account of vampire tendencies was convicted of wrongful confinement due to failure by the prosecution to avail key witnesses and documents”. Did I mention that instead of searching for evidence that would have been crucial to proving the Naivasha Vampire murder case, and would have provided scholars with vital clues about the man himself, the police demolished it?

Such news has become ‘old’, in a Kenyan sense, and no longer shocks the middle class in their suburban houses and apartments. It is quickly written off as an act of barbarism and a deranged mind, and when the victim is dragged to the police cell, society is deemed clean of such people…until someone else decides to eat his spouse. Look at Morris’ act, it seems spontaneous although by the description of those who knew him, he was probably the kind to keep to himself. Why, one might ask, did he feed his two-year-old son his wife’s blood? Why did he feel the need to make the child part of his heinous act?

There is no simple answer, because he died a few hours later but let’s hazard a guess…could it be lack of food? Did he, like the fathers in Slaughter of the Innocents who have killed their children, feel inadequate because he could not feed his child? We might never know but since all the reported cases seem to be in the majority lower socio-economic class, something is definitely brewing.

Should we just accept cannibalism as part of society?

What would drive a man, save for a deranged mind, to eat another man? Hunger is the most obvious answer because food is the most basic of needs. It is also likely because the lower class is grossly underfed, with millions lacking food everyday while we turn arable agricultural land into gated communities. Will the lower classes rise up and eat the upper, more healthy looking upper classes? From the look of things, it is just a matter of time…or wait, am I the only one who has just discovered that we have been eating each other all along? Have you ever eaten someone (non-sexually of course, in context)? I hear the ‘small of the back’ is where the flesh is sweetest…

Owaahh

 

Murder of the Innocents: A Society that Kills its Young

A man walks into his home at the end of another long hard day at work.. He doesn’t know why he feels so on edge, or whether there is anything good left in his world. His five boys back at home, waiting to be fed. Their mother, an enigmatic character when she was a raw cherry, unhurt by the pains of life, now a mess of nerves and the backbreaking work of holding a family together. She nags, once in a while, like all women should, but tonight she pushes too much. Something is wrong, he knows, and the pounding in his head as she yells something about flour and cabbages as he walks into the house. Tonight he feels overly on the edge, the sound of her voice, all he hears is her condescending voice telling him he is not man enough, that he cannot provide for his family, like an African man should. It is not what she is saying, but it is what he hears…

A scream cuts through the otherwise serene air, the neighbors ignore the ‘woooii! Wuuuuwi! Usiniue baba Peter! Usiue watoto wangu’ –[screams] Please don’t kill me Peter’s father. Please don’t kill my children. They ignore it because the two are always fighting, there’s always a fight, every night, and she always screams the same things. Since the children walk out of the house, they figure it is just the usual spousal ups and downs. Who doesn’t go through them, really? Tethered by marriage, customs, a government that does not give a fuck, religions that only seek alms and tithes and a system that is rotten. The man in between with a wife he cannot allow to work because they have had so many children, and what can she do really, with no proper education in a world where one is judged by what they have read not what they know.
The next day, television viewers in middle class homes shake their heads at the gruesome and unnecessary deaths of five children and quickly switch to other channels they can watch without disgust. The crime scenes are gruesome, as one would expect from a bloodbath. “The lower class is eating itself,” the middle class tells his wife as they get ready to touch in for the night, “why can’t one just give up his children for adoption if he cannot take care of them.” Quickly, the discourse turns to politics and the plight of five is quickly forgotten.

• 11th April, 2009: Jane Wagaki (wife and pregnant), Scholastica Wairimu 15 Martin Muiruri 3 killed by Patrick Kanyi, stepfather.
• Early October, 2010 –  Bilah Omare (wife); 12-year-old son, Kinley Ogendi; and 9-year-old daughter, Ivyn Ogendi killed by Justus Ogendi Kababe in Vadnais Heights, Minnesota.
• 23rd March, 2012- Silas Kiprotich 10, Salome Chepkorir 7 , and Bethuel Kiplangat 5 and a three-year old  killed by John Tanui 37 in Rongena, Narok South.
• 25th September, 2012: Amos Kipkoech aged ten, twins Dominic Kiprop and Caleb Kipchirchir aged nine, Daniel Kiplagat aged five, and Gideon Kipng’eno aged two.
• 10th November, 2012:  Brian Misati 8, Robert Toto 6, Cythia Moraa and Mogutu Mun 3 are killed by their father, Misati Nyangwenchi in Egesa Village.
• 12th December, 2012- Elizabeth Ochieng, Wycliffe Odhiambo, Melvin Atieno, Walter Otieno and Moses Ochieng’  killed by Boniface Ouma Auka in Korogocho slums. He hanged himself on January 7th in a prison cell.
• December 28th, 2012: Unnamed two months baby girl is strangled by the father after her  teenage mother dumped her at the father’s house.
• 2nd January 2013- Kahindi Zero kills his four-year old son ‘to get healed.’

It does not make it to the front pages, there are more important things than the deaths of five children in a poor family. The normally overactive, adrenaline social media lynch mobs do not bay for anyone’s blood even after it happens again and again. It does not matter, it would seem, if it does not happen to you or anyone you know.
Stabbing is a very personal way to kill someone, or something, in this day and age. When you combine it with the fact that the murderer here is killing his or her own, the personal nature of this crime becomes even more evident. They might also choose stabbing because it is convenient; every household, the economic position notwithstanding, has ‘sharps’ such as knives and machetes. Unlike the US where gun control is thought to be the solution to the constant bloodbaths, one cannot ban the use of knives and other such tools and cutlery.

• The children aged between two to 10 years had deep stab wounds all over their bodies. (AfricaReview, 2012)
• The gushing blood and twitching bodies of his own children could not stop Kirui, who earns a living brewing busaa and distilling chang’aa in the village. “The tragedy happened at around 3am this morning (yesterday). The man used a panga and slit their necks, killing each one of them,” said Wambua. (All Africa.com, 2012)
• …Nyangwenchi who has since gone into hiding, killed the children by stabbing them in their necks.
• “The body of the eldest daughter was discovered on the door step, while the rest of the bodies were found in a plantation nearby,” Nyaboke said.

“After killing his children aged 10, seven, five and three, he went and hanged himself with a rope and died on the spot,” he said.
The gruesomeness of these crimes bespeaks of an underlying psychological and socio-economic problem; the occurrence indicates that something is rotting in this society of ours. What do the crime scenes tells us? First, these crimes happen in low-income households, or rather the ones that make it to the news. Most are perpetrated by the father/husband, and often after a fight with the wife or family. The perpetrator, in most cases, kills himself or herself by hanging or some other such method. Why does he not stab himself?
Stabbing, even while being both personal and convenient, and fast, is still not a consolation that the innocents do not suffer. Think of it like this, one man cannot kill five children at once, so he must kill them in some order. Does he start with the strongest? Or the Eldest? Or with the lastborn he so much loves? One murder might be an accident but most of these murders are well thought out acts of savagery.
What do these murders indicate? Are the social fractures now showing? The socio-economic pressure on the father who does not feel like he can sufficiently provide for his family? Or the mother who feels frustrated by the strain and burden?
“The man slit throats of his five sons aged between ages 10 and two with a kitchen knife and then hanged himself in the same room. (Capital FM, September 25th 2012).

Another common factor in these bloodbaths is that the victims are often three or more, and often of the same sex-male. Does the number matter? Combined with the other factors in the crimes, a pattern emerges. The families are typical low income households where family planning is unheard of, and myths subsequently made to justify this need. Such households, whether in rural areas or in urban slums, are feeling the brunt of the socio-economic strain that results from the growth of a capitalist and seemingly selfish- society. In the one case that was thought to involve the mother, the Korogocho Massacre (December 20th, 2012), she told the police that she had separated from her husband and left the children in his care.

Amos Kipkoech aged ten, twins Dominic Kiprop and Caleb Kipchirchir aged nine, Daniel Kiplagat aged five, and Gideon Kipng’eno aged two

The looming crisis will probably catch us all flatfooted, unjustifiably so. While we are a country desperately in need of a social revolution, as opposed to a political one which we think we deserve, the children of low income families continue to live in such acrimonious households where they have to fight for their own survival. We shake our heads when we hear the murders occur ‘…because of food…’ as if food does not matter. The most basic of needs, food is the universal representation of parental responsibility. It is why we say ‘put food on the table’ and not ‘ fuel the car’ or ‘pay rent.’

• Residents claimed that the man was bitter after his wife criticized him for failing to provide food for his family. (SomalilandInformer.com, 2012)
• The suspect quarreled with his wife over rent and killed the children after she stormed out.
• Yegon had an argument with his wife whom he  accused her of having an affair before committing the heinous crime.
•  Nyangwechi’s wife Hellen Kemunto said they have had quarrels in their 10-year marriage but never knew their arguments would up in tragedy. “I did not know that the quarrels will one day lead my husband to kill our two sons and daughters. I did not know his intention for chasing me away,” Kemunto said tears rolling down her cheeks.
  
• She returned to her matrimonial home on Sunday morning only to be welcomed by the body of her last born daughter the doorstep http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/?articleID=2000070431
• Maelo said that at the time of the incident, Tanui’s wife was admitted at Tenwek Mission Hospital where she was expecting to deliver a fifth baby.
  

The likely cause is some social fracture, some element within the sanity that one would expect from the social institution of a family that is exhibiting itself as infanticide and other ‘household’ crimes. What is the risk then? One cannot remove knives and other sharps from the households, no can you stop all parents who can harm their children from doing so, so a compromise of sorts must be made. How is the rest of society to make sure that children are safe, even from their own parents?

Still, one must wonder what is missing from society to make the parent who cannot provide for his or her family seek to end the lives of his or her children. Is it economic? Is it social? Is it, by some far chance, political? I posit that our society is breaking from the base because we focus on things that should not be our ultimate priorities. Politics, our infatuation with political structures, has taken away any mention of social crisis. You have a low-class that has to wake up every morning, or every evening if you work night shift, to face a host of socio-economic issues.

The five children in the house need food, and education, and shelter, and the one man to supply all that is paid peanuts for back-breaking work. When they fall sick and he takes them to the public hospital, the nurses and doctors are on strike because the political class will not relent in its own selfish rape of the national coffers. Public schools are full, and understaffed, while we build big roads to nowhere. Food, the most basic of human needs, is prone to get even more scarce as we turn perfect agricultural land into gated communities for the middle class and the upper class. Then a slum will mushroom next to it to supply an army of workers to wipe our shoes, guard our gates, wash our clothes, provide cheap labor, watch our children and most of all, vote every five years.
It is only a savage society that will kill its own children, and that is what we are. The discourse revolves around political apathy, the notion that he who does not vote does not care. Consider social apathy, the amnesia you experience whenever you hear of a husband killing his entire family and then hanging himself, or waiting until he is incarcerated to commit suicide. No one wants to know why one would do such a thing, no one cares anyway. Each time it happens, it falls several columns into obscurity until the only mention of it is three lines in the Occurrence Book at the local police station listed as ‘Domestic Violence.’

The base of the pyramid is chipping, and when the cascade comes, for it will, it will take us all down with it. To think we are a civilized generation is to merely massage our own egos. We are still primal, instinctive, brutal animals. All that we have done, to rephrase Groucho, is to learn how to pretend we are civilized. Our only advantage over the cavemen is that this is our time, and unlike their lives which we can only hypothesize, we might actually have a chance to  make the ideal society.

Owaahh

 

4 Randomest things Ever Done by Settlers in Kenya

We all agree that the colonial times were dark days, we gained religion and cultural diversity, and lost everything else. History has a knack for leaving out randomness, frankly because it does not fit into the fabric of the sane society we purport ourselves to be…Have you ever wondered what the settlers did in their spare time, for fun, and for the random kick?

#4 Peter Harold Poole
Enter Peter Poole, born in 1932. His Wikipedia page indicates that he was an engineer from Essex who ran an electrical shop on what is now Moi Avenue.
“On October 12, 1959, he was charged for killing Kamawe Musunge in Gordon Road,Nairobi. Musunge had been riding a bicycle when Poole’s two dogs stopped him. Musunge threw stones at a dog, for which Poole shot Musunge dead with a Luger pistol [3]. Musunge was Poole’s houseboy [1]. Poole was executed on August 18, 1960. At the time Kenya was still under British rule, and the verdict was received dismally by white settlers in Kenya, who could not accept that a white man could be sentenced for killing an indigenous African”

The drama continued…

A man died for throwing stones at a dog, the story does not even say he hit the dog but one Peter Poole put one through him—-a bullet that is. The hanging was covered extensively in the US and the UK, including Time Magazine with the title ‘White Man Hangs’.
Poole was regarded as a matyr by the white European community, and his hanging got some coverage later when Tom Cholmodeley was convicted of manslaughter and jailed for 8 months. 4 years before the Poole case, Leo Hoyle had been sentenced to death “…for raping and killing an African woman to ostensibly “ end her agony” of being kicked out of her house.”  . Col Etwart Grogan killed two Africans infront of a magistrate but was only convicted of assault and sentenced to two months of hard labor.

#3  Lord Egerton
Every living Kenyan knows Lord Egerton, or at least the Egerton University that stands on land he donated to the institutiton. As such, most of the details of his private life are lost in his single act of generosity. Lord Maurice Egerton of Tatton, fourth Baron Egerton of Tatton in Cheshire (not to be confused with Galbraith Lowry Egerton Cole) died in 1958 childless and unmarried, but not by choice. It is said that he was spurned by an unnamed woman; the same woman for whom the Egerton Castle was erected at great cost (Turns out flowers and chivalry ran out of style a long time ago).

With a face like that, even a castle wouldn’t work…

As proof that testosterone has been the death of men since time immemorial, the Egerton Castle was built to impress this one woman, to make her change her mind.
“ He conceived of a castle that would have no comparison in England or any other country for that matter.
Dressed stones and zinc tiles for the roof were shipped from Europe, the builders from Europe and Asia. The result, in 1938, was a stupendous four-storey edifice fitted with some of the most up-to-date mechanical and electrical gadgets at the time, including an escalator.”
Upon completion, the peer threw what was billed as the biggest party ever seen in pre-colonial Kenya, with guests coming from as far as Northern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe and Nyasaland, now Malawi.
The cheers and congratulations, it was to turn out, had come too soon. When the woman for whom the castle had been built came back to Kenya and viewed it, she dismissed it as “a museum” and a monument to vanity.” (Benson Riungu, East African Standard, 2004).

There was a time when it would take an escalator to impress a woman?

Rejected by a woman? Sounds common, we have all been friendzoned at some point in our male lives, right? So, he did what we all do and went to a bar to brood over his troubles, right? Actually no…
“Being spurned appears to have changed Lord Egerton in a fundamental way. Thereafter he seemed to live in a fantasy world.
He furnished and ran the castle as if the family he had envisaged actually existed. Nobody but the house servants was ever allowed in.
But an even more far-reaching chance was in his attitude towards women. He developed such a passionate hatred for them that he banned them from his castle and put up notices warning female trespassers that they risked being shot on sight.
Visitors, including friends, were to leave their wives and daughters eight miles away from the castle. And when he planned to visit the quarters where his African staff lived, he would issue a two-week notice so that all women could be vacated.” (Riungu, East African Standard, 2004).
Wait! What? So being spurned made a man ruined pleasure for everyone else? …and he thought that donating his land to a university would somehow atone for such a sin?
Remember that house by the way, it will come in handy later…

# 5 The Ju Ja Incident
This is one of the least known signs that the settlers were mad. It is not included in any school curricula history books, nor will you find it in most stories about Teddy Roosevelt’s Africa expedition.

I don’t know about the outfit though…

To understand the gist of this story some background is necessary.
Enter Theodore ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States (1901-1909). Almost all historians of ‘badassery’ agree that Teddy is the most badass president to ever occupy the White House. Reading his acts makes James Bond look like the fake character that he actually is. First, Teddy had a moustache which was a NWC Police Commisioner, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Governor of NY and other things. He had a black belt in Jujitsu, was an accomplished championship boxer, expert marksman and, as if all that was not enough, he frequently skinny-dipped in the Potomac River (Yup! They all saw his balls). Did I mention that in 1912, while at a campaign rally, someone shot him as he was giving his speech. The logical thing would be to rush the president to the hospital, right? No,, not when you are Teddy; when you are this guy, he refused medical help and finished his 90 minute-speech, with an open wound on his chest.
So, why does this matter?
In Northrup-The Life of William Northrup McMillan, Judy Aldrick follows the story of McMillian and Teddy Roosevelt during the famous African safari in 1909.

We now know who invented the cool pose…

The seven-month visit included a long stopover in Donyo Sambuk, a village near Thika town.The ex-president had a big entourage, even by today’s standards, which is estimated to have had over 500 porters carrying all manner of items ‘…including collapsible baths and cases of champagne.’

A collapsible bath huh? Guess who is carrying it…

Among the dignitaries was Kermit Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt’s third and favorite son. McMillan, the host in Juja, accommodated the party at his 19, 000-acre estate. When the former president and his son Kermit were not hunting, they would drive to Nairobi, specifically to the Norfolk Hotel, to party. On their way back they would pass through Khoja, and often marvel at the newly constructed Ismailia Mosque. Now this is where it gets interesting

Aldrick includes a relatively unknown story; that they stole the stone lions that had been placed on either side of the Ismailia Mosque gate. They took them back to McMillan’s house where they remained unnoticed as a conflict was brewing in Nairobi over the theft. In what qualifies as a conspiracy, the government official who had first noticed them in the house organized to have them buried on the farm to avoid embarrassment.

Teddy and Kermit, pictured here not stealing two carvings of lions…and seemingly sober.

About 29 years later, in 1937, the farm was owned by the Nettlefold family. Their workers discovered the lions and assumed they were stone idols from West Africa (the gods Ju and Ja). The connection between the former president, his son, and the two idols was made many years later, by which time both of them were dead and history could not judge them harshly. The name of the –mistaken- gods, however, remains as the name of Juja town.

Oh, and where Egerton gave up after asking a girl out twice, TR asked Alice Hathaway Lee to marry him and she declined, he did more badass things, like getting his mother and sisters in on the proposal (not building a castle with an escalator in 1938, that’s for weak guys), and the second time, she said yes-because the badass guy always gets the girl. His exact words when she rejected his first proposal? “See that girl, I am going to marry her. She won’t have me, but I am going to have her.” That would count as a rape threat today, I’m guessing.
#2 Patrick David Shaw

A ‘ 300 pound school assistant administrator who freelances as a terrifying white cop in a black neighbourhood’ sounds like something in an action movie trailer, doesn’t it? Something featuring Bruce Willis and Denzel Washington to be precise?

Granted, Patrick David Shaw was more of an immigrant than most of the others in this list. His father was a prominent London doctor but the younger Shaw had moved to Kenya as an agricultural officer in 1955 and became a naturalized citizen in 1971. He was famous for his brutish policing ways and the fact that he was always first on the scene, driving his cream Mercedes, license plate KFH 845 and carrying a .38 pistol.

When he died in February 1988, his death was covered by international media and his funeral in March was attended by Pimps, thieves, prostitutes, top police brass and the Chief Justice (the list is a bit redundant though). His legacy is shootouts, car chases and a string of dead men. He rarely ever slept, according to some accounts, because of a glandular disorder that accounted for his chronic obesity. His Mercedes had a special seat that allowed him to sleep, which is said to have been no more than two hours. His only other known venture was running a boy’s orphanage, he never married, and he never took a vacation. His pastime activities were reading FBI manuals, ‘Wanted’ posters and the Kenya Penal Code.

Not Pictured: PD Shaw

It is said that his name replaced the ‘boogieman’ whenever mothers scolded their children. “Be good, or Pat Shaw’s gonna get you.”
Pat Shaw’s kill ratio was remarkably high, even in today’s trigger-happy police force. He is rumored to have been involved in the murder of J. M. Kariuki, a murder that has a much better plot and intrigue than most movies.
He joined the police in 1959 but gained national fame in 1977 when he shot and killed Duncan Gachui, one of Kenya’s premier bank robbers. The ensuing gun battle happened in South C and “The officer shot the gangster dead through the mouth.”
His next big kill was the infamous Wakinyonga ‘The Killer’ who was cornered in a bar in Kangemi where he was partying with his girlfriend.

Over to you Makmende, what have you done?

In 1979, a Ugandan outlaw named Walimba murdered a Nairobi family. Shaw was at the murder scene so quickly that Walimba was still there. He shot Shaw in the shoulder and fled. Shaw drove himself to the hospital, was treated, and then drove home.
From then on, Shaw was never without his .38 special. He switched last fall to a 9mm Beretta automatic, wanting a faster-firing weapon.

And did you know, one of Starehe Boy’s School’s boarding houses is called Shaw House? It was named after Pat Shaw because he was the assistant director in administration at the time of his demise.
By the comment thread here  it turns out some people think of him as the original Makmende.
He was always the first to arrive at a crime scene, often when the crime was happening, and would always shoot first.
Wait, did I mention P.D Shaw was actually never a police officer? He was merely a member of the Kenya Police Reserve. Did someone say Waiganjo?
#1. The Happy Valley Set Murder Mystery
You know how our parents never miss the chance to tell us how morally rotten our generation has become, given that we now have a style called ‘twerking’ and there is a search engine wholly dedicated to porn? Well, the Happy Valley Set will make all that look like child’s play…
The Happy Valley set is called that because they settled in the Happy Valley region of Wanjohi Valley.  The exploits of the group were covered extensively, and even immortalized in books and films such as The Happy Valley and the White Mischief. Among them was Hugh Cholmodeley, 3rd Baron Delamare, who is credited with being one of the original members of the Happy Valley Set and Lord Errol, the unofficial leader.

One against three, Alice could handle….

The group first came to international spotlight in 1941 when Lord Errol was killed in Karen. His purpoted murderer, Sir Jock Delves Broughton, had hunted him down to avenge the cuckold horns Errol had made him wear. The label of the Happy Valley set was ‘….louche parties, fuelled by alcohol, drugs, and sexual intrigue.
“These men and their wives were not uniformly champion adulterers, although Gwynned Gooch, née Brooke-Meares (1875–1964), and a neighbour were found naked in the back seat of a Buick during a party at the Errolls’ house, Oserian.”
“Beryl Markham was first married at sixteen to Alexander (Jock) Purves (d. 1945): each time she took a new lover, he hammered a six-inch nail into the wooden frame of their front door.”
Jack Soames was a voyeur who drilled holes in the ceilings of his bedrooms to watch his copulating guests.
At Clouds they played the ‘sheet game’: a sheet would be strung across the drawing-room, half a dozen men would poke their penises through strategically sited holes in the sheet, and the women on the other side would select their favourite appendage. A head start in the competition was enjoyed by Julien ‘Lizzie’ Lezard (1902–1958), a lover of both Idina Sackville and Alice de Janzé, who was so proud of his long member that he also liked to display it, along with his cards, when he got a full house at poker.

Pictured here totally not doing drugs and each other…and bed sheets.

When Evelyn Waugh stayed with that ‘fine desperado’ de Trafford at Njoro in 1931, the latter was trying to organize a scheme to capture gorillas, which he believed he could sell at £2000 a head to Berlin zoo: ‘he got very drunk and brought a sluttish girl back to the house’, then ‘rogered her and her mama too’. De Trafford, Waugh reported, in words applicable throughout Happy Valley, ‘fights & fucks and gambles and gets D.D. [disgustingly drunk] all the time’ (Waugh, Letters, 63–4; Diary, 347) .

Suddenly, that Truth and Dare you played at the random party does not look so daring does it?
The Muthaiga Club was their hang-out joint where they held the sane day time games such as polo matches and race week. The saying in England was ‘..are you married or do you live in Kenya…’, an obvious allusion to the spouse-swapping that took place during the racy parties.

The dealer was Francis Greswolde-Williams (1837-1931) who lived in the Kedong Valley. He fit into the role of the drug dealer because he was not as attractive, sexually at least as the other males in the Happy Valley set. Historians describe him as being “…too fat and drunken…notoriously coarse mannered and sporting a black eye-patch…”
One must take into account that all the members of the H.V set were damaged, at least emotionally or in Lord Delamare’s case, both emotionally and physically. One intriguing character is Alice de Janze who shot her lover and then married him (Because how else does one fall in love?) to Idina Gordon who ‘…funelled lovers to her younger husband to keep him amused.’ Alice de Janze was known as ‘the wicked Madonna’ and is thought to have killed Lord Errol in 1941.

Alice de Janze, the wicked Madonna, quite pretty when she was not shooting her lovers.

The protagonists here are real, with Lord Broughton being charged, and then acquitted, for the murder. He was one of the first suspects because Lord Errol was virile, which means he just plain screwed anything that wore a skirt and was still warm. He killed himself later, in 1942, at the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool. The other suspect,  Alice, shot and killed herself the same year after she had been diagnosed with uterine cancer. Recent investigations have uncovered seemingly convincing but largely circumstantial evidence that Anne killed Enroll. The most likely motive is as dark as was her life, that ‘they would be together…forever…’

“Alice appeared at the morgue where Lord Erroll’s body was resting. In front of witnesses, she lifted her dress, rubbed her hand between her legs, wiped her fingers on the corpse’s mouth, and said, “Now you are mine forever.”

Owaahh

 

7 Most Badass Kenyan Gangsters

Granted, this list is inconclusive and not entirely reliable because most data has been obtained from the police press releases which normally read like refined propaganda, and news pieces whose authenticity is not very clear. Then there is the conspicuous absence of any MP, current or former, yet they have the balls to steal from hapless and apathetic taxpayer every year and look at them straight in the eye when they say they are going to use their taxes to pay their taxes (it makes sense, that last part).

I also considered the fact that it is that time of the month again and we are all broke, there is a reward out on these purported criminals. Wait, is the only woman on that list wanted for ‘Illigal meeting, disobeying curfew order”? I think the bigger crime is the typographical error, and the cheeky look she has in that photo as if she was trying to get her good side…for a mug shot?

#7 The Embu GK Prison Escape Crew

In August 2005, a group of gangsters stormed the Embu GK prison and armed several inmates before shooting their way to freedom. By the end of the commotion, four people, a trader, one of the gangsters, a remand prisoner and a prison warder lay dead. This group of daring criminals was made up of, among others, Godfrey  Mulwa Kitheka (Ngilu), Simon Gitau Saitoti.

One of the images you get when you Google ‘Embu GK Prison.’ The pose….yo!

While this story is known among crime analysts, what did not make it to mainstream media was that the Embu GK escape was one of several prison escapes. Target practice for badassery had been Shimo la Tewa Prison and other smaller prisons from where capital offenders had broken out and gone on the run. This was before Michael Scofield became synonymous with (over)thinking prison breaks.

One of the prison break masterminds, Silas Mugendi Njeru, escaped from Shimo la Tewa prison on June 22, 2005. His accomplices were all capital offenders and he had been linked to the murders of at least five officers.Simon Gitau Saitoti was said to be a  “tall and light-complexioned gangster” which sounds like a movie villain. Like many entries on this list, Saitoti had been a matatu driver. When he was arrested, Tanzanian police officers found what sounds like a small arsenal for a drug war: seven guns, hand grenades, bullet-proof jackets and 85 rounds of ammunition. Ngilu was the opposite of Saitoti “ stout, dark-complexioned man”  said to have been a part of the prison escape.

Another prison break said to have contributed to the plain badassery displayed at Embu GK prison was the escape of 28 suspects from Naivasha Maximum Security Prison on April 21, 2004, followed swiftly by the escape of 29 remand prisoners from Meru courts.

What happened in 2005 reads like a movie plot. A group of gangsters drove into the prison compound and started shooting, they handed a group of prisoners guns and started shooting their way out of the prison. Forget what you have seen in movies though, Kenyan prisons do not arm all prison warders with guns because their role is not necessarily offense. This means that at any one time, most guns are in the armory and only the guards at the gates and the watchtowers are fully armed. You know this now, and a group of gangsters knew that in 2005 when they broke into the prison to break their friends out. So what happened to them? A common trend appears with all gangsters who display the characteristics of having titanium balls, such as shooting your way into and out of a prison, they die by the bullet of a police officer who most likely gets promoted.

 #6      Wanugu

Named Gerald Wambugu Munyeria by his parents, this criminal had a long history of criminal activities. He belonged to the same gang of four which terrorized Nairobi in the 1980s and the 1990s. The others include Anthony Ngugi Kanari (Wacucu), Bernard Matheri (Rasta), while the fourth position was occupied by different gangsters in the same period.

Going in the same trend as other thugs on this list, the gang of four went down ‘under a hail of bullets’ in Kajiado, Nyahururu and Nakuru at different times. Wanugu was most likely inspired by a criminal included in this list who died when he was eight years old. Before he started his illustrious career as a criminal, he was a mechanic and a tout.

How did he die?

“However, his hideaway was unmasked on June 27, 1996 as a team of flying squad on public tip-off tracked Wanugu to his rented abode at Kabati-ini, Nakuru. Armed Wanugu accompanied by his girlfriend on errands run into the elite squad.

Sensing danger he grabbed his fiancé as a human shield as he fired back at the police.  This did not deter the police from reciprocating and in a matter of minutes the two lay dead their bodies riddled with bullets.”

 Yup! Kenya police cannot be deterred by the possibility of an ‘innocent life’ dying in the process. And it’s clear that we have not started watching too many movies that depict police restraint now. Wanugu’s decision to use his own girlfriend as a human shield sounds eerily close to about 100 movie scripts. In the movie version, the police let the criminal go because they do not want to harm the innocent life. In the Kenyan version though, one standing behind the other makes it a more challenging target and saves bullets.

#5   Wacucu

Wacucu is thought to have been the leader of the gang. It is hard to find the court records detailing his rap sheet because well, the Kenyan court system decided future generations did not need to know. The criminal extraordinaire was alleged to have committed at least six murders within a span of two years, many violent robberies and bank heists.Gunned down on January 4^th 1996 in the far-off autonomous country of Rongai. He was the first of the gang to die and as he fell Wanugu stole a gun from him and bolted. So much for the brotherhood huh? All four had had a Kshs. 100, 000 reward tag as the most wanted gangsters in Kenya at a time when that kind of money could buy you a car or more than five acres of land.

Wacucu begun as a matatu driver, then became a mechanic and later a Karate tutor at the Kariokor Social Hall. You read that right, he had begun in much the same way as about half the entries on this list, driving people around in matatus. The trend indicates someone who can drive really fast, repair and still cars and kick ass!

The irony of it all? The story is told of a time when Wacucu was drinking in bar in Maragwa district when two police officer got drunk and begun to bully revelers? The leader instincts in Wacucu kicked in and “…he tactfully disarmed them, handcuffed them and took their gun to Kandara Police Station” Wait, WHAT? One of the three most wanted criminals in the country made a citizen arrest? Of the same guys who were supposed to have been looking for him?

Wacucu, pictured here totally burying the wrong person….maybe.

Wacucu’s controversies do not end there; the family thinks they buried the wrong man. First is the fact that his mother claims he was baptized ‘Malachi’ and not ‘Anthony’. The police spokesman at the time, Peter Kimanthi, claimed that he must have used aliases. The family also claims that they did not have enough time to identify the body, and had to do so in the presence of intimidating police officers.

His mother claimed that the body she buried was taller and darker than Wacucu had been and you cannot argue with a mother about the height of her son. She also noted that the criminal had had two warts on the two small fingers, both of which were missing from the body they identified. Do you think he might be an alive and well? And in Parliament?

 

 

 

#4   Wakinyonga-The Killer

Before the infamous gang of three there lived a man called Wakinyonga who terrorized Nairobi and its environs in the 1970s. Peter Mwea Wakinyonga is perhaps the first criminal for whom the surname was enough for a nickname and the first known all badass gangster. When the rest of the world was busy enjoying the bond films, and the film release of the Godfather, Wakinyonga was busy ‘bridging the gap between the rich and the poor.’ Forget economic policies, Wakinyonga used to rob the rich and give the money to the poor, because fuck capitalism and the laws of the land.

Wakinyonga is the grandfather of criminal gangs: He redefined how robbers viewed violence as a tool of coercion and sometimes, for mere adrenaline. Wanugu was killed on June 27^th, on the same day eighteen years after Wakinyonga The Killer.Why was he badass? He escaped from several police dragnets. The most notable escape was sometime in 1975 when he fled with a bullet wound in his right collarbone, and, of all other places one can be shot and still escape, his buttocks? Did you read that right? A man escaped with a bullet in his ass!

So what were his reported crimes? He was said to have robbed 330, 000 from a bank in Thika, 200, 000 from a bank in Nairobi along Wabera Street and over 80, 000 somewhere else. He was also said to have killed a Mr. Bloch as he attempted to steal his car. While I can see why someone who’s name sounds phonetically close to ‘botch’ would refuse to let his car go, Wakinyonga is perhaps the most badass criminal, our MPs aside, to walk on this Cradle of Man.

He went down in the only way a badass should, under a hail of bullets. Consider the following report:

“Police armed to the teeth and on a tip-off traced Wakinyonga to Nyakiambi Lodge and Nightclub in Kangemi, Nairobi on June 26, 1978 midnight, then surrounded it.

The pub was full to capacity with revelers enjoying his generosity. Interestingly, Wakinyonga had already dug his grave near his father’s and had sworn to kill a police officer before he died.

Coincidentally, at the pub he was boasting that he would shoot and kill the one famous officer, Patrick Shaw. While still binge-drinking, he noticed an officer, grabbed a machine gun from him but the officer pulled out a revolver, prompting an exchange of gunfire and confusion.

The dramatic firing lasted for a while before Wakinyonga was overpowered shortly after midnight on June 27 and the police recovered a revolver and several rounds of ammunition. Three bystanders, including a woman, suffered injuries. Drama would follow his burial as police made unanticipated swoop targeting young men and women.”

 Yes, that reads like a movie, and it happened, here, or as the police officers who were involved in the gunfight recorded their statements. There is a high likelihood one of the was a failed scriptwriter and he added a few lines to tune up the story but reading into Wakinyonga’s past, it’s likely most of the details are there. Further evidence is the shooting of bystanders, keeping with the Kenya police age-old fashion of stray bullets.

 Legend has it that the kill shot was taken by the one and only Patrick Shaw, Police Reservist extraordinare who instilled fear and respect due to his obsession with killing criminals. Nyakiambi Lodge and Night Club, where Wakinyonga the bank robber met his death, closed years later and the premises are now occupied by, of all mother of ironies, a bank.

#3 Rasta

On 3^rd October 1997, a newspaper called Maarifa carried the headline ‘Who betrayed ‘Rasta’ to the Police?”. The headline photo was one of Bernard Matheri’s bullet riddled body. The editor and journalist were later arrested, more so for the photo than the headline.To how just how badass one Bernard Matheri was, a worthy mention of his formidable sidekick, second wife and accomplice extraordinaire, one Mary Wanjiku Karirimbi (whose surname means a small fire). She started stealing as soon as she hit teenage, at an age where girls now scream Justin Beiber and write ‘gurlfriendz!’. She stole from her grandmother and before you let your moral outrage get the better of you, may I add that the Shs. 70, 000 she stole was Tithe money her mother kept in safety for her church?

This is not a mug shot, this is a badass pose.

When she gave 4, 000 bob to her mother, she told her she had found it on the road. But mothers know, mothers always know. So her mother did the silliest thing ever, she took the money to the police station (WTF!) and was rewarded….wait for it…..wait for it….Shs. 20 for reporting the crime?

She stole from customers who visited her boutique which had been financed by money she stole from a petrol station owner. And there she also met the Gang of Three and fell in love with Rasta who, since flowers and chocolate were too mainstream, gave his new fling an AK-47 as a gift to show his love (suddenly that clutch bag does not look so well-thought does it?). She was arrested in 1999 when she planned to steal Shs. 162 million (Yes, you read that right) cash in transit went haywire. Unlike the other criminals on this list, and which goes to show even badass women have a higher chance of survival, she was jailed for seven years during which time she ‘Found the Lord.’

Another member of the group, John Kibera, was the coffin-stealer of the group, because what is a criminal gang without a man who specializes in stealing coffins. Even more interesting is that this reverse undertaker is still alive and well because, like Rasta’s wife, he found the Lord. He was first a street boy, then a burglar, bank robber in the infamous Gang of Four and finally, the last step in the criminal world, a grave yard robber.

When he was caught, he did what anyone would in such a scenario, he hid in a coffin and then ran out, scaring and scaring all the onlookers who thought the dead had risen to begin the Zombie Apocalypse.

The last of the Gang of Four/Five, and perhaps the least known of them all was Timothy Irungu Ndegwa. Part of his lack of infamity is the fact that he did not die under a hail of bullets but was instead arrested and dragged through the Kenyan Court System, a worse punishment. He was sentenced to death in 2002 for the murder of an army officer and his punishment committed to a life sentence.

#2    Simon Matheri Ikere- The Infamous son of Gachie

When the entry on the Most Wanted List is titled “Public Enemy No. 1” then you know the police have a funky content creator for their website or you are completely badass.

He was arrested and jailed for arson for five years at the one place where hardened criminals in KE are manufactured, Kamiti Prison. Like most other thugs on this list, he was a mechanic at some point in his life. He first trained as a jua kali welder, then as a blacksmith and finally as a mechanic. Interestingly, Matheri chose the birth district of his namesake, the infamous Bernard Matheri Thuo, alias Rasta.

“Matheri survived by swimming across a fast flowing river to evade a hail of bullets and police sniffer dogs. He came home for the first time and we realized he was now a hard-core criminal,” intimates a brother.

Then his mother adds: “Kori karega nyina no gukua gakuaaga. Ndimukanitie maita maingi no ndaiguaaga. Riu ni ndamuneana kuri thirikari” ( if a goat’s kid rejects its mother, it dies. I have warned him many times but he doesn’t listen. Now I have surrendered him to the Government).

Matheri lived a very simply but wild life. When he was killed, the only things found in the house were two mattresses, a coffee table, a sofa set, a DVD and a 14-inch TV.

The stories told on this list are captivating because they sound like movie scripts. In Matheri’s case, a curious angle appears after he was gunned down in Madaraka Estate. The police swoop was carried out by over 100 police officers who, after riddling his body with bullets the typical Kenya police way, then proceeded to soil the crime scene in ‘unrestrained joy.’ They sat on his seat and then, most interestingly, were captured by television cameras enjoying a hearty meal of chicken and chapatti. Considering the operation took place at 1 am when the gangster and his wife were most likely boning or asleep, one wonders where the meal came from. There are several theories: One, that the meal had been made before but not yet consumed and two that Mrs. Matheri was forced to cook for the men who had just made a hole into her husband’s head.

The action of the officers gets even more interesting when you consider that they were too excited to remember to remove the handcuffs from the man they had just killed. How hard can it be to stage a ‘he started shooting at my (m)boys and they returned fire’ scenario? So the body beamed to the world had the hands stuck curiously behind because the officers had slept through their pathology class and new zero about rigor mortis and why any staging should take place within the first hour or so before the body stiffens. The next day, an accomplice of his committed suicide. Unless there is an unspoken suicide pact between such criminals, the death itself was as interesting as the fact that the Gachie villagers burned his body.

Matheri begun his working life as a taxi driver in…you guessed right, Rongai.

Of all the criminals on this list, Matheri showed the most ingenuity for someone who had never attended a military school. He had never used the front door of the house in Kitengela, and his wife of two years knew him as ‘Matheru’ because there is nothing like hiding one’s identity by switching a vowel.

Matheri was said to have shot and killed or wounded:  prominent African AIDS researcher, Job Bwayo; Lois Anderson, a Presbyterian missionary, and her daughter Zelda White, the wife of a U.S. embassy employee, a Carol Briggs, a missionary volunteer.” He is probably the only violent robber in Kenya who once had a Wikipedia page (It has since been removed).

#1   Edward Maina Shimoli, The Jackal

Acording to the Urban Dictionary Shimoli means ‘a beautiful girl who many envy and love.’

This is Shimoli, she might inspire men to be badass, but she is not…

To anyone who met him or heard of his legacy, there was ever only one Shimoli, also known as The Jackal.We all know that you cannot be called ‘The Jackal’ for no apparent reason. You either have to be related to the jackal family or at least show some of the animals characteristics. Shimoli falls in the latter category of natural selection. Synopsis, he was jailed for ten years. Spoiler alert, he died like all the other criminals on this list.

The other Shimoli, The Jackal, pictured here going green after having declined the customary paper bag.

Shimoli was nicknamed the Jackal partly because he found a way to incorporate women into his gangs and plots. Shimoli was the first gangster to incorporate affirmative action into crime. His prison escapes involved bribing and tricking prison warders, once breaking the leg of a warden. During another escape, his comrades carried out an escape that is only second to the seventh entry on this list where they shot at police as they were spiriting him to safety.When Shimoli was released from Kamiti prison on March 15^th, 2007, he had a record of having escaped from prison three times. Shimoli got his nickname from the Venezuelan terrorist ‘Carlos the Jackal’ because they both eluded police dragnets for a long time. Like Carlos, there is no evidence that Shimoli ever called himself ‘the Jackal.’

One of his dramatic escapes from Kamiti prison was right before he was to be hanged. He had been sentenced to death in 1996. .His last escape was from a Nairobi courtroom. Granted, the plot reads of numerous twists and accomplices but for a man who escaped from several rings of prison and police staff, having a tankfull of balls is an understatement.

When he was arrested in 2002 in Kiambu, Kamiti prison officers visited the police station and identified him as the same man who had escaped death row in 1996.  He was reported to have, among other people, shot his own wife in the back and killed his brother-in-law after he suspected they had betrayed him.

His charge sheet read like a script for a thriller movie.?: 14 murders, 88 rapes, drug deals and numerous bank robberies. Any man who rapes and keeps a record is 100% psychopath. Where Carlos the Jackal evaded capture for 20 years, Shimoli was a mere ghost for ten years. He escaped after a gun battle at Uhuru Park, then shot two policemen who stopped him as he drove a stolen Mercedes.

As if his three pairs of titanium testicles was not enough, Shimoli was photographed raising his middle finger several times to the police and judicial officers and even lit a roll of bhang within the precincts of a courtroom: badassery which got him one more year in the slammer. He was only jailed for twelve years because the police did not have evidence of his other numerous crimes. During the interview outside Kamiti prison, he expressed his fear that he would be killed and he was right because two months later, his body was lying on the cold tables of City Mortuary with a single bullet wound to the head. Shimoli did not want to leave prison because he knew, and with good reason, that an extra judicial killing was in the offing.

One event that might water down his badassery is the fact that in 2007, he was part of a team of prisoners at Kamiti prison that formed Crime si Poa. His litany of crime reads like something Stephen King would write up, but with Shimoli most of it is likely to have been true.

Addition, 26th March 2013

A reader (Chris) pointed out that I had left out one man who should have been number 1. I agree…

Daniel Kiptum Cheruiyot alias ‘Frank’
No, this is not Frank Martin but I can see why you would make that error.
CID officer, as he made everyone believe. In reality, he had only once been a Police Reservist who lost his job for hiring his gun out to robbers. Cheruiyot was also soft-spoken, murderous, cunning, and most of all, meticulous.

Looks a bit fatherly, no?

Like Matheri and Wakinyonga, he sparingly furnished the houses he lived in. In his house in Zimmerman where he was killed in 2005, he only had a single bed, a five seater sofa set (because a gang of five is not going to sit on the floor is it now?) and a black coffee table (I am resisting referring to it as ‘a black loot-counting table’).

“Only a few metres from the Deliverance Church, and tucked away in a secluded part of the vast estate, the house has a high perimeter wall ringed with broken glass. It is less than 200 metres away from the busy Thika Highway, and boasts burglar proof doors and windows.

Sandwiched between two houses, a passer-by has no view of Cheruiyot’s den, let alone the activities of its residents. The house’s backyard is, however, not barricaded with a wall like the front, and offers a possible escape route to the highway. “

Ignore the jackets and the clear lack of equipment, why haven’t they made a movie out of this?

He killed the first officer who went to arrest him in Imara Daima, Charles Karue and later killed Maina Cheserem.

Oh, and did I mention that the police ambush and 5 hour drama was recorded on video?
You can watch it part of it here  (ignore the lack of equipment, even Cheruiyot had bullet proof vests) and here.
What more would a man who has already survived severall gunfights, become a gangster complete with several homes and police murders, already using multiple phones in 2005, and died holding an Uzi sub-machine gun, do to be even more badass?

“Cheruiyot recently telephoned the control room at police headquarters and warned that he would continue killing police officers because he knows clearly that they are looking for him.”

Because catch me if you can? The man who did was rewarded.

Owaahh

 

The Barmaid and the Boy who Kissed an Inexperienced Bed

To the creative writer, there is something morbidly inspiring about morgues and barstools. Morgues because dead men tell no tales, as the saying goes, and the man looking for inspiration wants to tell tales. Barstools because, well, just barstools.

I often wonder how all the people who work in morgues live without a daily dose of writing about their experiences, about the different people they meet every day. But barstools are the place to be, partly because you do not look like an insane person when you talk to the person on the other side and partly because imbibing has a way of opening up the creative juices. The bar is morbidly relaxing, if you enjoy the sound of your own thoughts or if you are lucky enough to have good, non-demanding company.

Its times like that that seemingly small things become writing ideas, and you sit at 5.30 AM in the morning, with pains in places that probably should not hurt, and pen a story about the struggles of writing and the barmaid who might not know she is a shrink of sorts.

Immortality would not be good for any species, especially our kind for whom sated primal needs such as food and sex are not enough to keep our non-existent sanity. In case you do not bother to be regaled with stories of a man looking for inspiration, here is a link to flexible women, everybody likes flexible women, I am not so sure about pregnant women doing the split though.
I am thinking about sitting at the bar because I met Joyce this past weekend, a barmaid with a keen eye and a soft motherly look. Actually, I called her ‘mami’ several times before she gave me the evil eye and said ‘Ninaitwa Joyce’ (my name is Joyce) and someone pointed out that she actually had a tattoo of her name on her left arm. I had already been imbibing before I sat at the bar so a little blindness was allowed.

I like to watch barmaids/men work, there is something about the woman or man behind the counter passing out poisons to men and women looking for escapism that is intriguing. The barmaid at my kalocal, a heavy woman called Mumbi, or something like that, was a scary woman I used to stare at through the grills and wonder whether she enjoyed her work. She had no life in her, no spirit to make conversation, except when talking to older men who looked to have a woman listen without necessarily having to listen to their bantering in return.

Mumbi, or whatever her name was, was replaced by a thin thing with absolutely no life at all, even when an smiling old man bought her shots of things strong and potent. I have not cared to know her name, partly because I ‘bonded’ with Njeri, a waitress who has a happy face. Okay, I think she has a permanent smile but in actual sense she has one of those teeth structures that make the teeth stick out of the mouth at all times. I am sure you know someone with teeth like that, an oddly smiley face. I always wonder how people who look like that kiss without harming the other party.
Talking about risky kissing, I recently recalled an old story from high school. A student sleeping on the lower bunk was woken up in the middle of the night by a sharp searing pain in his upper lip and an odd weight. The weight was the upper bunk, complete with its occupant, which had come off the hooks on the ‘head-side’ and fallen on our protagonist. Sharp pain, and the weight meant that he could not scream, or he could, but it would emerge as a muffled cry like that of screamer with a pillow on her mouth.

For the few seconds it took the occupant of the upper bunk to realize he was now sleeping on his bunk mate, and not in a good way, our protagonist had a wound that required about fourteen stitches on his upper lip. On the bright side, my high school is next to a world-class hospital with a lot of hot nurses and doctors-hoping a good friend of mine does not read this because his sister works there-and a higher than proportionate number of white staff.

On the dull side, however, he now had to spot a bandage for a few weeks as the wound healed. Anyone who went through high school knows that there is a special place in hell for the kind of sadists who walk around in high school uniforms or with chalk imprints on their jackets. One of those men was Mr. Kiroko, a burly man who could chew on a blade of grass like there was a gift somewhere in the middle, and ignore the dripping drops of saliva, and overly disgusted students, trying hard to ignore him.

Granted, he was a Physics and Metalwork lecturer, perhaps the worst combination of disciplines for anyone hoping to be sane. Mr. Kiroko walks to our bandaged friend and asks

“Joseph, nini lifanyika?” (Joseph, what happened to you?”
Since there is no way of answering the question without it coming out as plain weird…
Joseph: Niliangukiwa na kitanda (The bed fell on me)

Mr. Kiroko (laughing): Ooohhh, I thought you had been kissed by an inexperienced person.

Those are the kind of men who deserve to burn at the stake for making sick and injured people laugh their way back to the theatre.
Okay, yes, barmaids. Njeri is special, she reminds me of the barmaid at another kalocal in South C who does not mind placing a lid over my unfinished beer and keeping it until I go back, even when it is a few days later. I first met Njeri on my birthday, when three girls raided my house and dragged me to a bar to stop mulling over my first major event as a single guy. She could not get over the fact that I had three women in a bar on a Saturday when the bar lacks any despite being in the residential area next to a public university.

I think I made around ten friends that day, men giving me the evil look because I seemed to be hoarding a precious commodity. Old men, to be precise, with clear worry lines on their face that only come from having two children, mortgage, a nagging wife, a demanding concubine, an old car and loans from all banks. They are the kind of men with tired looks on their face like the weight of all the people in the world has been placed upon their shoulders. They love sweet young things who can marvel at their experiences, and who are impressed by their seemingly fat wallets despite the fact that half the weight is just business cards.
I saw the kind at a club some time when I misguidedly decided to see what goes on in the dark side of Corner House. On the table next to me was a young girl, probably what Waga Odongo call’s ‘girl’s born in the multiparty era’ with two old men who could only have been her dad and uncle, or vice versa. One was fat and stubby, wearing the kind of coat you are sure your dad either looted from a stall during the 1982 coup or has had since his university days when Sabina Joy was still cool.

The other guy was younger, probably in his forties but was not interested in the particular girl. It was weird because she was dancing along, and she had moves from an alien planet, the kind that make you wonder whether the dancer has any bone structure at all, especially a pelvis, how can someone survive without a pelvis? The guys, on the other hand, were doing moves akin to swallowing a Taser gun and a raccoon with untrimmed nails.

Njeri still marvels at that, and every time I am hit by my withdrawals and I need to sit among strangers and block out the world, she always asks me why ‘my women’ are not with me. I smile then, because I do not want to tell her I have noises in my head that need silence in the middle of all the noise, and a fixation like counting the drinks behind the counter. I know she means well, so I buy her a beer, a Guinness Kubwa at the lower limit of Mututho time and shake my head as she tries to make conversation. She is hard to read, partly because her teeth are distracting and partly because I do not care to do so. It would not help either of us, she believes I am a pimp and I am happy to let her think so.
I met Joyce on Saturday, the barmaid with a tattoo of her name on her hand. That’s either vanity, or there is some sort of kidnapping ring going around in Kenya where people are tattooed their own names for easier identification. Maybe the bar is her prison? Think about it, she does not move from the bar, so maybe her legs are chained to something underneath so she does not move outside. She has to say in her circle, figuratively, and semi-circle, literally. It could be a project by the evil overlord, he of the all-seeing eye in the form of a bouncer who stares at your date like you are a chicken sticking its neck out begging to be killed. The thought crossed my mind, but I could not save her even if she was. She is not exactly hot, and the good lord, or evolution, or wherever it is we wretched beings came from, saw it fit to give me an untamed mind in place of smashing princely look. I do not think her parents are royalty so ours would not be a Shrek-kind of a story, so I let her be, and followed her with my eyes as she did her job.
There is something intriguing about the barman/barmaid and the way they maintain sanity in the middle of madness. Joyce even has a system behind her, which I noticed when I tipped her and she took the note and placed it on a tumbler on one of the shelves. The tumbler had her name, and there were other tumblers, probably five or six, with names of people I guess are the waitresses. The system seems pretty simple, given the madness of a bar, so everytime anyone gets a tip they take the money to her and she, hopefully faithfully, places it in the respective tumbler. I sit there and try to guess what led her to this life that is still not fully appreciated as an art in our country.

Is she happy about what she does?

Does she have kids?

Do they know their mother is pharmacist with a limited inventory who cures the worries of men by feeding them on what they order?

If she is a slave, does she have any sexy stories about why she is now behind the bar?

Like she tried to run away and her captors chained her there, so her way of asking to be saved is to tell me her name so I can stop calling her ‘mami’?

I missed the cues then I guess, and she is destined to live in captivity behind a bar her entire working life.

Owaahh, 2012.

 

 

Philosophical Musings on the Withdrawal Method

So when is it ever the right moment to make a tactical retreat? To the emancipated mind this should be a question of chance and choice, it has everything to do with one’s decision-making abilities as well as the willingness to follow through. Evolution has seen it best that once the train leaves the station, there is no stopping it until it gets to a station, any station. It cannot be derailed or bombed off its hinges. Any effort to do so would end in sheer pain and utter failure as the amount of pressure exerted can cause severe mind flashes, paralysis and, although the claim is not supported by any scientific data, a nuclear explosion. It can be diverted to a dummy station, however, and this is the basis of most male-oriented forms of contraception. The idea is to lie to oneself that the primal need of coital satisfaction and procreation can be separated into two goals. Once one accepts this as the premise of the act then a decision has to be made about the right moment.

Or 2 pages, depending on how long you can read.

Consider then  the dilemma, the level of self-awareness required to make the withdrawal method an effective mode of contraception. According to Abraham’s Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, coitus is at the base of the pyramid, next to food and oxygen. Self-actualization, the kind of self-awareness and confidence required to choose and act at the right moment, is at the helm of the pyramid. This implies that one must jump from top to bottom of the pyramid in the blink of an eye, literally and figuratively, to actually make the method effective.
What defines this moment? I believe it varies from one species to the other, although I have observed rabbits in their 15-second binges and pounced on a few National Geographic-filmed animal pornography clips to get to the conclusion that underneath our sophistication, we are at best lions. Our only advantage used to be that we were the only species known to engage in copulation ‘for fun’ and the only one capable, and insistent, on doing it face-to-face. Dolphins have already taken away the former, and the latter is in question because new species of crazy organisms are being discovered every day. The right moment therefore matters, and the decision-maker needs the support of the team player to act upon the decision of time.

It is also key to establish that testosterone, the euphoria driver in the male species, does not, for some odd reason, block one’s memory of the selected mode of contraception. One must remember to do it, and then decide on the moment, and then do it, and then stand/kneel/crawl/gyrate there with a smug on his face. If he has accomplished what is required of him by natural selection, then the team player is too euphoric to comprehend what has just occurred.  If possible, she must be saved from the ghastly sight and sounds of the frozen man. The alpha-female will demand that the moment must be had, for the sport to be fair, but the alpha-male must be in it to please and then and only then, to focus on his own desires. It means that all effort must be made to please the other party during the foreplay sections of the ordeal so that they can be cooperative when one needs to, as the common saying goes, ‘pull out’.

Such a decision can fail for several reasons. One, the connection between all our primal sense, coming together in harmony in one specific place, and dragging with it the rest of the body, is impossible to master. Some will howl, some will grunt, some will look up or cry but the common denominator is a loss of sense of control. How then does one regain control at the very moment when all senses are meant, rightly so, to be lost? Two, it is also dependent on the willingness of the participant to let go, and if a safe word has indeed been established beforehand. Such boundaries should be set early in the game, before the candles blow out, so that any scream of ‘pineapples’ or ‘incoming’ is understood as a wail for help to withdraw. A man in tune with his primal self must then come into consciousness at just the right moment to not pre-empt the moment itself by too far a point that it warrants a re-invasion, and not to hold out for too long that the moment is lost and other methods need be sort.  Three, coordination is key.  A decision can be made to make a tactical retreat but the forces of nature such as a flood or hurricane force the invading army inland. The decision of the commander must be relayed through an analogue system to various limbs, and a spine already in motion, that the battle has been won and the main force should be capped before all hell breaks loose.

At that moment, John knew all of his life’s work would amount to nothing…

The next challenge then is where to ‘deliver’ and what one should do during the few seconds the moment itself is destined to last. For most people, the moment must enjoyed with the chills it sends through the body, the bang that hits the spine and the high that overcomes all senses, at least momentarily. Since the primal moment has already been lost, and coitus interruptus selected as the method of contraception, the interrupter must hold it, either in hand or on a surface, until it is done, or ‘walk away’. I have heard from some sources that there is a cadre of man mammals who walk away as the moment progresses! I do not know the truth of this claim, but I imagine it would be very hard for a normal mammal to establish the pattern of walking while such a glorious result of natural selection occurs. Perhaps the motion is spasmic, if such an adjective exists, and makes the walker look like he has the tics.
Once the moment is chosen, and executed, and all clean-up of activities of the oil spill-a term selected for more than one reason-completed, the emancipated man can then re-engage and continue to make sure the team player has the experience of a lifetime. The re-engagement need not be a frontal or rear attack, as with a conquering army, and Alexander the Great need not lead the second conquest.  Evolution, or if religion is to be believed, a Superior being, granted the human being, and to some degree his ape cousins, a thumb separated from the rest of this fingers to make it easier to grasp and twist things. With such unique ability then, and with strong muscles in a ‘limb of sorts’ that resides in the loudest orifice-unless one is having the farts, then its second loudest- the next attack can establish one a kingdom and win a war. The mediocre man might choose the way of sleep, without even considering that the rush of serotonin in the team-players innards is exhibited by an inherent need to cuddle and smooch. Such desires are core in human interaction, and should be provided except in exceptions expressly allowed, marked, and indicated in bold font on one’s man-card.
So, of what importance is the withdrawal method to the world economy? If a measure of the ability of a man to withdraw from the most basic and the most primal activity in his life could be established then most of life’s questions would be established. The man granted a short span of time must be aware from the start of the experience that at any one time in the following ten to forty seconds, a life decision will have to be made, with only the shouting of a predetermined alarm allowed. The man with more time can take his time, like an athlete in a marathon who can afford to run briskly for two hours before choosing the right moment to sprint ‘away from the crowd’.

ADDITION on 25th March, 2013

The Holy See endorses, passively, coitus interruptus as a method of contraception. Surprisingly, the deity for who the See of Rome is Vicar once struck a man for doing exactly that. There is no inconsistency here, and one might argue that by the sheer volume of soldiers who never make it to Canaan-again a scriptural reference-the respective deity, and evolution, meant for it to be one big game of Russian Roulette. The only difference being, of course, the presence of more chances of failure and success, and less players, at least in the conventional games. The preceding statement does not apply to those to whom the groupie appeals, as the game then, void of a permanent contraception method, becomes many games of Russian Roulette embedded into one big job.

Owaahh

 

Go Tell the Spartans (A reply to Ken-Saro Wiwa’s ‘Africa Kills Her Sun’)

Dear Bana,
I was pleasantly surprised, no doubt, to receive the letter. I received it ten years after your death, brought to me by an old frail man who told me he was your prison guard and had sworn to deliver the letter before he died. I must write you this letter, my flower, as a final act of surrender. Consummated love my Bana, is nothing more than a scar for which I would rather have healed than this pain of losing the only person for whom I felt palpitations. Heartache.
I must begin by confessing that I never made you the epitaph for I thought it was not befitting. I loved you Bana, but you fell, fell to the very whims of the system you sort to uproot. You claim to have sworn never to kill, but stealing from a man in this economy is worse than driving a bullet through his heart.You sacrificed your lives that others might live, if only for so long. You bore ultimate responsibility and for that I must say you three were honorable men. Still, a man who chooses to take from another that which does not rightly belong to him wrongs this pitiful life and all that is right in it.

Today, I stand am sitting at a small table writing a letter I am sure you will never read but if there be an afterlife, I will recount my sentiments when we surely meet [sic!]. I think the simpletons will call this a suicide note, for the rope I tied hours ago hangs just above me, dangling every several minutes when the gusts sneak through the open window.

Must we die, Bana? Must we die like stray dogs?
Whether one dies by the hands of the police or his fellow men does not matter much now. Yesterday a mob set upon a man for the sins of his wife. The poor man, unknowing of his crime, wailed and begged for help but his neighbors turned a vicious mob would have none of it. He lived, but no thanks to the police who watched like crocodiles that have eaten to their fill. It is a precarious world this one, Bana, where a man and his wife becoming one becomes more than just about sharing a bed.
We are now akin to a mother whose son is the village rapist. She rests easy, even with the knowledge that he might turn on her one day and commit the indescribable. We look and shake our heads. Gaze as the grave slowly swallows the caskets of those lucky enough to have one. Can you imagine, Bana, even coffins are now a luxury? On second thought, I figure the government never bothered to bury you in one. Or a suit. We are happy fools now. Reluctant. Noisy. Greedy. Aloof. Apathy. Who cares really? Who cares that everyone loots? The few that do not are content with the knowledge that when the deities separate the wheat from the chaff, they shall remain as the few worthy grains. Must one be content with heaven if there be such a place? Is preservation of a soul more important than the dignity of life and your fellow man? Apathy, our disease, but we could not care less.
Where the king goes now, the hounds follow closely behind. Dressed in suits. London shirts, Hong Kong blazers, American belts, Cuban cigars. We exchanged one ruler for another, one master for his replacement. We are sold. Not to the highest bidder, as it were, but to the one who can sell us anything for the cheapest price and not ask questions about whether we eat our children and roast our dogs. We exchanged the devil who would hold sticks and carrots on one hand, for one whose only stick is to eat to his own fill, and to the many millions that must be fed. Is any better than the other, Bana? Is the master who feeds his servant on morsels from the high table any better than the one who lets his slave eat with the guests?
We pay the master, we pay the hounds, we pay their girlfriends, their sauna sessions, their trips abroad. With a smile we remit our taxes to the exchequer, heads bowed in awe. We walk around knowing that although our children sleep hungry and in pain, our leaders, voices of our freedom and sovereignty, are well furnished and supplied. What more could a good citizen ask for but the ability to make sure his leader is well-fed? Does not a well-fed master sleep easy? Does not a well dressed mistress allow her slave to sneak into her marital bed? Is not happiness the ham between the buns of life and love?
Religion? They have trampled on that one too my Bana. They always have anyway. Our grandfathers used to shake their heads every time they narrated how their first attempt at prayer had ended with the loss of their freedom. Now the middle-class citizen is shackled to a religion for which he or she worships nothing but the so-called messengers of deities. Whether it is the priest who lies on women as he casts away her demons, or the other one who looks to the red light districts to buy actors for his miracles, religion is a mere mockery now. The prostitute of St. Pauli, sage as she sounds to have been, would have made the extra shilling by making a testimony to reinforce our belief in Jehovah Rapha. Marx said that religion is the opium of the masses but now it has become more, it has become the leech upon their lives. The promise of heaven, a place where we shall walk on gold as angels make music from all kinds of organs. Glorious, divine, pure, the quintessential paradise for the wealth oriented man. All we have to do now is buy the Lord’s messenger a car, a plane ticket, a house, a gun, a wife, children, mistresses, servants, pets and a bible. All to allow him to go out and spread the message. For heaven Bana.
Where three brave men with stories and justifications fell by the bullet not stands two posts marking the rugby goal posts. To make a ‘try’, men have to place an oval ball between where you and Sazan died, directly above where Jimba refused to fall to the ground even after they riddled his body with bullets. How befitting for three brave souls, I always think, that men should run and chase after each other and an oval ball as thousands scream insults and praises where freedom died.
The Chief Justice died years after he condemned you and Sazan and Jimba. He died seated on his throne, delivering justice to a young mother who had dared kill a policeman who tried to rape her. He just stopped there in the middle of delivering justice and sat like a rock. Unfeeling. Eyes popped. He fell. The newspapers said no one moved for ten minutes. Eerie silence it must have been. As if everyone feared to be in contempt of a court whose judge had been killed by years of bribes, a blind eye to a vocation and bloody skeletons in every closet he dared look upon. His big stomach finally drove his heart to the beach where he had sent so many souls. Death is the great equalizer Bana. I am sure that if there is an afterlife, and you three have met the man, then you must know the story.
Sympathy my Bana, you would never get from me, nor pity or unconditional love. When we met by the stream so many nights in our youth, we promised to always be honest, even when it hurt. I will be honest Bana, I planted a tree, I went to the park and planted a tree, three trees, one for you, one for Sazan and one for Jimba. I thought it was befitting too because no one should live forever. I did not immortalize the Black Maria or the Dark Continent, I do not believe in the pain of death. Africa Kills Her Sun, Steels her Daughters, they now say. I once read an epigram by Simonides of Ceos, the Greek lyric poet in honour of fallen soldiers during The Battle of Thermopylae:

‘Go tell the Spartans, stranger Passing by that here, obedient to their law, we lie.”

I had it inscribed on the plaques next to the trees, but changed it to read

‘Go tell the Hounds, Stranger passing that here, obedient to their laws and greed, we lie.”

The hounds, they bay for my blood, for my money, for my sweat, my loyalty in times of war, my apathy in times of peace, turmoil and scandal. Death. Blood. Hounds. Ropes. I must stop writing now and push the table from my feet, the knot must be wondering what is keeping me for so long.

Your love, Always
Zole.

 

The Msema Kweli, and the Mad Woman who Wanted A fight

On a whiff of randomness the other day, I opened a facebook group for my primary school. Karunga Primary School, tucked somewhere in Kiambu, is where I spent eight years of my life learning everything from ABCD from Mrs. Dorothy (she had that musky old-woman smell) to present and past participles from Miss. Virginia. You know what happens when you start a group like that, people start remembering, photos start appearing, the friend requests start flowing. I still have my khaki shirt hanged somewhere in my parents’ house and numerous photos of my class.
It also makes one remember small things…

The lastborn of my sisters left primary school when I was in class four and in those four years where we had to go to school together every morning, I think the number of times I got to school before the bell rang at 6.45 pale in comparison to those I had to stand in line for the whipping or to run several times around the school field (outside PE lessons, this was considered a punishment).
When she finally did leave primary school and I was left to tend to myself, I still couldn’t make it to school on time. I was a teachers’ pet though, and I was a lazy thing so looking for any alternatives to getting beaten was the order of every morning.  I sneaked into school several times through a hole in the fence. I think I should add it was Kei apple fence, complete with thorns sewn meticulously into the wire mesh by the school factotum, who was the school gardener, fence-trimmer, carpenter and mechanic, and worker extraordinare. Sneaking in was therefore a ninja affair, the kind of slow motion you see in scenes where Angelina Jolie is working the laser system. I survived that, and I survived Mr. Mwai, our science teacher who had a small stiff rubber cane he christened (the) ‘Msema-kweli’.

A cane, and the concept of pain, is supposed to be a deterrent towards the act for which one is being punished. The msema-kweli, shaped like Africa with oblong sides on the North and South (One for grip, the other for contact), did exactly that. It was a short rubber cane, as long as the grown man’s palm but not as wide (Physics comes into play here). It integrated science into your palms as heat and pain and sometimes made you aware that keeping time  and getting 70% in a test were not requests. He died several years ago, Mr. Mwai, but I am sure someone somewhere has preserved that cane he whipped generations of students with, and always fished out of his back pocket when you did something wrong (it gave us a false sense of security because he could not use anything else to beat students. That is, until he reached for his back pocket and the sense of security levitated out of the room). I also survived the female teacher who had surname like mine (her husband and my old man are distant cousins and share the same second name) who used to hide her car behind the classes so you would get to school late and think you were safe, only to run towards the class and find other unlucky culprits kneeling behind the school tank.And we fell for it, every time.
There are several anecdotes as to why our time-keeping got worse when she got to class six. It all started with a woman who, for the sake of this article, we shall christen Wamatumbi* (I know, a mouthful, it means ‘one of the eggs’). Wamatumbi was a mentally disabled woman who lived next to our school. I dated her sister later, for a day or two I think, but that’s a story for another day. My sister has always been a healthy child (read fat*) and has therefore always seemed more mature than her current age….and Wamatumbi*, if she is still alive, is a very fat woman too (women, stop cringing, as the captain of this story, I am allowed to call women ‘fat’). A heavyset woman who had a retarded look on her face, like one eye was bigger than the other, ogling at you, waiting for you to make eye contact so that the fight could start.
One day, my sister was leaving school when she met out antagonist. They did not know each other so well but I suspect that at Wamatumbi had at one time been a student at our school. Still, Wamatumbi called out my sister’s name. You know how, as a society, we like to treat the mentally or physically challenged, if we are not directly related to them, we try to walk past them as fast as possible. That is exactly what my sister was trying to do, but Wamatumbi had a better idea.
“You! Stand there we fight.” Wamatumbi shouted.
“I am sorry, I do not fight with people who are bigger than me,” my sister replied, trying to walk away as fast as possible.
“Are you calling me fat?” an increasingly agitated Wamatumbi asked.
“No, no, I was just saying you are older than me, so I can’t fight you,” My sister should, at this point, have done the clever thing and asked for a lawyer.
“Aaaaah, so you are calling me old huh? You are insulting me? I will show you….” Wamatumbi replied as she gave chase.
Now picture this, two fat women chasing each other, actually, one woman chasing two girls (My sister was walking with a cousin). You can see it, hear the screaming and thumping of legs as one person looks for a fight and two girls run as fast as they can?

As they run towards home, everybody stops to see, some sadists laughing, some pastor praying, kids getting out of the way, a story to tell.

The heaving, the thuds, as one unhealthy woman chases two unhealthy ones. It was a hilarious sight but they got away, proving that equally matched opponents can never defeat each other.

Where our antagonist lives is directly behind the fence of the school, next to one of the two access points to the main gate. This meant that we risked meeting her anytime on our way out of and headed to school. To solve this situation, our headmaster, a well-groomed man with a shining bald head who was said to do more than teach beautiful girls, allowed my sister to use a smaller gate reserved for teachers.

The gate, for it is still there, allows one to cut the distance by around 300 meters by accessing the school directly from the main road and into what used to be the school shamba instead of following the school fence all the way to the main gate. This meant that we could enter the school without using the common route, where a teacher would be standing at a vantage point with a whip every morning at 6:46, rearing to transfer the potential energy in her body into kinetic energy on a poor boy’s behind or poor girl’s hands. That’s something I can never get, to this day, why girl’s would be whipped on the hands and not on the bottom like the boys. Someone mentioned something about their sexuality but still, anatomy shows that on average, women have a greater layering on the bottom than men which would make them better equipped to handle such beatings. Anyway, those are years gone…
Still, to access this ‘special gate’ meant using the longer route to school which meant that we were late every morning. We devised ways of hiding it, there was the few times I ran to the back of the class, called out my desk mates name and handed him my bag, then pretended I was heading back to class from the washrooms. It seems wrong to call them washrooms because they were just two sets of pit latrines and three walls with a trench at the bottom.

One set of pit latrines, the one used by the girls, sank into itself during the El Nino rains of 1998. We just got to school one morning and there was no toilet, only a huge gaping hole with lots of shit and maggots (I see you cringing) where the Ladies once stood (You.See.What.I.Just.Did.There?). It meant that we now had to share the toilets, and there are stories…of happenings…

They finally built new modern toilets at the turn of the new millennium, the kind with a plastered sewer system and filled with water to break down the sewage. They are the kind that, when you are taking a dump, you can hear the distant sound of your turds or the trickle hitting the water. If it sounds disturbing, it’s because it was.
Yours truly had gotten to school late more than a few times, but on almost all accounts, I would be freed so my sister would be beaten on my behalf. I suspect the teachers knew it was her fault, all the time, but it also meant that from that time on, she had no qualms leaving me behind if I delayed by a second. To be whipped double your ‘bill’ on a cold morning for your small brother is a touch price to pay, but she used to bully me at home so I guess, debt paid?

Still, as she went to class six and her eyesight started failing, I became her second set of eyes, always keeping an eye out for Wamatumbi* and another guy who we shall call John came into the picture, albeit momentarily. The story of John is sadly funny, he approached my sister once in the thicket as she was headed home. Now, any guy who has a crush on a girl knows that the best time to make his feelings known is when and if he can find her alone. Find her with her girlfriends and you are in trouble, women tend to be cruel in groups, alone, it is easier to make known your feelings without the distraction of her hotter friends. Approach a woman alone in the thicket when darkness is falling and the situation changes, Cupid, changes into possible rape, and we have a whole different scenario.
“ How are you?” He asks, walking slowly towards the now startled girl.
“Poa sana…” she replies, trying to walk away as fast as possible.
“ Please stop, I need you, sorry, I need to talk to you, I thirst for you (his words not mine, even worse in vernacular), I have always thirsted for you…” our would-be rapist says, bowing as he does so, as if ashamed at making his cravings for this girl known.
“You know, John, its John, right? (Ouch) When we thirst we drink  Jesus (Huh, what now?), you should try it too.” This is the same girl who only went to church because it was the usual thing at home.

.
He increases his pace, thinking of his next line, he can’t lose her, no, not today.
“Can Jesus really satisfy my thirst for you?” He asks, desperately now.
“Yes, yes he can,” she answers as she looks back and suddenly breaks into a run.
John never bothered my sister again, not because he gave his quest but because she never used that route again. It was a cursed route because it led directly to where our earlier antagonist lives and it goes to show that life, and even fellow thickset women, have never been fair to thickset women. Luckily, unlike her, he did not chase after her which perhaps means he was either not as ‘thirsty as he thought’ or he was ‘too thirsty’ to run after love (sic!).

Owaahh

 

Cannibal Cuisine: How to Better Serve Your Fellow Man

The Zombie Apocalypse is nigh.

*Fade In*

Enter Subukia farm worker Amos Gichue Kimeria  (his last name, translated means ‘one who swallows’…human flesh, it would seem) carrying a machete with blood stains. Our protagonist belches, he had such a fine meal last night he has actually woken up with enough strenght to walk to the police station and confess his crime, he ate a man.

The funny thing with this case is that the victim, one Samuel Epolisi Lokodet and all other villagers had been warned against using the path where the former was killed and dragged to make a meal. Redefining the concept of a ‘hunt’, Kimeria waylaid his would-be victim and then attacked him before dragging him all the way to his house and making a meal out of him. Two things led villagers to his house, the obvious trail of human blood and the smell of freshly cooked human flesh (you can smell it too, can’t you?).

Pictured: A warning you should never ignore.

The butcher precision described in most news articles is disturbing, the body was sliced open, cut in various pieces to ‘…provide boneless flesh.” …”The left leg had the upper leg flesh cut out, apparently to provide Thursday evening’s roast meat.” “…the bowels were stashed in a soot-covered sufuria that had been used to boil them.”

In almost every continent over the last two months, there have been cases of cannibalism, or zombie-ism. The jury is out on whether this is just a case of easier communication which means that such stories now have a global audience or a story of actual zombie-like evolution. In their literal meaning they mean nearly the same thing but a good cannibal is one who takes time to wash the body and chunks of meat, and even more time to make a cuisine out of his fellow man. A zombie, on the other hand, eats raw human flesh and loves it, at least in pop culture. The latter has happened twice in the US over the course of two weeks, with Alex Kinyua being a literal ‘heartbreaker’ (relax ladies, he likes men with doctorates, preferably West African) and the Miami Zombie, the man who was shot after police found him squatting, eating another man’s face. In any other situation, that last part of the preceding sentence would have sounded very gay (go on, take your eyes back and tell me what is not gay about one man eating another).

In the case of the Miami Zombie, the main suspect was bath salts, a concoction of drugs that can give you such a high that you believe you have super human strength (and apparently, a craving for your fellow man). Rudy Eugene was gnawing on the face of a homeless guy. More proof that he had gone zombie is the fact that he was naked and responded to police warnings with a growl, like your pet dog does when he is chewing on chunks of meat (the pet dog part will come in handy later). The police had no choice but to shoot his face-eating ass before he chewed the homeless guy out of a face too. Although everyone suspected bath salts, it turns out all he had was a little marijuana which goes to prove that in the case of the face-eater, other forces were at play (religious people can say it was the devil but for the sake of this post, think Zombies). The strange thing is, the Miami Zombie had no human flesh in his stomach so he might not be a cannibal but a zombie after all?

The Zombie bug also bit (Did.you.see.what.I.Just.Did.There?) in China where a drunken bus driver attacked a woman and started ‘gnawing on her face’. ‘Du’ ( a befitting name for one who is eaten, methinks, because you can pronounce it as ‘dough’) was actually pulled from her car by ‘Dong’ (Huh?) who had all of 1.75 ml of hard liquor flowing in his system (Asians and alcohol, not a good mix). Dong (I can’t get enough of this name) did enough damage to warrant reconstructive surgery for ‘Du’. After reading this, you are allowed to say, with legal backing, that “‘Dong’ ate ‘Du’ or ‘Du’ was eaten by ‘Dong’” Oh, and there is footage and photos of the unlucky ‘Du’ being gnawed upon (check the link above).

Made in China…wait, is that Zombie Barbie? Dong got her too? Asking for a friend….

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Even more intriguing is the case of Mao Sugiyama, a Japanese who had his genitals surgically removed and then cooked them for five diners who each paid $250 to, it would seem, eat a testicle cuisine. I don’t know what is so intriguing about a man cooking his own loins and then serving them to paying diners but I know the accompaniments were quite something (button mushrooms and parsley…yum yum?). Alex Kinyua, naturalized US citizen, had gone further than just his victim/meal’s heart. He had also eaten the brain, something zombies do

Ivan L., in Russia, is a chef who, unlike Sugiyama, chose to cook his victim’s/meals by rolling them into sausages and meatballs (you thought donkey and dog meat was the worst huh? Welcome new Moscow-meatball cuisine, tastes as good as the next guy).

“The small of the back is the best place to start with…” Zombie Martha Stewart Cuisine Recipe instructions, 2020.

There is the case of the gay porn star who ate his boyfriend and sent his limbs to political party headquarters to make a point.Or the professor from Sweden who ate his wife’s lips went a step further, using the cuisine of raw human flesh (a contradiction, if you ask me) to settle scores with his ‘cheating’ wife. It would appear that he sort to punish the orifice through which the cheating was done, a key element of the Mosaic Law (am stretching it, no?).

Stephen Griffith’s ate three women in a none-sexual kind of way. Interesting is the fact that he killed one in the medieval style, using a crossbow. He cooked two, and ate one raw, and what you don’t hear is whether he will ever get to write a thesis about a human flesh cuisine (we need to find a single name for this new cuisine?) since he was a PhD. Cannibalism is not new and in some cases, such as this one where Armin Meiwes found a willing meal in Bernd-Jurgen Brandes (sounds like one complex meal, that one). The victim, if you read the story, was alive for long enough to eat his own junk, well-cooked by his executioner/diner, before he blacked out and was made into a main course.

Then SCREEEEEEAM at the top of your lungs, if you still have any left.

Are you grossed out already? I still have not told you the story of the Texas man who recently ate his family pet dog. Michael Daniel was high on synthetic marijuana when he beat his 40-pound family pooch and started eating the black dog. He “began to bite into the dog, ripping pieces of his flesh away.” Whether or not the K-2 in his system caused his to be psychotic enough to kill and eat a dog raw is for a jury to decide but, unlike where other humans eat their fellow men, the worst he can be accused of is ‘animal cruelty’ (look at you, with a disgusted look on your face yet you had beef last night. Acceptable? Yuh, so is pork and dog meat).

Cannibalism is covered several times in the Old Testament, in passages such as the famous

“…”Give your son, that we may eat him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow.’ So we boiled my son, and ate him. And I said to her on the next day, “Give your son, that we may eat him’; but she has hidden her son.” (2 Kings 6:24-30).

It is found much earlier in Deuteronomy 28:53-57, Leviticus 26:27-30, Micah 3 and others. If you think about it, even the very foundation of Sacrament, John 6:55 where J.C says “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him,” makes allusions to cannibalism, albeit sanctioned and, as many Christians will argue, obviously not literal.

In Islam, the argument about whether or not eating human flesh is permissible is just as controversial. The scripture below, for example, seems to provide options for eating much of anything but does not give explicit permission for human flesh.

“He has only forbidden you dead meat, and blood, and the flesh of swine, and any (food) over which the name of other than Allah has been invoked. But if one is forced by necessity, without willful disobedience, nor transgressing due limits,- then Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful” (Surah The Bee 16:115).

There is no consensus among Muslim scholars on the exact implications of the passage above. One school of though holds that it is never permissible to eat a human being while another argues that it is okay to eat human flesh as long as it be that of an enemy fighter or adulterer.

In other religions, the debate continues, among atheists the main culprit is our own human nature as survivalists. Evolution has turned us into natural cannibals, ‘reduced the size of our jaws‘, domesticated by the fact that we have other ready sources of food.

Oh, you thought we were at the top of the food chain? I can see how you would make such a…wait, BRAAAAINS!

Since we think ourselves normal, we recoil at the thought of a human being eating human flesh, whether his, of that of a consenting victim or that of an unlucky ‘Du’. We “…refrain from exploring the possibility of our own ability to cannibalize others..” because the thought is disturbing. We recoil at the thought of eating ‘man’s best friend’ raw and yet, driven to hunger and with an impending zombie apocalypse (if you believe in a zombified future), human beings will eat each other to survive, even where there are no bath salts or hard liquor to help. The fact of the matter is, the Zombie Apocalypse might not be nigh but it is lurking and you might have to start your fellow man as a good source of protein.

Chaos, disorder, Pandemonium, panic, controversy, self-doubt, craving a human brain, family pet? My work here is done.

[All Photos sourced from ‘Zombies are Delicious’]

Owaahh©

 

 

Ritual Sex, Orgies and Lessons from Bizarre Cultural Practices

     At every stage in the history of man, every generation has viewed itsel as more advanced and civilized than the last one. Yet it is all a matter of perspective; every subsequent generation, especially in matter’s coital, will adopt and adapt to realities and beliefs. Although anthropology teaches us several things about the evolution of cultures, the position of sex and orgies within a primitive context is not comparable at all to the modern madness. Using history as a reflection, it is easy to trace most modern sexual fetishes and practices which goes to prove that we never really evolve, we just learn how to behave in public.

        Among the Kikuyu and several other Kenyan tribes, initiation ritual sex was allowed and expected. In fact, according to this article, parents would talk freely with the children on all matters sexual, including the pre-initiation masturbation which was ‘right and proper’ for boys but ‘wrong’ for girls. Ngwiko was a post-initiation ceremony of incomplete sex-play that disappeared during the colonial era while some such as kuhuurwo mbiro ya rwenji’ (wiping off the soot of the circumcision knife’) are still present among some rural Kikuyu. This was full sexual intercourse, different from the intercourse during the initiation ceremony itself. Suffice to say that in addition to the knives, the tetanus and the bleeding, initiation ceremonies were big orgies.

Other elements of sexuality included mutual masturbation among young unmarried adults. Full intercourse was discouraged before initiation but they could pretty much engage in anything else.

    Then there’s this article with more racist rants than a KKK dream. Before you read it, I should warn you that the comments are worse. The stated facts are, however, exactly that, facts. Among the Samba of West Africa, a boy must copulate with the older men orally during the first stage of the initiation ceremony. Interestingly, this has nothing to do with feminization but with turning the boys into fierce warriors by ingesting the semen of the older more accomplished men, or, euphemically  ‘inseminators.’

    The Fourth Stage of Initiation has an interesting element. The young man, now turned from being ‘inseminated’ to being an ‘inseminator’ marries and is taught how to protect himself from the odor of a woman’s genitalia. He must, “…while having intercourse with her, not penetrate too deeply because if it (you will not believe this) enters her urethra it might make him ill…” HUH? The upside is that the young woman has been taught fellatio and she must swallow the semen “…to later be able to provide her child with milk and strong bones..” because the Samba believe “…semen is transformed into breast milk…”

He does look quite manly but, question is, how much can he swallow?

     You have probably heard the argument that homosexuality is not only African but the first recorded case was actually right here. Archeology proves the point, with a 4390-year old Saqqara tomb in Egypt. In it, two men, Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum are buried together, a practice only related to lovers. The walls of the tomb depict them nose kissing and in an intimate embrace.

    Generally, gay people in traditional socieities were classified in a neutral manner, with lesbians making up most of traditional healers and astrologers in some South African tribes. In some tribes in Gabon and Cameroon, homosexuality was believed to have a medicinal effect. Among the Meru of Kenya, crossdressing medicinemen called ‘Mugawe’ were known to engage in homosexual relationships, although the social dynamics viewed them as women despite their male genitalia.  

    Sexual orgies of yore were dark events, and future generations will perhaps think the same too of our coital madness. Joseph Campbell writes about the ritual love-death in a book called Primitive Mythology, a part of the series ‘The Masks of God. ‘The Marind-anim of South Guinea had one ritual that combined everything from cannibalism to sexual orgies.

In Page 171, Campbell writes:

“The particular moment of importance….which terminates in a sexual orgy of several days and several nights, during which everyone in the village except the initiates makes free with everybody else…-until the final night, when a fine young girl, painted, oiled, and ceremoniously costumed, is led to the dancing ground and made to lie beneath a platform of very heavy logs. With her, in the open of the festival, the initiates cohabit, one after another; and while the youth chosen to be last is embracing her the supports of the logs above are jerked away and the platform drops, to a prodigious boom of drums. A hideous howl goes up and the dead girl and boy are dragged from the logs, cut up, roasted, and eaten.”

That’s two different orgies, one with everyone in it except the select few and the other with the select few in a single girl who, with her last mate still at it, would be killed, roasted and eaten. And in the morning, they would feel as accomplished as the next guy.

Seconds to Disaster, the cuisine.

Before that grosses you out, the Mardurdjara Aborigines of Australia have a solution for all men who have trouble peeing with an erection in the morning. It’s simple, during male initiation, the boy would be made to cannibalize his own foreskin. He has to, essentially, swallow ‘his own boy”. Disgusted? Relax, later, the young man gets a second incision “…on the underside of the penis right from the frenulum, the head, all the way to somewhere near the scrotum…” This means that he has to squat to urinate so there gentlemen, problem solved? Anthropologists think it’s meant to simulate menstruation, essentially to sympathize with women. In the comments here , the commenter says that the nick was also used as a form of contraception because a pebble could be placed inside there to stop the semen from flowing into the vagina during intercourse.

    Marriage orgies are an interesting primitive cultural element, but it has not quite died down. In modern weddings, especially those done in the Western world, ‘gang kissing’ the bride is an accepted and expected part of the wedding ceremony. Gang kissing itself traces its roots to a tradition in some cultures where a marriage ceremony would end ‘…with people other than the groom being granted full sexual access to the bride’. Freud defined as the ‘..bride taking on all the men present.”

    Among the Dahari of India, however, exists a slightly different version where any woman married into a family (not a particular man) has to have sex with all the brothers. That means that a wealthy family is known by how many wives they own between them, as opposed to how many cars, acres of land, jet planes or even bank amounts.

   Among the Chickasaw matrilineal system, a man moved into his wife’s home after approval by her mother and sisters. Once accepted, he was culturally allowed to have sex with all her sisters, married or otherwise. I should probably end that part with a disclaimer that you should not try that at home, but you go ahead, refuse to give a fuck and go all Chickasaw on your wife and her sisters. Also, please like before you do it, in case they have an internet connection in the part of hell you will be relegated to after your wife chickasaw’s your behind!