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 Joys and Art of Being an Uncle

I have a theory; being an uncle, a good uncle at that, is much harder than being a good father. One can be a good father without much extra effort per se, but the status of the good uncle that the children run to when he walks through the gate is an honor that must be earned. I agree that fatherhood is a task but it has a greater guarantee of success than simply being the happy uncle.

You hope that when they are old enough to see you for who you really are, they will still love you as much as they do now.

You do not care that they call you by your family nickname.

The task of being an adult in a childish world and then being a child among children is difficult. Your official duties are to be fun and act goofy because you have a ready audience that appreciates.

The grandmother is the ultimate ally of her grandchildren but the good uncle must strike a balance. He must be the man who gives the children good advice about life, the functional godfather to whom questions parents can not answer or requests they cannot fulfill are directed. Such requests can never be denied with good reason, because being an uncle is a fulltime job.

One must bribe with sweets, and then at a certain age switch to sinful delicacies such as chocolate, ice-cream and then, when you can no longer keep up, money for ‘lunch’ that is given immediately after a heavy meal.

The worst thing is that this series of bribes which I believe is the root of our corrupt nature seems innate. My two nephews and five nieces are masters of the art, seven little hoodlums who believe their only maternal uncle can get them anything they have been denied. He is the one who always knows what to get them for their birthdays.

He makes effortless, despite the fact that it takes extensive research and head scratching in supermarkets and gift shops trying to figure out how to impress a six year old. He cannot tell them that he engaged the supermarket attendant on why smaller toy cars are far more expensive that the much bigger one. The clearly clueless girl said the only thing that came to mind “Pengine ni juu ni mzito…”

Its tough work, buying presents for a ten-year old girl who is just realizing she is a woman and will now not look at any male older than her straight in the eye. One who cries when I hug her and tell her she has an open cheque if she gets marks past a certain point this term. How much can a child really spend? At least that’s what am hoping, that she will ask only for a book or some sort of glossy girly appliance, maybe a make-up kit. I am hoping she does not confer with her mother before she cashes her open cheque, otherwise I will have to sign a pay deal with her to pay in installments for ten to thirty years.

There is the young boy who just turned six. He loves his cars, but he is too soft for a boy his age. He is constantly beaten by his younger cousins, and he cries like a girl, and his uncle, being the caring man figure in his life, makes a point of pointing out his wail is sharper than that f his female cousin. He is sentimental though, his grandmother’s pet. He is happy with whatever it is you buy him, but he prefers cars, the bigger the better. You would think toy manufacturer’s would have figured this and made the bigger ones more expensive, but do not tell them just yet, uncles around the world are constantly saving money.

The other girl is the girl of the group, a mass of lovey dovey chubbiness. She is lovely and intuitive, although sometimes I think she has ADD. She almost fell into the adult pool the other day-okay, we all overreacted. She was walking near the pool and her attention was on something behind so she was not walking in a straight line. Nothing like the scream of four adults to “look where you are going’ to snap her back into this world.

She hates school. At four years old you would think you can bribe her into learning but no, not with this one. Every Sunday like clockwork she wakes up at six thirty in the morning and shouts for her mother:

” Mum! Mum! Mum”…
”Yeeees”….
”Leo ni kwa shule? ” (Is today a school day?)
”Apana”…. (No its not)
”Ooooh”

…. and her head falls back onto the pillow and she goes back to a world where her attention does  not have to be on one thing. A world with no kindergarten, no screaming adults, no children yearning for her toys. A world where she still has the whole set of kitchen toys her uncle spent a whole hour picking out in a toy shop. A world where she can hit her cousins without being hit back or having to run away until someone falls and the adults start screaming for order.
Then there’s the one with cute looks and at three, he knows it. He has a look that will make you and your  time-hardened sentiments melt. He has declared war and plunder on the action figures I have around my house, and has been declared persona non grata until arrangements can be made to either negotiate with him for something better to his baby eyes or hide them until he leaves.

He is the official tyrant, the one for whom you must buy presents every time there is a birthday, whether or not it is his being a non-issue. The option is having to watch a boy fuss and start fighting, and as much as I am an objective viewer and do not necessarily support answering to a baby’s every whims, peace is of the essence. He loves school because he can whoop other kids and get away with it with his killer looks.

He is the boy who still cannot believe that an “S’ is not a half of ‘8’. Before he learnt some self-restraint, you had to stop him from completing the ‘S’ as an ‘8’, which would then become some pattern, before slowly degenerating into a scribbling activity.
Then there is the diva who can pose better than most professional models. She is a complex kid who once spoke Kiswahili with a Luo accent, I think it was due to teacher influence, but it has now faded into a tweng. She knows three words, or maybe two, in Kikuyu, and is many years older in her head than she is on the birth certificate.

She is the official diva who got a phone the other day and called her uncle who, having had his fair share of random callers, pulled a paranoid ‘Wewe ni nani’ move and she went like “You don’t remember me?” and hang up. Imagine the shame when he was called by her mother and then had to call and apologize profusely to a five year old while declaring his undying love and assuring her that he had never, and never would, forget her. What is with women, even at such an early age, and making such a fuss about the amnesia present in most of our male minds? I have concluded it is a primal need, maybe evolutionary, and that I, as an uncle, must foster its progression or suffer unrequited affection.
Then there’s her sister, a wiry cute girl with looks that make you just want to hug her all the time. She has a deep voice that makes you wonder whether her levels of testosterone are too high for her two-year old body. She has a lazy eye I cannot ignore and since her mother showed me how to temporarily ‘fix it’, I keep waiting for it to be left behind. Trying to take a picture of her in motion can be a problem because she is random, like the uncle, and will pull retarded moves without batting an eye at what the rest of the world thinks. You either hear her laughing or crying, and sometimes saying a word or two to her sister.

Then there’s the new baby, fresh from wherever it is babies are born from. This one has only seen her uncle on Skype, and she is not yet aware of the immense emotional power she holds on her uncle even at three months of age. I do not know how long I have before I have to start picking gifts for her online and sending them so I can buy my rightful position as an uncle.

The work of an uncle can be daunting, but it is fulfilling. The uncle is the objective one who has enough ignorance and book-knowledge to dole out parenting advice to the mothers of the kids and watch them listen keenly to his assessments of their personalities. He has to pay his way through numerous birthday parties and visiting days, and is tied down whenever some muscle is needed to take the kids to the bouncing castle.

The best thing is that he is just at the limit of the weight limit and retarded enough to, once in a while, remove his shoes and join in the fun and bounce! The falls have to be light enough to not bounce the kids out, and the long legs must be worked around the knee-high children all over the castle. If it is too full, some must be bribed to leave so the adult can have his share of bouncy fun, before going back to the adults with a wide grin on his face and wild ideas about how he should get a bouncing castle in his bachelor pad.
The ideal uncle is the complete package; reliable, efficient, resourceful, compromising, easily manipulated, and constant.  The journey to being the uncle who will have to hide his niece’s or nephew’s first night out, or to drive out in the middle of the night to punch a boy or girl who took his charge to the club begins when the child is born.

The uncle has a sacred duty to maintain a balance of trust between the parents, grandparents and the children, and to always be firm without being too much of an ass to the most important party, the child. He must handle the banter of numerous children running around his bachelor pad, ruining every semblance of a secretly-OCD personality. He must resist the motherly urge to go about screaming for order, or the fatherly one to give the look that signifies a sudden switch from play to a high likelihood of pain.

What does he get in return? Assuming he plays his cards well, he will always have a ready group of eager and possibly irresponsible baby sitters if he ever decides to take the plunge into fatherhood himself. This willing team will always have his back, at least in his mind. Secretly, he begins to view them as his own team A, a secret cartel of chocolate-smugglers and cash-deal hoodlums willing to smooch him on the cheek to get money to but a toy watch that will be dropped into the pool less than half an hour later. This cartel has no leader, for the adult is a team player who, while maintaining a face of maturity and calm, bubbles with plots of childish mischief and retarded facial expressions to amuse the little rascals.

When you begin the journey to being an uncle, and more often than not you will be forced to adapt to it, then be ready to have your sanity questioned. You will learn to hold an argument about whether the ‘o’ comes before the ‘e’ in ‘people’ during a game of Scrabble. You will learn that it is not important to win, and you should resist the urge to whip out your smartphone and show the kid she is wrong. Instead you will let her win, and hope that when she becomes older the vowels will fall into their rightful place, or they will have integrated autocorrect into some brain microchip. You will learn to sit in the middle of a group of kids, three somehow seated on you and one on your head while the others step on you at various points without flinching. You will learn to bully them by pushing them around playfully, carrying them upside down in turn and playing risky games that make you look like the ultimate stuntman. You will also learn that the way you memorized the alphabet as ‘A, B, C, ….Z” song is now outdated and has been replaced by phonetic system. Then you learn that the funny sounds the child is making whine doing his homework are not car noises but sounds of the letters of the alphabet, including ‘U’ as ‘A-open sound.’
Wait, did I mention that the small toy car whose seemingly high price resulted in a lengthy conversation with a supermarket attendant was not to bribe my way into being the crafty uncle? It was mine, this 1955 Buick Century model…a man as certain needs that transcend age

 

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!

 

 

 

The Boy, the Frog and the Blow Job

The blank page stares back…

I have told some morbid tales in my time…

Every writer knows that a good story is one that he or she can write about over and over again, in a hundred ways, and never tire of. It is a bit of an over-reach, I know, because even I cannot bring myself to read stories I have written….all am saying is, I have written this story before, but I doubt you have read it.

Where to start?

1997: Kenya is facing the worst rains in recorded history, the torrential El Nino rains are causing mudslides and flash floods in almost all areas where it normally rains. In a public primary school in a simple village in central province, the rain pounds the buildings. In the middle of the night, the entire girl’s washroom’s block gives way, or rather, sinks within itself, and is swallowed in, well, that stuff that is under a long haul latrine…

The Board meets the next day, officials from the Ministry are all over the place. Should they close the school? They decide against it and instead, get the ground covered, and convert one line of boy’s washrooms for use by the ladies. No one complains, who would dare, no one has foreseen the complications of a girl peeing on one side, and on the other, a cheeky boy is peeping through the wooden partition, get images that will probably haunt him, in a nice way, for the entirety of his life…

A new trend emerges in the two years before a new ultra-modern line of washrooms are built, boys tend to avoid their urinals and washrooms unless it is an utter necessity, girl’s hold it in (This always sounds so wrong, like its an army one should let out) and everyone gets an education…

All is well, until one day, something extraordinary happens…

During a break/recess (whatever the children call it this days), a group of boys plays football with a ball (its not really round, but it once was, and a rose is a rose even in Russia) made of string and paper, and probably sponge. They are divided into two teams, sweaters and shirts, and the battle will go on until the thirty minute break is cut short by the sound of a bell ringing from the Class Seven East, 100 metres away.

All is well, until one boy needs to take a piss, should he go all the way to the washrooms, all the way across the field, towards the classes, through the hallway, down towards the toilets? And pee at the risk of a girl peeping through the partition at his privates? The humiliation… Its far, and his little class Four legs will take the entire fifteen minutes left on the clock to get there and back even if he runs like a madman, or more correctly, boy.

What is this little boy to do?

Then *bulb* above head…

He walks to the edge of the field, near a shallow ditch that is used for short jump, and when filled with grass, flipping (dislocated shoulders and arms, story for another day.). He lies down on the grass, like he is planking, then looks around him. Everyone is busy making the best of the time they have left, some girls are playing volleyball fifty metres away from him, but they are too engrossed in their game to notice him. The Class Eight pupils have the entire football field, and his friends are playing on without him… there are the lazy ones just lying on the grass, basking like lizards, flirting, sleeping…but no one seems to be paying attention to him.

He quickly opens his zip, reaches for it and pulls it out and then lies on his stomach. Just before he starts the hose, he feels a hole right on the spot where he is about to do his thing.

Interesting.

He can pee and pretend he is doing that thing adults (and some Class Seven kids) do at night…is this not his lucky day?

So he *inserts* it (you cringe) into the hole he just felt on the ground and opens the hose…..

In the hole, a different story is brewing…

A frog was just minding his own business, doing what frogs do in the late morning, in their holes-cum-homes. It is a pretty boring day, nothing much happening in the frog world except the noisy kids again…

Then something interesting happened in the frog’s world…darkness!Where did the sun go, all of a sudden…the frog wonders, then a small snake (which you know is not a snake, right?) touches him (or her, am not sure) and then starts throwing water (which you know is not really water, right?). OH NO! you can see where this is going…a frog has to defend himself, or herself, or themselves?

Above the ground, the little boy’s little soldier rubs against something that feels like the ground, its shallower than he thought. Then he opens the hosepipe, and rolls his eyes…

Under the ground, the frog’s instinct’s go into high gear, this is his holiday home, his playground where he entertains his frogs…he has no weapons, none at webbed hand really, what is he to use against this monster of a thing (its actually pretty small, but who is to tell the frog that)….oh wait, he has his mouth!!!So he attacks…

Above the ground, the boy feels a little pinch, then his little soldier feels weirdly warm, then pain, as if something is sucking it in…

Pain…confusion….

The little boy tries to pull it out, the frog pulls it back in as it sinks its frog teeth in this bad bad spitting snake…

The boy screams, in a field full of screaming children…he screams as loud as a scream can be, but no one hears him, or rather no one thinks he is screaming for help…is he? Is it, maybe, delight??

What is a little boy, who’s little soldier is in the mouth of a frog in a hole, in a field full of screaming children to do?

Then the bell rings and the children, all of them but our little-boy-who’s-soldier-is-in-a-frog’s-mouth, run towards their respective classrooms.

He is screaming his head off now, the pain is taking over.

Then someone hears the screams and runs back, another one follows, and another one follows the one who followed first…

They ask him what the matter is, but he cant talk. He is crying, his whole face cringed like he just saw the devil get raped. In the middle of his cries, they make out the words help-me-up. They try to pull him out, but he is in pain, and the frog won’t let go. They try again, and they succeed. They turn him over, and his little thingy is all bloody and swollen, sticking out of his dirty khaki shorts.

A few centimeters away, a frog hops out of a hole, and runs for his frog life, traumatized, in dire need of frog therapy.

Traumatised, hurt, all its innocence taken away...

Our little-boy-who’s-soldier-was-just-in-a-frog’s-mouth is rushed to hospital, where the doctors decide that they might as well circumcise him, make him a man, as they remove the frog venom, or saliva, whichever works for you. They are traumatized too, but its funny in a way, a morbid mortician-I-like-to-be-sucked-by-a-frog-kind-of-way.

He comes back to school destroyed, in need of therapy and amnesia. The girls stare at him in sympathy, the boys in jealousy at the boy who got his first blow job from an actual frog and the teachers, experienced in life and harboring sexual fantasies of their own, in awe that he lives…

The story, as the new washrooms come up and a new big thing happens in the little primary school, slowly becomes a legend, and is soon forgotten by many….almost forgotten, until one day many many years later, a boy who witnessed the last part and then filled in the other parts as the story spread through school, now a man with morbid experiences of his own but none matching that one, writes about in his blog…