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A literary monument to the murder of Innocence

"The bandages swathed her innocent young body
the women broke down and wept...
Then they found their voices."
The Daily Nation: December 5th, 2003

The prayer between her lips quivered in high octaves, and higher still, until it shook the earth beneath her and split the darkness within into a thousand invisible voices. She crouched on the earthen floor of her hut like a foetus digging its way back to the womb of the earth, the dried ash-gray skin of her knees almost touching her chin, her forehead pressed tightly to the ground in a sorrowful supplication of the damned. The dark cave of her mouth mourned whimpers of mercy in wretched spasms, scratching the weary walls of her throat within, and causing her to sit up with a sudden choke that begged release. She coughed uncontrollably, tears of fear and anxiety streaming down her face. My child, my child. Lord, bring me my baby.

She begged.

The women of Gatamaiyu village sat like a buffer against the floods around Mukami. They had tired of trying to calm her down and they now swayed on the floor of the wooden shack to one hymn after another. It had been a long evening and the midnight hour was already at hand. A few hours ago, right after the sun had shaken off the last of its daylight dust, the shrill cry of Mukami's voice had pooled the entire village of tea-pickers to her house, an untidy structure that stood at the end of a row of rectangular prefabs. They were quarters build for the tea factory workers, each one a replica of the next. The only difference was in the content of humanity that lived within these structures. Some were families, big and small, old and young. Mothers struggling to eke out a living for their one-too-many young ones. Fathers with festering dreams of bequeathing thoughts of grandeur to sons who slipped away from their grasp with each waking day. Single adults with secrets that hung openly on the ever diminishing frames of their bodies, trailing behind them the villagers' whispers of I-know-what-you-have. Their harvest baskets intoxicated with the acid gloom of a dreadful end to come.

Yet in this desperate neighbourhood of tea-pickers in Gatamaiyu village, there hung a mist of defiant hope. That hope was housed in the babes whose innocence had not yet been defiled by the knowledge of this world. Whenever one observed an adult gazing into the eyes of a toddler, one could see a pair of cracked lips stretch into a smile and linger there on a haggard face like a suspension bridge across a turbulent river. The innocence of children was the fountain of unspoken hope that kept mothers and fathers waking every morning. It was in them that the adults invested all the dreams they had failed to achieve. The children who came unplanned and demanding the last drop of borrowed resources, also held the key to another life, another world, another new day.

Mukami had been picking tea at the plantation for three years. She had moved into the workers' quarters with her little girl, Shiku, when the child was barely a year old. Mukami herself was barely out of high school then. Unplanned motherhood had prevented her from going on to the polytechnic where she had hoped to study carpentry. She was born of the spirit of the woods. She had a talent for moulding the material that came from the forests. At her high school, she has astounded both male and female teachers with the products of her imaginative mind and deft hands which she displayed in the workshop during parents' day. Woodwork was by far her favourite subject.

One day, while she worked alone at the workshop, it suddenly came to her what she was going to do when she left school. She would open the first coffin shop in her village. How inconveniencing that people had to travel to a shopping centre twenty miles away to order a coffin. She would make the most beautiful home-going boxes at very affordable rates for the village. And when the business grew, she would build her parents a decent house before she opened another shop where she would make chairs and tables and the little pretty cupboards for the kitchen. Mukami had smiled at her dream before she heard the smack of a rough hand at the back of her head. It was Mr. Ngumo. He was shouting at her and raining down an inferno of bad breath which almost drowned her to a faint.

"What are you ndoing here arone smiring rike a foo'? Ngo to your crassroom now!" Mr. Ngumo screamed.

It was evening study time already and Mukami had lost track of time. She quickly mumbled an apology and headed to class to do her math homework. Her last days of high school were full of bounce. She could not wait to finish her exams and embark on her mission.

It was during that tense time of waiting for results that Mukami met her first serious boyfriend. He was a neighbour who had also just completed high school. During a moment of passion and abandon, she conceived, he ran away, and the dream deserted her. By the time the results came around, she had missed her periods once, and she was looking at grades good enough to take her to one of the public universities. The polytechnic was also offering her a one year scholarship through a grant program that would start the following year. By then she would be a single parent. Her parents preferred the University option and promised to work hard to help her raise the first semester fees. But they soon found out about her pregnancy. She felt as if she was suspended between a soft place, a cushion, and the burning hell-fire below. As the months went by, an admission letter to Egerton University to study Education arrived. Confusion reigned. Priorities shifted. Somewhere in the place where her purpose resided, she felt a light go out. That was almost five years ago.

Soon after Shiku's birth, Mukami decided to follow her mother's advice and look for a job as a tea-picker in the plantation. She got the job and moved into the workers' quarters while her mother took care of her baby. Months turned into a year, and a year into two. All of Mukami's struggles were centred on feeding her daughter, hoping that someday, she will overcome, and her dream would revisit her. But once again, she found herself carelessly seeking comfort in the arms of another nondescript lover. She conceived her second child, Nduta, born the year Mukami had promised to start classes at the polytechnic. Her admission to Egerton University was something she had decided was safer to forget. With the birth of Nduta, Mukami's dreams faded away yet again.

She now lived with both her children, and her mother was always a close help who Shiku adored dearly. Whenever she visited, little Shiku would bounce up the black soil path with excess energy shouting "Cucu! Cucu! Cucu!" in that sing-song way only a child's affection could compose. Her grandma would scoop her up, feed her with the mukimu she always prepared specially for her, tie her to her back, and move on with chores around the house with a ceaseless song and a sense of belonging. Shiku was her grandma's source of joy and fountain of hope. The aging woman lived for the moments she spent with her granddaughter. The two shared a name. It was well known that one's namesake was one's reincarnation. Mukami allowed grandmother and granddaughter all the spoiling they needed of each other. She had Nduta to take care of. And foolishness to avoid.

Time had gone by, and four year-old Shiku was growing fast. Her two year-old sister, Nduta, fought her sister as a second born always does; that primordial war against the firstborn for snatching the secondborn's right to be first.

On this Sunday, Mukami had noticed that Shiku had woken up with a temperature higher than usual. She had done the usual chit-chat with neighbours after church and made lunch for her children. By evening, Shiku seemed to be developing a steady fever. Cucu was not around on this day to help. Mukami was getting worried. She began to feel the grip of fear and loneliness. Shiku started to cry. Her mother took her firstborn in her bosom and tried to rock the fever out with lemonade and a soothing song. Little Nduta sat next to her mother on the floor and held on to Shiku's toe, helping rock her to wellness. When she was tired of holding on to her big sister's toe, she lay her head on her mother's lap and rocked along, a tear streaming silently down her face. Her two year-old mind could not yet comprehend what she felt, neither was she consciously aware that she was in the process of formulating the first emotional memory that would stick with her for the rest of her life. Compassion.

Later in life, she would remember the emotion without recalling the incident. She would remember that it felt like sorrow, a deep sorrow with a softness that kept sliding off the fingers. It felt like a part of you hurt terribly and you could not physically touch it. It felt like pain that escaped from its bearer and got caught in your own ribcage, welling up to escape again through silent tears. It felt like wishing a wish for someone that you could not make come true just by wishing it. Compassion. It felt like a black hole in one's heart that could only be lit by touching another's heart. Nduta was not aware of her own subconscious wishes. How she wished she could make her sister feel better. Take away her pain. Stop her from crying. She rocked on with her mother, the only thing she could do.

The sun had already gone down, and Shiku was now sweating profusely. The closest hospital was a two-mile walk and a twenty shillings bus ride away. But there was a kiosk about a quarter of a mile away that served the workers till midnight. She decided to leave the children in the house and run for some pain-relievers. Some panadol would definitely do some good. She put Shiku on her bed and left Nduta sitting on the floor. It was seven-thirty. Some of the neighbours were having their dinner outside, especially the single men who lived alone. They would sit outside or leave their doors open so they could see all the females who went by. They were like merchandize on display. Mukami was never bothered by their behaviour. Afterall, some women had taken to the same behaviour as well in subtler forms. Everyone needed someone.

On her way out, Mukami caught the glow of a yellow shirt against a lamp in one of the houses. It was one of her very shy neighbours. He sat quietly holding a plate of food on his lap. He was alone in his house with his door open, slightly facing outside, perhaps for fresh air. He never talked much. Everyone believed he was an outsider, from a neighbouring country, but no one seemed to know how they had come to that information. He might have talked to someone who talked to someone. Or someone might have imagined it and told it to someone as if it were the truth. Mostly, he kept to himself. Mukami was sure he had noticed her and she felt compelled to shout out a greeting. Really, it's rude to assume someone, she reprimanded herself. But in the next second, she decided not to bother him and she quickly took the dirt road to the kiosk. She had a sick daughter waiting for her.

In less than fifteen minutes, Mukami was running back into her house with her purchase. Without looking at her bed, she went straight for a glass of water so she could administer the medicine. And then, just as she was about to pour out the water, something caught her attention. It was the silence. An eerie kind of noiselessness. Between the time it took for this thought to register, and for her to turn around, Mukami's world had turned into a monster, grabbed her with its tentacles, shoved her down its throat, and ground her frame into a pulp of horror. Shiku was missing! She does not know how the scream left her lips. Nduta was now crying and could not explain anything. Mukami walked around the small space frantically turning every stool and spoon upside down.

The neighbours had heard the primal scream first time around and they came flocking towards Mukami's house. Instinctively, Mukami noticed that the man with the yellow shirt was not among those who had answered her call of distress. Maybe he was already asleep. She ran out to call him so he could help search for her daughter. When she knocked on his door, there was no answer. She turned the knob to open, but the room was empty. Oh well. Mukami went back to her house and told the neighbours how she had left to get medication for her daughter, came back and found one of them missing. The neighbours set off on a search for little Shiku. They combed the entire neighbourhood for close to three hours and came up with nothing. With every advancing minute, Mukami felt a rope tighten around her neck. The men decided it was wiser to retire to bed and resume the search at daylight.

The women stayed with Mukami and swayed to the sounds of their hymns, their voices rising above the darkness of the moment, out through the door, into the night, and ascended the trees of the nearby Githunguri forest that had stood vigil in this land of watchful ancestors.

Yea though I walk in death's dark vale
Yet will I fear none ill
For thou art with me...

The forests swayed in the wake of the spirituals sung in the tongues of the people. The treetops whistled in the midnight winds, receiving the women's voices as they rode on an inspired traditional tilt that defied borrowed music. Mukami's prayer got stuck in her throat as the women lifted their voices higher still.

In the chill of the night, deep in the Githunguri forest where the predator had hidden away with his prey, the monster began his orgy. The roots of the trees sucked in the first blood of murdered innocence. They mourned with every thrust into the purity of little Shiku's womb. They groaned the groan of the ravaged. The feverish thrust and theft and tearing went on and on and on. The little girl screamed. The sound a brutal slap to silence her crushed her little jaws and slammed the lights out of her conscious mind, sending her to a welcome stillness. A human soul must not bear witness. She finally lay limp as her spirit found the strength to climb the trunks of the trees and escape the excesses of cruelty upon her already bloodied body.

The demons that had taken hold of the predator kept drumming up a frenzy, urging him not to stop until he got his release. He had no idea how he got the strength to stab and thrust and stub and thrust into a tiny bundle all through the night. By the time he was done, he could not recognize his victim. She was but a mangled wreck of former innocence covered in gore that ran from her ears, nose, mouth and between her legs. The light from her still eyes had gone out. That door from which the hope of human goodness had shone out to so many neighbours seemed tightly shut now. He was done. He commanded his demons to cease the drumming. He took one last look at her, caught a whiff of the stench of faeces that oozed from other ruptured orifices, and instinctively spat on her face. The yellow of the predator's shirt disappeared out of the forest that had seen it all and borne the poison of the orgy for generations to come.

Right before the searching light of the morning sun began to descend, the forest wrapped its warmth around the little girl, whispered a secret wisdom into her tiny ears, breathed a flame of life down her twitching throat, and sung:

O Creator of this precious child
Bless this land that drinks of her blood
Justice be her shield and defender
May she dwell in love and forgiveness
Compassion be found within her spirit

The morning light led to the gruesome discovery of Shiku's unconscious body in the forest. Shock, anger, outrage, and things unspoken flowed freely from the neighbours who had spent the night in search of little Shiku. It wasn't long before the neighbour with the yellow shirt that had glowed against the lamp was found with an equally gruesome confession to make. After Mukami recovered somewhat from the sight of her daughter, and the shock that she still had breath of life, she gathered strength, cleaned up the child, cradled her, and rushed her to the local hospital. They soon transferred her to a city hospital where they would reconstruct all that had been ripped apart, broken, and mangled. What mother was not prepared for was how far her daughter's story would be heard. The neighbours' outrage had quickly reached the ears of a journalist who put story to paper.

A week later, on an ordinary Wednesday in the city of Nairobi, a Minister in the August house picked up a newspaper to catch up with matters of national import. On this day, she was due to table a controversial bill which the opposition had promised to defeat. They hated her guts, and she knew it. She knew another thing they hated too: a woman standing up to men. Those who had not overcome their chauvinistic upbringing still trembled with indignation at the mere idea that a vagina and a thought could co-exist in a woman. That is why some of them, dignified in position as they were, would still attack a woman below the belt; afterall, there was nothing in the head to attack. The last attack she remembered was a male Member lashing out at female "indecency" in the House. How dare the Minister wear pants in the August House! The pants in question had been part of a formal beige lady's suit she liked to wear. But she understood the genesis of this attack. A week before, the male Member had approached her and made a lewd overture, to which she had responded, "Mheshimiwa, zip up your pants!" She meant he should keep his indecent thoughts zipped up in his head.

That is when he decided to hang her in public by making her pants, literaly, an issue of national concern. What a miscalculation. An army of women and men all over the nation rallied to the Minister's side and left the Member's unzipped ego terribly traumatized. She chuckled. And almost immediately felt old bile pile up in her. She remembered that this was the same Member who got away with the rape of his fourteen year-old niece who had been living with his family as a housemaid. The clueless girl had had to explain how she got pregnant, and the case had quickly found its way to the media. Charges were filed against the parliamentarian rapist. Money changed hands. The case was dropped. A few months later, a child was born to a child. The memory tasted like quinine in the Minister's mouth. Subconsciously, she snapped her spine straight as a soldier, then relaxed into the soft cushions of the armchair.

As she turned to page three of the newspaper, she casually decided to read a story that had the headline "Demonic ordeal for little girl." She quickly realized it was a tale of rape. Not another one, she thought. These stories had become so commonplace she had decided to stop reading them. There was little she could do. Besides, she felt she needed some emotional distancing if she was to do anything meaningful for the nation. But for some reason, she continued to read beyond the first paragraph, and before she knew it, she had read the whole story, remained transfixed to the chair, and absent-mindedly let the tears well up in her eyes. Down the corridor, a female colleague approached her excitedly, anticipating a warrior's greeting from the Minister. But all she got were a pair of tear-logged eyes. Quietly, the Minister handed her colleague the paper, and she read the story.

Within half an hour, a group of eight of the most power women in the nation had gathered in the cafeteria of the August house, dropped all scheduled business for the day, and begun a silent march towards the city hospital where the child was reported to be in medical care. No one heard their footsteps. No one heard the beat of the anthem that clicked below their heels and pushed them forward. No one saw the army that had begun to march on out of the forests of silence, theft, oppression, and persecution.

And so the army of eight women stood around a crib that held a smiling baby girl, swathed in bandages, oblivious of her own pain, oblivious of the power that surrounded her, oblivious of the eye of the world that watched her, oblivious of the forest that will never desert her. The women looked at this little heroine with awe and felt small in their own skins. Their unspoken questions got stuck in the soft palate behind their tongues, the very tongues that fought fearlessly in the chambers of parliament. How did she survive, they wondered. She called out, "Cucu, eha Cucu?" Grandma soon appeared from a corner where she had been talking to a nurse, and the little girl's face lit up with life. A spark stood twinkling in the eyes that had been tortured to a surrender only a few days back. Grandma was here. Right there stood the answer to the survival of the human spirit. It was the reincarnation of unconditional love passed on from one generation to another that kept us going. Little Shiku had survived for all the victims who had perished.

Mukami could talk very little. For the most part, she just wept. It was ok to weep. The women, still unable to speak, cuddled the little girl and allowed their tears to fall freely, washing her tiny arms and healing their own deeper wounds within. Theirs were the wounds of soldiers suffered through years of battling for the stifled voices of over-burdened mothers, the anguish of young girls growing up in a world of confusion, the silent tears of little children who did not understand the sexual assault on their persons. A soldier does not display her wounds; she marches on until the battle is won. They wept silently.

And when they finally found their voices, the anthems of the forests rose up to meet the power of their resolve. The cry of justice rang across the nation, past the oceans, and into the hearts of all the children of Kenya scattered on the face of the earth.

This literary monument is dedicated to all the children of Kenya who through the years have become mere statistics as victims of rape and sexual violence. May the story of Shiku restore to them the human face we must look into and cause us to arise to the call of justice. The monument is inspired by the story of "Baby Jane" that appeared in the Daily Nation of December 5th, 2003, titled, "MPs in tears over rape victim aged 4". It is this story that led to the foundation of the STOP! Campaign against child molestation.

Note: All characters are a fictional expansion of the writer's own imagination. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Mkawasi Mcharo Hall
© mkmc jul2004 washington, dc