Otiato GuguyuThat tea girl, there’s something about her my memory cannot grasp. The boyish smile smudged at the corner of her lips, her brother’s gap between the eyes. And her nose ring, which featured in many lurid wet dreams as a boy. My memory has not been known to be the best. Yes, I can memorise a few numbers enough to pass an exam and enough to remember a pin code. But my recollections are sometimes too far removed from reality. I suspected this could be Rukiya right in front of me after so many years. But I was not sure it was her. She did not recognize me, from the cursory glance she threw me then deflected to more familiar faces in the room. I had to make a quick decision whether to declare I know her or to pretend I did not. I chose the latter, you see I could have been mistaken which can be quite embarrassing. As I pointed out, I have quite a woeful memory. I have walked up to strangers a number of times claiming we had known each other in some shared historical epoch only for it to turn out not to be the case. Those embarrassing situations have taught me better about being the first one to claim camaraderie. I figured if I claimed to know this tea girl as my childhood kalongolongo playmate and she turned out not to be Rukiya I would look stupid. Besides, if I pretend not to recognize her, it gives me an opportunity to recede into my corner of observation and really look at her. The tea girl or Rukiya had a very effectual laugh which brightened the room. She had a silver tooth which gleamed as she smiled while the hot tea throttled into plastic cups. The years had been kind to her, hopefully healed her and by god hopefully she had forgiven me.
That might have been the real reason I had been afraid of claiming familiarity. That historical epoch we shared was clouded by a heinous crime. As a child I had not processed that epoch as I was incapable of fully comprehending what it had really meant and as an adult, I was not too sure about the soundness of my memory. You see when we were children Rukiya was defiled, and I was there when it happened
I am not certain of the facts that surround October the sixth of 1995. However I have very loose childhood memories of that traumatic day. I had woken up that morning upbeat about the day ahead of me and the excitement it bore. We used to live in Usaid in a tiny two bedroomed standalone house perched on the slopes that descended into the slums of Obunga. It was a slums upgrading programme for potential peasants who would serve the posh Tom Mboya estate households, a gated community that stretched away from the slums towards the city. That day we were going to visit the seminary in Ojolla and my whole being was giddy with elation.
As a child I had fancied I would become a priest. I had read Mary’s Pilgrim: Life of St. Peregrine, and was convinced I would walk the pious way of the cross.
Mary’s Pilgrim was very influential to me as I had just graduated from the Lady Bird series as I scoured through the small home library my Father had built. It was the most enticing book that stood out from the Barclays Bank magazines on the shelves or my elder siblings’ school books.
This book about a young man’s journey through life. How he became a dissident and even a highway legend criminal like robin hood, but through God and a pilgrimage life is turned around and it’s a painful book that has faltered form my memory now but it gave me a purpose in life. To reach out and fix the pains in this world. And how better than by being a priest. Another story that I think got me was the Uganda Martyrs. Mother used to read us a chapter a night, and it gave me religious reverence. It influenced my childhood especially seeing my brother as an altar boy at Kibuye church. To me he was like Kizito and the other martyr children. Cloaked in long flowing robes enacting a ritual of life and death before hundreds of people, they had stolen my reverence in the grace with which they handled Mass service. It gave them an angelic aura, a levitation that captured my young mind. I so wanted to be an altar boy, religious and a devotee of God at the Kibuye Catholic Church, although I dreaded going through catechism first. The stories made me want to be a mass server and helped overcome the fear of catechism, and to reward my pious decision mother had organised a trip for me to visit the seminary. You should have seen how promising I looked and how mama was proud I might turn out as a priest. She dated one, an Italian but that is a story for another day.
They should have warned me though. Now with such adoration of a former lover swaddled on me, I was ingratiated towards this profession and I took it seriously. Father Ojolla offered to apprentice me and take me on a tour of the Ojolla seminar. You see where memory befuddles me. How come we called him Father Ojolla because he came from Ojolla parish? That means we did not even know his real name. We were children for all I recall. But that childhood was about to be stolen.
Now Father Ojolla would come and pick me, although it was more of, pick us up. Mother wanted my sisters to come along too, so they may learn something about disciplined Catholic sisters. Mother felt the more they needed an invincible power the more she could channel her authority as his representative, as a creator. And the crowd just got bigger after my sister dragged Rukiya along for the excursion. The two were inseparable like siamese twins and not even a christian excursion would have convinced a muslim girl to keep away from her best friend.
I was pretty excited, I remember. It was such an excursion, my first time to travel without a parent, that it was for a long time an anchor memory. I kept the sight clear in my mind like a postcard. If you have ever seen how the slopes undulate down Ojolla hills into the vast flatness falling into a silverfish cesspool of Lake Victoria, like the iris of an eye. It looked so beautiful with the sun dangling grimly purple through thick clouds. The rains were good so the vegetation was plush, thick bushes with leaves as wide as a saucepan exhibiting the abundance. And the drive was thrilling, fast, as if on the back of a stiff horse galloping on tarmac that unfolded like a heated black carpet sweating mirages. At the missionary we saw many things. We visited holy sites, crossed ourselves in front of the icons and prayed next to God. We had a meal during which Rukiya had a heated argument because she was Muslim. Then we went home. The day was special.
That is how I remembered it the first time.
However I could not explain why that song had stuck in my mind. I take a ride On a minibus, destination Kingston, suddenly we get to a stop then I look around, it was a red light green light yellow light turning upside down, red light green light yellow light I don’t know what to do. Pappa piiipiip, traffic jam, in the city. Why did this song stick so adamantly in my head. Where had I heard it. Was it in the matatu going or coming back or was it at Father Ojolla’s house. What were we doing at his house? With hindsight I figure after being traumatized certain central events may be remembered forever as this is an adaptive outcome. The brain has learned that this is important, remember it because it could later save your life.
Now the next morning Rukiya’s mother comes pounding at our door. She is a huge woman of ill repute. The gossip here is that he has two husbands. She is a kept woman for an Arab who probably had a wife somewhere else. She also had a Swahili lover, a lean man that made himself scarce when his worthier competitor showed up. She is a strong voluptuous woman and has a tongue that can cut through unrefined gossipers. Her flabby hands were gathered around her loose dera and silky scarves that dangled off her oily hair. Something terrible had happened I could tell, by the way she dabbed the end of her scarf on her eyes.
Rukiya had been defiled. I had a very vague idea of sex at the time, scanty stories from Rukiya’s brother Habib. He was my bosom friend as a child but had carnal knowledge. One day he told us that our dudu, limp penises had sperms in them like little tadpoles. I could not believe there were tadpoles in our dicks which went into women if we had tabia mbaya.
Another time he came with a condom packaging and showed us from the illustrations giving instructions on how to use the latex, what happens when adults do the thing. But what was this rape thing?
I could tell it was serious business by the way it was talked about in low tones. Rukiya was placed before the adults in the wide sitting room and she looked squeamish on the seats like she could fall over and disappear into the ground. She was crying and kept twisting her fingers into the embroidered set covers to reduce the torture that she was going through. The adults interrogated her as she wept and recounted how that evening Father Ojolla had offered to show her why the Christian faith was better than her Muslim one. The tall lanky priest with huge rimmed glasses had told her he had this book in a room at the end of the corridor from where we were. And she had naively gone to retrieve the book following the instruction very keenly. And then he had followed her after she had stayed away for a while, still trying to find the book. And had left the rest of us in a room where loud music played on a three CD changer. …it was a red light green light yellow light turning upside down, red light green light yellow light I don’t know what to do. Pappa piiipiip, traffic jam, in the city.
Now she had broken down crying. And the agitation in the room was so tight as the adults comprehended the gravity of the accusations. Someone would have to fetch Father Ojolla to hear his side. I could see the lean limbs of Rukiya tighten as if she had been electrocuted. One of the adults mentioned the police. Rukiya’s little toes now dug painfully into the carpet as she squirmed. Then the interrogation from the adults started tearing at her scrambled mind. Was she sure about what she was saying? Her accusations would put a man of god in jail for a very long time. She has to be sure it happened as she had described it.
I could see mama did not believe her. She obviously felt the girl was being pressured by her mother to make the spurious allegations. Either it was her dislike for Rukiya’s mother or her devotion to the church that clouded her judgement. Or mother was scared she had put the children in harm’s way and it was all her fault. If it was true, then what had happened to Rukiya could as well have happened to Mother’s own daughters. And she had delivered the children to the lion’s den like sacrificial lambs. She did not want to carry that guilt on her head and was the most stern of the adults in the questioning.
“My own children told me their version of events and it was nowhere near what you have just told us, are you making this up? Are you sure? You need to understand that you may send a man of god to jail if you are lying,” Mother was saying as Rukiya’s mother’s huge eyes bulged from the soreness of crying and alarm at the line of questioning the Christians had taken. Rukiya also looked helplessly from one adult to another and saw the accusatory eyes that questioned her version of reality.
Now it was up to us to either confirm her allegations or damn her and her accusations. Mother turned to us and asked us to relate our own version of the account. Now last evening Mother had been enthralled when we had briefed her about the trip. She had listened wide eyed like a little girl as we recounted how we had knelt at the icons and kissed the limestone feet of the delicate Mary that trampled on the devil represented by a snake. We told her that Rukiya due to her religious sensibilities had declined to prostrate herself to this Roman version of deity. And her eyes had hardened. She was angry we had taken that Muslim girl along whose mother was of ill repute. Those bad habits she was picking among my sisters were probably influenced by the girl. She had sternly warned us that we had no idea of the kind of religious war we were in. We were Christ’s soldiers in a war against the devil and heathen religions. We, being the only true religion, should guard against being influenced by people who had lost the true path. Those people will do anything to bring down the church of Christ and we should never align with them.
Had she been right that Rukiya and her mother were involved in a nefarious plot to bring down the Church of Christ? And was I being called upon to defend the representative of the Holy See by giving my account of events. And what really happened that evening? Had I witnessed that crime or was her story influencing my own version of accounts?
My sisters said they do not remember. They had sent me to go after Father Ojolla and Rukiya after they had taken a while to come back. I would be in a better position to tell how I had found them. The adult eyes burned into my skin and I averted my eyes. I felt they could open up my head and read my thoughts and I was afraid. “I found them reading the bible”.
“He is lying,” shouted Rukiya with bewildered eyes. “He came in while I was searching the shelves and groped into my bui-bui feeling for my chest. I turned to protest but he was so big and powerful and I shouted and he choked me so hard I could not breathe. He squeezed me into a corner and touched my private parts I swear, by Allah am not lying,”
“Will you also have some tea?” the tea girl asked. She was standing right there before me and her voice was so clear in my memory that I was sure I was not mistaken. This was Rukiya.
I nodded having failed to find my words. The man next to me smiled knowingly, probably thinking I had been love struck into silence. As Rukiya moved away, the man whispered to me. “You do not want this one, they cut off her wings right before she could fly. She doesn’t do men anymore.”
