STORY THREAD

Last week, my cousin experienced the beating that befell South Migirango MP, Sylvanus Osoro, in the hands of Hon. Simba Arati, when his girlfriend’s father found him inside his house. His girlfriend had invited him to her home in Nyayo Estate while her father

was supposed to be away in the village still extending his village Christmas visit.
She had traveled back to Nairobi after Christmas ahead of her father to take her university exams. After her last exam paper, she invited my cousin, her coursemate, to her home.

‘We were just chilling, bro. I had no other coitus motives whatever. I can’t shag a lady from her parent’s house. Plus, she had insisted that she had the whole house by herself and she was bored. Bro, I was just chilling,’ Kevin shrugged.

He talked labourously, still nursing the pain from the barbarous body mutilation that befell him in the hands of his girlfriend’s father.
Unbeknown to Cecilia, his girlfriend, was that her father had planned to travel back to Nairobi from shags on the same day that she had

hoped to killer her exam hangover with a shagging. An African father will never warn or announced the day when he is coming back home.Maybe Cecilia had missed that important memo about African fathers while growing up.
Kevin said that was sitting on a cozy one-seater leather seat

His legs were stretched on the table, his arms resting on either side of the seat’s arm. His back was resting on a throw-pillow. A TV remote rested an arm stretch away while a glass of whiskey sat on a stool standing next to the seat. ‘I was watching Al Jeezera.

When I turned on the TV, Al Jazeera started playing. I did change it.’ After a short moment of making out, his girlfriend left for the kitchen to prepare lunch.
‘For a moment, I pretended to be an already accomplished retiree man with a cozy house.’ He was overwhelmed.

He was swimming in opulence that wasn’t his, a lavish life that he closed his eyes to dream about, with his girlfriend as his wife. He imagined longer and hoped to open his eyes to the reality of owning that luxurious home with a rich lifestyle.
‘When I opened my eye,

the reality hit me, harder. I was confounded to note that a man was entering the house unannounced. I had not heard him open the door nor walked in. We stared at each other for a few seconds, his eyes brewing with rage each passing second. Panicked, I hurriedly pulled my legs

from the table and sat upright, and fumbled to zip up my trouser. My girl had given me head a few minutes earlier. I had not managed to zip up my trouser yet when the man descended upon my already stricken body with all manners of battering. The man was tall and strong.

Bro, I did not insult him, I did not say a word to bother him nor did I provoke him in any way. He just started assaulting and clobbering me,’ he lamented while echoing the moves that the man pulled while attacking him.
I laughed, helplessly.

‘The man did not need any other motivation to attack you other than the fact that you were sitting on a chair exclusively reserved to him.Old school fathers have special chairs in the house that thou shall’nt anybody else sit on them.

Sitting on that chair signifies their authority. That seat is like the iron throne in the Game of Thrones or as the Golden Stool was to Kings of the Ashanti People. Sitting on it is like challenging their authority in their house. Even if you are the president or

his wife’s pastor, you are not supposed to sit on that chair if you visit his house.
To add more salt to his already injured ego, you were taking his whiskey and watching Al Jazeera. You should have asked his daughter if anyone else watches Al Jazeera in that house

apart from her father. Maybe he would have excused you for shagging his daughter in his house if he found you sitting on a stool, or on another seat and not watching Al Jazeera.’
‘It is not funny,’ My cousin cried. His face still bore the evidence of a diabolic beating.

‘What was your girl’s reaction?’ I asked.
‘She was in the kitchen unaware that her father was attempting murder in the living room’. I laughed. ‘His blows were very heavy. Ordinarily, I would have screamed for help or just bellowed out to express my pain.

My toxic masculinity would not allow me to cry in front of my girl. And I could not fight back because the guy was very strong. His punching echoed that of a trained fighter. My girl was horrified to see her father. She beseeched him to forgive me,’ Kevin narrated.

“Dad, he is my friend, forgive him,’ she begged. Her father stopped beating my cousin, grabbed his shirt’s color, and turned to face his daughter.
‘Run into my bedroom and fetch one of my leather belts,’ her father ordered her. He narrated that his nineteen-year-old girlfriend

rushed to his bedroom without questioning him or wasting a second.
‘I have never seen her as timid, scared, and as obedient as she was before her father.’ He added. ‘When Cecilia returned with the belt, he released my shirt and ordered me to lay down on the floor.’

‘Like teacher’s used to do?’
‘Yes, man. I wanted to challenge him. Ordering to lay down was ridiculous, unacceptable. It had been ages since someone ordered me to lay down for a beating. It was a stub at my ego and masculinity, not especially in front of my girlfriend.

I felt like telling him, ‘na usinitishe’ in Atwoli’s voice.’
‘Did you challenge him?’
‘Prudently, I did not. When he released me, a wall photo mount flashed in my eyes. The man was an ex-military. In the photo, he was in full military regalia.

He was carrying a gun in God known which jungle the photo was captured. I went down on the floor as he had ordered. Not even our deputy school principal was as merciless as that man when disciplining us. He beat me like he was exorcising demons out of my body.’

Cecilia's father whipped him countless times. His girlfriend kept on imploring her father to forgive him. She even took the blame for inviting him into the house and begged her father to punish her instead.
‘Once I am done with this poorly-raised ill-mannered lunatic,

I will deal with you, Cecilia.’
Her father lashed at her with rage. ‘Opportunities knock once in a life-time, bro. When the man lashed out at his daughter, I saw an opportunity to escape from my shackles of doom. Luckily, out of the shock of meeting another guy in his house,

he had forgotten to close the door. I dashed off towards the door, grabbed my shoes in my hands, and sprinted out of that house like I was possessed.
Around the gate, I stopped running to pull on my shoes least people started suspecting me of being a thief.

A glance back, I saw him standing by his door writhing with profuse anger. I wish my girlfriend had warned me that her father is an ex-military officer, I wouldn’t have set a foot in that house. How can a man be so savagery?’ He lamented.

‘You would have asked me before agreeing to go to that home. I have an experience. A long time ago, when I was just 17 years old, two years younger than you are, I learned that as a man, never set foot in another’s house to pick or shag his wife or daughter.

Always invite the girls to your place or on a neutral playing field. Always treat another man’s house with the dread and respect that you accord a police station.’

In form three, I developed a perverse habit of picking up our chief’s daughter from the chief’s homestead at night for a night of lungula in my isimba. We were in love, the stupid teenage love.
The chief was a very fierce and respectable man.

Those old school chief officers under the old constitution’s provincial administration had a lot of powers. They were the presidents, chief justices, and the chief whips of the location. I once witnessed the chief whip thoroughly one of our uncle (Kevin’s father)

in front of a chief’s baraza after finding him guilty for letting his cows graze down his neighbor’s maize field.
‘You were picking the daughter of someone who whipped an elder in front of the whole village?’ my cousin asked.
‘Yes. Her father was strict with her.

He was an authoritarian. He never allowed his daughter out of his home during the day, unless on errands.’ I explained. Nasenya and I agreed to be sneaking her out of her father’s home whenever we felt like shagging. With our hot blood fizzing with post-adolescence energy,

we made it a routine. On the days when we had agreed to meet, I would walk past her father’s homestead while whistling to alert her of my presence. She used to sleep in a grass-thatched house a few meters from her father’s iron sheet-roofed house.

She shared the house with her two younger sisters in lower primary school. When whistling did not alert her, I would pick gravels and throw them on her father’s rooftop. That used to be my crude ways of alerting her at a time when there were no mobile phones.

I made it a habit to levels where I had to befriend their dog to earn its loyalty. Initially, the dog used to bark at me then I started bribing it using bones. I used to come with bones to feed it as I awaited for Nasenya to sneak out.

Once alerted to my presence, she would sneak out of her house after a few minutes. She would walk out wrapped her whole body in lesos to look like a Muslim girl in a hijab to avoid being noticed in case we met people on the way to and from my isimba.

After fornicating, I used to sneak her back to her home before the village cocks started crowing.
One day, I performed my usual routine; whistled past the homestead, came back and threw gravels on the rooftop, and waited for a few minutes for Nasenya to sneak out.

There was a spot on the edge of her homestead where we used to meet, embrace, kiss, and walk her home. She walked to the spot, I walked to the same spot. When we met, I tried to talk to her as usual but she did not respond. I walked closer to her and hugged her.

While hugging, her breasts felt unusual, bizarre. They were unusually bigger and harder. She used to have em smaller and very tender.
Hell broke loose when I attempted to kiss her. kissing me is when her father drew the line. He grabbed my hand with a very tight grip.

I attempted to escape when I learned that it wasn’t Nasenya but the chief dressed disguisedly like Nasenya to trap me. It was late. His grip was very strong.
‘1 nyaunyo twa, 2 nyaunyos twa, 3, 4… countless.

Not even the falling of the ripe avocados he had capped on his chest to act as Nasenya’s tits stopped him from whipping me,’ I narrated.
‘Hold on! He had capped avocados on his chest to look like his daughter’s nyos to trap you?

Man, I am not viewing avocados in the same manner again,’ my cousin laughed with hysteria.
‘Yes. I received countless whips. The following day, he summoned my folks into his office and gave them a severe dressing-down. Nasenya was also around.

We were warned to stop our lascivious ways. We were whipped again by the two sets of parents. And as if that was not enough, we were given a punishment to slash the whole of the chief post compound and weed all its flower beds.’

Since then, even if a woman tells me that her husband died while fighting in Vietnam, even if a girl tells me that her father traveled to Mars; and they invite me to the home to shag or pick them up, I can’t go, I can’t set foot inside another man’s house with coitus intentions.