The Babies Did Not Survive

 When the sun goes down, it is an indication that the day has ended,and therefore people should rest. In the Big City Under the Sun and its Outskirts however,dusk,for some,is a start of their day,or should we call it night? Kibra as it is commonly know by the elites who have chewed big books from prestigious universities within and without, and Kibera for those whom gods did not favour much in the world academia,is the place she was born 12 years ago. Her birth contrasts greatly from those of the elites and the haves because,when the mothers wait in awe to welcome their kids,hers waited in agony and bitterness and to add to the miseries sorounding her birth,her mother was ferried to the hospital in a cart pushed by men,her wailing and cursing from labour pain undeterred the neighbours in the shanty settlement.

Her youth was marred by great contrivances of problems which she knew not how to settle and was one she would not yearn for,nor wish any of her offsprings  to imitate. When she left the small village of Kondele in Ugenya and came to look for her shining star in the City,she did not envision the problems and sufferings  it had served her. The first job she landed in the city was that of a house help to one Mr. Obare an abusive man who had married an equally evil woman. The argument is that unlike poles attract but the man and the woman of the house were similar in their mannerisms like a hand and its back. They had defied Science. A misplaced cup in the kitchen,a not well ironed shirt, a baby crying..any tiny thing would upset either the man or woman resulting in abuses,both verbal and physical.

One day when ironing Mr. Obare's shirt, Awino overheat the iron and the splendid official shirt was malformed in a second. She stood there shaking,knowing well what would follow but she gladly welcomed fate. When Obare saw it,he turned as dull as a chameleon sprinkled with tobacco. Veins formed on the sides of forehead with blood flowing at a pressure that would have burst them open. He clenched his fists,froth formed at the corners of the mouth,shanking,he charged for her.

"Stupid girl,i pay you to work and even feed you,but even the minutest of tasks you know not how to perform" He said as he slapped her on her right cheek.

"You know how much this shirt cost me? More than your salary. You cannot afford it. Don't expect a singl cent from me this month".

"It was a mistake,i will not repeat..." She tried to explain but her mouth was shut by brows after brows.

"Saat up!" He banged the door loudly as he walked out. 

Mr. Obare despite his fierceness,used to creep in to her room at night,shush her,abuse her and then quietly go back to the living room to watch the Tv. She would cry herself to sleep knowing well that she could not tell the woman of the house what was happenning because the blame would shift to her.

"Nowadays you pick some poor uncivilised girl from the village to work for you hoping that she has got enough sense to save the little she gets to fend for her poor siblings,but their gratitude? They help themselves with your husband too!" Vicky,her employer,used to say when scolding her.

All hell broke lose when she one day realized that she was pregnant and she decided to confront her abusive employer. 

"I will let your wife know", "She has to know what you have been doing behind her back all this time!"

"Dare open your filthy mouth and your family will wonder where their ugly daughter vanished to!" Obare threatened. His threats were not an empty rhetoric,she knew he was capable of it and much more.

"Tomorrow,first thing in the morning,you have to leave,where to,i don't give a hoot! I never want to see your face again,ever". With that,he put his hand in his back pocket,drew his wallet and gave her ten thousand shillings. This time,Awino did not cry. She did not shed a tear. She did not shake. Her bravado made Mr. Obare fearful this time. She had gladly accepted what life had thrown her way.

Awino decided not to go back to the village. Her goose had been fried in the City,she would wait for it to cook and eat it in the same place. With her mind made,she moved to Kibra and rented a small room paying a 1000 shillings per month. With the rest she learnt and started chang'aa brewing business to keep herself going in the city and in preparation of the child that was on the way. When praying,she would ask God to protect her young one and if anything,let not her sad life be imbibed in them.

Hope,the name she was given after she was born was the most beautiful thing you could set your eyes on. Dark in complexion and tall for her age,she was a daughter any woman would have been proud to have mothered. She was jovial but at times sullen but this was not uncommon to kids her age.Growing up,she knew the streets of the slums like the back of her hand. At a young age of five,she had already been exposed to more than she could chew because the slum had the wherewithal to force this down her throat. The first thing you saw when you visited this place,are thousands of iron sheets connected as if it was one long warehouse. The houses offered no privacy as they were made of iron sheets. During the day,they were extremely hot and at night they were as cold as the Poles. Most of the residents preferred the sunny seasons however because the rainy season came with a fair deal of misfortunes; leaking roofs,floating sewage,runoff water in the shanties...

Their house if it qualified to be called so,was the second from the junction at Jamhuri Shop. An old one roomed house whose roof was complaining from the long years it had stood under the sun. On the sides,the sheets had openings but the residents had improvised an ingenious way of covering them by erecting a cupboard on the inside and therefore their privacy was heightened a little. This shanty served as a chang'aa den in the street. At the wee hours of the night,it was not a wonder finding men and women incoherently hurling unmentionable words to do with copulation and both the male and female genitalia especially so when scuffles arised on who was to pay the few hundreds of shillings they had spent. All this while,she would be bundled in a corner in the small mattress laid on the floor,trying to catch a little sleep. Her mother also served the needy men in kindness and they could part with a hundred shillings for her services. In the slums,man must live. And the means do not justify the end.

"Mum,my stomach hurts and i saw blood when i went to the toilet" She said some day when she was around nine.

"Misichana,sasa umekua mwanamke'' The mother said in her deep Luo accent...

"lakini usijali,asani bed motang' gi jowuoyi"(be wary of how you relate with boys).

She found this strange being the first time she was experiencing periods and the pain that it comes therewith. It was the first of many she would have. She feared breaking the news to her female friends in school,fearing they would laugh at her but she later came to learn that most of them had started their cycles earlier than her and they had already devised ways of getting money to buy the towels. Because in the slums, girls too,must survive. The leaders  had in their wise counsel seen it wise to disburse condoms to mature people enjoying themselves instead of sanitary pads to girls who couldn't afford them.

"Kuna vitu hufai kuomba mamako! Huku nje kuna wanaume wako willing kununulia provided you..." An experienced young girl Mish suggested.

"Eeh,itabidi ukae rada,they will give you money and more. I assure you that you will like it" Another girl by the name Zippy suggested. 

The choice was hers to make and after a long retrospective session,considering the struggles her mother had to go through putting her and her five siblings through school and fending for them through the chang'aa and the part time hustling business,she decided that she too,would become independent. She was doing her best in school given her environment at home and in the neighbouring houses where distractions at night were no secret. The whinings and the creaking of beds at night,which she much knew at her age that they were not caused by the neighbours sweeping the house all contributed to her yearning to try it out herself.

Slowly but steadily,she started meeting men behind the mother's back. Awino was too busy with life to have noted the change in her anyway. On Sundays during the afternoon she would in the company of girls her age go strolling to meet her lover Oti,a bodaboda operator in the CBD but who lived in the slums. She would hop on the well pimped TVS bike with a mud-guard bearing the writings "Ukingoja yaive,wengine wala kwa chumvi" and it would have not been a better description if you considered who was aboard the bike and why. They would go and roam in town all afternoon,pass by "Crackerz Wine and Spirits" and pick their favourite Konyagi brand and then head to Oti's house which they comically called "Slaughter".  There they would drink,and do all that pertains to drinking escapades.

At eleven years,she was as experienced in the streets as old women in their forties. Making love was a degree she had studied and graduated with honours in the corridors of Kibra. She would plan dates,meetings,and at time she would taste bitter liquors to draw herself from reality. She could afford the sanitary towels with ease and even the trendy clothes,courtesy of the men especially the boda boda guys she used to swap like clothes. At a young age,the society had forced her to become a woman,to afford her basic necessities. 

In her naivety,she assumed when she missed her red visitors for two months that it was all well but it was far from it. When it rains,it pours and this time,it had poured in her life. She could not tell who had fathered the child owing to her multiple boyfriends. She wondered how she would break these news to her mother critically assessing that she had failed her immensely. One evening she decided to confront the devil,claiming that whatever would be born after breaking the news she would breast feed it.

"Mom,there is something i want to share with you" The girl said trembling.

"Ona sule imekuharibu unaniongelesa kisungu siku hisi!" The mother retorted.

"Mom,the last two.. hizo miezi mbili zimepita.. si...si.." She stuttered.

"Usinipotesee wakati,niko na kasi za kufanya..nyathiwa nyako"

"...sijakua...sijakua nkisoma vizuri!" She lied and decided to call off the mission altogether. The mother too engaged in her own thoughts considered this as the little complains girls her age fondly made.

Boldly,Hope decided that she would take the responsibility upon her hands and terminate the pregnancy. The means would in this case,justify the end. Witfully extorting money from her boyfriends,she was able to raise enough to carry out the risky and much needed procedure to get rid of the life which was blossoming in her small belly. Such services were readily available in the slums and so long as you had the money,age did not matter.

"It is a small procedure that will take about thirty minutes but painful..." The doctor advised her.

"Just do It! I cannot support a kid at my age and my mother does not have the means to do it". She claimed.

For the 'many' years she had lived,she had never known pain as she experienced on the operation table. She shouted,shrieked,wailed,cursed until her mouth run dry and she could talk no more. She only felt the sharp objects cutting the insides of her stomach,blood flowing like water under a bridge. She passed out.

As the mourners congregated around the small grave in Lang'ata Cemetry to bid her farewell,dismay was written all over their faces looking at the grave and shifting the eyes to the small casket with the two lives that never lived to see their brighter days. The priest sprinkled the grave with holy water,murmuring some short prayers,probably because he was uneasy burrying a sinner who had died in the epitome of sin,Abortion. Awino's eyes shone brightly with tears and they resembled a gaze of a trapped gazelle in a burning forest at night,peering into safety.  She looked back at her life in melancholy and cursed that her daughter had subconsciously followed her path.

"Did i not ask You God not to let them follow the path i had followed?" She was asking herself as the service went on. The sound of a sad and low pitched song woke her from her reverie. 

"From dust we came,to dust we shalt return" were the words of the priest,followed by a loud unsettling sound of dust hitting the wood in the grave "Boom! Boom! Boom!" Mourners wailed,mothers cursed,fathers bent their heads in pain,kids looked bewildered unbeknownst  to them what was happenning. If the leaders had seen it wise to disburse free sanitary towels to the needy girls in the slum and poor backgrounds her death would have sure been avoided.

On her epitaph the words "The babies did not survive" were written in bold.