Leading the Night

Speaking streets

32 Leading the Night were life; limitless in its flow. For others, it was all about a photograph in the papers. People pointed excitedly at a photograph of a blue pickup full of well dressed women now frequent in the newspapers. Arrested malaya, prostitutes, they would say. Sometimes the arrests made for a small feature on TV. Police would be seen guns cocked, ready to shoot these women they called criminals if they dared to try to escape. “You are not scandalised Nguvu and am glad. These girls should not be raped and killed. If they have to sell themselves should it at least not be for a negotiated official price? Should there not be a law for their protection? Those who want to live on others must learn to pay their own taxes. Our black people stand out as the prostitutes in Europe too. I have seen them abandoned in remote vineyards with mattresses, our sisters lying there trying to catch a dollar. But we cannot live like that. We must not think that Koinange Street ends here in Nairobi. Nguvu, talk to your sister. Ask her to go to hospital for a check up. If we do not speak, we shall all die in this. We cannot insist on taboo topics now. We must talk with, discuss sex matters with our children. When a society is unequal, sexuality suffers a big blow. What you see here in with our sisters on the street is how Afrika is seen in the world! “You are the brave ones. The ones with the keys that unlock these things,” Nguvu said. “Among us men we boast that we are better than this or that person. We live in competition. Kikeshe has threatened me for taking you to work but I know the law. He cannot do what he thinks. Speaking streets As she walked along the streets, the history of women in Kenya spoke to Rika. People spoke about single women as a ‘phenomenon’ that sprang up mainly after the Kenyan Emergency and Mau Mau struggle for independence when men were detained. Rika knew that all sorts of Leading the Night 33 women always existed but that their diversity was often overlooked. What became of so many women left at home during the World Wars when Afrikan soldiers were taken by the British to fight in Burma? Women were so easily classified by all and in all tongues and made to fit into small boxes.They were seen to be there quietly absorbed and holding up society that had no room for them as women. In the past they were accepted if they became mothers, but now, not all single women were getting babies. Single women even when they had babies were seen as outsiders. When they died, some said, their burial place was outside the fence of the family compound. Such women were taboo. Such women had increased even more with deaths caused by malaria, TB and HIV Aids opportunistic infections. “My sister came home to marry herself,” Rika, said Nguvu. “Now I have some money to educate my daughter. Maybe we can find her a simple and cheap college?” “Marry herself? You mean this issue has gone this far?” “Yes, even a Catholic nun in our neighbourhood came home to marry herself and return to the convent.” “We are just trying to make sure that everyone belongs somewhere since our values are fast disappearing!” “But don’t your sisters also have children whom they are trying to educate? Is it always the men who have responsibilities and who must receive the money?” “We take care of our families. See what I want to do for our younger Sis?” “That is you, Nguvu. How many men have died these last months from taking cheap brews laced with methanol and they say also jet fuel?” “Last week, twenty six of them died in my village. Eighteen went blind!” “Some women have died too but these are few. Women do not need men to allow them to be and to use their bodies. In fact, you will 34 Leading the Night agree with me that too many men abuse women, even when they do not rape them. There is deep silence about crimes against women. We have to work to change lives. Men never have to marry themselves...regardless of being bachelors or widowers. Men are receivers of money made from...