By Njeri Ossak
USA
A
conversation I had with some friends recently on Facebook went something like
this:
Jerry: These are signs of our
times. Posthumous scandals
Me: Hio ni sawa kabisa…In
keeping with our national pastime off having asides and deserts
following the main meal! Hahaha! She said in her supporting affidavit that she
needed to hit the iron when still hot…i.e. before he is interred…Her trump
card!
Willis: I think we are in a
material oriented society. What about other men of less economic status? Almost
nobody goes to claim anything when they die. Also, we are in a society where we
lack strict laws on marriage, inheritance, Wills, Estates, etc. Undercover
babies
As you might have already guessed…Yes! It was us Kenyans engaged
in another favorite pastime….In the bar, at home, on street corners (I saw
a lot of mini Kamukunjis in the city, Nairobi, when I last visited just before
the elections…and nice little benches to laze on and chat that also ironically
say on the backrest…”I will not just sit here…”!). We
were discussing current events (more affairs than gossip…affairs have
a ring of highbrow intellect being engaged!) and lending the discussion
our own wild suppositions and explanations for the state of affairs…a death in
the family called Kenya. In this case it was the untimely death (when is it
ever timely?) of the said distinguished lawyer turned politician Mutula
Kilonzo.
The reason why his passing caused a stir is in part because we
had just come out of a bruising election and he was on the side that lost. The
losing side was and still is trying to make sense of that loss and any
scapegoat will do. In this case, it was being whispered that he has been
“eliminated”. And that sinister dark forces that oddly resembled the government
of the day and probably the Dalai Lama or Maradonna (remember his famous Hand
of God?), must have had a hand in it…all in preparation for the return match
set for 2017 by eliminating whatever and whoever looked like a formidable foe!
But
that was not even the core of our discussion…We have since moved from shock
and grief and crocodile tears and playing Sherlock Holmes by offering
our “elementary” theories of how Mutula died…to now a more seedy and corpulent
topic. That Mutula Kilonzo while serving the nation so opulently and in
distinguished manner, may have found time to sow wild oats in
his backyard that resulted in a little boy being born. Oh boy!…
Is
there a topic that gets our juices going and tongues wagging more than one
where a clande relationship is nakedized for all to see and savor
Now we know who he really is, we bellow! We have seen his underwear…sorry
underbelly! And all that pseudo-intelligence cum political talk we
earlier had on how a great reformist mind and sturdy mugumo has been felled by
dark ninja forces, is forgotten. So let’s talk about sex nooow!…undercover
sex and how oops!…babies can also be the unintended consequence!
I have only the greatest respect for this distinguished son of
Kenya who led an iconic life. He was smart, and is the only lawyer within the
Kenyan legal fraternity that a colleague said he ever heard expound
on the law of unintended consequences; and his life story reads like the great
novel Angela’s Ashes, a
1996 memoir by the Irish-American author Frank McCourt. I read a long piece on
Mutula, written by one journalist, Emeka, in a local daily, and whose writing I
admire for its depth and research, in which he chronicles Mutula’s journey
from his indigent village life, through school and hard work, making
much moolah along the way, and right back to the magnificent Valhalla he
built as his getaway, and at which ironically he exited the earth!
But by the time Emeka wrote his piece, the woodwork was still
intact and Nthenya had not busted through to thicken the plot
with claims that she wants to tell us another part of the story! She had a son
with Mutula all seven years ago and before the soil is settled on his cenotaph
and the ink dry on the will…would they please add a nota bene and include her
son!?
All this remains unsubstantiated and it is all conjecture of
course, until the DNA results are in.
A pointed aspect of the discussion however, was on how he Mutula
had now sunk low in the eyes of some of those who held him in high esteem as a
morally upright person and whose life and success is a testament to how it is
possible to be rich, famous and a politician and still be
an example to others. One other friend weighed in on the discussion
saying: “This man was all form
and no substance. Let no one tell me about speaking ill of the dead. I’m
getting more disgusted with Mutula with each passing day. This one about
hobnobbing with his herdsman’s daughter…a girl much younger than Kethi…..eish!”
Women were more incensed because this has become the norm rather
than the exception in our society where men shirk their responsibility of
looking after the children that are born after the nice time of making them is
a long forgotten faint memory that does not cause a stir in their groin
anymore! My friend Esther was livid and had this to say: “Eunice Nthenya is a daughter to the late
Mutula’s herdsman/ranch hand. I am trying to imagine how he approached &
seduced her. Or was she just delivered by her father? Mutula paid Ksh 4,000 for
maternity fees for Eunice child, his son… a princely sum indeed maybe at a
local hospital or Pumwani.
But…. he paid Ksh700,000 to feed the lions
(PER MONTH!!)…so there you go..value for money, I tell you….. so Kenyans where
do we go from here???
We need to hold our leaders
accountable for their private immorality. After all we are funding their lavish
livelihoods. Give the politicians their raise but they should live in a moral
and transparent manner, failure to which they should be disrobed of their
positions.”
Private
Immorality! Now that is a new one. How is that and is it allowed? My friend is
angry and indeed echoes the sentiments of many women who will no doubt be livid
to hear of the lions eating well and yet the mother and child are left to fend
for themselves. In Nthenya’s case, it is being suggested
by mathematicians who did the quick mental sum that she was underage
(15!) and did not know any better and did not have the wherewithal to
make ends meet. This is even more annoying according to many, considering that
the person involved here as the supposed father is wealthy beyond our
wildest imagination! He had lions and gazelles and other
wildlife for pets for crissake and he fed them!
But
before we rush to judge Mutula so harshly, there is the other side of the coin
that alleges that women we have also become not very different from the lions
that he fed!…And that we go into these clandestine escapades knowing
full well that the man is taken..He has a wife or wives and children to boot!
Whatever
also happened to the pill…and now there is even an I-forgot-morning
after-the-white-night pill? Can we still say it was an accident when the belly
begins to grow? We then wait in the wings for the cue…most usually when the man
is completely died and dead…and just before he is buried…then we tokelezea with
the immutable exhibit of a child or children in tow to claim a share
for “the children”!
A local daily quoted Nthenyas affidavit as saying that: ”Ms Nthenya has sworn an affidavit to the
effect that she was in a relationship with the late Makueni Senator between
2005 and 2008 and that he was the biological father of the minor who was born
on May 5, 2006 in Makueni”. It is the child’s natural right to share the
father’s wealth with the other siblings. It is in order therefore that the
paternity test be conducted with speed and expediency to enable this child
legally claim his fair share of the father’s wealth”
Speed
and expediency! What speed now when we had all the time in the world to get
matters fixed…birth certificates, wills and testaments and all that good stuff
while everyone is still feeling lovey dovey. Maybe there is a lesson here that
each time you are with a clande in a tight embrace and the with intentions of
making immutable consequences called babies, pluck some of his hair and store
well for future DNA purpose! But how about we also use the same wiles we used
when the man is still alive to get ourselves situated…a business, a
job…anything that will make you self sufficient and independent and
strong…instead of waiting to potentially make a joke of yourself before the
entire world…asking for a Shylockean pound of DNA to prove that indeed, apart
from the forehead, ears and fingers looking a lot like the dear departed,
science will also bear you out?
As a
friend, Willis, said at the top of this article, women seem more Machiavellian
when they arrive later to claim that they are acting for the children. That
there are never cases of women chasing after poor men…only the rich and famous.
I don’t know that such cases do not exist because we would not hear about them.
Poor people’s stories never make it into the big media unless it turns tragic
or comic. Readers and the public in general like to read about a rags to riches
story..or riches to rags, but not about people who are just poor and whose
lives seem to be going nowhere. Frank McCourt’s story in Angela’s Ashes
only becomes interesting because he rose from abject poverty in Ireland and
found his way to America the land of dreams and fulfillment.
We empathize with
stories such as these because they mirror our hopes and aspirations. So Willis
that is the irredeemable fact, It is a material world and women now also know
their rights. If the case cannot be made when the rich and powerful man is
alive, then they will wait for when his torch has dimmed and the family is at
its weakest, to step forward and lay their demands.
Will
Nthenya’s addition to the story be the final epilogue to the unwritten ode of
Mutula’s life…or should we expect an addendum(s) and more ibid, sic
footnotes?…Or even part two and three…and four…as separate rejoinders
and or as replies to the original manuscript? That is
most likely never gonna happen because the drama is now over and the
story is almost complete. We the interested bystanders will also have long
moved on (okay…I know I might be boxed in the ears for that phrase by recovering
poll losers but its for lack of a better one and also being Kenyan…!). We will
have already found another sumptuous topic to mutilate with our forks
and scythes which we always have at the ready! Linturi’s case is waiting in the
wings. And the other guy..an MP also and whose 40 year old son wants to be
counted as part of his brood!
We are never idle. My niece Yvonne gave me a nice phrase that
describes how we roll us Kenyans…”We don’t idle well” and as Jerry said at the
start of our conversation “These are
signs of our times. Posthumous scandals”!
Catch
up with the story here…or you will be the green horn at the bar discussion!:
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