I had passed this place so many times before, I mean the police station in Kawangware, but I never imagined I would enter it like this. I’d heard stories about these stations and how officers treat people in there. Tonight would be my baptism of fire. The officer who was seated with me at the back of the Land Cruiser pushed me forward. “Get out.”
My legs felt weak when I stepped onto the ground. The rain had stopped but the air was still cold and my heart was racing. Inside the station, a tired-looking officer sat behind a wooden desk with a lot of materials on it. A small radio beside him quietly played gospel songs, and a thick, worn-out book lay open in front of him.
“Afisa, another one?” he asked lazily without looking up.
“Hii ni defilement case,” one of the officers said.
The man behind the desk paused his writing and looked at me. His eyes studied my face slowly.
“You?” I nodded. He laughed sarcastically then asked, “Jina?”
“John.”
“Full name,” he said with annoyance.
“John Kanga.”
He wrote in the book. “Age?”
“Nineteen.”
“And the girl?”
“Sixteen,” the arresting officer answered.
The man behind the desk sighed heavily—he’d heard that story many times before.
I was booked around eight-fifty. All eyes were on me. The officers were disgusted by my presence. One female officer said, “Such men don’t deserve to be locked up. They should be castrated and their balls should be fed to their fellow pigs. How do you even rape a sixteen-year-old? Couldn’t you have gone to a brothel and paid a prostitute for that one minute?”
As much as I wanted to defend myself, I chose silence. Who would want to listen to a sex offender? I was in a deep pit, and I had no idea how I had gotten myself into it. I wasn’t a religious person, but I could blame it on the devil—yes, it was all his doing and I was paying the price for his dirty work! I should have known earlier that that fat maggot was responsible for everything, and he was trying to blame it on me. Why didn’t I think of this before?
“Lock him in there with his fellow criminals. Hapo, cell three. Remove your belt, your shoes, and any other valuable items you possess.” He pointed to the cell. The officer removed my handcuffs and led me into a short hallway. On the right was cell three, opposite cell four. He shoved me into the dark. “Fellas, we have brought you another criminal.” He laughed, then the cell closed behind me with a bang, followed by the sound of a padlock locking.
I tiptoed into the cell. There were three small windows almost at the top of the wall, supplying the cell with a little air and a few rays of sunlight. “Watch where you’re going, moron. You stepped on my leg,” groaned a man lying on the floor in the centre of the cell. “Sorry, sir. This place is too dark. I can’t see well,” I politely answered. I couldn’t tell how many people were in here. I had to find somewhere to sit.
“Mind where you step,” another man said. Apparently there wasn’t just one man lying there, but several.
I manoeuvred my way to a corner, and searched with my hands to make sure I wouldn’t sit on anyone. I coiled up like a cat, with so many thoughts racing through my head. Son of a rapist? My mother’s words kept replaying in my mind: “I thought I brought you up well, a son with manners. I didn’t know you were going to be like your father. The son of a rapist. I should have aborted you rather than watching you become a rapist.” Why had she decided not to believe me? After all this time. She was supposed to be my number one defense. These thoughts were interrupted by a man singing in the opposite corner:
Nafsi yangu usichoke
Roho yangu msifu Bwana
Aliahidi atatenda
Mtumainie Bwana
Ahadi zake ni za milele
Akiahidi atatenda
Roho yangu, nafsi yangu
Mtumainie Bwana
He repeated the chorus over and over again until one guy got annoyed and yelled at him, “Pastor, can you shut up for once and allow us to sleep. Some of us will be leaving tomorrow morning and we need to sleep.” He clicked, and after about five minutes a snoring competition started in the cell. I couldn’t sleep, my mind was all over the place. But at about eleven o’clock, sleep seemed to have found its way to me. Just then the singing pastor started his rehearsals again. This time he sang a song from Kirk Franklin’s catalogue:
Today’s a new day, but there is no sunshine
Nothing but clouds, and it’s dark in my heart
And it feels like a cold night
Today’s a new day, where are my blue skies
Where is the love and the joy that you promised me
Tell me it’s alright
I almost gave up, but a power that I can’t explain
Fell from heaven like a shower
I smile, even though I hurt see I smile
I know God is working so I smile
Even though I’ve been here for a while
I smile, smile
It’s so hard to look up when you’ve been down
Sure would hate to see you give up now
You look so much better when you smile, so smile
Tears welled from my eyes as if they were a spring in the valley. “I know God is working even though I’ll be here for a while,” I said to myself. I sat up and asked the pastor, “What’s your name, sir?”
“James Ngugi. I’m a born-again Christian and I’ve accepted Jesus as my personal saviour. Nothing and no weapon formed against me will prosper. What of you, what’s your name?”
“John is my name.”
“That’s a powerful name. Do you know when John the Baptist was sent to the world to prepare the way for the coming of the Messiah he faced a lot of challenges, but he endured through knowing that the work was greater than the obstacles put in his way. I don’t know what it is you are in here for, but I do know that just like Daniel in the lions’ den you will emerge victorious.”
I laughed then said, “The offence I’m accused of has put a lot of men away for many, many years. I am beyond saving, pastor. My own mother has turned her back on me, and I am on my own now. I don’t know anything about God and this fellow named John the Baptist. Anyway, why are you here?
“An antelope was sprinting like crazy. An elephant asked, ‘What’s the rush?’ The antelope replied, ‘Law enforcement officers are rounding up goats in the village!’ The elephant chuckled, ‘But you’re not a goat!’ The antelope shouted back, ‘You know how justice works—it’ll take twenty years to prove I’m not!’ After hearing that, the elephant joined the sprint.”
“Meaning what?”
“Before the suits, Bible, and contracts, I had a matatu business. It was chaotic. I was driving matatus, and my wife Evelyn opened a retail business in Githurai 45, but both ventures collapsed. Failure seeped into my first marriage. We had solemnised our union in a church in Githurai around 2000, but poverty is a silent third party in many marriages: it sleeps in the bed, eats at the table, and eventually demands attention. Our union cracked. She possessed charm, ironed out red flags into decorative napkins, and remarried. Nakuru, handsome and bright, became husband number two. For most women, two marriages would qualify as narrative excess but for Evelyn, prosperity expanded her appetite.
“And so, somewhere between security jobs and late-night negotiations, I met Caroline during one of her drinking sprees. The chemistry was immediate, two adults fluent in disappointment, temporarily anaesthetised by alcohol, so love flared, hot as ice and dangerous as debt. At some point, blind trust, which is reckless and expensive, entered the room. I entrusted Caroline with 1.5 million shillings to help her acquire a car. The money was not loose change. It was assembled like a survival kit: savings, loans, and a loan carved out of my father’s retirement benefits. It was faith and Caroline failed to deliver. Instead, promises multiplied while progress evaporated. She acquired a Toyota Probox.
“When I began digging into her biography, I discovered a franchise: a husband, multiple lives and multiple lies. The revelation stung because I had fled something similar but history had dressed itself differently and returned, and there was more egg on my face. Another confirmation that love, in my life, was a recurring audit of humiliation. Hurt metastasised into rage and rage fermented into alcohol. Whispers circulated that I was not man enough, that my manhood wasn’t working. Harsh words followed, and my matatu business collapsed.
“I sold everything and spent the money aggressively on prostitutes and alcohol. Money allegedly changed hands and betrayal blurred into vengeance. When private pain spills into public duty, the critics become an amplifier. Meanwhile, my life marched along its own complicated rhythm. After graduating from the school of hurt and shame, I resorted to bars and brothels to feel some sort of attachment.
“One day I was drinking with some other drinkers, and some guy came to warn us that police officers were arresting people in the other bars. My companions ran off and I was left at the bar alone, drinking and minding my own business, because I saw no reason why they would arrest me, but I got arrested anyway. Do you now get my story about the antelope and elephant?”
I took a deep breath and then sighed, “I’m sorry you went through all that. I thought you were a pastor.”
“When you have been through it all you start to reconnect with God even though you’re not a man of faith. Since Caroline ran away with the money meant for my business, I started communing with God to better understand the trials of life.” Then he asked the question he had been waiting to ask: “What got you locked up here?”
I kept silent for more than two minutes before I answered. “I have been accused of a crime I didn’t do and no matter what I say no one will ever believe me except Eliza.”
“Did you rape her?”
“Who told you that? I didn’t mention it. Who are you again?”
The tension started to mount between us, but it was broken by a loud fart, followed by the smell of rotten eggs. Everyone in the cell started to complain and loudly tell off the person who farted, but no one knew who did it. I told myself, “Tomorrow might be a rough day but I’ll live through the night.” Then I fell asleep.
