I have to confess, writing about domestic violence as a Christian is the most daring thing I’ve done in my life. Sometimes I hung up my boots but again the master sends me back to the fields and so I’ll tarry some more and wade through the repercussions.
The story of the late Mueni suspected to have been killed by Mutisya drove me to such a sad corner yesterday. I struggled to work for the better part of the afternoon after reading about her death.
I distanced myself and sobbed, I called some women who had gone through abuse, I started worrying for them, I panicked.
It got me thinking about how we match faces, words to individuals more so our brothers and sisters. We declare them harmless, people lovers, kind and a well behaved child from birth to top it all born-again and such a lover of God. Yet, we do not know them as husbands or wives.
You look at Mutisya’s face and it’s all calm, warm and gentle. His father seems to want to say what he thinks yet the mother is all protective, he is her son, she gonna cover him even in the worst of murders. It hurts to know that their union brought forth a child who’ll experience such trauma eeeh
It hurts.
It hurts so deeply how this man is devoid of the thought that his own child will go through trauma getting to lose the mum in such inhuman manner.
This story got me thinking so much about what the lady would have wanted to say about the fiancé yet she couldn’t say due to the perceived character of the perpetrator and again sometimes one would say it’s only jealousy, it shows he loves me, it’s only anger he is such a good man and a splendid father. And “it shall be well” clause sanitizes it all.
Any adult unable to control their emotions, stay away from them.
One morning in 2017, I woke up, cooked my life away and by 7am I was ready to leave for work, then this guy wakes up and somehow the remote is not functioning. I see the anger steaming, I send for batteries and it’s still not working and it seems the remote had served it’s days on earth. He shouts asking why we can’t keep the remote functional. He suddenly smashes it on the wall and for a moment the house help and I are lost for words. I keep my handbag aside went all the way and bought a new GOTV remote, we buried that anger bout.
Frustrations of changing environments, he’d say.
More anger bouts followed.
Then I learnt how to coil and say nothing to manage anything of the sort that would rise.
Am deep and I can’t help it.
Whenever I’d write a post on FB I’d be asked to delete it with immediate effect. And so during my marriage life I couldn’t post a thing because it was prohibited. Yet this person was outside the country.
Then come November same year, I was a follower of a man of God’s website who would write real issues affecting married couples, he still does and am still an ardent consumer of his content. One day he writes some article on “Don’t marry a perfect man” with my kimbelembele, I read, did a long comment and even shared with this guy about the content. Wueeeh, I had to inbox this pastor at night to delete my comment since it was through his website. I was asked to delete that comment because someone will see it and judge him and I should be careful with my words not just write everywhere like a foolish woman.
An adult unable to control their emotions, stay away from them.
So maybe I’d only post things like “I am a blessed woman ” for the sake of peace.
I saw Musyoka’s face and my heart raced terribly it reminds me of 2019.
During the day we walked in tow along Ngong road looking like beans in a pod. We seemed to be dating, strangers wowed us, and we smiled and pressed closer. We had left a garage together; we were fixing our marriage that month. As we got to church that same Saturday from our counseling sessions, weren’t my group members happy for me! They confessed we looked all sweet together, one even whispered only to my hearing “we need a wedding soon, such a handsome gentleman he is” I was all smiles; he’d be holding me small small smiling and locking eyes. The display was catchy.
Then that night, am still blubbering half drank from the day’s niceness then he asks me why I said what I said in the counseling room, in the frenzy I stretch to pull out my reason, a content in my phone.
In a second his hands are on my neck am gasping for breath, he yanks off then am escaping from the bed, he pins me back to the wall his hands on my neck again and he looks me in the eyes and says “I can do worse than this!”…..
I mumble “Lemmie call my mother…” he stares right inside my eyes and confidently spits such hurtful words “if your mother was battered by your father what will she do?”
I surrendered to fate.
The next morning in church his arms cushioned me so well and lovingly, same hands but now gentle.
He was just angry last night and so I stayed another year. I stayed until the young ones I birthed witnessed the ugliest of scenes. Their voices crying and pleading slapped me out of “he was just angry, he is such a good man”
I waited for him to be angry again, because si anyone can get angry?
I know what trauma is.
I know how my heart races when am in a matatu with only male gender, I know how trusting even the gentle of them all is a task for me.
Am scared of a male presence because they can only violate and not protect me.
Am untrusting of a female presence because am scared they may leave me when I need them.
I know how my children have been traumatized.
I know how the death of Mueni has traumatized me.
An adult unable to control their emotions, stay away from them.
Families from either side may not know the trauma the abused go through after incidents that we may not know how to describe to them.
The trauma that one goes through after a woman finds out the description of a steamy bedroom affairs of her husband on a text then he in turn have intercourse with her to explain to her how she’s better than the other woman, and he even says while he’s on top of her. And she gives in because her body is his. The trauma of showering away the engraved violation!
I see families distant themselves from a woman having gone through domestic violence because they’re waiting for evidence and it breaks my heart, even women who have birthed watching through the window saying it rains everywhere!
Even fathers who have sired daughters and sons, stay quiet in a corner and they won’t say nothing.
It breaks my heart, to see fathers with clamped lips, locked forever.
Even our own mothers asking us to pack up and go back to our homes, our husbands were just being men, they reacted when angry. Our rights were not violated and we even provoked them.
It shreds my heart to see a woman die in the hand of a man. I know and I believe before the last stroke to the demise of a woman, there had been series of unreported abuses. But it was all rosy outside. Ancestors were happy.
Any person unable to control their emotions are unfit to be around people. Be it anger or jealousy.
Stay away from them.
Do you know when they’ll get angry and lose their minds again?
Please leave to live, let them heal from their woundedness.
Rest in peace Mueni.
~Emily Omondi