By Oyunga Pala

I still sleep with a Somali simi sword under my mattress and a carved club with a knob the size of a baby’s head within reach.

Fortunately, it has been years since I had to step outside in vest and shorts wielding a club to repel opportunistic thieves.

I picked up these self-defense instincts in circa 90s BC (Before Cellphones), living on the fringes of Kawangare slums. Our abodes were rows of one roomed houses with communal bathrooms and toilets located within a single compound. They were managed by a punitive landlady who rationed power and water.

impunity

Back then, thugs operated with impunity. They arrived in gangs of over 15 men, held the entire plot hostage for hours and not only robbed and fondled your women, but also ate up any food they found.

The harassment was frequent and there was a looming mass exodus until a nondescript individual moved into one of the vacant houses.

He was known as “Japolo”, a religious devotee from the Legio Maria sect, known for their energised worship ceremonies.

The mason who doubled as a charismatic preacher had a sinewy body shaped from a lifetime of physical labour and possessed an amicable disposition.

Shortly after his arrival, the bad boys returned for another post-midnight raid. Loud noises emanated from the first house in the row and we cowardly prayed in our rooms hoping to endure the torment unscathed.

It would take us awhile to realise what was going on outside our securely bolted doors. The rising crescendo of noises turned into a blood-cuddling scream, followed by what sounded like a stampede.

Then there was an interlude of silence before we heard a deeply Dholuo accented voice shouting, “Wanaume wote otoke inje (all men step outside),” repeatedly. When I eventually stepped outside cautiously, the sight was one to behold.

Standing out there in the dead of the night was a stark naked Japolo, breathing heavily with a bloodied panga held in a vice grip by his side. There was not a single thug in sight. A nude, everyday hero had emerged to save the day.

For a week, he was feted like a Don, food always waiting as resident women swooned over their able protector who apparently slept naked.

The thugs did come back once more to salvage their pride but they were repelled because they found all the men had suddenly acquired a pair of nuts.

But with the increased spate of gun related violence and grenade attacks against innocent civilians, my sword and club feel terribly inadequate as deterrents against radicalised youth tossing grenades about with unnerving ease.

hunters

 As it is, only privileged citizens bear arms. The rest of us have to put trust in the Lord as a demoralised, underfunded police unit, trigger happy APs, ex military personnel, a protected political elite and licensed sports hunters and gangsters get all the fun.

This makes a rather strong case for a right to self-defense. Anyone rendered hostage by unabated terror would accept that access to a loaded handgun is a lot more reassuring than an empty pronouncement from some official functionary whose goats in the village enjoy 24-hour police guard.

As Japolo illustrated, the only response to lethal violence is instant counter-attack.

 

A classic we won’t buy

The latest tell-all book on coalition intrigues, Peeling Back the

Mask by Miguna Miguna, a former aide to the Prime Minister Raila

Odinga, has the country buzzing with excitement.

Everyone relishes a good scandal and the Kibaki presidency has provided ample fodder for investigative journalists.

Interestingly, nothing out of the Moi era seems to be rolling out from the publishers.

As expected, one look at the price tag, pegged at Sh3,300, and most

Kenyans decided there was really no point of buying a personal copy

when one could glean extracts off Twitter, Facebook, random blogs and serialised pages.

For the PM’s supporters who find Miguna’s abrasive’s

nature annoying, the entire text will be dismissed based on a few

choice lines. On the other hand, for Raila Odinga’s critics who have a

score to settle, Miguna joins the league of John Githongo,

uncelebrated whistle blowers putting their reputation and lives on the line to expose the filth of the political elite.

In a country like Kenya where gossip is headline news, Miguna’s book is positioned to become a classic.

In Kenyan-speak, a classic, to paraphrase Mark Twain, is a book everyone has an opinion about but very few have actually read.

 

Sleaze and sex appeal

The Ugly Duckling is a popular fairy tale written by Hans Christian Anderson.

Anderson was a Danish author famous for other classics among them The Little Mermaid and The Emperor’s New Clothes that are still popular references. Ugly duckling is a story of transformation depicted by an unsightly little bird, despised by other barnyard animals and eventually matures into a beautiful swan.

This is the whole philosophy behind the makeover craze that rules the beauty industry. Plain Janes are transformed from ordinary girls with plain features into confident women oozing sex appeal.

What does it take? A quick trip to the beauty parlour, a stopover in the gym, high end shopping and voila! Overnight, ordinary Jane becomes sassy Jayne.

Therefore, when I turn on the TV or flip through magazine pages, all I see are ordinary girls who would sell their liver in exchange for sex appeal.

 The beauty industry has convinced thousands of young girls that if they work on their sex appeal like Beyonce, they can all end up hooking up with a Jay Z and life would be grand thereafter.

Beauty is invariably tied to happiness. Beautiful people are caricatured as successful while ordinary folk are always portrayed as sad and desperate for help.

The problem is that a lot of what passes off as sex appeal is borderline sleazy and some women will paste make-up so liberally, they might as well be hookers.

In time, they get so hooked to this altered personality, like an actor on stage with fake hair, fake nails, fake skin tone, fake body enhancement, propped height they get lost in character.

So the tragedy of this scenario is that we are now beset with a parade of plain Janes who believe they are so hot and yet all we see is ordinary girls pleading desperately for attention.