Sip your tea, a woman is being raped but you worry the least

Who cares about rape when tea, sweetened with sugar just right and sprinkled with a whiff of masala tastes just right on a cold rainy day in Nairobi’s River Road?

No, seriously, who cares about rape when you have a million money-making errands to run in down-town Nairobi and wouldn’t care less about the rapist or his target?  Just tell me, who cares about rape when it is so much fun filming a clip of an actually brutal violation of a woman by a gang?  

Sip your tea; it is better than getting outraged by a video clip doing the rounds that a woman was raped in the full glare of the public by street boys and no one seemingly “cared to intervene”.

 Keep sipping your tea, because it sure is better than giving a damn when cries of a helpless woman are muffled by the grips of monstrous beasts, who cares?!

As I write this, I have just strayed on to the official Twitter page of President Kenyatta hoping that at least his handlers would by now have put down their cups of tea and acted on the crazy rape video.

I was wrong. His page is neat. It is diplomatically politically correct. It has glowing feeds of the visit by the African Union Commission chairperson Mussa Faki Mahamat. They are discussing important things about trade and regional integration.

No, they are not discussing the rape in down town CBD, No. Regional Integration is a huge priority. They are sipping their tea. Please do not blame them. You see, addressing rape is not exactly a national priority; it is not something the government or those big names we see on our screens focus on as an issue.

 It is not even part of the Big Four agenda! You see, rape is a women’s problem. Women are the ones affected. Women must solve this problem themselves because women rape themselves.

The clip of the “rape entertainment” was two and a half minutes long. That in the full glare of whoever was near, whoever was clicking away, whoever was acting in shock or whoever is heard cheering on, the horror and terror of the woman being attacked was not enough for some swift action; it did not invoke any kind of fury to force anyone into action to come to her rescue. It must have been one of those “surreal scenarios” where you observe something amusing you look, frown or smile, then continue with your business of texting a message, reading your newspaper, talking to your buddy or just sitting there and sipping your tea.

 Yeah, I mean rape in the eyes of those “film-watchers” is nothing but cheap entertainment. It must be more amusing when it is “ably executed” by a marauding gang of street urchins.

Once upon a time, when the world was young and innocent, we are meant to believe that men actually respected women and girls. We are told that once upon time, any man worth the title of a MAN would look onto his hands and acknowledge what they were meant to do; to love and to protect women – any woman!

These days, we are told the Man has since evolved so much and mutated his affirmation and power that he does so much more than just love and protect – he sips his tea when a woman is being raped right before his eyes.

It does not take an experience for a woman to shudder and die inside to imagine that someone is violently forcing himself on to her. It just takes a woman to be a woman to know that any act of aggression against her body or any other woman’s body is an affront to the very core of her being.

Let us not talk about the police. The police are there. Let us not talk about the law, the laws are there.

Let us not talk about the political class, we have an over-flow that is choking us. Let us talk about hands of men who in their wisdom see it fit to take by force that which does not belong to them.

Let us talk about minds and hearts of men who in knowing that they ought to spring up to protect and protest instead sit back, laugh, record and sip their tea.

Let us talk about your 12 year-old daughter making her way from school in an alley grabbed and violently raped. Let us talk about your lovely wife cornered in the office by a sadistic boss forcing himself onto her in the desperation of her economic situation.

 Let us talk about your pretty girlfriend out with friends whose drink is spiked by criminals and she wakes up on a strange bed with the bloodied evidence of her rape marking her every breath. No, why don’t we talk about the reality of the fact that no woman whatsoever asks to be raped but every man who does actually chooses to do it!

Please sip your tea. When you are done, speak your importance as man – yes, a man! Let us hear you repeat that rape is a women’s issue.

Sip your tea and move on to other important matters like the devolution conference, global warming, foreign direct investments and the market fluctuations in the bourse. Forget about women being raped, because after all, your mother, wife, sister or daughter is rape-proof. Sip your tea.