Oh yes, the dead also tell tales

By Ted Malanda

I have to confess sheepishly that I am incapable of slaughtering a chicken. That means I wouldn't be caught dead anywhere near an abattoir.

My youthful enthusiasm for blood mysteriously vanished when my biology teacher made me dissect cockroaches and frogs in a hopeless attempt to turn me into a neurosurgeon.

But that’s not to suggest that I can’t stomach dead chickens, especially when they are already boiled, fried and steaming on a plate.

My aversion to slaughtering things actually came much earlier when my uncle Tim — the village-bred lout knew a lot of stuff — whispered that people who slaughtered livestock suffered horrible deaths.

On their deathbeds, he said, they were haunted by the many cows and goats that they had dispatched to the other world.

They hallucinated, screaming, "Help! That bull! It’s coming! Get me a knife someone — a knife, you hear!" But Tim wasn’t done yet. "It’s the same for murderers and witches. Before they die, they confess and shout the names of everyone they killed. In fact, to ensure they don’t embarrass the family with their tell-alls, they never die peacefully in their sleep — they are strangled by their wives!"

land feud

By this time, as you can imagine, I was already wide-eyed with fright. And then came the clincher. "Did you know", he whispered, "that when you murder someone, just before they die, their eyes photograph your face? All the cops need is to pry the dead eyes open and the evidence is right before them!"

I briefly thought about the guy who had been murdered just that week over a land feud and wished I could have the guts to pry his dead eyes open and prove, as everyone suspected, that he had been done in by his neighbour. But as you can guess, I didn’t — and still don’t — have the guts to face a cadaver.

My point is that if Tim is to be believed, all our gory national secrets, such as who killed Tom Mboya, Robert Ouko and filched our billions in the Anglo Leasing scam — will all be told on some deathbed.

Unfortunately for everyone, wives are not in the habit of washing their dead husband’s dirty linen in public. Hence the oft quoted lies, "He was a wonderful husband and father. He would never hurt a fly. He died peacefully in his sleep…"