The journey of a battered woman

By RENEE MURRAY
Published November 10, 2009

It is threatening to rain. This can’t be happening, getting home will now take me close to three hours instead of the normal 45 minutes. I want to hop into the first matatu that comes plying my route. I need to get home soon, but unfortunately so does everyone else. With shoves and tosses, I struggle to get into the matatu. They are few and come after very long intervals. “I am not getting soaked in the rain, I have to get in”, I promise myself.

Lucky enough, I do get in, and as if the gods are with me, I am just in time to find my favorite seat unoccupied. This is the seat just behind the conductor’s. It means I will not have to seat uncomfortably close to anyone, because it is a single seat. Matatus and buses are not always very safe ways of travelling since you seat next to all kinds of characters. I once sat next to a pickpocket who tried to rob me in broad daylight.

Another day, I sat next to a pervert who kept pretending to be asleep while skillfully putting his hand on my thigh! I remember ‘waking’ him up, though it was evident he was not deep asleep as he pretended to be. With a nudge on his shoulder, I asked him quite politely to take his hand off my thigh. He smiled! Looked at me and said, with his hand still on my thigh, “What is wrong with me touching you?” How my hands became fists and landed on his face, I don’t know to this day. I slapped him, hit him and called him every abusive name I could think of. He recoiled and wasn’t smiling anymore – It felt good to defend myself, really did! I guess it became too uncomfortable for him to stay seated next to me after that with people staring at him with disgusted looks, and so he alighted immediately. The look of his embarrassed self still brings a smile to my face to this day.

I feel happy that at least I won’t be putting up with such characters today-I still can’t believe I managed to struggle past those many men and women struggling for a seat in the same matatu. The matatu soon fills up and the conductor hits the side with a big bang to signal the driver to start moving. ‘Twende!, he yells.

Traffic jams are a must when it starts raining in Nairobi. Today is no different. Our driver however is a very impatient guy; he maneuvers through it like a snake ignoring the honking from the other disapproving drivers. Mary J. Blige is crooning through the radio with her hit song ‘Without you’. I love the song, and almost sing along. Then I remember that I am not that teenage girl anymore. That however does not stop me from nodding my head albeit so slightly in tandem with the beats.

“Pesa hapo nyuma”, the conductor requests (or is it order?) for the fare.

I comply and give him a Kshs 50 note which he takes, looks at and looks back at me. I give him a questioning look to which he ‘responds’ “Fare is seventy bob.” Since when? I have always paid Kshs 50 from town, now he wants Kshs 70? He notes my annoyance and retorts that I should pay or get out of the vehicle. “Rain is blessings”, he adds. It now dawns on me that he is increasing the fare rates because of the rain! They always do this because this is when everyone is in a rush to go home. Talk of extortion! Since none of the other passengers look like they can be incited to join me in chanting ‘Haki Yetu!’ or uprooting the railway line in the Kenyan style of protest, and since I would not want to alight and have my freshly-retouched hair get wet, I give him a Kshs 100 note, he gives me back the Kshs 50 and asks me to wait for Kshs 30 change.

“..and I’ll be waiting up until you get home, coz I can’t sleep without you baibe…”, Mary J. Blige is still singing.

In a while, we get to the first stage and people start alighting. The matatu is about to leave when a small-bodied gentleman asks the conductor to wait. A lady is following him closely. She gets in and the man who was with her practically shoves her as she does so. He gives the conductor the lady’s fare (I wonder whether he paid Kshs 70 like the rest of us), then turns to walk away without so much as a word to the lady, who is now seated relatively close to where I am. Thank God for the distance between us because she is drenched, the rain had soaked her to the skin!

Our dutiful conductor hits the vehicle once again, then turns to the lady smiling and asks “Mathe, umeleta kichwa?” She is a heavy built woman with a blue jeans and a grey sweater-top. She has nothing for the cold, and since she is all wet from the rain, she has a slight shiver. Her lower lip is broken and swollen as a result. Her eyes are red, possibly from crying. She however doesn’t cower from answering the conductor’s question. “Kwani mtu anafikiri ataleta bibi mwingine kwa nyumba yangu na ninyamaze?” So, with this statement, we all establish that she is a disgruntled wife who objected to her husband’s philandering. The husband apparently wants to marry a second wife. Clearly she objected and hence her swollen face.

The music is still loud; some other musician is now controlling the airwaves, but my mind is not in the music anymore. This woman is; I see her and think of all whose husbands use violence to get their way in their relationships. A lady seated on the far side, to her right, dares to prod “Unaenda wapi?” to find out where she is going. She answers that she is going to stay at her sister’s place “Lakini nitarudi akitulia”, she adds. It is unbelievable that she intends to go back after what she has been through. I also cannot resist the urge to find out more and ask her if she has any children. “Two”, she confirms. The other ‘detective’ –that is what we look like now with our inquisitiveness- wants to find out why she wants to go back and she retorts “He is my husband”. “More like a thug!” I almost add.

When I ask who was taking care of her children, she responds that they are under the care of her house help. With that, the tears begin to flow. I decide to leave her alone. I don’t know what triggered the tears; maybe it is the thought of her children, or the physical pain from the swellings on her face. Maybe it is the pain of a broken heart that only a spited woman can understand. I realized that in spite of her being in a moving vehicle, she was in essence heading nowhere because she believed that she belonged with her abusive husband. I regret her ignorance.

At that point I wanted to tell her so much, to let her know that she was the only one with the power to get out of that abusive relationship, if not for her sake, then for the sake of her two children. I hope she someday realizes that abusive men do not change even after apologizing on their knees.

To contrast her turmoil, melodious beats keep streaming in from the speakers in the matatu, more passengers come on board as more alight. It is business as usual as we are each dropped to our destinations, our homes, our lives and our problems. The woman just sits there, as well awaiting her destination too.

“Shukisha”, I yell for the driver to stop as I realize I am home. The conductor lets out a long whistle, and the driver brings the vehicle to an unceremonious halt. As I alight, armed with my umbrella, I take one last look at the battered woman. She is calm now, no more tears. She has a distant look in her face, her body still shivering from the cold. At that moment, I curse all the men who dare raise a finger to their defenseless wives. “May they all rot in hell!” I think to myself.

The rain persists and the umbrella can just shield my precious hair. My feet and lower body are getting wet as I take a walk from the stage to my house. Then as the matatu pulls away, I realize that I forgot to ask for my Kshs 30 change. Damn!

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