Possessed By The Bottle

Katana On Trial: Episode 12

Read episode 11 here and episode 1 here.

“Look at my hips, video vixens in Nairobi have wide hips like this, do you want to hold my hips, Katana?” Beatrice continued in slurred speech while walking towards me. “Hair doesn’t just grow on my head, Katana, do you want to see where else it grows?” she added while tagging on her leso.

I was dumbfounded. Njoro, and Mama Linda had disappeared into the house and Freddie, Timo, and everyone else looked on with hungry eyes. Churo village was a dull town and this, I knew was a theatre performance that generations to come would talk about. “Dance with me Katana, come on, don’t be shy we have done it before,” she said wrapping her hands around me, bare-chested in her white underwear.

Just as she did, Njoro emerged from his house holding a panga and started coming towards us at full tilt. From the look in his eye I could tell the wroth was directed towards me. Before he could get to us Mama Linda came out of the house holding her bible: “Nyasaye, the devil has possessed my sister-wife don’t let her disgrace this family,” she started chiming and Njoro stopped in his tracks.

“The devil is a destroyer, here to break a happy home. Enkai, hear us in our time of need,” Mama Linda said now thrusting herself onto the ground. “My husband Njoro is a good man, a great man. Don’t let his hands be stained with blood because of the work of the serpent,” she added while ripping her headgear from her head to reveal poorly done matuta.

“Look at my thighs, video vixens in Nairobi have thick thighs like this, do you want to touch my thighs, Katana?” Beatrice said, her beer breath pungent on my face. “Abibibi-shantiriba-bashi,” Mama Linda was now talking in tongues. “Njoro is a successful man with a posho mill, pub, and hotel. Ngai, don’t let his success be destroyed in a day,” she said jumping around the compound on one leg.

Amidst the confusion, I realized Bobobo the fool had managed to sneak past me and he was now licking the grease from Timo, Njoro, and Freddie’s plate. “Abibibi-shantiriba-bashi,” Mama Linda continued. “Mulungu, you have told us in your good book that there is nothing too big for you. Don’t let this be the day that Njoro’s house falls but the day that it overcomes,” she said raising her bible and began stomping her foot while breathing hard.

While calling the God of every tribe, it was unclear why Mama Linda had saved me yet again. This would later be a heated debate in Churo Village; with some saying that she had saved me because it was a bad omen to spill blood in your own compound on a Sunday, while others insisted that she did not want to lose the cheap labor I provided, yet some said the spirit of God had possessed her so that I could become the man I was today.

After she grew tired of stomping her foot, or Nyasaye, Enkai, or Mulungu whispered in her ear that it was time to stop, as some would later say in the drinking dens of Kabarnet town, where the story reached within a day—She pulled Beatrice from my embrace and covered her nakedness with the leso that was a puddle on the floor.

That evening, as the sun went down: Timo, Freddie, and Njoro sat down yet again, without the company of goat meat, nor a strong beverage, and it was decided that Beatrice had been possessed by an evil spirit; out to destroy Njoro’s household. The coming days would be tough on Beatrice and on me by extension. As the whole village came together to exorcise this evil from her.

Read episode 13 here.

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image credit: jonathan greenaway