Today, my heart is broken. As a policeman, even one from a small village such as Jiji Ndogo, you get to see a side of humans most people never see, and hopefully never will.
A while back, right here in our village, someone shot an old man and left his body to rot on a couch. It got me wondering how anyone could be that heartless. But every time you think you’ve seen it all, another incident reminds you that humans can always do worse.
This morning, a woman called the police post and informed us that her neighbour had the cruel habit of locking her kids inside the house when she left for work. For a toilet, she leaves them a bucket, like inmates in a police cell.
“How long has this been going on?” I ask.
“Since she moved here, I think,” says the woman. “Should be six months now.”
My partner, Sergeant Sophia, leans closer to the phone I have on speaker. “And how come you’re only now reporting it?”
A beat of silence from the other end. Then, “You know how it is. I didn’t want to interfere. Nowadays if you even talk to someone’s kid or look at them in a way they don’t like, you get an earful from the parent.”
That’s not news. All that stuff about ‘It takes a village…’ that’s old news. These days parents are a village of two, sometimes only one. I have dealt with enough disputes over children to know that.
When we check the house, we find it locked, no kids inside.
“It’s a school day,” the neighbours explain. Makes sense. However, a couple more neighbours verify the accusations.
Sophia and I decide to make another visit to the said house later in the evening hoping to catch the mother at home. We knock at the one-room flat at 10 o’clock at night. The door is unlocked, but a small girl no more than eight years old pulls it wide open.
The scene that greets us is not pretty. Five children in total, ranging from two to 10 years old are asleep on an old dirty carpet on the floor. Their mother is dead asleep under a mosquito net on the only bed in the room.
She turns over and says groggily, “Is that you, Oduor?”
The girl who opened the door says, “No. It’s the police.”
Smiling sleepily, the mother says, “Ha-ha, my love. Come over to the bed. I like it when you role-play.”
Sophia steps over to the bed and shakes the woman fully awake. “How can you sleep on a bed, under a net, while your children sleep on the floor?”
The woman looks annoyed. “Does it look like we can all fit in this bed? Besides, they are comfortable. Ask them.”
We do exactly that and after a little coaxing, the kids spill the beans.
Because their mother is a heavy sleeper, the door is never locked at night so that Oduor, her lover – who is not their father – can let himself in. And yes, on more occasions than they can remember, they have had to stay all day in the house when their mother was out.
Actually, they say, the other day the three-year-old
was so thirsty she took a cup, dipped it in their ‘toilet’ bucket and drank. And
on the few instances that their mother has allowed them to cook during the day,
the 10-year-old boy does the chore.
Sophia is very affected by this story, I guess because she’s pregnant. As we arrest the woman and haul her off to the police post, I wonder why we only license people to drive and never do the same for those who want to be parents.
