Screams of terror rendered our apartment’s air with calls of distress. A woman was screaming from one of the houses on the upper floor of our apartment. The first thought that launched into my mind was of a woman being assaulted by her husband. For the sake of gathering this content, I dashed out of my house without locking the door with a padlock. I had a high false sense of security which was inspired by the agency of the matter and the knowledge that my fellow tenants could not steal from one another.
At the door, I met my neighbor at his door. None of us was privy to what was happening, yet he asked me what was going on.
‘What is going on?’ He asked.
‘Jesus is blowing his trumpet to signal his second coming,’ I shouted on the way up. Seriously, how did he expect me to know what was happening at that time? He clicked, walked back into his door and, closed his door with a bang.
On the second floor, I met more tenants standing outside their houses, undecided, and asking each other what was happening. In some houses, women served my eyes to the finest lingerie and skimpiest of sleeping gowns. In one door, a woman stood naked behind her half-closed door to catch the wind of what was happening. The allure of getting mshene overrode her need to be decently dressed.
I hurtled quickly past them. Equally, at that time, my desire to gather this content to share on Social media in exchange for likes and comments overrode the allurement of stopping at the doors with skimpily dressed women for eye chitchat.
Finally, I got to the door. Two guys were standing outside the door of the scene of the crime. They were imploring the house’s occupants to open the door. One of them resorted to banging on it. Still, the occupants defied their request and bangs. The lady kept on screaming in anguish. Her affliction seemed to grow with each scream.
You see, I knew who this lady was. She was one of the tenants that I interacted with from time to time. I met her when she was moving into her house. She was exhausted from the hassles of moving into a new apartment in Nairobi. A boda-boda had just dropped her at our gate from the gas station. I offered to help carry her 13KG gas cylinder to her house on the 4th floor of our apartment.
In return, she tipped me gloriously. From then, we became friends. I became her go-to-guy who was readily available whenever she had a problem that needed a quick fixing. I worked from home. She didn’t work. These made readily available.
I was the one who mounted her 65-inch TV. A few weeks later, she bought a DSTV dish. I remember that night when I erected the DSTV dish on her balcony. As well, I climbed on the rooftop to tie her laundry line. When she bought a new bed, I was the one who screwed and hammered the bed’s part into a functional bed and still lay the mattress on it. I was the guy that she called whenever she needed her things mounted, screwed, or hammered.
But today, she was in agony. I had heard her scream before, but not in such an agonizing manner. Another man was beating her up. She needed another one of my help. I knew she had a man. He rarely stayed in Kenya. He was a Nigerian, Achike. He alternated between staying in Nigeria and Kenya.
Minutes passed, the lady’s screams became unbearable. We became desperate. A few more tenants had gathered outside their door. Even amid the commotion and the noise, their immediate neighbor was still locked in his house listening to loud music.
When all the methods employed by others failed, I stepped forward, cleared my voice, and shouted: If you don’t open this door, I shall call the police. You have a chance to allow us to solve this amicably’. The lady’s screams suddenly turned into whimpers.
Everyone stopped talking as footsteps were heard walking towards the door. No one knew what was on the other side of the door. What if the perpetrator was weaponized? At the door, a tall and bulky man appeared. He was dressed in basketball shorts, a green Nigerian National Team football jersey. He kept a medium-sized afro-hair. His face seemed intimidated already. His eyes coyed when he made contact with the crowd outside his house.
He made a few steps back into his house to allow us in. ‘What is happening here?’ One tenant asked.
‘Oga, I did nothing, oo,’ Achike said.
‘We have heard screams of distress. Is everything okay?’
‘Oga, I did nothing, oo,’ Achike repeated. He spread his hands to register his innocence. On his hands, there was a cut with blood. His face was deformed, and his left forearms had what seemed like teeth bite scratches.
Wanjiru’s whimpers turned into hard moans. She was sitting on her carpet, which I lay on the ground. One of her rested its elbow on the couch’s pillow while the other was wiping tears off her eyes.
‘He was strangling me,’ Wanjiru said in Swahili.
Achike tapped on my shoulders with desperation. I panicked. Had he identified me? My heartbeat throbbed beyond the normal rate. ‘What is she saying?’
‘She is accusing you of strangling her.’
Achike locked his hands above his head and made a few aimless steps inside their living area. He tried to confront Wanjiru. He was stopped. ‘Why are you lying? Why are you lying? Why are you lying?’ His tone and intonation reminded me of the famous ‘Why are you running?’ clip. ‘God go bear me witness, oo. I can’t beat a woman in her country. Abeg, she is lying. Oga, hear me out.’
‘I am not lying!’ Wanjiku cried. Her whimpers hardened.
‘Oga, look. Oga, look at my hand. She bit me oo, she scratched me, oo. I didn’t do anything. I swear by the gods of Enugu, she be lying oo. This Kenya girl be liar oo.’
‘Why was she screaming then?’ Another man asked.
‘Oga, this Kenyan girl be bringing men in my house whenever I am in Nigeria.’ My heart skipped a beat. ‘I wanted to leave with my things, but she doesn’t want me to leave. I tried unmounting my TV, she started screaming, oo.’
‘It is not his house,’ Wanjiru said. She pushed her hands below the coach’s pillow and produced what looked like rent receipts bearing her name. ‘The house is leased under my name, and these receipts show that I am the one who pays rent.’
After back and forth, it was established that Oga Achike used to give Wanjiru the money that she used to pay rent with. I also learned that our apartment had a policy that did not allow Nigerians to lease one of its houses owing to the Nigerians’ reputation of partying every day 24/7, causing an uncontrollable disturbance and acting in a disorderly manner when they were drunk, and staying in a group of more than 5 Nigerians in one house.
However, a Nigerian could live in the house only if he was being hosted by a Kenyan. This inspired Achike to procure the services of Wanjiru. Her role was to rent the house under her name. Achike paid the rent, ensured that Wanjiru had pocket money, clothes, food, as well as furnishing the house.
Trouble rocked their African union when Achike got wind of Wanjiru's sleazy decision to turn the house that he paid rent into an extension of Koinange Street. Their fight erupted when Achike called his compatriot from Kilimani late into the night and asked them to drive to Ruaka to move his belongings. They disagree on what Achike owned in the house. When he tried to unmount the TV that I had mounted, Wanjiru protested and screamed to alert the whole building.
On the table, she produced documents after document, receipt after receipt, that proved that she was the one who bought the furniture, electronics, and everything in the house. Adichie, on the other hand, claimed that she might have bought the things, but the money came from him. He claimed that Kenyan businesses treated him with suspension whenever he shopped for expensive things.
The two antagonizing parties were not willing to involve the police in the matter. Wanjiru did not have a reason to give why she did not want to involve the Police. Adichie cited harassment and favoritism from the police as his reason.
It was a delicate issue to solve. Although Wanjiru acknowledged that Achike financed the purchase of everything, she was not willing to lose any possession whose receipt of ownership bore her names. If burdened with the task of proving ownership, the law was on her side.
‘Ata ukitaka twende koti sai,’ Wanjiru announced with an arrogant tone, one that dared and mocked Achike.
A Nigerian who was potentially involved in their usual online mischief had walked into the jaws of our very own, that is what I thought.
‘She is saying that the courts can solve this case,’ I translated. Achike paced around the house. He was mumbling things in his mother’s dialect, probably invoking his gods to strike all of us with thunder.
‘Oga,’ he called me and placed his hands on my shoulders in a manner that was supposed to woe me into his side. ‘I picked this Kenyan girl in Rosambu. Offered her comfort, gave her everything she wanted. The only thing she was supposed to do was to pay rent on my behalf. Then she started shagging men in the house that I pay rent for. Oga, I know one of the men stay in this apartment. Thunder go strike him one day, oo. Oga, if it were you, what would you do?’
Why was he putting me in such a dilemma? My moral obligation commanded me to side with him, in the spirit of brotherhood, but my lascivious obligation commanded me to side with Wanjiru. What if I sided with Achike, angered her in the process, and then she revealed that I was the man who came to screw, mount, and climb Achike’s things? What if she got angered and stopped asking me to fix her things?
Her eyes were fixed on me, patiently waiting for my reply.
‘Personally…’ I stammered. ‘The best bet for you, bro, is to seek intervention from the police.’ The case was too complicated for most of us. Most of the tenants walked back into their houses, at least with a piece of mushene to share with their colleagues the following day.
The handful of us who remained were so invested in the story that we didn’t want to leave. Eventually, after failing to come to a consensus, Achike stormed out of the building. His friend picked him up. He relinquished ownership of everything.
We walked back into our houses after everything was resolved. It was only getting at my door that I realized that I had not closed my door. I pushed it in a rush. My phone and laptop were missing. The following day, I woke up to a Kamkunji outside the apartment. Most of those who had attended the quarrel longer walked back into their houses to find a lot of their valuables missing. Nairobi, Nairobi, Nairobi.
Anyway, I didn’t believe that someone could walk away from this 65’ TV, cooker, washing machine, leather couches, dining table, a king-size bed, home theater. Yesterday, Wanjiru said that Achike used Ksh. 70K to buy the laptop that I am using to write this story.
