We all came outside and watched, not knowing what to do. It was the caretaker who approached them and tried pulling baba Roy away. The caretaker lived in the last room if you start counting from the gate. The houses were all “face me I face you” single rooms made of iron sheets and formed two rows such that they faced each other. Each row had 6 doors. At the far end, there were two pit latrines and two bathrooms to be shared by all. It was only the caretaker who had interacted with the new tenants when they moved in. The rest of us had not talked to them. By the time they finished moving in, it was already 7.30PM and all of us were inside our respective houses.
When the caretaker managed to pull baba Roy away from mama Roy, she got up, picked the first stone she saw and hurled it towards baba Roy with all the energy she could marshall. Baba Roy dodged the stone and it hit the only bulb which was providing security light in the compound. The bulb, which was hung outside their room, shuttered into tiny pieces. The darkness hampered our view. Some people switched on their phone’s torches but it seems after the lights going off, there was not so much to see. The fight kind of just ended and what we could hear were just abuses which mama Roy showered on Baba Roy. Many people went back to their houses to catch up with the remainder of the 9 o’clock news bulletin. The few who had television sets. Those of us who remained outside to witness the end of the fight saw baba Roy getting inside their house and mama Roy stood outside and hurled last minute insults before joining her husband inside.
A few minutes later, just when we were beginning to enjoy the calm that ensued after the incident, we all heard loud laughters emanating from baba Roy and Mama Roy's house. They were giggling and laughing out so loud that we could all not concentrate on what we were doing. We could hear them teasing and making fun of each other. It was so bizarre to an extent that it was even funny. They were also frying ‘omena.’ The “cheeeeeee” sound of raw onema being dipped into hot oil defeaned our ears and the aroma which followed that cooking wafted through the rafters and suffocated our noses. Long after the cooking was over, the aroma of deep fried omena lingered around the compound like a stubborn, jilted lover.
Our sleep was again interrupted by sounds of three people talking loudly and making several trips to and from the toilet. It was Baba Roy, Mama Roy and Roy. From what we could decipher from the conversations going on outside, the first midnight trip to the toilet was because Roy wanted to relieve himself, so his father had taken him to the toilet. The second trip, barely ten minutes after the first one, was because Mama Roy had developed some running stomach, but because she was afraid to go to the toilet alone, Baba Roy had escorted her. We could hear her say she suspects the 'omena' she ate had too much oil and that her stomach is sensitive to oily foods. Or something like that. We could not hear every word. The third trip came twenty minutes after the second one. It was Baba Roy alone. Before he reached the toilet, he turned back and walked towards the house. We could hear him cursing. He had forgotten to take tissue paper. When he reached the house, we could hear him calling mama Roy a terrible cook. It seems he had developed a running stomach as well. Mama Roy said that she did not force him to eat. This reply angered Baba Roy and he surprised her with a terrifying slap on her cheek. Or maybe she was not surprised at all. This is because she did not retaliate. Baba Roy trekked again towards the toilet, this time with a tissue paper, we guessed. After a few minutes, we heard his footsteps. He was walking back to the house. Then he heard him locking the house.
A short time had elapsed when we were woken up, again, with wailing sounds from mama Roy. This time it seemed baby Roy was giving her another kind of beating. Unlike the first time when she wailed loudly so that we could all hear and come to her rescue, this time she struggled to suppress the cries from escaping her mouth. She clearly did not need some help. Pleadings of “Baba Roy utaniua”, “Imetosha” “Aaaaaaggrr”, “ Mungu wangu” went unheeded by baba Roy as he heaved and signed as he fought relentlessly. This fight went on for quite some time, driving away all the remnants of sleep in our heavy eyes. It was only after they went dead silent that sleep returned to transport us to slumber land.
The next day, he beat her also. And the day after that. He would come from work at around 8PM and the beatings would start around 9PM. Ever since they moved in here, we have never enjoyed the 9 o'clock news in peace. He worked as a supervisor in a cement company in Athi River. She had no Job. She was just a house wife. Though sometimes she would dress well, apply make up and leave the house after her husband has left. She would be brought back by a Boda Boda guy just before her husband arrives from work. The days she does that, she usually gets double beatings.
A week after they moved in in our plot, the president announced a 7PM to 5AM curfew. This forced baba Roy to come back to the house a little bit earlier than usual. He would arrive at around 6.50PM. During the curfew, the beatings started much earlier. At around 8PM. This was a relief for us because by 9PM, they had finished the first part of their daily fights and we could enjoy the 9 o'clock news bulletin in peace. However, the only bad thing about this was that the second leg of their daily fights commenced earlier than usual, much to our disadvantage. The fight would start when majority of us had not gone to bed. Those with grown up children were worst hit.
One Friday evening, at around 7.03PM, Baba Roy entered the compound with his torn shirt drenched in blood. He was bleeding from the head and his Jaws were swollen, making him look like he was just about to swallow a pregnant toad. He was furiously cursing and calling the police abominable names. Apparently, the police had used his frail body as a punching bag while reminding him that the curfew was still in place. They had clobbered him like a thief. Never mind that he was just 2 minutes late. That evening, he beat his wife like he has never done before. As if she was the one who instructed the police to clobber him. He poured all his frustrations on her with kicks and blows meted with precision to inflict maximum pain. After that award winning beating, he slumped on his rickety chair and waited for the usual insults but they never came. She had lost her voice, and her limbs were broken. Every part of her was paining. That night, he never meted out the second beating, much to his disappointment. And how Roy manages to sleep soundly amidst all these chaos defeats logic. He is a heavy sleeper, that one.
If there is a phrase that mama Roy does not tire to use is this; “You useless man, I am leaving you today. And I will never, ever come back.” She uses it like a million times every evening. Sometimes she even ties her luggage together and makes to leave, but for some reasons best known to herself, she never goes past the gate. One night, she made her threat come true by actually opening the gate and storming outside with such a determined mind of never ever coming back, only for us to be awoken in the tail end of the night by her screams of “Aaaaaah, eeeeeh, unaniua, unaniua, haki ya ngai, nakupenda baba Roy…” She might have sneaked back at dawn so as not to miss her nocturnal beatings, and Baba Roy, ever ready to beat the hell out of her, did not disappoint. Or maybe she met mean-looking policeman armed with “Rungus” and live bullets maintaining the curfew orders and she chose to be beaten by Baba Roy instead of becoming another statistic of those felled by police in the name of keeping Coronavirus away.
Nowadays, when baba Roy and Mama Roy fight, we don’t interfere. We don’t even sympathize with them however gory the fight may be. Theirs has become a normal. A child play kind of fight. We just wish that this COVID-19 pandemic could be over so that the curfew can be uplifted. Even better, we wish Baba Roy and Mama Roy could just move out of our plot so that we can live in peace again. The constant fights is sending a bad message to the young children growing up here. We are already dealing with a strange disease which has not only shut down the economy but is also threatening to claim more lives. It has already taken 14 lives so far. We don’t want to deal, at the same time, with the stress that comes with baba Roy and Mama Roy's unending drama. And for those who are looking to do a research on Coronavirus pandemic's impact on domestic violence, they should look no further than baba Roy and Mama Roy.
(Image source: Facebook)
