The Journey to Mombasa

Apart from a dog that barked occasionally from a distance, the night in Kibera, Africa’s largest slum, was unusually still.  A half moon shone dimly over the densely populated slum characterized by shacks, most of which looked like temporary fortifications.  Like all other slums in the country, Kibera bordered on crime and savagery.

In a mud hut, deep in the heart of the slum, eleven year old Mumbi sat alone by the fire in her family’s two-roomed hut. There was no glamour on her face; instead there was pain in her heart and a big lump in her throat.  Tears ran freely down her young and innocent face, as she sat staring at the soot that hang with great deformity from the tin roof.  A small kerosene lamp sat on one of the hearth stones, and once in a while, smoldering remains of the dying fire flickered, sending little distorted forms of her image across the walls. 

From where she sat, Mumbi could hear her dying mother groaning and breathing heavily from the next room, where she lay in a state of alarming deterioration. With a hollowness that bespoke the pain in her heart, Mumbi recalled the circumstances under which her family had ended up in this dire situation, and she held her head between her hands and wept quietly.

Until her father joined the Mungiki sect two years previously, Mumbi’s family had known happier days. Although remarkably poor, the family was once happy and close, bound tightly by the bonds of a common poverty.  Only two years earlier, her father was a cheerful and humorous carpenter who loved and cherished his family.  Those who knew him saw him as a good man, who encouraged Mumbi and her two younger twin brothers to work hard in school, so as to live a better life one day.  His wife was a humble and devoted Christian, who always reminded her children to count their blessings irregardless of their circumstances, and she worked hard selling vegetables in the nearby market.  Although they lived far below the poverty line, this was a family envied by many in the neighborhood.  With both parents able to work, the family was one of the very few who could afford to pay the monthly rent of 250 shillings without difficulty, and who could also afford to have a few pounds of meat in their meal at least once every two weeks.

However, from the day a family friend introduced Mumbi’s father to the Mungiki sect, the once happy family was sundered forever. Mungiki, which means ‘united people’, was an outlawed religious cult with criminal gang activities. The cult members were well known country wide for forcibly practicing female circumcision, brutally murdering innocent people, as well as burning down houses to avenge killings of their own by either angry citizens or the police. Members prayed facing Mt. Kenya, which they believed was the home of their God, Ngai.  The cult beheaded its defectors as well as anyone who opposed them.  They also performed ritual killings, and it was rumored that children were sometimes slain as sacrifices.