The Jealous Boyfriend
After arriving in Maralal on Babie’s Coach, I went with the driver, the turnboy, and a friend of mine who is a chief, to the house of a friend, a woman who sells changaa. We were all having a good time drinking, talking, and laughing, when the woman’s boyfriend arrived. He asked what we were doing. I told him that we were with my sister having a good time, and that we would be staying all night. He told us to leave, but we just kept drinking and talking. He left the house, but came back in an hour.
‘Are you still here,’ he asked?
‘Yes,’ I told him, ‘we are comfortable here. We are having a good time, and like I told you, we’ll be saying all night.’ The chief is always joking around, especially when he has been drinking. He starting joking around with the woman in front of her boyfriend. The chief was saying things like, ‘Ah, this is my woman,’ and he was also speaking in nonsense syllables. The chief had no interest in the woman, but he liked to flirt and to joke around. The boyfriend wasn’t smiling. He became threatening, but we ignored him, and again he left.
This time, when the boyfriend returned, he seemed to be in a better mood. He sat down with us, had a drink, talked a little. What we didn’t know is that he had gone to the restaurant where he works and returned with the small knife used to peel potatoes. When he finished his drink he told his girlfriend that he’d like to take her out to buy her a beer.
They had not gone more than a few steps down the street when he took out the knife and stabbed her in the chest. She screamed. We ran out of her house. The neighbors came out of their houses; we were all shouting at the boyfriend to leave her alone, to let her go, but the boyfriend did not pay attention to us. He stabbed her again and then shouted, ‘I want to see the baby that you have been given by these people.’ Shwitt, he stabbed her in the stomach, high up, just under her chest, and ripped down, disemboweling her. As she fell, he broke into a run and disappeared into the dark street.
When he was gone, we all crowded around her. The chief said, ‘Leave her, don’t go to the hospital, get the man.’ The neighbors asked him what he would do with him if he was caught. He said that he’d shoot him. The neighbors thought that was a good idea. They said that he was a bad man and they’d like to get rid of him. It turns out he had not gone far. As we were talking, he came out of where he was hiding. The chief and the neighbors took off after the man. The chief shot him, but only wounded him, shattering a leg. We all surrounded the boyfriend so the chief could go for the police.
After the boyfriend was arrested, my friends and I went to get lodging, and the neighbors went to bed. In the morning, the police came to pick up Wisute. She was covered with flies.