A guy gets blamed for getting a village girl pregnant
Tony huffed in but weak defiance. He turned his face and pouted rather childishly but said nothing. His father maintained a stony silence in the seat beside him as he drove. Clearly he was still mad. Tony knew better than to push it regardless of how much he didn’t want this. Besides, this was his own fault he was being shipped off to shagz.
Tony unhappily recalled how Jeff, his best friend, over the half term period, had convinced him to take his dad’s car while he was abroad to go attend a party outside Nairobi in Naivasha. He wanted to be cool so he went along with it and after the party, buzzed, proceeded to crash the car… Like it actually rolled. He could have died. I was a miracle that he and Jeff left the site unscathed with just a few bumps and bruises.
Thankfully his father was out of the country and wasn’t at liberty to come home right away. It helped that he wasn’t badly hurt to the point where it was urgent. But that didn’t mean that he was off the hook by any stretch. His father was, understandably, livid. If he came back at that time, Tony would have been dead for sure. The car had been totaled and would have to be replaced all together.
His mother, knowing his father the way she did, took a belt to his arse….and a mop handle, but shielded him by convincing his father to stay abroad to give him time to cool down. And when he came back, tony was already back in school at this point, she convinced him not to come down on him with all the wrath he could, because he had loved that car, but to give him a more abstract punishment that would be more meaningful and less destructive.
What was it? Shagz. A whole year of shagz. He would go to school and over the holidays go straight to shagz. No going home, even once. School, then shagz. Shagz then school. No TV, no phone no friends. Tony’s heart had faltered when his mother had come to the school with a silent husband in tow to tell him. Maybe a beating would have been better, but he wasn’t in any position to say sh*t. One look at his father’s face was enough to make him swallow his fate.
After literally dumping his ass at his grandparent’s house, pausing only to politely have a cup of tea and leave a bunch of foodstuffs and some money, his father drove away without looking back. Other than warning him to behave, he said nothing. Tony’s fate was sealed and there was no way out. He was stuck in the middle of nowhere and regardless of how wild his friends were, nobody was going to trouble himself coming all the way out there just for him. He was doomed.
HE couldn’t make friends. Having been a dyed in the wool babi, he couldn’t even speak his mother tongue. Add his incapability to do manual labor and his spoiled attitude and he was worse than a pariah. He was the butt of everyone’s jokes. The girls, shady as they were, snickered at him to his face and the boys just harassed him physically. He was roughed up and forced to do things to entertain them and one time, he could swear he was almost raped.
He blamed his effeminate softness and his whiny attitude. Either way though, he hated it here. That one month holiday couldn’t end soon enough. When the holidays ended he cried tears of joy as his father drove him back to the school. He made a resolution. He was going to grow a spine. Otherwise he wouldn’t survive.
He said this to Jeff, as he settled back into civilization.
“And how are you intending to do that?” Jeff asked him, smirking. Tony was silent for a moment.
“im going to take agric,” He said. Jeff’s eye brows rose.
“Dude…that’s shady as f***….like why would you want to do that? Its not cool at all, and nobody’s gonna wanna hang out with u.” Jeff said reminding him why he was in this mess to begin with. It was because he was trying to be cool. He scowled bitterly at the memory, and threw a poisonous look at his friend.
“This is your fault you know… If you didn’t -…” Jeff cut him off.
“Hey…don’t blame me. Did I force you to go? And besides, I almost died too.” He said looking aside. Tony gave him a sullen look but said nothing more. This guy was a bad influence and he was probably better off not being friends with him anymore. But if things were going to go the way he thought, Jeff was probably going to be the only friend he had in this school. What a sh**ty situation.
He figured he would join the rugby team as well to get some physical strength up too on top learning what to do in a shamba situation, but honestly, it was a nightmare. By the time half term came by, he was exhausted. He couldn’t go all the way to shagz so he stayed in school and Jeff, at least feeling sorry for him, chose to stay behind too.
When the holz rolled by again he was back in the reserve but he was a different person. More jaded and experienced with this life and armed with a small smattering of mother tongue, he was less defenseless than before. The usual suspects came around and this time he resisted. It was weak, but persistent and finally they got bored and eventually just stuck to ostracizing him.
It was around this time that the girls stopped making fun of him, and some even tried to come on to him, but who would want that? They were shady and they smelled funny. He chased them off like you would a stray dog and as it happens; this just made them want him more. God forbid! He scowled in disgust at the thought. His grandparents couldn’t be bothered with the teen angst of the young ones, so he was on his own.
There was only one person he didn’t mind. She was some distant cousin. Their homestead was just a stone’s throw away from his and she was one of only 3 girls in the household. Her two older sisters were married so she was the only one left. Her brothers and the cousins that lived in the same household particularly hated him, so he was always wary when it came to her. But she was the only one who had always been nice to him. Infact, when he had first arrived and didn’t know anything, she actually helped him out with some of the chores he’d been given.
This didn’t mean he liked her as a girl in anyway, because … no. But, she was his friend. His ONLY friend around these parts. Her brothers knew she was friendly with him and they hated him even more for it, but the most violent opposition came from one cousin, also one of his biggest bullies. Not wanting to re-invite their wrath he mostly stayed away from her only waving from a big distance, and only when no one was looking. Once or twice, if he encountered her on the paths, if no one was looking he would stop to chat (he was starving for human conversation of the non-old-people type).
Once or twice, he almost got caught so he pushed her into the thicket until they passed. But that was all. But this is why, when the his father showed up at school when the next term started, breathing fire, his clearly stressed out mom in tow this time, he was beyond confused. A heavy slap had him on the floor…
“This idiot!” He shouted. His mom jumped up and held him back.
“Hapana….lets listen to his side of the story first…” She pleaded clearly upset as well.
When the dust settled, Tony sat frozen, eyes the size of saucers. Pregnant? Ok, it was shocking, but it happened and what did it have to do with him? He voiced his ignorance, which only seemed to heat his father up again, but he didn’t get hit this time.
“So your not going to admit to it?” His principal said looking intently at him.
“Admit to what?” He asked mystified. The principle sighed, exasperated.
“Admit to getting that girl pregnant…!” His father spoke again, impatient. He froze again in shock.
What?!?! Who got a girl pregnant?!?!? ….He was still a virgin for pete’s sake! His mother, seeing his reaction, seemed to believe him. She spoke up.
“Let’s go home and get the whole story directly. I don’t believe our son would get some unsophisticated village girl pregnant….he is too picky. You know this!” She said pleading again. His father gave his wife an impatient look, but he gave in.
Two days later, he sat in a heavy meeting full of grownups, unable to lookup, let alone talk. Her people sat on one side and his, in the other. His grandparents were present and so were some of her brothers. They glared accusing daggers at him, but he didn’t look back. When the girl was made to come forward and name the perpetrator she seemed to falter in front of him and mumbled incoherently looking down.
He looked up at her, expecting her to come clean when she pointed at him. Dumb struck, he stammered before jumping up and yelling at her to tell the truth! At this point, her hateful bully cousin chimed in with stories about how he had seen them meeting secretly and how more than once he had seen Tony drag her into the bushes when he thought no one was looking.
Tony broke into a cold sweat, unable to deny it. His father regarded him with eyes that seemed to say ‘I’m done with this idiot.’ He tried to defend himself but it just sounded like excuses. Later that night his parents sat him down to tell him what had been decided. They would not force him to marry her, but they would have him take responsivity for the child. However, his mother said that before they invest a cent more after the baby comes, they would test for paternity. His father did not look too enthusiastic about it, but he let it go.
He broke down at this. He loved his mother to death! He was sent back to school after his parents left money behind for the girl, but he swore on his own grave that that was the last time he would talk to any girl in the village.