MY VALENTINE GIFTS: BASTARD AND EVICTION- By Peter K'ouma

The sun had set then. The dimly lit security lights that hung above the slum shelters were on. See a young girl of my age sent to go purchase kerosene from the shops that kiss the dumpy roads in the shanties at this time of the night is a common sight in the slums. Kibera has been my home for now seventeen years. I have been kissing the dusts and the smells in these dirty streets. These streets have taught me the art of making babies; of course you expect me to know that, staying with my sisters and brothers, sleeping in the same curtain-partitioned room with my parents, who are at the verge of reproducing still. These streets have exposed me to seeing women who part their legs along the walls so as to afford their house bills and meals.

Maybe most of you haven't grown up in the slums in my country and this might sound a written tale. That very day, I had met two thrown polythene bags at different spots, each holding the result of what happens in these slum streets. Where would that teenage girl take the thing if their house is filled with hungry rats? These young women would be kept out of the keg pubs, if they dare keep the pregnancy, and you know exactly what that means- no livelihood.  And the dump fathers? Of course they are never known. They are the Muthama, Kamau, Oloo, Mwakazi, Abdi, Mushokholo, Kipng'eno, and Miriti, who all have walked on her barefooted. She actually doesnt know who to cling to as the father to the thing. Therefore, only one name emerge- the  bastard, who has to be gotten rid off before the next customer on board checks.

The first man appeared from the front structure that lines the road. The structure blocks the light rays from reaching to illuminate the part of this slum street well, giving advantage to the anonymous. As a thunderbolt, I am picked and slid off the scene, with total haste and mouth shut to prevent the defensive noise that could cross my mind.  Laid prostrately, like a sheep getting the better of the butcher's knife, the three men took their turns on me, each scooping his pleasure from a teen slum-girl. You don't know when it is like hearing the moans of rough men, men whom you do not know their identities. Maybe men who go to mijengo with my dad every single sunrise or could be scooping the pleasures from the sluts in the slum pubs, scattering their seeds.

The kerosene bottle that I held in my hand could have shared the same fate with my innocent blood flowing in that very outdoor bedroom scene, flowing for a short period before it is absorbed into the thick film of dust that cements our streets. Finding a teen with her virginity intact in our slum is anathema, since the hawks are ever hoovering to pick the chicks before they could have the claws for scratching and the head to think.

I gave away my virginity to these strangers on a valentine dish. They strangers were kind enough to reward me, to offer me the gifts of the world lovers day: a bastard in my lap and a kick from my mother's "parlour".
As you celebrate your Valentine, I too celebrate my gifts (bastard and eviction), but still in these dirty streets that suffocates me; the streets that choke me, on this Valentine.