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MOMBASA, KENYA - My ordeal at the hands of Kenyan probation officers is a once in a lifetime experience! I had to report at their offices with my probation card almost every other week.
Moraa Gitaa I remember a friend who got a job at a local bank, but a year down the line ended up doing time at Shimo la tewa. She and three male colleagues had been implicated on fraud charges. They went through a lengthy court case and people were stunned when only she alone was convicted while the three men were acquitted. She was jailed for three years and later on told me that the presiding Judge had asked all of the accused to part with a hundred thousand Kenyan shillings - she had declined because she didn't have money. Luckily, (though her two small children whom she left with her sister suffered trauma.) she was released after serving only one year of her jail term. She was pardoned through the Presidential amnesty of which it is widely rumored that it is normally up for grabs for only the convicts from wealthy families.
Maybe it was better than what I was going through in the name of probation. Here I was without a job and - when on some days I missed to report at the probation office - the officer would not understand that I did not have bus fare. I saw people being subjected to punishment because of missing out. When you missed an appointment, the next time you reported, you would be asked to sweep the compound or wash the offices or even the curtains.
One day I met one lady who had come to report on her weekly basis and she told me that I didn't have to go through such, that all I had to do was be friendly to the probation officer and meet his demands! I was soon to find out how! First he asked for a coffee date. For the life of me I didn't get it. What on earth did my probation have to do with coffee dates? I refused.
Initially I reported once a month a couple of times and then, without any reason, he changed it to twice a month. I wondered, did they have carte blanche to do as they pleased? He knew it was hard for me financially. I knew there had to be a catch somewhere and I waited in anticipation for his move. It came eventually. He dangled a very tantalizing carrot.
One day I went to his office to report. I found him with some forms - he showed me some of them and said that the Government was able to help deserving cases on probation, like myself, so that they don't regress back into their bad habits, by paying school fees for our children until we get jobs. So he showed me the forms of some needy cases whose fees had been paid. Then he asked me out to dinner - I refused again.
He put the blank forms I was supposed to fill back into his desk drawer. He told me to continue being stubborn and that I would not get any help from him unless I came back to my senses. I stared at the pictures of his wife and children proudly di splayed on his desk and told him that I'd never, ever go out with him no matter what. He stared at me enigmatically and told me not to use such words with him, and that he'd heard it all before ...
I left his office with suppressed tears.
Another day he told me that the Government could help me start a small business, as I was one of the more disciplined cases, but first he wanted to come to my place. Didn't the man have ears? I told him I didn't want him coming to my place - he said that as my probation officer he had the right to. So I told him that if it was official , he should tell me the day, and the time and I'll make sure that my sister or one of my family members was present. To cut a long story short, you've probably guessed right - he never did make that visit, and I never got any school fees for my daughter or grant or capital to start a business.
But I did get a hundred shillings one day from hi m for my b us fare! To-date I still wonder what criteria the Government uses to veto the deserving cases? Eventually I got a job - and I was still on probation. When I informed the probation officer (he'd told me that if I got a job I have to inform him) I thought he would be happy for me, but instead he looked miffed, like I'd slapped him! He had gleefully been gloating - and now here I was telling him I'd gotten a job.
This job was in town and I had no difficulty making my monthly reporting to the probation office, but then I landed a better paying one. He set out on another route of frustration. My new job was in Mombasa West, a long way from the town center. Instead of reducing the number of times I should report to him, he increased them - to reporting once a week.
Every time I would come to report, I would not find him. I would spend hours hanging around waiting for him. Sometimes I understood he was in court - but once court was over I would call him to ask him to come to his office , and he would say that he was first going for lunch, or he would tell me to go to the court house and he could sign my card for me there. I would rush there, only to be told he'd just left, yet he knew I was on my way there. I almost lost my job but, luckily enough, my one-year probation was drawing to an end.
Once or twice I would find the other probation officers (one of whom was a lady) and th ey would sign for me after I explained to them the situation at my work place.
On subsequent occasions they refused to sign saying that my assigned officer had refused their interference - but why couldn't they meet my eyes?
On the last day - I could see it in his eyes, he couldn't believe that I'd finished my one year. Neither could I, but I could hear my mother's words ringing in my ears, that I'm a strong lady - that,coming from an African woman who has brought up seven children, and buried two others, is more than a compliment.
So the probation officer looked at me. I've never forgotten his words. He had the audacity to tell me that he had a feeling a mis-justice had occurred somewhere along the way - but as I was not showing any remorse either, he was going to write a bad final report, unless I talked to him nicely.
Remorse? I doubted if the man could recognize the emotion if it walked right up to his front door, rang the bell and kicked him right in the face! Pray do tell me, how is one supposed to feel remorseful when you are not guilty?
He continued that with a little fee, all traces of such records could disappear. I was stunned! He had the nerve! I simply told him that he can go to hell as I didn't care what he wrote. And that was that. I wish you could have seen the look on his face!
My probation was over and it was a relief - I've never even wanted to know what he wrote in my file.
Someone I'd just met once expressed shock when I openly talked of this experience. He challenged me to show him proof and I simply told him to check police records. He certainly had the means to do so - he had the cheek and he said he'll call my bluff and went to check; It profoundly confounded him to find my confessions true! I'll repeat myself again - who ever is interested can go dig the archives!
During the entire probation period I was so frustrated I thought the pain would kill me. All through the grueling ordeal, I thought I'd died and gone to a sort of perdition, my own private hell, but then I sensed God's presence. That maybe it was His own highway to my own serene heaven, I then relied heavily on His grace and my fortitude and serenity to see me through.
I would walk long distances looking for a job. I simply refused to compromise my dignity. People said there were no jobs, but the jobs were there, because at numerous interviews somebody with no papers or any sort of qualifications would land the job.
I needed some slack, and I knew something had to give, either I would loose it and go insane, or get a job.
One day it leant towards the former and almost proved fatal. I'd walked into every office on all the eleven floors [of an office building] looking for a job. Any job. I was tired of the indignity of borrowing money all the time. Some friends said it was pride. But it wasn't. I could no longer go on borrowing money yet have no idea when, and how I was going to pay it back. I was exhausted, the fatigue, heavy like a cloak around my body. I'd wiped my brow and moved away from the elevators towards the windows that overlooked the city and the strip of ocean in the distance. I'd rested my feverish forehead on the cool panes. Shock rippled through me when I realized that in between the large panes of glass there was enough space for someone to slip through. I wondered: Was that why there had been several suicides committed from this eleventh storied building? Shuddering I'd moved away from the windows. Why had my thoughts wandered so?
Wondering, I'd wandered back again and stared down. Eleven stories below the hustle and bustle of Digo Road, the main avenue snaking through Mombasa's Central Business District ('CBD"). A peculiar sense of floating outside myself had engulfed me. A curious foreboding had settled over me. I'd felt a detachment from my being, my very soul ... My breath had slowed, filming the glass. My bitter self-recriminations had faded. There had been only the distant pavement glinting and beckoning seductively at me. Until that afternoon, my infrequent cons iderations of suicide had always been along succinct and logistical lines. I'd never been one to entertain suicidal intentions, and always thought it a cowardly act. but that afternoon, gazing down from eleven stories at the shimmering square cuts of pavement, my normally acute mental processes and faculties had been distorted, thoughts had floated like insubstantial wisps of clouds that could not be grasped. There are no grills ... it is so very easy to jump out.
But then the elevators ringing sound had intruded breaking the spell of the betraying thoughts. It ground to a halt and the people, in a typical Kenyan way, pushed and shoved to get out, the ensuing melee bringing me down to earth. I'd been shocked. What was I thinking? I'd gone and sat on the stairs, hugged my knees to my chest and cried my eyes out thinking of Tracy. Asking God for a job. People going up and down the stairs had stared at me with questioning glances.
I walked home later. When I looked deep into my daughter's eyes I knew then how innocent she was, I vowed then to soldier on and see the end of the sordid mess, but the experience of that moment remains with me to this date, reminding me how transient life can be
It was only a year down the line that I shared the horror of that day with my Mum and sister, Lillian. We had cried together and it served to exorcise the demon that had been tormenting me. The dem on of an untold near tragedy.
The Lord says that we should not seek revenge - vengeance is for Him alone. How so very true. Barely two years down the line, the casino was closed due to some financial problems. The perjurers got no benefits. Their benefits and dues are still outstanding. The Security Officer was involved in a terrible car accident and both his legs were broken. Do I hear someone out there whisper, " Poetic justice" ? How apt.
We now have a new government in place. I wonder, Will a new political dispensation on its own, be panacea for human misery and suffering? We need a stronger antidote as a means to conflict resolution in all sectors that pertain to our lives.I get inspired every-time I read Margret Ogola, Toni Morrison, Pat Ngurukie, Nadine Gordimer, Hellen Keller, Virginia Woolf, Maya Angelou and a host of other women writers. That's why I know I can win the best of literary prizes up there. I know I can make it. So can you.
JESUS SAID, " ... I TELL YOU THE TRUTH, IF YOU HAVE FAITH AS SMALL AS A MUSTARD SEED, YOU CAN SAY TO THIS MOUNTAIN, 'MOVE FROM HERE TO THERE ' AND IT WILL MOVE. NOTHING WILL BE IM POSSIBLE TO YOU." REF: HOLY BIBLE - MATTHEW 17:20
MORAA GITAA says of herself: "My names are Moraa Gitaa. I am a Kenyan Lady of African descent in my early thirties born to Kenyan parents. I am a single parent with an adorable nine year old daughter (Tracy) who is a blessing in my life and keeps me going as I struggle to carve a niche in the world of writing, but to no avail, especially here in Kenya where even getting a call from a Publisher is like manna from heaven." This is her first article for The World's Magazine.
© 2004, GENERATOR 21.
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