Rest In Piss

THE GRAVEDIGGER.
You start dying the day you are born.

Kamau has been a grave digger at Nairobi’s Langata Cemetery for the last 21 years. He has seen it all, from the high and mighty humbled by death to the low and lowly finding their moment of fame at the cemetery.

Rest In Piss.

It was close to 7pm and Kamau was about to call it quits. Saturdays were the busiest days for him. On this particular day he had overseen over 50 burials and he could remember all of them. The uniqueness of each, from the dressing to the coffins, was permanently etched in his mind.
As Kamau locked the door to his weather-beaten office at Langata Public Cemetery, a shabbily dressed man staggered in past the rickety dirty white gate and went straight to Kamau’s office.
“How are you?” the man slurred.
Kamau remembered the face too clearly. He had been present during one of the earlier controversial yet colourful burials of a church Pastor.
“What can I do for you?” Kamau asked, hoping that it was not one of those coffin robbers he had to deal with. On a number of occasions, a few had tried bribing him to get coffins but he had remained firm: the dead also needed respect.
The man opened his wallet and produced a shs.1000 note. “Take me to his grave,” he told Kamau.
Kamau knew the grave too well. It was one of those he had to dig personally after disputes from the deceased’s parents, his legal wife and two mistresses who had appeared on the burial date, threatening to stop the burial if they did not get a share of the man’s estate.
“We are also his wives and have children with him,” one of the vocal ones was heard saying.
Some Church elders had called the women aside and whispered something to them. The animated discussion had delayed the service by a couple of minutes but it seemed like a consensus had finally been reached.
The parents of the deceased wanted the grave to face the gate, claiming that a man who had died without building a permanent house upcountry had to be buried in that position.
The legal wife wanted the grave on the right hand side of the main gate.
“This side, unfortunately, is full and there is nothing I can do about it,” Kamau had told her.
“How much?” she had asked Kamau.
“Nothing, unless you want him buried on top of other graves,” had been Kamaus reply.
Finally Kamau’s orders had prevailed and he had gone ahead to personally dig the grave. He also made it a point to be there at the time of burial. The church members, both male and female, were dressed in snow white long robes with a green belt and green sashes. The coffin was also white in colour.
It had come as a shock to Kamau to note that during the burial service, amidst the crying and wailing, one smiling man, in a grey suit and loose hanging tie, had stood out. It was a first one for Kamau. He had never in his 21 years service to the dead seen a happier face at a burial.
The man’s smile had grown wider as the body was being lowered. Kamau gaze had not left the man.
It was therefore shocking and amusing that less than three hours after the burial, the same smiling man was back at the cemetery.
“You know your way?” Kamau asked, not sure what had brought the man back.
“Yes,” he replied as he staggered towards the freshly filled grave, a 50m distance from the Kamau’s office. Kamau followed him, but from a distance.
The man reached the site and to Kamau’s horror he unzipped his trouser and started peeing on the grave, the piss hammering the soil with the fury of a jilted Kenyan hailstorm. As he did so, he kept chanting and Kamau had to strain to hear what he was saying. “Malaya wewe!”
It was the longest pee Kamau had ever seen, the slurping sound decreasing to a gentle trickle. The guy just didn’t seem to run out of piss. He made sure that he had peed on each and every corner of the grave. He vigorously and furiously shook his manhood to make sure that the last drops found their mark of permanency on the grave.
When he was through, the man farted loudly and then staggered away without saying a word. Kamau followed him and watched as the man boarded a matatu and melted away into the city.
The following day, a group of ladies from the Pastor’s church came to tend to the grave and replace the flowers. Kamau was there to observe them. One particular grieving lady stayed longer than the rest, continuously shaking her head and clicking. “Why?” she kept on asking, tears streaming down her cheeks. She was not amongst the ladies who had harassed Kamau about the burial spot. She was the last one left and Kamau, accustomed to emotional breakdowns at the cemetery, approached her.
“Is he a relative?” Kamau asked.
The lady paused before replying, “He is the father of my three sons!” Kamau did not understand but he did not want to be too pushy. So he let it be.
“My husband does not perform,” the lady started in a whisper, her eyes fixed on the fresh grave.
“He is a certified alcoholic, a committed daily drinking officer and this has affected our sexual life. I cannot forget how he humiliated me one day. As usual, he came home in the middle of the night and demanded his conjugal rights. In the process, he lost direction and ended up screwing the old tattered mattress that we slept on.
“Wow that is the best sex I’ve had in ages! What did you put down there?” he had slurred.
Kamau’s face turned in shock. He did not believe that there were such men still dotting the surface of the earth.
“I cried and he thought it was because of the great sex we had had. I shared this with the Pastor and he was very sympathetic. Too sympathetic to father my three sons! I miss him,” the lady concluded, wiping tears off her face.
Kamau remained mute.
For the next five days, the peeing ritual was repeated, each time the peeing session getting longer and the abuses getting more and more colourful. As long as the man did not touch the grave, Kamau did not mind. After all, he was getting his daily cut.
Finally on the sixth day, the man came late, as usual. He was driving an old pick up. By now Kamau had become accustomed to the man’s timing. This time, however, he came with an epitaph. It was too dark for Kamau to read the inscription on the epitaph.
The peeing and abusing ritual was repeated just like before. When the man was done, he turned to Kamau and spoke for the first time in many days. “Today is the last day I am coming here. Thanks for your help,” he slurred.
Finally Kamau got to ask the question. “Why?”
The man laughed a dry one. “He is the father of my three sons!
“My wife joined this church some 5 years ago and became fanatical about it, dedicating every ounce of her energy to the church and pastor. That was the last time we had any meaningful relationship. I took to heavy drinking because many things were not working. I neglected my wife and myself. Then she conceived and things became worse. We drifted way apart, the child taking my entire wife’s time and the drinks taking all my time.
A year passed and she conceived again. Another boy. By this time my businesses had started picking up and I could afford some luxuries in life. But my wife refused to let me into her life, still preferring the warmth of the church. Two years later and another boy was born.”
Kamau was itching to ask another question but he let the man talk.
“She only slept with me three times in 5 years and those three times apparently led to her conceiving,” the man continued.
“Then one day I came across this letter.” The man removed a crumpled letter from his pocket. “It is too dark to read it but I know its contents.”
“It’s a letter from the Pastor to my wife explaining the tough financial situations that had rocked the church and how he wanted them to elope to the US after he had secured a green card!
“The letter also told my wife that the passports were ready and she could go ahead and destroy the ‘fake’ birth certificates that were in my house!”
The man took a swing of the drink he was carrying. Kamau was very interested in what happened next.
“I called one of the thugs I grew up with and told him that the Pastor was sleeping with his girlfriend.”
Kamau gasped.
“Two days later, the Pastor was found murdered. He had been lured to a drinking den in Kawangware. The rest, as they say, is History!
It took time for the message to sink to Kamau.
“Does your wife know all these?” Kamau asked.
“No! I don’t know about the children and the USA trip and she doesn’t know about the pastor. We are even!”
With the help of Kamau, the man went ahead to fix the epitaph. Finally he looked at the grave one more time and left.
The following morning, the same group of women from church were there to tend to the grave. The same woman who had talked to Kamau called out. It was more of a scream than a call.
“What is this?” she demanded as she pointed at the epitaph that had been installed the previous day.
Kamau bent down to check on the inscription on the epitaph. It read: R.I.P M.B.A. Below was a fine print which read. Rest In Piss Malaya Bila Aibu.
Kamau chuckled.