Frog has become very unpopular of late. So much so that the village has decided to banish him. His family have vowed that they will stick with him through thick and thin, and so they will all be leaving the estates before their two weeks’ deadline expires.
Frog has caused the estate tenants a lot of distress in the three years since his family moved from South Sudan to escape the war. His black book is filled with a multitude of sins that keep growing. He has stolen a countless number of chickens, wrung their necks and cooked them in the dark over a wood fire at the back of their house. Frog has been accused of sneaking into a passion fruit shamba and stealing fruits.
One of the locals said she caught him asking her little girl for a kiss. Another person said she has seen him twice, walking along the walls that separate the houses in the estate.
The latest atrocity happened last week. The one that got people all wired up, talking and hating. The one that forced Frog to spend the night in hiding. The one for which he was captured from his hiding place and brought before an estate committee, and later a village committee. A barrage of questions was fired at him from all directions as he sat on the dusty ground. He could only answer “no” to everything he was asked, as his eyes scanned the ground in terror.
The story goes that Frog, his brother Jimmy and an older relative hatched a plan against one of the girls in the estate. This older relative who had been staying at the Frog’s house for nearly three months, had his eye on a neighbor’s new housemaid, in the house opposite theirs. Whenever he spotted her going to the shops, he would stand in the corner near the gate, and touch or tap her, and tell her in broken English that he loved her. She always repulsed his advances, telling him to leave her alone or she would report him to her “Auntie”- her employer. The boys laughed and made fun of her as she took off in fear.
On this fateful afternoon, after ensuring that the neighborhood was “safe”, Frog had jumped over the neighbor’s back gate, and then proceeded to open for Jimmy and the relative. While Jimmy played sentry, the relative pounced on the girl, threw her against the dining table and back-handed her hard. Then he flung her to the floor, tore off her skirt and her panties and took advantage of her as she screamed her lungs out. Frog watched all this unfold.
When Auntie returned from work at about 10pm, the maid was crying her eyes out. She was so traumatized that only bits and pieces of the horror she had endured could come out. She narrated to Auntie what had happened and they reported the matter to the police. A doctor’s check the next day revealed that the girl had been forcefully penetrated and she was immediately put on post-exposure prophylaxis.
Frog and his relatives had got wind that something was wrong, and the “rapist” fled. When the police came, they found Jimmy in one of the bedrooms, pretending to be asleep. He was arrested and frog-marched to the station where he was locked up for six days.
Meanwhile, Frog’s uncle, white-haired and using a walking stick, had gone to the police station to plead for Jimmy’s release. He argued that Jimmy is only 15. Also that he and his family have no knowledge of the young man who was accused of committing the violenct act. One of Frog’s older brothers then made the mistake of threatening Auntie, “What can you do? Do you know what we can do to you? If you want money, tell us how much and we give it to you!”
The villagers were enraged when they heard what had happened. How could someone be raped in their own house in broad daylight? That was unforgivable, they said. These people are seeking refuge in a foreign land and have been accommodated in a good estate for three years, and tolerated by their neighbors in spite of their bad manners. The villagers also say that instead of apologizing for their relatives ill manners, they are offering money, which is admittance to the crime.
The first meeting was convened in Auntie’s house. Someone calling himself the head of the South Sudanese Community in the area apologized for what had happened. However, what incensed the tenants was that he demanded that Jimmy must be released because he is only 15. “How dare you?!” the tenants railed, “That 15-year old stood guard while a 16-year old girl was being defiled. Don’t you even have a bit of regard for her?”
The landlord refused to attend both meetings. He pleaded illness. One of the very concerned tenants who was baying for his blood, called him up personally. He refused to pick her calls. She called him a day later, on another number, and when he picked up, she narrated what had happened. He told her to take charge and relay to him what the tenants would decide. They knew why the landlord was being evasive and reluctant. “You know, these South Sudanese pay in dollars! And they still owe him two months of rent, so he doesn't want to let them go!” But the other tenants were threatening to give their notice if the Sudanese did not leave.
Being a refugee is not easy. The Sudanese have been called all sorts of names. Dinkese. Obudinka. Xenophobia? They have been accused of failing to assimilate, and some have been told to “go back to Juba!” They have been accused of trying to steal electricity fixtures for money, after all “where do they get the clothes they wear?” They were accused of sitting in other tenants’ compounds and littering them with chewed out sugarcane fibres, and refusing to learn the local language.
The village meeting, held late on Sunday, summoned the head of the house, the elderly uncle, who hobbled in on his walking stick. He came along with an interpreter who struggled to get in a word edgewise because the villagers were so incensed and accusations were flying left and right like stones. The uncle apologized profusely and continued to deny that he didn't know the accused “boy”.
“Someone who has been living in your house for a month?? That’s inconceivable! Don’t lie to us Old Man!” He said that his nephews had lots of friends who came by, even after he had locked himself in his room and gone to sleep at 8pm after having a strong drink.
“And that is one of the reasons we want you out of this place!” The tenants yelled. “The stream of young men walking in and out of that house is too much. We don't know any of them, but they keep walking in and out at all hours of the day and night! Who are they? Where are they registered? Does the village LC chairman even know about them??!”
The Old Man gave up and walked back into the house. His interpreter looked lost, the sea of enraged faces staring back at him, snarling mouths demanding answers was too much for him.
Then the announcement came. You have to leave, they said. Within the next 14 days. In that time, there will be no visitors in your house. There will also be no playing Ludo in your compound. And, if anything befalls Auntie and her family, you will be held fully responsible.
One week later. The Frogs have left.
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