A neighbour found out that her daughter, who completed her form four last year, is pregnant. An emergency crisis kamukunji was called at the veranda, where the angry father demanded to know the one responsible for the pregnancy. Her mother and two uncles were present.
While the members of the kamukunji were grilling the girl, Aleki, a young bachelor, walked out of his house. He was only wearing a black and blue pair of basketball shorts. He was carrying a karai of wrung clothes, and an old, small mkebe of Toss was balanced on top of the clothes, with three or four pegs inside. He was going to hang clothes on the line. He was whistling joyously to Wizkid, who could be heard playing from his house with the door ajar. He looked at the kamukunji uninterestingly while passing by.
Just then, the girl's father called him.
He stopped in his tracks and looked back.
"Come!" the man ordered again.
Aleki put the karai down and approached them. When he got there, the man put his hand in his shirt pocket and retrieved some money. He gave Aleki a currency note.
"This 200 is yours," the man told him.
"Mine?" Aleki was confused.
The man explained that his daughter was pregnant and that he had strongly suspected him, and the money was a token of appreciation for not being the one who touched her daughter. He had practiced self-control and he was proud of him.
Aleki was offended.
He was not offended because the man had the audacity to think that he was disgusting enough to get into contact with the labia of a minor. Although the girl was not really a minor. It was revealed that she will be turning 23 this year. She had begun school late and had repeated a few classes because of her inability to grasp anything.
Young girls are not his type, Aleki said. They don't cause a stirring in his loins.
"I only drive big cars," he said, using his hands to make gestures of big breasts and big buttocks.
Aleki was offended because the man gave him KES 200 for keeping his pants on. That was very little money, considering that he had planned to pin a pregnancy that wasn't his on him. So Aleki did what only Aleki would do; he called his lawyer.
He went inside his house, and after a minute or so, he came out with his best friend Kassim, a butcher, full of sleep and a bad hangover, staggering behind him while rubbing his eyes. A bedsheet was tied carelessly around his waist.
Kassim used one arm to lean on a pillar next to the girl's seething mother while the other arm was held akimbo. One leg was crossed over the other. He would yawn and scratch his goatee then look at the kamukunji curiously. Aleki was standing next to Kassim with his arms crossed and the weight of his body on one leg.
"So, what now?" Kassim asked.
Aleki explained the situation.
"First, has he apologised for falsely accusing you of impregnating his daughter?" the hungover lawyer asked Aleki, while looking down at his feet.
"I haven't accused him. I only THOUGHT," the man said defensively.
"Shut up. You have slandered him with your thoughts," Kassim told the man.
"He has apologised by giving me this 200 bob," Aleki said, showing Kassim the Sh200 note.
"So you are trying to buy his forgiveness?" Kassim asked the man, narrowing his eyes at him.
"No, I was just showing my gratitude because he isn't the one responsible for my daughter's pregnancy. You know how he is with women..." the man trailed off and shrugged.
"That is true," Kassim nodded in agreement while thoughtfully studying something on his thumb. "This one is bad news. In fact, he impregnated a prostitute."
"What? Which one?" Aleki asked, surprised.
"Kūi."
"Kūi is pregnant?"
"She had an abortion last week."
"And it was mine?"
"She told me."
"But she's a whore."
"Even whores get pregnant."
"We use condoms."
"You did it without them that night we were eating your Sportpesa money."
"How do you know?"
"She told me."
The other man interrupted them, asking them to excuse the kamkunji because they were in the middle of a crisis and they wanted to solve things. Kassim assured him that they would leave once they had solved the case. The lawyer told him that his client would not accept the payment of Sh200 as compensation for slander and libel.
"You have stained his reputation," Kassim told the man.
Aleki nodded.
The man laughed.
"What reputation exactly?"
"You've taken him from sleeping with women to sleeping with schoolgirls."
"And I have apologised for that."
"With 200? This is not enough to take care of the psychological and emotional damage you've caused my client. Add a little something so we can drink beer and forget."
One of the uncles who was studying Kassim carefully said, "I know you. You're the man who was sleeping around with my wife, Khadija."
"He's the man?" the pregnant girl's father asked the uncle.
"He's the husband?" Aleki asked Kassim.
"The Sh200 is fine," Kassim said as he ran off.
The court went on recess.