Why was schoolgirl suddenly desperate for marriage to tout?

The mystery that was never solved

Sally went to a school somewhere along the notorious Matatu route 9 in Nairobi—those are the vehicles that go through the expansive Eastleigh estate.

These matatus have for years, nay decades now, been known for loud music which attracts lots of youngsters into them. And that is exactly how Sally fell into a snare that was destined to leave a major scar in her life.

The first time that Oguttu (which is the name that we shall give to the tout, now deceased, to protect his real identity) made advances at Sally, she was quick to put him in his place. Boldly and without any fear she asked the tout if he thought in his wildest dreams that he had anything in common with her. Girls in the matatu giggled. The few older folks on it nodded their heads in approval at this brave school girl’s bold and noble actions.

Oguttu’s reaction according to eyewitnesses was a little strange and not what one would usually expect from the usually foul-mouthed touts. He just smiled and did not say another word.

Now according to what people say, what happened next was bizarre. It is said that one day Oguttu apologized and Sally accepted his apology and she seemed to have been touched by the apology and it was from that day that her attitude towards the matatu tout totally changed. Some speculate that he went to a witchdoctor and armed himself with deadly juju to ensnare Sally and to make her stop thinking straight.

Others say that it was the sex that drove the girl crazy because Ogutto “specialized” in young school girls and knew exactly what to do to them in bed that made them stop thinking straight.

It is difficult to pinpoint exactly what the causes of what unfolded after that was.

But the bottom line is that Sally who was only in third form then suddenly lost all interest in school and all she now greatly desired was to get hitched to the high school drop-out Matatu tout called Oguttu.

The man did not even have exceptional looks in fact if truth be told, he regularly gave bathing a miss altogether, sometimes for days on end. He was also known to be a serious womanizer who had a reputation for chasing anything in skirts and the younger the better. The man had even missed prison by whisker when he impregnated a 16 year old girl whose parents understood the law very well. The only reason that stopped them pressing charges against him for sleeping with a minor was the fact that they feared the publicity and were advised by a psychiatrist that it would have a very negative impact on the life of their daughter. They quietly organized an illegal abortion for their daughter and picked up the pieces from there.

So those who knew Ogottu well just looked at Sally and greatly sympathized with her. The girl was doomed.

She would leave the house in the morning and her parents would believe that she had gone to school. Instead she would go to the matatu stage and wait for Oguttu’s matatu to come. There was always a seat reserved for her right next to the driver at the front and after the morning rush hour ended at around 10 am Sally would leave with Ogutto for various activities which would have caused her parents to collapse and die had they been made privy of them then. The activities included passionate and very noisy lovemaking at some downtown hotel in Nairobi.

Sally was a clever girl and she never got pregnant having obtained some birth control pills very early in the relationship. So by the time her parents were discovering what was happening she had missed an entire term in school.

Sally’s dad worked in a Nairobi bank and her mother was a nurse at a well known children’s hospital and so most people called them rich. But what they really were was terribly busy. Too busy to notice any tell-tale signs that would have told them that all was not well with their daughter. Her sudden moodiness virtually all the time, her preference to lock herself in her room playing music late into the night. The fact that she stopped asking her dad to help her out with her homework when he got home late, many times after a few drinks. The “evidence” was all there. Her parents never saw it until it was way too late.

Everything was tried to end the relationship with no success. It started with a thorough beating that left Sally with marks and scars from the ‘deadly” end of her father’s belt. Then it moved to “bribery” at one point she was even promised marriage but with anybody else but that tout who hardly took a bath. What would their friends say? At one point an attempt was even made to bribe her with a car of her own to drive around. All she had to do to get it was end her affair with Oguttu. Then when all that did not work, somebody advised the parents to take their daughter to see a prominent psychiatrist. Apart from being terribly expensive, that did not work either. At the earliest opportunity Sally got she would just rush back into Oguttu’s arms.

Finally the parents appeared to have given up on the whole issue and seemed to have surrendered themselves to being the laughing stock of the entire neighborhood. But did they? The truth will probably never be known.

Barely a month later Sally finally came home for good. I am not one to speculate because the police file is still open on this murder mystery, although it is many years since this happened. But Oguttu left a bar one night and some people waylaid him and knifed him several times. He was dead by the time they found him. Knowing his lifestyle anybody would have murdered him.

Sally went back to school and is today a leading lawyer in town. She’s heading towards 50 and has two lovely children. But she never got married and those who know her say that she never stopped mourning Ogottu. One woman who knew her particularly well said that she was sure that what Sally had with the tout who rarely bathed, was true love.

Terribly deadly thing, this true love thing is.