When love turns sour

Bernadine is pissed off. And she should be. She’s got every right. She’s been married to John for the longest time. Given him two beautiful kids. A boy and girl. Given him the best years of her life. Given him the peace of mind and guts to make tons of money and, it seems, in hindsight, the space and gall to cheat on her.

She knows everything about John. Wait. She even knows the number of times that they’ve made love. Seven thirty two.

But now she’s pissed off. Pissed off because several weeks ago, John left her for another woman.

A white woman. And ain’t nothing like that to a black sister. She loves him, make no mistake about that, but hates him for doing this to her, with ‘that’, of all ‘thats’, leaving her like this, thinking he can get away with it.

She’s got to revenge, hit him where it hurts the most ... not on his nuts, although she would love to, but some place that will make him go nuts.

Ding. A light bulb goes green on top of Bernadine’s head.

“This mother****r is psychotic,” Bernadine hisses as she opens the drawers and doors, her eyes darting from John’s expensive watches, to the designer shoes and suits, to his golf equipment.

“Only a white woman can tolerate your smug ass ... I was your white woman for 11 years.”

Then she piles all his expensive toys, and trappings, and whatnots inside his expensive car, coolly lights a cigarette and sets the ride on fire, calling it trash. Bernadine later gets rid of John’s remaining stuff through a garage sale, selling them for a song.

That, right there, is a tear-jerking scene from the chick flick, ‘Waiting to Exhale’, where a scorned lover goes on a limb to show that, like the Sicilians say, revenge is a dish best served cold.

We can’t all be Bernadines. For some jilted lovers, trashing inanimate stuff just doesn’t cut it. It’s too soft. Too painless. The only thing that can equal their hurt is to cause grievous bodily harm.

Like, for instance, giving him the dreaded Lorena Bobbit chop, literally a low blow, and the personal (hush-hush) favourite of most scorned chicks.

But some chops may turn fatal, causing the death of one partner, or both. In the madness of the moment, when there’s absolutely no method to the madness, when common sense runs to the hills, and tears blind one from seeing the tragic consequences of their actions, taking the law into one’s own hands seems as legal as swatting a pesky mosquito in a malaria-prone area.

There are many ways to hurt an ex, and most counsellors concur that the best is summed up in the cliché, let go and let God. God?

Apparently, when love turns sour for some, anything goes. Religion has nothing to do with it.

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Look for killers or just turn on your killer instinct

It was over. That’s what the elders knew for sure. The couple would go their separate ways peacefully. Kiss and say goodbye. Like normal folks. Well, the elders were wrong on this one. This man was anything but normal.

It was recently reported in a local daily that Silvanus Owuor Lwamba used a hoe to batter Esther Akinyi, a wife he had inherited, her nine-year-old daughter Lilian Akinyi and one-year-old son Barack Odhiambo to death.

According to the newspaper, Esther’s father James Ogolla, had called a meeting to discuss the constant friction between the couple and it was decided that the two should part ways. Lwamba appeared unhappy with that decision, even though he didn’t openly object.

The meeting ended with prayers from Akinyi’s father and everyone went to sleep. But the villagers woke up to the horrifying news of Lwamba’s act.

That’s one side of the coin. The other side involves jilted lovers hiring killers to do their dirty work.

Some are young, trigger-happy and see such ‘jobs’ as less risky than the ones that involve, say, robbing a bank. And with so many small arms in the wrong hands, and mysterious unresolved murders piling up in police files by the week, it’s anybody’s guess what could be the causes.

If you can’t box ‘em, bewitch ‘em

Laura* knew that her and Chris* were meant to be. They were high school sweethearts, going all the way back to Form One, and everyone believed that they would grow old together.

Their families and friends always said that theirs was the perfect model of how a relationship should be.

“I trusted her with everything,” Chris, a former professional boxer, moans. “She was the one who carried my ATM card ... in fact, my everything, plus I made sure that her family was well taken of, because her parents were doing badly financially.”

The cracks started in their relationship when Chris’ career started floundering, he wasn’t getting as many fights as he wanted, and it didn’t help matters that they were from different tribes.

Unknown to Chris, Laura’s parents had been encouraging her relationship with a wealthy man from their tribe. She would go to her parents home and the two would meet there with encouragement from the parents.

“One night I decided to go to their home and found this car parked outside. Laura and the man were in there. Kissing. In a rage, I hit the windshield with a stone and it gave in. I was mad like hell. He started the car, flying over the kerb, hitting a lamppost, and I chased after them. As he sped off with my girlfriend, I stood there helpless. What angered me more was the fact that she was not willing to discuss the incident. Before long, Laura left him.”

Two months later, Chris visited a witchdoctor. He wanted the guy, who advertised his services saying he was from Tanzania, to cast a spell on Laura and make her lose her mind. Make her walk nude in the streets, to be exact. He was given a mixture of herbs with some stern instructions.

That was nine years ago

Nowadays Chris roams all over the place, mumbling incomprehensibly to himself, sometimes striking southpaw poses – he was a southpaw, and a deadly one at that – weaving and bobbing, shadowboxing.

People say it’s the years of taking head blows from other boxers that’s to blame. Others say it’s the spell that backfired. Others say it’s a depression brought about by losing a lover to a more moneyed guy. Laura is a happily married mother of three, twin boys and girl.

The real acid test, using the real McCoy
In Pakistan and Afghanistan, this is the most common revenge. According to Jim Verhust, a Times Perspective editor, since 1994, a Pakistani activist who founded the Progressive Women’s Association to help victims of acid attacks, has documented a staggering 7,800 cases of women who were deliberately burned, scalded or subjected to acid attacks, just in the Islamabad area.

If you think that acid attacks only happen in Asia, think again.

Henry*, who is a born-again Christian, met Liz* in church where they were both in the choir. Like they say, one thing led to another, and soon they had become more than choir members.

They were lovers, and Henry, a struggling guy who was at the Polytechnic and doing graphics jobson the side to survive, even started thinking about a wedding.

He even got Liz a job from one of the firms that gave him graphics jobs, his love so strong that he didn’t even think about giving the opening to his jobless siblings.

Then Liz changed. She met another guy, a worship leader from another church, someone who was in demand from the sprouting evangelical churches because of his music prowess. Henry didn’t stand a dog’s chance in hell.

“I sought out some tough guys in my ‘Mtaa’( neighbourhood) ... I always saw them hanging out aimlessly, at times snatching purses and stuff, and told them that I wanted to give them a job,” Henry says, adding that all the teachings about turning the other cheek flew into thin air.

“I told them exactly what I wanted them to do. Pour acid on her face. I gave them the directions of where they could find her, but they laughed at me and told me to man up ( do it himself).”

With hate controlling him, Henry decided to man up, but was saved the damnation by his Pastor, who had noticed that something was amiss between the two. He counselled Henry, giving him what every broken-hearted person needs: accessible ears and shoulders.

“Years later, when someone sent me an email forward by T.D. Jakes, it spoke of the very thing I wish I’d heard when I was hurting: ‘And it doesn’t mean that they are a bad person. It just means that their part in your story is over. And you’ve got to know when people’s part in your story is over so that you don’t keep trying to raise the dead’.”

Hiring thugs to teach him a lesson

This is the oldest trick in the Bible. I mean, the Politicos Bible.

But Grace* wasn’t cutting and pasting her revenge from this book when she decided to teach her former boyfriend, a matatu driver, a lesson. They had been going out for a while and, against her better judgment, she was starting to love him.

“He drove the flashiest matatu in the route, but he was ever broke and I’m the one who always bailed him out,” Grace narrates, saying that it seems the man, on realising that she was a banker, decided to hustle her.

Grace realised too late that he was a womaniser, and she was one of his victims. What made her lose her mind was when he disrespected her in front of his latest catch, a young college girl, not knowing that Grace had friends in low places.

“Just break his hands, and we’ll see how he’ll earn a living,” Grace instructed the heavies after paying them an agreed amount.

A couple of days later, she feigned surprise when she received her boyfriend’s distress call, telling her that he had been in an ‘accident’ and asked her to help pay his hospital bill.

“I’ll be there very soon,” she cooed.

He’s still waiting, jobless and in casts, for Grace to visit him with a card and an open cheque.

Fighting fire with fire

When Janice’s boyfriend of many years jilted her, just when she thought it was time to settle down with him for the rest of her life, she was inconsolable, and sunk into depression.

She quit her job, a highly paying and secure job that her parents had paid a human resource manager in a multi-national for her to have, and locked herself in her room for days in end.

“She refused to eat and we thought we would lose her,” her elder brother whom she later went to live with confides, adding that they placed her on suicide watch.

But what tipped the scales was when Janice learnt that her former beau, who was living in the same estate, was about to walk somebody else down the aisle.

Some of Janice’s friends showed her the wedding card, thinking this would make her sober up, accept the truth and move on, because she still nursed hopes that her boyfriend would “realise his mistake and we will make up”.

The following evening, Janice’s brother was startled when neighbours rushed to his house and dragged him out. When he followed them, and after squeezing his way through a crowd outside a house, he saw Janice lying down, writhing painfully, her hair, clothes and face burned.

Janice had gone and set herself on fire outside her ex-boyfriend’s house.
This didn’t stop the wedding. Nor make the guy “realise his mistake”.

But, like a flatline, it stopped Janice’s life. She’s refused to move on. Her scarred face and neck are a constant, reminder of the wisdom in Maya Angelou’s words: “You did what you knew how to do. And when you knew better, you did better.”