One night I received a frantic call from the watchman at the apartment Xavier lived in.
“Madam kuja haraka kuna shida!” He was so distressed. In the background I could hear noise. I tried to get him to explain to me what was going on and all he said was “kume haribika”
I jumped in my car and sped there. I had called one of my sons to go with me. I was shaking. My son and I arrived at almost the same time. We saw a crowd gathered outside. It was about 11pm. People were in their pajamas and some of the men were holding sticks,bottles and knives. Some of the watchmen from the other building had also gathered. What is going on? I wondered. The watchman(Kama) came to me,”Madam, it is very bad. Xavier alikuja na huyu msichana” I hadn’t even noticed the girl standing off in the corner shaking like a leaf in a very short skirt. “ Alikuja na huyu msichana, alafu wakakosana akamfukuza kutoka kwa nyumba”,Kama continued. “Huyu msichana kutolewa nje akaanza kupiga nduru.Akavunja dirisha zote phew(he gestured with his finger) kwa hiyo nyumba.’
I was speechless. My son asked Kama where Xavier was because he was mysteriously not in the crowd. “Amejifungia kwa nyumba, hatoki” Kama said that he had tried to get the girl away from the apartment once he heard the screaming and breaking but by the time he got there, most of the windows were gone. She had used a large mop stick to break the windows.
I stood dumbfounded. I didn’t know what to do. What are you supposed to do in a situation like this?Luckily my son was faster than I was. He cut through the crowd and went to assess the damage. It took me about 2 minutes to get myself together and I followed after. There was glass all over the corridor on the third floor and droplets of blood. The girl must have cut herself. My son started baging on the door for Xavier to open. He did finally come to the door,peek through the curtains, saw it was me and opened the door.
“Mum, how are you?” Xavier said smiling. I thought that was strange. My son was not too happy, “ unaleta makesi kwa ploti? What is all this? Do you know how much damage you have caused? I should call the police and have you and your girlfriend arrested!” My son said,
“I didn’t mean to cause any trouble. We had a disagreement and I told her to leave, she must have gotten upset and broken the windows,” Xavier said.
I asked him if he thought it was right to put a woman out like that in the middle of the night. He said he had called her a cab to take her home. “ Still that is not how you go about doing things. You should have let her spend the night then in the morning you could have asked her to leave. Both of you were clearly very drunk so the agreement is likely to be heightened. Do you not have sense?” I said to him
Xavier offered to pay for the damage. The least he could do for causing all that commotion. “This is your first warning, a problem like this again and I will be the one throwing you out!’
I walked downstairs to find the girl. If she was bleeding she needed medical attention. Plus who was she,where did she come from? When I got back outside, she was gone. The members of the crowd told me she had called a cab and jumped in as soon as it arrived. We never saw or heard from her again. Strangely enough no one had even asked what her name was.
