The havoc in the girls’ dormitory at St Kizito School in Meru on July 13, 1991, after 200 boys at the school raided the dormitory raping 71 girls with 19 others dying due to the stampede.
What did the girls do to invoke the wrath of their male schoolmates? They had refused to join a planned strike by the boys.
The terror at the school shocked the whole country. Still, despite the magnitude of the situation, those in positions of responsibility handled it casually and dismissively, sending chills around the world.
For example, immediately the boys started unleashing terror just past midnight, two teachers managed to escape from the school to make a report at a police station situated 15 minutes away. But two hours later the police were yet to respond to the situation.
Meanwhile, the school’s watchmen, armed with bows and arrows, had also fled and hid in a nearby hospital, from where they called the police to inform them about the worsening situation. But still, the police were nowhere to be seen.
By the time the officers were arriving 19 girls were already dead.
Even though the officers admitted that they had been informed much earlier, they claimed that they couldn’t respond because their vehicles had no petrol.
Meanwhile, two girls who also managed to escape that night fled to the hospital claiming rape and physical assault, but were casually treated by the medic on duty Mr John Mutembei, who refused to give them the necessary attention.
Mutembei ignorantly stated that rape was a police case, not a medical case.
If you thought Mutembei and the police were incompetent, then you better listen to how moronic the school’s senior administrators sounded after the incident.
For example, Joyce Kithira, the school’s deputy principal, while responding to journalists after the incident said, “The boys never meant any harm against the girls. They just wanted to rape.” In her reasoning rape was not harm.
The school’s principal Mr Joseph Laiboni on the other hand stated without shame that cases of rape were normal at the school. These were a bunch of two incompetent who failed to enforce discipline, leading to a disaster.
Nevertheless, the incident created international concerns about the treatment of women in Kenya with international organisations demanding assurance for the respect of girl child’s rights and dignity.
As the world-renowned Time Magazine commented on the incident, “Sometimes it takes a tragedy to startle people from the complacency of old and destructive – attitudes.”
The Washington Post on the other hand stated that the “deaths must be used as a catalyst for changes in the way African women are treated.”
Courtesy Levin Odhiambo Opiyo
