Nyamu squeezes eyelids to fake sympathy tears for Ojwang' death

Karen Nyamu squeezed her eyelids harder than a baby clenches their fist, hoping that a teardrop would fall down her cheek.

With that, she could successfully pretend to care about Albert Ojwang’, a school teacher who was brutally killed in police custody, where he was because some big police officer didn’t like what he (Ojwang’) had, allegedly, said about him.

Perhaps if I blinked hard enough, the senator must have thought that Tuesday afternoon, my eyes would tear up. Nope, they didn’t. 

She must have replayed the saddest moments from ‘‘Straw’’, the depressing low-budget movie trending as much as Deputy Inspector General of Police Eliud Lagat, the big police officer in question.

Maybe thinking of Samidoh in another woman’s arms would work? Her eyes had said no, no.

In Nyamu’s hour of need, tears had deserted her. Crying didn’t look as hard when Ojwang’s colleagues shed gallons.

Looking back on Thursday, amid protests that made Nairobi look like one big hookah lounge, Nyamu must have wondered why the police hadn’t brought the tear gas sooner.

Then, finally, her eyes turned. Not because of the late Ojwang’. God forbid, no. The nominated senator remembered she had been trolled online. 

“Right now, I am trending because I goofed, maybe, by politicising the matter. I have been trolled. I cannot fathom getting such anger to the extent of trying to be vengeful with anyone who is trolling me (sic),” she said.

Despite her best efforts, she couldn’t pretend to care about Ojwang’, a man she had slandered on social media.

As news of Ojwang’s arrest and subsequent murder spread, Karen played Karen, initially suggesting that Ojwang’ had abducted himself.

“Who arrested Albert Ojwang? Why was he alone in a police cell? Do we have surveillance cameras in the cells?” Nyamu posed.

“We have seen shameless self-abductions to set the people against their government, and it is not lost on us what this desperate, bitter opposition is capable of just to make the government look bad.”

She did not care to clarify whether dead people are capable of abductions and whether the opposition politicians had become mediums, capable of issuing instructions to the departed.

And Nyamu would double down on claims that the opposition, colluding with the police, was involved in the murder.

“Albert was arrested by the police. It is these police that could be working with the opposition. Kama police hadi wanaimba wantam kwa mugithi (if even the police are singing wantam at a mugithi), what stops such a policeman from working with the opposition?”

Poor Nyamu, she has yet to move on from Samidoh, who, upon reading Nyamu’s remarks, re-examined his life’s choices, questioning how he could have loved a human being of the phylum, in Samidoh’s words, “fools”.

Perhaps keen to preserve whatever feelings Samidoh felt for her, Nyamu would show regret, following it up with a warning that the government should not live up to its “blood-based” reputation.

But no amount of regret would fix what her words had done — mock a grieving father who had lost his only child.

All of Ojwang’s father's years in the quarries, where he likely lost his fingerprints, had been rendered useless by heavy-handed police officers

And Nyamu, desperate for clout like a struggling Bongo artiste, thought she could take the chance to trend.

Nyamu hopes to become Nairobi’s woman representative, currently held by a lady who can’t tell Inspector General of Police Douglas Kanja and his predecessor, Japhet Koome apart. Maybe she doesn’t want the seat, or any other, for that matter. She always seems interested in less serious hobbies.

Since a career as a lawyer hasn’t worked out for Nyamu, life as a TikTok influencer would probably be more exciting. Or maybe she could seek a slot in one of the Real Housewives shows, where she would play the woman who refuses to move on. In that line of work, she would be sure of a trip or two to Dubai, where she can brawl with her exes’ wives.