With just about everyone glued to the ruling by the ICC and its resulting fallout over the last couple of days the Kenya Forum brings you some stories from the inside pages that you may have missed, important things, the real stuff of life, like husband-battering, sex and malaria, and police lavatories, mixed with a few thoughts form the Forum.

HUSBAND BEATING

A woman from Nyeri (sounds like the start of a Limerick but it’s not, although readers are invited to send in their own ditties starting with the line, “There was a woman from Nyeri”) has been charged with battering her husband.

A Mrs Eunice Wairema Gaitho has been charged with the assault of her husband Patrick Kimaru Mwangi on New Years Eve. According to the press, the ‘court was packed to the brim’ by curious locals who wanted to ‘catch a glimpse of her’ and her visibly marked husband.

WIFE ‘BUTTERING’

The Kenya Forum recently received a submission for publication from a reader. It wasn’t a bad piece but the headline did cause a giggle or two: it referred to the fight against ‘wife buttering’. Now the Forum is all against wife battering, or husband battering for that matter, but ‘wife buttering’ sounds like it could be fun.

A STIFF DOSE TO WARD OFF MALARIA

The alarm has been sounded, according to the Sunday Nation, over the discovery of fake malaria drugs that have been found to contain Viagra, the drug that helps men, how can we put this, keep up their interest when it comes to their sex lives.

Malaria is a very serious problem as is the problem with fake medicines but the Kenya Forum can’t help thinking that although anti-malarial drugs laced with Viagra may not be as effective as they should be, at least the male recipients will have somewhere to hang their mosquito net.

HANG ‘EM HIGH – BUT WHERE WERE THE POLICE?

Kenya’s national pastime of ‘lynching’ shows no signs of abating. A man was lynched in Vihiga County (reported Monday) for allegedly murdering his neighbour in a dispute over access to water; a ‘suspected thief was lynched on Sunday by the residents of Maili Saba, in his case the accusation was that he had stolen a number of iron sheets; and Wednesday’s Star newspaper reported that a ‘thug’ had been ‘Lynched by the mob’ in Ikuva, also a village in Vihiga County.

The Kenya Forum have asked before, where were the police on such occasions? According to Mr Abimalik Ismael Hajir, a student at Mount Kenya University (Point Blank, Standard, January 20), who was robbed of his mobile and cash by fellow passengers as he traveled from Eastleigh, “there is little the police can do besides opening files and carry out never ending investigations”.

Perhaps that’s why the police never seem to be around when you need them, no one thinks it’s worth their while to call them.

THE POLICE KNOW WHODUNIT

There’s another reason the Kenya Forum has come across for not informing the police of a crime.

A woman recently told the Forum of the time she was car-jacked. The criminals concerned made her drive to a cash point and draw out a large sum of money, which of course they relieved her of. Fortunately, after a bit more driving around, they ran away with their ill-gotten gains.

The woman in question, after steadying her nerves, drove to the local police station to report the crime. Well, she was going to report the crime, until, as she walked toward the police station from her car, she saw two of her assailants now dressed in police uniform.

THE LONG DROP OF THE LAW

But we must not always blame the police, they don’t always have an easy time of things.

One report this week, which unfortunately provided few details as the policemen concerned agreed to talk to a reporter only on the basis of anonymity, reveals some of the difficulties they face in carrying out their duties.

Officers from one up-country police station are up in arms about the conditions they have to work under, not least that they have no access to working lavatories and have to walk into town and sneak into a local hotel when the call of nature becomes too loud to ignore.

The Kenya Forum sympathises with the officers concerned. How can our police force solve crimes if they have nothing to go on…