TONY NJOROGE - THE LORD’S SHEPHERD

Tony Njoroge is Kenyan. He lives alone in the middle of nowhere, but with a lifetime of books. He has been published by the two biggest newspapers in East Africa and several journals across Africa. He has also won several writing competitions. 
You can connect with him @njorogewambugu 

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THE LORD’S SHEPHERD
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​“Do you love your husband, my child?” Pastor Michael asked.
“With all my heart and soul, Pastor,” Nyakio said. “He’s the only man I’ve ever been with. He is miserable in his current job in the quarry. It doesn’t pay much and this makes him grumpy all the time. That’s why I am here, Pastor. If only he could get a better-paying job.”
“I don’t think I know your husband very well. Does he attend any church?”
“No, Pastor,” Nyakio answered ashamedly. “Thugs in robes, he calls you; thugs who use the Bible instead of guns to rob, he says.”
“Hhmm, a non-believer,” said Pastor Michael in deep thought. “This will be very difficult and calls for special prayers. Kneel down my daughter and I will pray for your husband.”
 Nyakio, a tall light-skinned and slender beauty in her late twenties got off her chair besides the pastor’s desk and knelt down. The Pastor, a tall dark fellow built like a heavy-weight wrestler, was seated behind his desk. He got up, rounded his desk and stood over her. He gently felt her face and neck with the back of his hand.
“Are you wearing a panty?” Pastor Michael asked in a low voice.
“What,” said Nyakio. Unsure of what she had heard.
“Are you wearing a panty?” he repeated in a more valiant voice.
“Yes, Pastor.” Nyakio answered queasily.
“Remove it.”
 He looked intently down at her, stroking her close-cropped head.
She hesitated, unsure what the relation was between her panty and the Pastor praying for her husband.
“Your husband requires special prayers being a non-believer. The book of Habakkuk states that during such prayers the Christian woman should hold hands with her non-believer husband. If the husband is in absentia, then the woman should hand over her panty to the pastor.”
 Dutiful Nyakio struggled to remove her panty as she knelt. As she nervously handed him the white panty she was relieved it wasn’t the other with the many tiny holes.
 “Close your eyes we pray, my child,” said Pastor Michael placing a heavy hand on her head. He went into breaking the chains that had held back Nyakio’s husband, Jakubu. He prayed for deliverance from any charms that may have been used against him. He prayed for him to see the light, and finally he broke into a session of speaking in tongues.
Nyakio happened to have mistakenly opened an eye as she shifted her weight around to relieve her tiring knees. She saw him sniffing fervently at her panty as he paused between utterances.
After the long prayer, Pastor Michael strode back to his swivel chair behind his heavy desk laden with all sorts of books.
“Get up, my child,” he said. He always addressed everyone as ‘my child’. Yet he could have been in his mid-thirties, the same age-group as her husband.
“The Lord spoke to me in a vision the other night,” the pastor said. “He said there were quite a number of women in the village who were beginning to develop breast cancer. He showed me how to examine the breasts so as to arrest it early.”
Nyakio remembered the agonizing end of a neighbour’s relative who lived in the city. The relative had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Her breasts had been cut off to prevent them from poisoning the rest of the body. Her family sold off everything they owned and borrowed heavily to cover her medical bills. But sadly she eventually succumbed. This disease is a wretched affair, thought Nyakio. 
 “I want you to remove your blouse and bra so that I can continue the Lord’s good work,” said Pastor Michael with a straight face.  
The pastor was sluggishly swinging side to side in his chair, his fingers interlocked on his chest with his elbows resting on its arms. Nyakio had never undressed in front of another man beside her husband. She felt like a little girl about to undress in front of her father. But this was the Lord’s shepherd, she consoled herself…and what if she was one of the women beginning to develop breast cancer?
She fumbled with the buttons of her faded blue blouse as the good pastor licked his lips.
“Slowly,” he directed.
When she was done with her blouse, she reached a hand to her back to undo her bra.
“Stop, I’ll do that.” The pastor said in an eager voice. “Come over and sit on my lap.”
Nyakio had the most glorious breasts, big sumptuous ones. She was one of those girls who are slender but endowed with large breasts. Pastor Michael had wanted to caress and suck on them ever since she had walked into his church many months ago. Nyakio slowly walked to him and carefully sat on his lap. He helped her out of her bra and commenced to fondling her rather greedily.
Nyakio shut her eyes. She couldn’t bear looking at him. Not that she found what he was doing to her loathsome. It was the weird feeling of having another man’s fingers, besides her husband’s, exploring her breasts. She wasn’t shocked though when it didn’t elicit any sweet sensations like it did when it was Jakubu’s fingers.
The Pastor’s shepherding methods are strange, thought Nyakio. She remembered when her best friend Mukami had whispered to her en route to their farms about his unconventional ways. Mukami’s elder sister had suffered three miscarriages. She had consulted the Pastor after realizing she was pregnant a fourth time. He had explained to her she had to sacrifice a lot besides tithing.
“I’ll do anything, Pastor,” she had said.
Pastor Michael had stood up and unzipped his pants, his huge appendage hang out.
“My child, you will have to fellate me once a week till the child is born,” he had said.
He claimed his holy seed once ingested would boost the foetus’ immune system. Mukami’s sister agreed and she miraculously carried the pregnancy to term. She gave birth to a beautiful robust girl.
Nyakio could feel the Pastor’s appendage ballooning beneath her bottom. It slowly raised her like a jack raises a car. The Pastor wriggled his hips beneath her as he fondled her ’til she felt dampness on her bottom. Nyakio thought it was all part of the breast examination.
“I have found a lump, my child.” Pastor Michael finally said.
Nyakio’s eyes sprung open in alarm. Her breasts suddenly felt heavy and hot and she began feeling nauseous and she knew it was true. She did have breast cancer.
She dropped to the floor. “Oh, what am I to do Pastor?” she cried. “You know I’m just but a poor servant of the Lord. My husband can’t afford to take me to hospital. Oh, and my children….Oh, Lord. They are too young to lose a mother. What are to become of them?”
 “The Lord tells me you have only two months to live,” added the pastor.
“Oh, Pastor!” Nyakio wailed and clutched onto his legs. “My children are too young to lose a mother….I’m too young to die….and Jakubu….What if he re-marries and the woman mistreats my children? Oh, Pastor, please help me. Please save me.”
“Let me pray for you, my child,” said the Pastor in a re-assuring tone.
As before, Nyakio was on her knees and the pastor’s heavy hand on her head. Only this time she was topless. As the pastor prayed for her healing, cursing and condemning all diseases, she started feeling her breasts get lighter and healthier, and she knew The Lord had cured her and saved her from certain doom.
“The Lord has healed you, my child. Get up; you will live a long and prosperous life.” The pastor said jubilantly after the long prayer. “Though don’t forget to drop in from time to time for checkup, just to be on the safe side.”
“Yes, Pastor,” said Nyakio beaming, her tears drying on her pretty face. She thanked the Good Pastor profusely as she wore her bra and blouse.
“Do not forget to bring in your tithing every first Sunday of the month, my child. You have clearly seen the phenomenal work of the Lord.”
“Yes, Pastor. I certainly have.”
Her panty was on his desk.
“I believe you wore this today morning, right?”
“Yes, Pastor.”
He gave it back to her and she quickly slipped it back.
“Do not tell anyone about the miracle that has happened here today. Not even your husband. You know how the Lord works in mysterious ways, don’t you? Let it be our little secret.”
“Yes, Pastor.”
“One more thing, do not change that panty or wash it in three days. I will come to pick it up at your home the afternoon of the third day. You remember Jesus rose on the third day, my child. You will hand it to me secretly. We don’t want people getting the wrong idea. I will burn the panty here in my church to ward off all evil that seem to be hounding your family.
On that day I will come also to pray for your home to keep the devil away. Cook something nice for The Lord’s Shepherd….And no sex for those three days. If your husband wants you, tell him the two of you should ‘fast’ to add more potency to my prayers, so that the Lord may provide him with a better job. Have a good day, my child.”
She curtsied and left his office. There was a spring in her step as she walked home.

Pastor Michael was an enigma of sort. No one knew where he had crept up from with his little luggage when he graced their humble village a few years back. The villagers only knew that he had studied in Oxford University in England, or was it Cambridge, where he had obtained every single degree that university had to offer in two and a half years.  
“What is a man with so much book doing in a village like Kisiriri?” The village headman had asked, “A village where we don’t even have a dispensary, a secondary school or a police station?”
“It is the Lord who has directed me to this sleepy village to fight your demons,” Pastor Michael had answered firmly shaking his Bible in the air. He had then looked around the village. “Oh, they are so many!” he had exclaimed, “I can see them floating in the air with their horns and jagged teeth and long tails.”
The horrified villagers had squinted their eyes to try and see the floating demons as well.
“Sorry, only I can see them as the Lord himself has anointed me to fight and extinguish them.” Pastor Michael had said with the air of a glorified clerk.
“Once I squash them I’ll move on to the next village or town. This is what I do. In the last village I wrestled with a giant seven-headed serpent for four days and four nights. It almost got the better of me, but with the Lord by my side—he had said looking to the heavens and raising his arms—I prevailed and slew it back to hell.”
Kisiriri was a dusty little village where everyone knew everyone. Most of the locals scratched a living from the impotent lands surrounding it. Some men worked at the quarry several kilometers off the village like Nyakio’s husband, Jakubu. When the children completed primary school, the few that did anyway, they went to the city to look for work. Many never returned. The few that did came only briefly to dump their bastards on their parents’ laps.
The village headman had allocated Pastor Michael a small piece of land to build his church. He built it out of mud, wattle and thatch like most houses in the village. He also built himself a small hut next to it where he lived. The church grew like a weed. One by one people had started to steal away from the mainstream churches. He demolished his mud church with the help of his swelling congregation and built a larger church of iron sheets with an in-office. He also demolished his hut and erected a brick house. Two years in the village and he had bought himself an old white Nissan Sunny. The Lord was unquestionably smiling upon him.
Pastor Michael was well loved in the village, especially by the female population. The biggest selling point of his church was that it walked with the times. His preaching was infused with catchy proverbs and interesting stories that endeared him to his congregation.
“As a small boy we had a neighbour who beat his wife frequently,” Pastor Michael once said. “At times the beatings would be so severe she had to be hospitalized: Today it would be a broken limb, tomorrow a shattered jaw, a miscarriage and so on. Her pastor would visit her in hospital. I want to leave my husband, she would lament. No, it’s against the church, the pastor would say. It’s wrong in the eyes of the Lord. Have hope, my child, and let me pray for you. The Lord will tie your husband’s fists and open his eyes to see what a jewel you are.”
Pastor Michael took a slow sip of water from his glass leaving his congregation to dangle a little in suspense.
“The husband never changed his ways, I tell you. Some people no matter how hard you pray for them are destined to burn in hell for eternity. This man came home drunk one night and beat his wife to an early grave.”
The congregation sighed in sadness.
“Now, let me ask you, my children, whom do you blame? The man who beat his wife to death? The woman who stayed in the marriage despite the unending beatings, or the pastor who pressed the woman to stay in the abusive marriage till she got killed?  Whom do you blame, my children? Whom do you blame?”
“The husband,” some shouted.
“The pastor,” others screamed.
“Well, for me I wholly blame the pastor for misleading the poor woman. If your husband beats you day in and day out, my church will not mislead you like other churches do. I will not tell you to stick it out until your husband finally maims or kills you. Leave him, I say. Leave him and the Lord will take care of you!” Pastor Michael roared.
The women applauded him rapturously. The men cowed in their seats. Such was his preaching, and it wasn’t long before the rate of separations and divorce went up exponentially in the village.

Only two people owned cars in Kisiriri village, old and battered, yes, but still…cars. One was owned by the village councillor, a red Chevrolet pickup with whooping cough, the other by Pastor Michael. The good pastor was campaigning to oust the long-serving councillor, and the general election was three months away.
Jakubu, Nyakio’s husband, was walking home with his two colleagues from breaking rock at the quarry- pickaxes resting on their shoulders. The short rains had just started. Pastor Michael zoomed past them in his Nissan Sunny, splashing muddy water on them that had collected in puddles in the earth road. This was the only road that connected the village to the city.
The councillor in the previous campaign had promised to make it an all-weather road. There was talk that Pastor Michael would easily beat him and this greatly inflamed Jakubu.
“We bought him that knock-kneed car. Would it kill him to give us a lift?” Rono spat as he wiped his face off the muddy water with a dirty rug that passed for his handkerchief. “I forbade my wife from ever attending his church again after discerning his true colours. But I think she’s doing it behind my back.”
“He has a way with his female congregation,” said Musyoka, a short angry-faced eleven-fingered bloke. “They are sure to elect him.”
“I have never trusted that man,” expressed Jakubu.
Jakubu had always been suspicious of the pastor; more so after a friend who had found a gig in the city came home and claimed to have seen a poster with a photo of a man vaguely resembling the pastor. This was about a year after the pastor’s arrival. The photo had a different name under it, not Michael, the man had said. Notify the nearest police station if you see this man, a line stated. Under it another line said the man had gone into hiding after his gang had been killed by the police. He was wanted for murder, robbery with violence and rape charges.
The rumour had gone round the village but it had been strongly crushed by Pastor Jakubu’s followers. They undoubtedly felt the rumour was the malicious work of jealous pastors who were losing their sheep by the truckload.
Over the years more rumours had snaked their way round the village. One was that with his new-found riches from the church. He was able to bribe police officers and clerks at the courts to disappear his file.
“And a man his age with no wife, there must be something seriously wrong with him,” stated Jakubu.
“He sees no need for a wife since he makes our wives his,” said Rono, a strapping dark fellow like Jakubu, but with buck teeth. “To fetch water for him, wash his clothes, iron them, cook for him, clean his house and give him ten percent of their earnings.”
“By doing so they think they have one foot through heaven’s highly selective golden gates,” explained Musyoka.
 “Why did we tether ourselves to such foolish wives?” asked Rono. “Who cursed us, my friends? How can they not see through that false prophet like we do?”
“Not just women,” said Musyoka. “Don’t you remember, Zakayo? He was the richest man in the village until the pastor convinced him that to get into heaven, he had to sell all his cows and goats and give the proceeds to the church.”
Jakubu winced on picturing poor Zakayo, now a beggar.
“One day I arrived home from the quarry and my wife hadn’t prepared my supper.” Musyoka said. “I asked her why she was late. She joyfully said she and other women had been to the pastor’s farm to weed his maize and beans. Did he pay you, I asked? She shook her head and said the Lord would pay her in other ways. I was so mad. I couldn’t fathom her weeding the pastor’s farm yet our farm lay uncultivated. I retrieved a cane from my bed and whipped her severely and warned her against stepping foot in his church or farm ever again.”
“Careful there or she might leave you for a taller man who treats her well,” Rono said and burst into laughter. “Or better still, she might leave you for the pastor. I hear he’s secretly screwing some of the women who’ve left their husbands.”
“Women!” Jakubu hissed. “My wife thinks he is the Son of God. She would chew her arm off to attend his church if I tied her up in the hut.”

The sun was setting when Jakubu trudged into his compound. His two children were darting in and out of the hut to the ramshackle they used as a kitchen, carrying pots and plates.
“Fafa, the pastor was here,” his youngest, Kiere, informed him. Kiere grabbed his father’s hand and they made for the hut.
Jakubu felt a bitter grip in his throat.
“You’ve just missed him,” his daughter Njoki said.
A sweet aromatic scent hit him on entering the hut - the unmistakable scent of fried chicken. His wife Nyakio was lighting their old lantern.
“What special occasion warranted the slaughtering of chicken?” Jakubu asked in a stern voice before taking his seat.
Nyakio didn’t answer. Jakubu’s brow furrowed in anger.
“I said….”
“The Lord’s Shepherd visited our humble aboard.” Nyakio answered quickly and with a quiver in her voice.
He leaned his pickaxe on the wall next to the door and sat on his chair. It creaked more than usual. That bugger pastor must have sat on my chair, he thought. The children sensed the anger in their father’s demeanour. They sat quietly on their stools.
“What did I say about men coming to my house without my knowledge?”
The atmosphere was tense and Nyakio’s silence compounded it.
“He’s not just any man,” she finally said. “He’s the Shepherd of the Lord. Are you saying the Shepherd of the Lord is not welcome in this your house?”
The lantern burned dim and smoked. Little Kiere thought the angry shadow of his father looked like the shadow of an ogre.  
“I want no man stepping foot in this house without my say so, man of God or not.” His voice boomed in the hut. The small hut made his voice more menacing. The hut was divided into two, the inner room where the parents slept and the living room where they were, and where the children slept on mats.
 “He was here to cover your house with the blood of Jesus; to ward off all evil designs.”
Jakubu leaned back on his seat and regarded his wife a while.
“I’m hungry. Get me some food.” He barked at his children.
The children ran to the kitchen. Little Kiere came back with a jug of water and a basin and washed his father’s hands. Njoki brought in the steaming food and served him. As the man of the house it was customary that he ate the two chicken thighs whenever a chicken was slaughtered. That’s not what he was served. He realised that the pastor had not offered him and his friends a lift and splashed them with muddy water. So that he could rush to his hut and sit on his chair and eat his chicken thighs, and perhaps even see his wife’s thighs!
This greatly heightened his anger.
“Njoki?”
“Yes, father.”
“When was the last time we ate chicken in this house?”
“Many months ago, father.”
“On Christmas Day,” jumped in little Kiere. “We only eat chicken on Christmas, father.”
“Who is this man who holds so much power in my house that even chicken is slaughtered for his gracious presence?”
Nyakio ignored him. She continued knitting a sweater for Kiere. It was her chicken she had slaughtered anyway. She had bought it with money she had borrowed from the women’s self-help group; a group which had been initiated by Pastor Michael to empower the Kisiriri village women.

After grudgingly eating his chicken and ugali, and taking a quick shower, Jakubu went into the inner room to rest. He unrolled their thin mattress, wore shorts and lay on it. Most of his muscles ached. Quarry work is the worst kind of work in all of mankind’s history, he thought. His wife joined him later. With the lantern’s light she changed into a shortened faded red old dress that passed for her nightdress.
She lay on the thin mattress beside him. She hated her husband going to bed angry at her.
“I don’t know why you hate Pastor Michael so much,” she said breaking the silence. “What did he ever do to you? By the way he wants your vote in the coming elections.”
Jakubu ignored her. Talking about the damn pastor for one more minute would drive him to lunacy. He turned his back on her.
“If you won’t talk to me then I won’t massage your back,” she said coyly. “I know your muscles ache and you know how skilled my fingers are,” she whispered in his ear sensuously.
“Sleep, Nyakio,” he ordered. “I have a long day tomorrow.”
She slowly ran a naughty finger on his back. He shrugged her off. She forcefully climbed over him, making him lie on his belly, and started massaging his aching back, shoulders and arms. It felt sublime, as always. He no longer resisted her charms. Over the years she had perfected ways of making him surrender his resentment towards her.
“Will you vote for him?” she asked as she massaged him.
“He can go and eat shit.”
“Please husband, refrain from talking in such a manner of the Lord’s Shepherd. That kind of talk could bring the wrath of God down onto our peasant shoulders.”
When she got off him he felt like a new man. He went out of the hut to take a piss and came back with an itch for his wife. She refused him.
“But your time of the month was just last week,” Jakubu protested.
“It’s not that.”
“What then?” Jakubu demanded.
She hesitated. She didn’t quite know if he would understand, but she gave it a try.
“You are miserable at your work and it makes you cranky all the time….and poverty is eating at us mercilessly.”
“What does that got to do with me making love to my wife?”
“Well, Pastor Michael said…”
“Not that wretch again,” Jakubu cut in angrily.
“I went to his office three days ago so that he may pray for you. We prayed that you may get a better job. If you got a better job your moods would elevate and perhaps we wouldn’t be eating chicken only on Christmas.”
“I still don’t get why you are refusing me,” Jakubu said, more enraged.
“He asked that we ‘fast’ for three days to give more potency to the prayers.”
Jakubu couldn’t believe the nonsense that was spilling from his wife. This so-called pastor splashed him with muddy water, sat on his chair, ate his chicken thighs and now was dictating to him when he could get between his wife’s thighs. Not unless his name was not Jakubu.
He slapped her hard, partly due to anger, partly to clear the cobwebs from her eyes. So that she could see how unreasonable she was being. He then tried to prise her legs open, but she spiritedly kept them closed.
“Today is the third and last day,” she begged. “Tomorrow we can do it all you want, my love, all you want. Think of our future, my love.” Jakubu wanted her then and there and he wasn’t going to wait another night because a damn pastor said so.
Nyakio somehow managed to free herself from his grasp. He pursued her around the hut and they kept stepping and falling over the children. Nyakio unlocked the door and dashed out. He caught up with her a short distance away from the hut. The moon was full and spied on them.
“This pastor that you hate so much saved my life.” She shouted at him as she covered her head with her hands to block his blows. “He found cancer in my breasts. I would have died in two months hadn’t he prayed for me till I was healed.”
Jakubu stopped attacking his wife and took a few steps back, panting. He wore a puzzled look on his face.
“How did he know you had cancer in your breasts?”
“That day I went to his office to pray for you,” she said in a teary voice. “He touched them and found lumps. They are gone now.” 
“What! He touched your breasts, and you let him?” Jakubu asked choking on his words.
“Yes. The Lord whispered to him in a vision. I am healed now and that’s what matters.”
“Is that why you won’t oblige me my conjugal rights because you are already quenched by the pastor? Is that why he came here today? You gave him my chicken thighs and then opened your thighs for him?” Jakubu said stuttering. As he spoke he would make a step forward toward her and she would make a step backward.
“No, he came to collect my panty.”
“Come again?” Jakubu said, shaking his head to clear out the daub in his ears that was making him hear crazy things.
“He told me to wear it for three days without washing it. He took it with him today to burn in his church to destroy the evil spirits that have been plaguing us.”
Jakubu felt as if the gods were strangling him: He couldn’t breathe, his vision blurred and his face burned hot.
“I will kill that perverted pastor of yours today!” he shouted.        
Jakubu rushed into the hut and retrieved his pickaxe. Nyakio bolted in the moonlight, in her skimpy nightdress, to warn the pastor and to escape any harm that Jakubu may unleash her way. Pastor Michael’s doors were open till very late. She prayed as she ran that the pastor had gone to bed early. She could hear Jakubu’s heavy footsteps behind her, slowly gaining on her.
Nyakio feared Jakubu might crack the pastor’s head open with his pickaxe. She also feared the pastor might shoot him. It was well known in the village that Pastor Michael owned a pistol. It wasn’t clear how he had acquired it, but wasn’t the pastor a man of many mysteries. He had got it after two gangs of angry husbands had beaten him up on two different occasions. The first gang had blamed him for their wives leaving them, and the other for their wives being too devoted to him than they were to them.
It was said rain no longer fell on these men’s farms, while it fell abundantly on the farms next to theirs.
As Nyakio entered the pastor’s compound, huffing and puffing, she almost collided with another woman running away from the pastor’s house. She was topless, her breasts swung as she ran.
“Do not get in there,” she beseeched. “That is no pastor, I tell you. No pastor,” she said and ran off.
Pastor Michael came running after her, shouting at her to stop. He only wore shorts. He stopped chasing after the woman when he saw Nyakio.
“What are you doing here?” he asked baffled.
“My husband is on his way here.” she said still out of breath and in a panicky voice. “He has a pickaxe with him and I fear he intends to do you great harm. Please get in your house and barricade yourself.”
Just as Nyakio finished explaining the situation to the pastor, Jakubu steamed into the compound like an enraged buffalo. He saw the pastor standing in the dark with his wife. He ran to them and swung his pickaxe at the pastor. Perhaps due to his fury he missed him entirely and stumbled to the ground. His weapon jumped out of his hands and landed several feet away from them. The pastor sprinted for his house, maybe to fortify himself, maybe to retrieve his pistol. Jakubu was quicker though than the bulky pastor and he pounced on him before he could get there, and they rolled in the dirt.
Nyakio screamed her lungs out calling for help.
“Wuuuuuiii!…Please come and help us! They are killing each other! Wuuuiiii!…”
Villagers heard the screaming and realised it was coming from the pastor’s homestead. The men refused to pull out their clubs from under their beds and rush out to help the pastor, no matter how much their wives begged. Inwardly the men were dancing. They reckoned it was a jilted husband who was settling old scores with the pastor. He had it coming.
Blood was all over: On their noses, on their teeth, on their fists, on their chests, on the earth. Nyakio tried to intervene but they would violently push her away. Her teeth shuddered when a punch landed on the body of the other. They were two bulls, in shorts, engrossed in a fight to the death. Nyakio observed that no one was coming to help. She saw the pickaxe glimmering a short distance away. She couldn’t bear to watch them tearing each other apart any longer.   
She had to make a choice. She had to choose between the love of her life, her husband of eight years and father to her two beautiful children, and the panty-sniffing Lord’s Shepherd, curer of cancers and demolisher of demons. Nyakio was not known to cope well under stressful situations. She picked up the pickaxe, slowly walked to the combatants, raised it above her head and with all her might brought it down on the head of ….