In yesterday’s blog, I ran three edited extracts from journalist Kate Copstick‘s diary. She is currently working with her Mama Biashara charity in Kenya. The story continues in these edited extracts from her diary, which she has been posting on her Facebook page.

Tuesday 21st November

Still no news from Oliver. Doris is now linked into several groups on WhatsApp, trying to help mothers and wives find their missing boys. All young men. Bodies are turning up in far-flung hospital morgues. Beaten men are being dumped by roadsides far from their homes. This is ethnic (well, tribal) cleansing by stealth. But no mention in the press …

And, if this is how it is in Nairobi, then out in the villages…

We need to find a way to get the displaced women out of Kisii county. Farm lorries seem to be the best way. VIcky is still up there but treading very carefully. She now has some help from villagers and farmers who have no problem in helping the refugees. The plan is to pay one of the big farm lorries to ferry them out in smaller groups.

I hear that half a dozen houses were torched in Kibera last night. I recount our tale of Oliver. No one looks hopeful. I tell about the bodies dumped. There is a lot of nodding. “That is what they do,” says Mwangi. Everyone has a tale of young men being ‘disappeared’ in the night.

Wednesday 22nd November

The mothers’ group is up and running. We start to think about a name for the rescue house when it opens in January. The women are – in stark contrast to how they were at our first meeting – nothing if not to the point.

STOP RAPE is the most popular suggestion. STOP MEN RAPING is another. I suggest it might be slightly in yer face. And point out, jokingly, that these “Kill All Men” titles are not always helpful. They actually quite like KILL ALL MEN, especially when I mention T-shirts.

Doris appears. Nothing from Oliver but she is in a bad way, having just spent the morning miles away in a place called Tigoni, with a group of mothers also looking for their disappeared sons.

The network of mums (now numbering about 46 in Nairobi alone and centred on Mama Biashara as a point of communication) does internal alerts whenever a body turns up, wherever it is. And mums go.

If they find their man alive or dead, his name is taken off the list of the missing.

None of these alerts is ever, ever made by the hospital. The young men are dumped on them in the night. If they do have ID, the hospitals (so the group have been told) have been instructed to destroy the ID. So only mothers and sisters and wives and friends can identify them, as long as they are prepared to search.

This morning, there was just a badly beaten body to identify. And Doris was there to take care of the distraught mother. This young lad was a student at a technical college on his way home. Taken with two friends. They are yet to be found.

Jayne calls (from Awendo). She has been going to KIsumu to visit a boy in hospital. The matatu she is in has been hijacked on the way and now she has nothing but her phone which she hid when the hijackers took everything from everyone. I send her the money to get home.

Thursday 23rd November

Doris says her friend in the horrendously abusive relationship has been much enlightened by my info on BDSM.

Now she knows what’s what she is keen to take my advice to get out. Especially as the latest news is that he has bought a state-of-the-art knife sharpener and has applied for a gun licence. Easier said than done in a society where:

1. the man can do no wrong, only the woman can fail in a marriage and

2. her family is toxic with Christianity and will probably explode at the mention of anything sexual. Especially extreme bondage and the kind of demeaning shit this monster is into. But she is going to talk to her parents and try to rouse the family group behind her.

Still no sign of Oliver.

His auntie/guardian (Oliver is an orphan) is now in on the search.

Friday 24th November

The poor abused woman with the psycho husband has moved out and is with her parents, where he will not dare reach her.

I bring her up to speed on the child rape rescue centre project and ask if she can think of a name. I want something hard-hitting. Punchy. Says it as it is.

Swahili is not the greatest language for saying it as it is in a punchy way.

“I know what you want, Copi” says Doris. “But you must not…”

“Not what?” I ask, girlishly.

“Call it something like Tombe Tombe Baba MBAYA” she says.

I am convulsed with a mixture of hysterical laughter and out-and-out admiration for Doris’ brilliance.

It scans… It trips off the tongue… It says it like it is…

It translates roughly as FUCK FUCK BAD DADDY.

Oh how I wish…

I am hearing the Christmas single… seeing the crowds chanting our name…

If only…

She then suggests I name it after Daddy Copstick. Don’t think I had not thought of that, but BIG BOB’S HOME FOR THE REPEATEDLY DEFILED is not a name I see gaining popularity.

I get brought up to speed with the whole ‘disappeared’ saga.

We have found another young man. Doris has spoken to him (in case he knows Oliver) and he says he was taken in a group of three by men who appeared out of nowhere (again, in Huruma) and identified themselves as police.

The boys were bundled into a van. There were many more boys in the van. The boy offered up his ID but the men tore it up in front of him. The captives had sacks over their heads. They were taken to somewhere unknown and beaten to within an inch of their lives. Or further.

The boy does not remember how long they were there. But then they were divided up and dumped in various outlying locations – some alive and some dead.

The boy woke up in a hospital about three hours from Nairobi where he pretended he could not speak because everyone there was speaking Kikkuyu and he did not want to give himself away as a Luo and face a repeat of what he had just been through.

He watched and waited and said he was treated very well. Finally, a cleaner came in the night and let him use her phone. He alerted his parents. He is now unable to walk properly but alive and safe.

And then something amazing happens.

Doris gets a call.

Oliver’s mother has been contacted by someone saying they think they know where he is. They are waiting for another phone call. He is in some sort of a retreat for pastors and priests outside Sultan Hamoud – which is about a third of the way to Mombasa. Two and a half hours without traffic.

And he is alive. Injured but alive.

The mother is already on her way there.

Saturday 25th November

I awake to a dozen messages on my phone.

The mum had reached the place where Oliver was but the men there were terrified to let him go with her. Doris persuaded her uncle to drive her to the place, getting there about four in the morning. The men running the retreat knew only that Oliver had been dumped on their doorstep in the middle of the night and that, twice since then, a group of men has arrived, demanded entrance and asked if there is a boy here who arrived at night.

The men say they are going to tell the enquirers, if they come back, that Oliver just escaped. He was badly bashed about head, severe wounds on his back where he was beaten and an injury to his leg. He says the men in the retreat treated him really well, but just kept him secluded and never told him where he was.

The men in the retreat, says Doris, seemed more frightened than Oliver.

Anyway, Oliver and his family are off back to his home area now. Doris says he just cried and cried all the way back to Nairobi. HIs mother is planning a ‘cleansing’ ceremony when they get home. For whatever good that will do.

In more good news, the first 20 women have left Kisii en route to their new life. This is all wrapping up rather well.

We discuss names. Gotta have a name.

I mention something Doris suggested the other night. And Joan loves it. So, for the time being, we have the working title :

BRAVEHEARTS – MAMAS FIGHTING RAPE

If anyone can do better, I would love to hear. Acronyms are good.

Though I still like TOMBE TOMBE BABA MBAYA.