Rahab Omunzi

Rahab Omunzi was 13 years old when her parents broke up. For the young girl just entering her teen years, it was a shattering experience. Her two brothers were much older than she was and had moved out of home, so she was the only child left with her mother. That was in 1995.

The following year, she joined secondary school, which turned out to be a whole new experience. “During our first year in high school, most of our conversations centred around boys,” she recalls.

“All the other girls said they had boyfriends and seemed very happy when they talked about it.”

To a 14-year-old who had led a sheltered life and took everything at face value, things became rather confusing. To try and make sense of life, Rahab asked her mother what a male student in Form Four had meant when he asked her to be his girlfriend.

“She rebuked me,” recalls Rahab.

“She warned me not to do what the boy had told me to do and that was it. No explanation about why I shouldn’t. It was only much later that I realised that at that point, my mother was hurting after her marriage of 25 years fell apart, and that she was bitter towards men. But her reaction made me decide to keep my teen issues to myself. I did not want to annoy her, so I didn’t bother her with any more questions,” she says.

This, as Rahab later realised, set the stage for her rebellious attitude. She wanted to be like her friends who did not seem to need permission from their parents to be with boys.

She cannot not tell why, but she says she felt liberated. In any case, she reasoned, she was no longer a child to be told off. Besides, she had a whole new lot of friends to support her.

“My desk-mate developed a special liking for me,” Rahab recalls. “and before long we had introduced each other to our mothers. We soon became bosom buddies. I spent most of my time at her house, and I thought my friend had the ‘coolest’ mum.”

You cannot miss the pain in her voice when she says “coolest”.

As it turned out, the ‘cool mum’ was extremely permissive.

“She allowed us to watch pornography, took us to nightclubs, introduced us to drugs and gave us lots of pocket money. She seemed like a cool mum to a 14-year-old who wanted to have a taste of freedom,” she explains.

So Rahab continued revelling in her newfound freedom, not daring to breathe a word to her mother.

“I continued being rebellious to show her that I was in charge of my life. I could not stan