When Terry Gobanga - then Terry Apudo - didn't show up to her
wedding, nobody could have guessed that she had been abducted, raped and left
for dead by the roadside. It was the first of two tragedies to hit the young Nairobi
 |
| *Terry Gobanga |
It was going to be a very big wedding. I was a pastor,
so all our church members were coming, as well as all our relatives. My fiance,
Harry, and I were very excited - we were getting married in All Saints
Cathedral in Nairobi
But the night before the wedding I realised that I had
some of Harry's clothes, including his cravat. He couldn't show up without a
tie, so a friend who had stayed the night offered to take it to him first thing
in the morning. We got up at dawn and I walked her to the bus station.
As I was making my way back home, I walked past a guy
sitting on the bonnet of a car - suddenly he grabbed me from behind and dumped
me in the back seat. There were two more men inside, and they drove off. It all
happened in a fraction of a second.
A piece of cloth was stuffed in my mouth. I was kicking
and hitting out and trying to scream. When I managed to push the gag out, I
screamed: "It's my wedding day!" That was when I got the first blow.
One of the men told me to "co-operate or you will die".
The men took turns to rape me. I felt sure I was going to die, but
I was still fighting for my life, so when one of the men took the gag out of my
mouth I bit his manhood. He screamed in pain and one of them stabbed me in the
stomach. Then they opened the door and threw me out of the moving car.
I was miles from home, outside Nairobi
A child saw me being thrown out and called her
grandmother. People came running. When the police came they tried to get a
pulse, but no-one could. Thinking I was dead, they wrapped me in a blanket and
started to take me to the mortuary. But on the way there, I choked on the
blanket and coughed. The policeman said: "She's alive?" And he turned
the car around and drove me to the biggest government hospital in Kenya
