Mwaura Tajiri is an insane man who is often to be seen at a shopping centre in Kigumo District.His mental disturbances come visiting during rainy seasons and that is when he camps at the shopping centre begging for small favours from those he is familiar with and making a nuisance of himself to strangers.
But there is one accusation that he levels against a local Deliverance Church pastor with great clarity."That pastor is the father of my brother’s last born," he declares. "If you think I’m lying just look at the pastor’s kids and then at my brother’s last born."
And true enough, even without the evidence of DNA testing, the resemblance to the pastor’s kids is uncanny.
"To this day the pastor is my brother’s wife’s lover. We have tried warning him off but he appears to be stuck with the relationship," Tajiri says.
In the neighbourhood of this pastor’s church, word is that he is a prize bull and has impregnating many women in his flock.
"Ah, we’ve lost count of the pregnancies pinned on him around this place. We have reported him to the chief, village elders and even to the police but no one cares," says Richard Mbote, an area resident.
Besides offering spiritual nourishment, the pastor is also a teacher at a nearby secondary school.
Intimate knowledge
"He is a sexual champion. Our female secretaries and some students know him intimately. He has two disciplinary cases that he has kept under wraps," a colleague reveals.
Another pastor in the area, Maina Njake, is the self-proclaimed bull of his church.
"You see, even the Bible values heroic love affairs as long as they are consensual. Look at Abraham and King Solomon. Pastors are also human beings," he says.
The pastor, who has been excommunicated from his African Inland Pentecostal Church in Murang’a District, is battling a pregnancy claim against a parishioner.
Mary Wangare has since gone public accusing the pastor of rape, but the pastor insists that it was a pregnancy that was a product of "a peaceful, affectionate and memorable affair."
He tells Crazy Monday: "Yes, I’m a married man but Agikuyu traditions do not frown on polygamy. I felt I needed another wife and I picked on her."
He says pastors should not pretend that biological passions could be stilled with salvation.
"We have many who are doing it as if they are committing a capital offence. They should all come out. There is a time for sex and time for spiritual nourishment. Both are not related and cannot contradict the religious calling," he argues.
Unofficial wives
He claims to be unable to count the number of kids he has sired with "unofficial wives in my 10 years of administering the Gospel".
A common joke in church-going circles has it that if a female member of the congregation has a child out of wedlock and there is no husband in sight, just compare the baby’s features with those of the pastor.
The illicit unions are reportedly hatched in overnight vigils commonly known as kesha, evangelical tours to other parishes and retreats to secluded and silent places.
Other alliances, it is rumoured, are hatched during prayer sessions that pastors conduct in the houses of widows, abandoned wives and senior spinsters vulnerable to loneliness.
And since the Bible says many are called but few chosen, it appears pastors will be the majority miss-outs, thanks to their love for illicit affairs with women in their pastoral care.
Catherine Ndolo is a resident of Githurai 44 Estate in Nairobi. She is full of distaste for a leading gospel artiste and a preacher at her Zimmerman church.
"This man has a concubine in our plot. He usually comes in the evenings armed with a Bible and under the pretence of sharing the Gospel they end up sharing bodily warmth," she claims.
She adds that, "Recently the woman gave birth and the pastor is the one who paid all her expenses as well as employed a housegirl for her and the baby is brown like him."
Evil spirit
She fires a salvo: "Why can’t these men of the cloth just abandon the pulpit and indulge in all the love affairs they can manage in a day?"
She fears that the Church is in the grip of a sexual evil spirit that innocent parishioners can get infected with.
"Imagine a situation where an infidel pastor lays his hands on a sister. Will the sexual evil spirit not get transferred into that innocent sister?" she queries.
Prophet John Mburu Ndegwa of the Akorino sect in Central Rift Valley believes some pastors have a special degree in sexuality.
"There is this turbaned pastor friend of mine who is very prominent in Nairobi and also a gospel artiste. He usually takes spirits discreetly mixed in a bottle of soda," he reveals.
He adds: "Despite his white turban, after he takes his dose of booze, he usually gets into his vehicle and drives to a nearby media house where his concubine works."
Prophet Ndegwa discloses that the woman has two kids with the pastor and he meets all their expenses.
Gospel artiste Emmy Koskei is furious that some clergy are "pretenders". Their association with the genuinely called is a disgrace and blasphemous in the eyes of God, she declares.
"We have in our midst those whose mission is to cannibalise the Gospel. But God hates schemes of evil and he does everything to expose the wolves in sheep’s clothing," she cautions.
Her colleague, Wakabura Joseph, sums the situation thus: "Some brethren opted to clean their outer sides while the insides reek of iniquities. If Steadman were to conduct a research, some of our colleagues would score highly in these bodily sins."
Quit celibacy
A leading pastor on River Road, Nairobi, is also on the spot for being the ‘bull’ among the unattached female members of his church."He is responsible for many pregnancies especially among women whose mission in life is to remain single," confesses a ‘sister’ who claims she is one of the benefactors.
She says: "Our pastor is handsome and well cultured. Instead of going out there and risk getting pregnant with a gangster, I tricked him to bed and conceived."
She adds that many women have sought his seed and it has always been planted.
"He is a good breeder and his physical features are so unique that it is not hard to know the parentage of many of the children in our church," she confesses.
A journalism colleague confesses that his initial calling was to be a Catholic priest.
"I enrolled in one of celibate order of missionaries but quit a year later," he says.
He confesses that he suffered from "insane sexual passions".
He could not stand some of his senior priests who discreetly sought the services of the opposite sex while he was forced to abstain.
"While there I met a highly respectable Catholic priest. There was a woman who usually brought a baby boy to the mission. We came to realise he was the father to the boy," he reveals.
He says the revelation was so hurting that he started seeking sexual gratification openly.
"I deserted the mission and bid goodbye celibacy. I came to realise that we were living in denial," he says.
Famous televangelistMary Wangechi charges that a "famous televangelist" impregnated her and later abandoned her.
"He had not become as popular as he is today. I used to be an usher in his church when we started dating. I found myself pregnant," she says.
While the man of God was considerate in the first year upon the birth of his daughter, he later turned cold.
"I even appeared on TV cuddling his daughter and appealed that he assumes responsibility or I take him to court," she claims.
But when the evangelist stopped being a pauper and became a high-flying national figure, he threatened to sue her for defamation.
"I could not afford a tussle with a rogue millionaire. My aunt counselled me to forget about it," she says.
So common are cases of randy men of cloth that almost all congregations have a case in point.
Some pastors are reported to be quick to fill the ‘matrimonial vacuum’ that befalls widows upon the death of their spouses.
Gerald Oyoo says he is aware of a senior pastor with Legio Maria who ended up marrying his follower after her husband was jailed.
"Although it’s against our cultural traditions, this pastor argued that there was a distinctive line between archaic traditions and the call to salvation," Oyoo recalls.
Killed by mobFinally, either by design or through misfortune, the husband was killed by a mob in Makongeni after he was released.
"Today, the pastor has backtracked and is living with this widow as the alternative husband and together they have three kids," Oyoo claims.
Some of the cyber cafÈ operators Crazy Monday talked to reveal that some pastors are major customers for their pornographic sites.
"There is this pastor who has a church on Thika Road. He pays me to download for him pornographic movies," claims a technical assistant in a cyber cafÈ in the city.
This pastor has teamed up with another commercial pastor "to progress liberal gospel that treats sex as just a normal topic".
A follower who says he quit the church in 2007 claims: "It had reached a point where the sermons were never complete without being punctuated with sexual anecdotes. I thought he was becoming a pervert and I quit."
He says he had all along suspected the pastor was more interested in the "many girls who sat at the front rows with skirts shorter than a coat and always giggling wildly any time the pastor broke a sexual joke," than in saving souls.
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