Devil on the Cross

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of sexual harassment, sexual exploitation, enslavement, depression, and suicide.

Devil on the Cross is narrated by The Gĩcaandĩ Player, Prophet of Justice, who is approached by the mother of someone named Jacinta Warĩĩnga, who asks him to “tell the story of the child I loved so dearly” (1). The Gĩcaandĩ Player fasts for seven days to reveal the story of what happened to Jacinta. At the end of the seven days, The Gĩcaandĩ Player is lifted above the roof of his home and admonished by a booming voice. The Gĩcaandĩ Player is then cast down into the ashes of his fireplace, where he cries out that he accepts the prophecy offered to him. The Gĩcaandĩ Player then reveals that he will tell the story of Jacinta Warĩĩnga.

The narrator of the story of Jacinta, The Gĩcaandĩ Player, starts of by saying that the “Devil appeared to Jacinta Warĩĩnga one Sunday on a golf course in the town of Ilmorog in Iciciri District” (4). However, the narrator also says that this is not the beginning of the story, and for that he will need to return to when Warĩĩnga’s troubles began, when she worked as a secretary for the offices of the Champion Construction Company in Nairobi, Kenya.