Still, Kaiser urged the women on, and one of them filed a private prosecution that generated a front-page headline: "Sunkuli Accused of Sex Attack." A Nairobi magistrate ordered Sunkuli to appear in court to face the charge.
"It's a just war," Kaiser wrote, "and I am on the right side."
Sunkuli, now a minister of state and a rumored successor to the president, accused Kaiser of orchestrating "a sex scandal," and called the allegations "all politics."
In late October, the government ordered Kaiser deported, on the pretext that his visa had expired. The U.S. Embassy intervened. Kaiser hid in a convent loft, shimmying down an iron pipe to the back alley when police arrived. The order was rescinded.
In its heavy-handedness, the regime was turning the priest into a symbol. In March 2000, the Law Society of Kenya, a spearhead of the pro-democracy movement, gave him a human rights award. At the banquet, a speaker compared him to the prophet Elijah. Lawyers and foreign diplomats lined up to shake his hand. He wore a Roman collar and a pair of $10 pants.
Before the crowd, Kaiser declared that Moi should be tried at The Hague for crimes against humanity.
After the banquet, walking through Nairobi with a visiting Minnesotan named Don Beumer, Kaiser pointed to a burly man across the street. "That's one of those thugs," Kaiser said. He told his friend not to be surprised if he was killed. "They'll say I committed suicide."
Worried priests remonstrated with Kaiser. To call for Moi's prosecution was to invite retribution. They could kill us, the priests said. Can't you ease off, John? More than once, church superiors urged him to go back to the United States to rest. He said his work was in Kenya.
In Lolgorien, he went through the parish house, making sure the windows were closed and draped. He wrote: "They have tried to deport me & failed & have made death threats but what is that to a 67 year old has been."
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The threats kept coming.
As Kaiser would tell friends, a game warden brought him a message: There is a plan to shoot you and plant a dead animal beside you, so it appears you were gunned down as a poacher.
A rock flew through Kaiser's window. An anonymous letter arrived in his box. He opened it. The threat was in Swahili.
Utaona moto.
You will see fire.
Then came a hand-delivered letter, on Saturday, Aug. 19, 2000, from a surprising source: Giovanni Tonucci, the pope's appointed spokesman in Kenya, known as the papal nuncio. He wanted to see Kaiser urgently in Nairobi.
