There was once a drama called ‘She Ate the Female Cassava’ by a guy called Jimmi Makotsi-Makotsi. I have always wondered about people with double barrel names by the way. Like the drug lord called ‘Vincenzo Insunza-Insunza.’ Or our very own Miguna Miguna! Such a guy introduces himself – and it’s as if you’ve been shot twice, between the eyes.
Anyway, I never got round to reading Makotsi-Makotsi’s play; let’s just say I was at that silly age for boys where, because of its titillating title, I thought it had something to do with lesbians. I was reminded of this play the other day when Justice Wakiaga denied bail to one Jowie Irungu. For readers recently returned from Mars, he is the main suspect behind the death of a woman named Monica Kimani.
In denying Jowi bail, the learned judge described him as a ‘male slay queen,’ and qualified this by calling him some sort of Woman Eater. Many were left wondering: Who is a woman eater? First, he is usually a ‘male’ slay queen, as the most learned law lord pointed out. These are men who care way too much about their appearance.
It is okay for an African man to comb hair, brush teeth and keep nails short and neat. But when a man does a manicure and pedicure, facials, dresses like a pimp and cuts beards in circular shapes?
Secondly, these ‘woman eaters’ have specialised in a certain type of lady. They are not there to grow or support any woman, because they themselves are the fisi! So they will go for a corporate woman or a lady who’s stable in her career, usually in her thirties, and a single mom — with one or two kids — who has been previously disappointed by men in her life. Thirdly, these types of men are very fast when it comes to moving into the house of a
woman.
Forget the old trope about the one-night stand who forgets her panty, then her toothpaste in your flat, falls pregnant, and never leaves. We have a new breed of men who move in so fast into your house, you think you just missed the clause in the lease that said: ‘the house comes fully furnished … with Ben.’
Fourthly, what is about these kind of men, and being all over their women’s cars? It is not uncommon to see a big guy in traffic, hunched over like a question mark in a tiny Vitz. You think he went over to the showroom/car yard, and said: ‘Hey, gimme that cute pink moti’?
But even such a woman eater should draw the red line in the sand, at some point.
(i) Never carry her huge scarlet Givenchy handbag, unless she’s a recent amputee.
(ii) Don’t be that guy in a muscle T-shirt walking her tiny rat-like dog (Chi) in public.
Fifthly, these guys are always borrowing money from the woman they are dating. You chew her, you eat the food her sweat/investments puts on the table, and you still munch her money? Honey, you must be balmy to keep such a bum about ye.
Sixthly, these women eaters never seem to have a known source of income – that is when they make money. And their deals always have a foreign stink about them — gold in Gabon, cobalt in Congo, guns in Sudan, dubious deals in Dubai. When they are not a con, they are dangerous.
Lastly, you know very little about the fellow … He’s like ‘Eye Witness’ who materialised out of thin air. You don’t know exactly what he does, where he lived (before making himself at home in your abode), who his friends are, where he went to school is sketchy, his family — so much so it is like he self reproduced like an amoeba. This is taking Mystery Man to fearful levels.
‘Woman Eater’ was a 1958 movie starring a lady-eating tree that then oozed a serum that allowed its owner to bring the dead back to life. Sixty years later, the ‘woman eaters’ slay the ladies, and turn the living into the Dead.
Let’s sign off on a cheerful note, with Lou Bega’s Mambo # 5, about Woman Eaters:
‘A little of Monica in my life, a little bit of Erica by my side, a little bit of Sandra in the sun, a little bit of Mary, all night long; a little bit of Jackie, makes me a man.’
By Tony Mochama
tonyadamske@gmail.com
