Do wives use "chama" meetings as an excuse to cheat on their husbands?

There was a heated debate on how secretive women are with their money. That even the proceeds of their investment clubs, commonly known as chamas, which their husbands fund, of course, reluctantly never make it to the family budget angered most male callers and listeners.

What, however, was not discussed was how the once noble and respected investment clubs have lost their shine, with some empowered and cunning urbane women, especially in Nairobi, giving them a bad name.

Reportedly, some of these women now use chama as an excuse to leave home and go out to cheat on their men.

First things firs-. Chama was the brain child of village women. Initially, they would meet over tea, exchange gossip, buy each other utensils and that was it.

 Fast forward to today- the chama trend has increasingly become popular among urban women, but for all the wrong reasons.

If you are a man and your wife has developed the habit of leaving the house over the weekends, claiming she is going for a chama meeting, only to return glowing with excitement, overly nice and relaxed, you have every reason to be very worried.

“When your woman comes home from chama very excited and all giggly and strut around with an air of fulfillment, chances are very high she is from having a good time with her secret lover who probably did a ‘better job’ than you always do,” says James Kwoba, a Nairobi city resident.

Kwoba says nowadays, married women, especially the younger ones, use the chama excuse to go seek intimacy - which some claim lack in their homes - from secret lovers.

“I have a friend who has all along been getting excited whenever his young wife said she was going out of town for a chama. It excited him because that always gave him an opportunity to paint town red with the boys. What he didn’t know was that his wife’s ‘out-of-town chama treats’ had nothing to do with an investment club, but romantic rendezvous with a secret lover,” says Kwoba.

 He adds that his friend only came to learn about it when he stumbled on his wife’s X-rated WhatsApp chat with a younger man, talking about their sex escapades in Naivasha weeks ago.

“These things are all about peer pressure. Women, especially the liberated types in big towns like Nairobi, meet and once they run out of gossip, they start sharing naughty ideas they read online or watched in movies,” says John Njenga, a Nairobi-based taxi driver.

Njenga says when a faithful young wife hangs around crooked friends, they tend to make her feel the odd-one-out, and with no time she succumbs to their pressure.

“I have heard a couple of cases where loyal wives have been hooked up with boyfriends by their crooked chama friends,” he says.

“You only need to eavesdrop to urban women in a salon or at a chama while having a chat nowadays. The language is so x-rated that it would make a typical male bar talk sound like a child’s play.

 A faithful woman who confesses that she has never cheated is always turned into a laughing stock,” says Njenga.

Ever wondered why some of these urban women need a whole day or even a weekend to contribute money and discuss only one agenda — the venue of the next meeting? Something our mothers used to do in an hour on an afternoon?

 Well, Grace Kendi, a city-based business woman, gives hints as she laughs at the fact that men have increasingly become gullible.

“Honestly, if men were to be serous, they can easily tell when their women are cheating on them. In the chama I belong, we hardly even meet. All we do is send the treasurer money via M-pesa. Meetings are so minimal and only happen when there is a major project like buying a big property such as land. When a woman mentions ‘out-of-town’ and ‘chama’ in the same sentence, any smart man should raise the red flag,” chuckles Kendi.

Why dress to kill when going for chama? That men hardly raise eyebrows when their wives dress to kill, wear their best shoes and perfume when only going for a chama meeting surprises Kendi.

 “Does contributing money, catching up and eating require one to make such an effort to look and smell good and endure the discomfort of tiptoeing on a seven inch stiletto? Complete with a big trendy handbag? Guys need to be smarter also,” laughs Kendi.

But Tina Akinyi disagrees, defending the urban women and their chamas. She says it’s women’s custom to dress to kill, even when they are going for small events or activities like chama meetings.

“Just like men, we need time to socialize with our girlfriends, catch up on the latest stuff and rejuvenate ourselves so that we can manage and run homes and husbands better,” says Akinyi.

Brian Oketch, who confesses he has banned his wife from such activities, says men need to be cleverer.

“A lot of things happen in these chamas. Women ‘spoil’ each other. Personally I always discourage my wife from such group activities. Why would a man finance his wife’s activities that he has no clue about?” Wonders Oketch.

He says his wife had at some point began pestering him to fund her chama activities when he put down his feet.

 “I demanded to know all their activities and meet those chama members. For some strange reasons, she gave up. That made me suspect some of the women our wives meet in chama are of questionable characters and that’s why they dislike it when we ask to meet them,” he says.

George Kutwa throws a spanner in the works by saying that Nairobi is a fool’s paradise. He says women have discovered that men always cheat and that’s why they, too, have devised a way to return the favor and are very clinical when at it.

“Unlike back in the day when our mothers used to meet in their friend’s homes for an afternoon, nowadays women have taken it a notch higher. They take their meetings out of town. And when a man hears that his wife wants to travel out of town for a weekend for a chama meeting, he gets excited because that’s a perfect opportunity for him to have a good time with his secret lover,” says Kutwa, adding: “So as the man thinks he is having a good time at the expense of his absent wife, she is also somewhere with another man”.

However, it is important to note that not all chamas are ‘rotten’. Some play a very important role in empowering women.

“Most men have a wrong perception about chamas. Personally, I would never do such or even encourage women to do so. My chama has really helped me, especially when it comes to raising school fees for my children. Some chamas have helped women buy lands, livestock, invest in the stock exchange and do all manner of things that they would ordinarily not manage to do on their own. So the notion that women use chamas to cheat is a misguided,” says Joy Amira, a salonist.