Last week, one Beryl lamented about a man who once took her to an expensive restaurant and bought her a drink called a 'Habanero Hellfire' which she decided to accompany with double espresso.
This is why I've always maintained that watu wa Wanga you just take them to the local nyama joint for candlelit dinner (the candles are to keep the flies away from your meat), buy them three of those big Guinness bottles to keep them busy during the date as you watch your Euro Cup game in peace on the big screen.
Anyway, the real Habanero Hellfire men in women's lives are many, let the ones who take you for dinner be. There are the 'real African men' who will never take you out. Not even on your anniversary. Hell, they don't even REMEMBER any anniversary.
You met two years ago today, and you wake up with a smile and say: 'Honey, you know what day it is today?' A slight frown crosses his face as he concentrates, then clears as his face brightens: 'Saturday?' Then there are those who expect you to personally cook dinner, every day, seven, 365, six, four! (we've said '4' because we had three, five, six and seven in the sentence above, and four was AWOL).
It gets worse if it is the kind of guy who stays at home all day while you are out at work from dawn to dusk. You go to work and leave him listening to Mwalimu King'ang'i or Radio Maisha. After pleasing the ears, he relaxes the eyes with those ridiculous mid-morning Nigerian movies whose plotlines, quite honestly, barely make sense.
Then after lunch cooked by the 'Mwende' you pay (and whom Wafula, the security guard, wishes to wife), your house hubby aka Habanero takes a hearty siesta, which he will only wake up from late in the afternoon to go 'gumzo mtahani' with the boys in the neighbourhood, and perhaps a game of pool or ten as he sips on Pilsner scrounged from the sweat of other guys.
But he is such a great story-teller and spinner of yarns, some very imaginary, that you just want him at your table in-between his pool games (he is the reigning champion at pool, and quite proud of this fact). An 'ex' of mine once told me about her 'ex' who was a real Habanero.
One evening she gets home, bone tired, and he is curled up on the sofa set, looking as fresh as daylight, complete with being wrapped up in her pink bathroom robe; and he looks up at her with a sweet smile from the Playstation on his lap and asks: 'Darling, what's for dinner?'
That's the day she threw him out, even though it was eight at night, complete with hurling a suitcase full of clothes (she had bought him while in Turkey) over the balcony. (When she told me the tale, I thought – 'wow! Women can be real crazy, signor.')
Anyway, because Beryl is my buddy, let me help her by saying if she ever finds herself confronted with cocktails with warlike names like 'Habanero Hellfire,' hizo vitu wachana nazo. B52 Bombers, Californian Corpse Reviver, Death in the Afternoon, Earthquake, Israeli Car Bomb, Monkey Bizness, Jack's Shadow Jezebel, Green Russians (or indeed any alcoholic drink with 'Russian' in its title), 'Tom and Jerry', Zombie Orgasm – stay the hell away from cocktails with bizarre names.
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