Sowing the wild oats

By Edwin Makiche

Many eyes popped when the size of the harem Asentus Akuku Danger left behind was revealed.

‘The Kenyan polygamy legend’, he was eulogised in newspaper articles.

The truth is, there are many Kenyans walking around unnoticed who would make Akuku look modest in comparison if their sexual exploits were exposed.

This writer has been carrying out research and the findings are astonishing. The subject of my study has been ‘the serial impregnator’.

First, who is this fellow? He might be your relative, friend, workmate, boss, classmate, employee or even the pious-looking local pastor.

He might be rich and famous or the fellow next door whom nobody pays any attention to. But his acts are felt far and wide.

Serial impregnators, no matter their background, share similar characteristics: They are responsible for bringing a lot of children into the world. They have a way with women and are famous for ‘jumping over the fence’ and sowing wild oats in neighbourhoods.

They are keen to leave a mark in every town or village they stay in or visit. For a strange reason, they seldom fire blanks and in many cases, leave behind replicas of themselves.

When Charity met Gabriel, a 38-year-old accountant with a bank in Nairobi, it was love at first sight. She was fresh from high school and waiting to join university.

According to her, Gabriel looked shy, innocent and was handsome. And from the way he spoke, she suspected that he had never approached another girl.

They exchanged phone numbers and were soon meeting on coffee dates. These eventually graduated into the occasional sleepover. Finally, they became inseparable.

He even proposed to her but on condition that she first bore him a child ‘to prove her love’.

Though it was not a simple decision to make, Charity was so madly in love with him that she would do anything for him.

What she did not know was that the man who appeared to her as pure as snow was married with three children. Besides, four other women were after him for children’s upkeep.

Parental duties

She learnt this on the second month of her pregnancy when a woman Gabriel claimed was a cousin called from Embu demanding that he sends money for school fees. Next came a court order demanding that he appears before a magistrate in Eldoret for neglecting his parental duties.

As usual, Gabriel lied to her claiming that the child was a product of a one-night stand and that the woman was out to besmirch his name.

“It’s fine, dear, I trust you,” Charity responded. But she could tell that the man was shaken. Matters came to a head when Gabriel’s wife and her two sons paid a surprise visit to his city residence.

But she left with a permanent trophy, a daughter who is the spitting image of her father.

“Men are beasts, always out to prove their manhood by preying on innocent women,” she complains. “You will only learn the sad truth when you earn a scar from hot water thrown at you by his wife.”

Talking of hot water, my friend Joseph Kiragu talks of a teacher in his village who has a child or two with virtually every brewer of illicit alcohol in the location.

The teacher’s wife used to give a hot water shower to any woman she suspected of having an affair with her man, but as his list of concubines grew she gave up.

Now she is content that he at least provides for the family. Kiragu says a large number of the pupils in the school where he teaches are his but by different mothers.

Well organised

But what makes such a man tick? How can a right thinking woman bear a child with such a wicked person? Kiragu suspects that it has something to do with his wallet and brains.

Compared to many other men in the village, the teacher is industrious and well organised. It is also said that the teacher’s children are the sharpest in their respective classes.

Rebecca agrees with Kiragu that some women look for a certain ‘stud’.

She says that if your dream man is taken by another woman, you can still have a copy of him by having a child with him.

She believes there are men who have superior genetic make-up and that it is better for one to have a child with a victor than marry a loser. And that, to her, explains the serial impregnator’s secret.

“Don’t be deceived that all men are the same. There are good ones and bad ones and you make the world a better place when you have a child with the right one,’’ she says.

I took her controversial comment to Siele, a man from Narok South who concurs that it holds water. He says that women are wired to associate with wealth and fame and that many would rather share a successful man with 100 other women than have broke men all to themselves.

Parade of beauties

He says sarcastically that he would rather remain a simple man than to be rich and famous since women would disturb his peace and that his five children are already a big enough headache.

Is this why President Jacob Zuma of South Africa has many wives and King Mswati of Swaziland always inspects his biannual parade of beauties? Yes, he answers and gives examples of local politicians who have a hard job warding off advances from women who want children with them. Others suffer the headache of mistresses who pay surprise visits to their offices with children — some of whose names they do not know.

But Juliet maintains that a serial impregnator is a wicked womaniser who should be condemned.

She defends women saying that many get into relationships for love and that children are just a reward from God. However, she says, some cunning men are out to mislead people’s daughters and spoil their future.

She gives the example of her ex-boyfriend whom she describes as “a cock who left no hen untouched”.

When she met him in campus, he had already impregnated two other girls. Though he accepted responsibility for the pregnancies, he claimed that he had been set up while drunk.

He stopped drinking and joined the Christian Union. After assuring her of marriage, he duped her into having a child. They went for teaching practice to different schools. After a while a letter came from the school where he was posted informing her that he had impregnated two schoolgirls and a fellow teacher.

Heard rumours

When Juliet confronted him, he pleaded innocence and she believed him. Three months later, he and a woman were suspended from church for unbecoming behaviour. Juliet heard rumours that the woman was also pregnant with her boyfriend’s child. He dismissed this rumour as well.

The final nail in their relationship was when Juliet discovered that the man had several cases of child neglect in his village. She is driven to tears as she narrates the story.