Guys, it’s end of the road for the so-called bad boys of Nairobi, thanks to the latest sensation on Facebook – Dead Beat Kenya. If you have been sowing wild oats all over the place and dissolving into thin air before anyone can say ‘child support’, the proverbial night of the long knives is nigh. Until now, it has been a playboy’s haven.
A guy just needed to have loads of cash and swag to ask out the most gorgeous socialite out on a sinning date. Flowers would be unfurled and the fragrance let to mesmerise the nostrils of the curvaceous lass, doors would be opened and gentlemanly manners you only see in the soaps would be acted out.
Drinks would flow at expensive resorts – they all now have VIP lounges – and after that the steamiest of scenes of sin would unfold. In the morning, cash would change hands, either as payment for a socialite-consultant or for the more hypocritical type, as a token of appreciation for a time well spent. Somewhere down the ladder, it’s simply something small for the salon, or chama.
Higher up the social ladder, flights to Zanzibar, the Cayman islands and other high-end resorts are the name of the game, punctuated with uniformed chauffeurs and humongous SUVs with the engine capacity of a chopper. So, when our gorgeous campus student is treated to this fairy-tale bliss, they easily forget what they were cautioned against when they first came to Nairobi.
Thus hypnotised by the sparkling wine, and promises of an even fancier experience when our playboy’s holiday is due, their hearts snap open and caution is thrown to the wind. The bun is safely deposited in the oven, as a colleague puts it.
And since most moneyed playboys do it for sport, the girl can continue fooling herself that last night was the start of a beautiful story of ostentatious life all the way to the aisle. Reality is from there the man will either be forever in meetings or will put her permanently on answering machine.
By the time she realises there is a baby on the way, calls don’t go through, another college student is in the mix and the sweet-life merry-go-round continues. If she threatens to sue, a token now and then and a few threats from the same cops she approaches for help silence our yesterday’s socialite.
It seems today’s politicians and super-rich businessmen took their village lessons on patriarchy too seriously. In my village, the only hotel – a large dimly lit hall with an imposing counter and aroma of ‘mandazi’ wafting from a dark kitchen – had a huge painting, which summed men’s view of women back then. It was a painting of a huge cockerel, its wing feathers unfurled with lust, running after a helpless hen. In the next picture, the hen was now sitting on a million eggs as the same cockerel, its nostrils again steaming with lust, hurtled relentlessly after its next victim. In a word, a man was nature’s gift for procreation, and nubile lasses were the uncomplaining caretakers of the man’s progeny. Not any more. With ‘Dead Beat Kenya’ in town, plus a million other sites scouring our past sins for a prelude to God’s Day of Judgement, you must be very afraid.
The trouble with sites like Dead Beat is that they follow no rules or code of ethics. At the slightest whiff of social scandal, careers are wrecked, lives are put at risk. Worse still, we have vicious people who will have no qualms harming those who they suspect of exposing them on such sites.
Again, it matters little whether you are a moneyed tenderprenuer with all the police bosses in a brown envelope. Or whether you paid in cash and expected no conception.
Truth is, if there are skeletons in your locker, you are dead meat. Of course, you can swallow your pride and call that forgotten missus and ask to meet her in the absence of your guards and in a far-off place for a settlement. Or you can pretend to be macho and keep breathing heavily every time you go online.
My advise? If you are yet to fall into the ditch, stay on the safe side. As for the playboys, you must be very very afraid.
