By Boniface Gikandi
It is said that if you have never dated in Nanyuki town, you have no dating experience.
Not a single day passes without a sexual scandal, some of them involving the town's high and mighty.
A recent scandal involved a married woman who was caught red-handed by her husband with a white soldier in a thicket.
The husband was so enraged that when he realised he could not take on the well-muscled soldier, he broke into tears and cursed both of them.
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"Never will your sexual passions satisfy you. You will forever be having sex but never get satisfied," he said amid sobs.
Word has it that the soldier later paid him Sh200,000 in compensation, and the man was later heard in a local bar wishing his wife would get into more liaisons of that kind.
The town was founded in 1907 by British settlers, some of whose descendants still live in and around the town.
Sodom and Gomorrah
It is rumoured that the railway line ended in the town in 1954 because the lead engineer had the map stolen as he indulged in a romp with one of the town’s women. Even today, the town is christened Mwisho wa reli (End of the railway line).
The town is a swamp of illicit sex and recalls the biblical Sodom and Gomorrah. Young girls, some in their teens, are often to be seen roaming the streets in search of clients.
"If I do not land a Johnnie, I will land a prominent person. In Nanyuki, no prostitute has ever gone back home without dining and wining and later being paid handsomely for her services," declares Waitherero, a sex worker aged 19.
Women in the town do not take chances and often confront suspected concubines and commercial sex workers on suspicion that they are husband snatchers.
"There has been an increase in fights between women. Most of them involve wives and girls they suspect of sleeping with their husbands," says a local councillor.
A recent incident involved the wife of a prominent civic leader who suspected another woman of dating her husband.
She drove to the woman’s business premises near Nanyuki Prison and started hurling insults at the woman, before slapping her a number of times.
Not satisfied, the heavy-set woman smashed a rock into the windscreen of a vehicle parked in the compound.
Sexual attractions
What followed is the stuff that Hollywood movies are made of as the assaulted woman gave chase in her car.
The chase led to Nanyuki Police Station where the two were reconciled and allowed to leave.
It is telling that the town has websites advertising its sexual attractions.
Some of the sites are www.nanyukikenyasinglewomen, www.nanyukikenyababes and www.100%freemilitarydatinginnanyuki.
Visitors to the sites will find touting messages such as: "Are you looking for military singles in Kenya? Find them in Nanyuki. Meet fun and attractive military singles in Nanyuki. Find dating and activity partners in Nanyuki. No hidden fees. No credit card ever!"
Nanyuki is now the main airbase of the Kenya Air Force. The British Army also has a base at the Nanyuki Show Ground (NSG) from where it conducts yearly desert and jungle training exercises around Mt Kenya and in the arid areas to the north.
