My turn to revenge

By Eric Mariwa

With my bruised ego, I walked down the meadow and crossed the bridge adjoining the tents. If the man felt nothing about grabbing my woman, I told myself, it would be a lesser sin to go after his woman than to kill him. I met her down the footpath with a lesso wrapped around her waist.

"Hello," she said, her voice cutting through the freshness of the thicket. Bored in her room, she had come out on bird watching. I realised that she took keen interest in the butterflies flitting about in the flowers. To me, they resembled the two mammals in the pool engaging in infidelity.

She looked cheerful rather than the forlorn, put upon consort of a German I met at breakfast. We chatted for a while as I picked her mind on what was going on. She seemed to least care. Laetitia and her husband Kahn Badwulf were in Tanzania apparently to mend their broken relationship.

"So how is it getting on with the team building?" I asked, tongue in cheek.

"We are stuck," she said with an element of regret.

"And to think that we came all this way for him to fall for another woman in an African jungle," Laetitia added in her clipped English.

She studied in the UK while her diplomat parents worked abroad.

"I am sorry," I cut in trying as much as to suggest that since we had been ditched, we were birds of a feather. As she stretched herself to pick a flower from one of the branches, she tipped over and I jumped over in time to stop her falling into the thicket below. She held onto my bare trunk as I hoisted her shapely body up. I could smell her breath, her fragrance and then something happened.

Our eyes met. I felt an urge to kiss her, I saw her lips twitch and her eyelids flutter. I could sense the magnetism. I let go after one of the security men apparently responding to her scream came running. "Kila kitu sawa (is everything ok)?" he asked. "Ndio. Alianguka nikamsadia, Yes, she tripped and I helped her)" I said. He turned to her and said sorry before walking away. "Would you like some wine?" she asked.

"I brought some with me in the hope that there will be a happy ending to this.