Businesswoman strips at the bank

By Maureen Odiwuor

Security guards at a Bank ATM in Kisumu last Saturday dived for cover to avoid a ‘curse’ when a woman stripped naked.

The middle-aged woman who had gone to withdraw cash accompanied by her employee shocked other ATM users when she started screaming.

“Mayoo, nabed wendo ng’a yawa (who will save me from in this mess)”, she wailed.

As those on the queue anxiously moved forward to have a look at what had caused the commotion, the woman started undressing, oblivious of the shock waves she was sending on the queue.

“She removed everything. I couldn’t stand there anymore. The money I wanted to withdraw had to wait,” said an eyewitness.

The young man who had accompanied her equally vanished when she tried looking for him among those present to explain what had happened to her money.

“Ere nyathino, Otieno bing’isa kumaiterega pesana, (where is this boy Otieno? Come and tell me where you always take my money!)” she shouted in her birthday suit.

She then coiled herself in a corner, yelling on top of her voice that she had lost a year’s earnings. Caught unawares, the perplexed guards did not know how to handle the situation at first. They however gathered courage and pleaded with her to dress up or else they would throw her out.

The woman, after throwing all decency to the dogs, refused to comply and instead exposed herself further, something that made the guards and all present to stampede off.

After absorbing the shock, however, the guards gathered courage and called for reinforcement from colleagues in the banking hall who hail from communities that don’t associate nudity with curses.

They are the ones who carried her and her clothes to an enclosed room where she was left to dress before being allowed out.

“This woman has bewitched us. If anything, tradition demands that a man should have intercourse with an elderly woman who strips naked before them, unless you want chira (curse) to befall you,” said a disgusted security guard from the local community.

The woman on the other hand explained that she had a business premise in town from where she had been sending her employee to deposit cash on her account.

“Now imagine I came with him to withdraw the money only to find nothing in the account. He has to be jailed for this,” she swore, saying her next stop would be the police station to record a statement.