National Snooping Agency

BY BILL ODUNGA

KENYA: Relationships in campus nowadays are about validating each other’s existence. This is a far cry from the days when dating in campus was like a marriage. A story is told of a man (let us call him Mheshimiwa), whose exploits can offer interesting insights how things have changed.

In his day, a girlfriend had responsibilities that went beyond sharing bed sheets. Our Big Shot here was known to discipline his girlfriend in a manner that will make Fida demand his neck for dinner today.

Breakfast

In the morning, his girlfriend had to warm his water to the right temperature, the way he liked it.

While he bathed, she would press his clothes, make him breakfast. Suffice to say they attended the same classes.  

Today, the script is different. The rules have changed. The only function of a relationship is sex and perhaps cohabitation.  One month later, your girlfriend no longer looks half as good in the morning, at the bedside coffee table as she once did at a bar counter. Sooner rather than later you discover that your relationship was good in theory than in practice.

Campus girls will not believe that there were days when part of their job description as a girlfriend included being battered by irate boyfriend, routinely.

 If you tell them such a thing, they will roll their eyes, so far back, you might see the roof of their skull.

Girls in campus today are the kind that quote their constitutional rights to your face, and have Maendeleo Ya Wanawake’s number on speed dial.

They do not have time to take care of their man. Hell, where will they get the time when they don’t even have time to laugh at a simple joke — all they do is just say “Lol”?

I wish one of them would be taken back in time to be Mheshimiwa’s girlfriend, and then do as much as nag him while listening to Habari at 7pm. Maybe then, they would understand what it means to be Shebeshed.

Those were the days when lanes meant something. Women were treated like form ones — only to be seen and not heard.

Battery

However, this is the 21st Century. Times have changed, may be for the better for them. What we once knew as ‘disciplining’ is now called ‘battery’.

And may God help you if you as much as raise your voice at a woman, for they will come for your balls, literary.