I will never forget the first time I watched Waiting to Exhale — a 90s ‘girl power’ movie.
In an epic scene Angela Basset, who plays Bernadine Harris, finds out that her husband of 11 years, with whom she has two children, and who she groomed from a ‘nobody’ into a ‘somebody’, is leaving her for another woman.
In retaliation, Bernadine goes into her husband’s wardrobe takes his favourite clothes, shoes and watches, locks them up in his white Mercedes, then she lights a cigarette and sets her husband’s car on fire. Then she smirks and cat walks from the scene of the crime
Here in the real world if you pull an Angela Basset move you will probably be arrested!
But that does not mean that we women go down quietly without a fight in the face of a man who has used and abused us, in fact I believe that every woman is born with an innate cunning and if you wrong her she will definitely get you back where it counts.
Nicki Minaj
When it comes to revenge there are generally two paths that a woman can take, the high road and the low, down and dirty road.
The high road, usually involves walking away and doing reasonable things like joining the gym or a man-hating book club, having a wardrobe makeover, crying on the shoulders of your good friends while secretly hoping that one day life will pay your ex back.
But who likes the high road anyway?
The down and dirty road can include everything from writing a hit revenge song like Beyoncé, Adelle or Nicky Minaj, to hooking up with his best friend to stalking his new woman -- the list goes on and on.
However, locally women have come up with about three kinds of revenge that, I might add, are proudly Kenyan.
The most common weapons of war for a Kenyan woman usually revolve around three things: personal property, professional papers and children.
The first, property destruction is all about destroying something which you suspect your man loves very much, sometimes even more than you.
A friend of mine who was scorned by her man, in retaliation cut his shirts and trousers into two halves, and then she left with one shoe from each pair of shoes that her man owned.
There are also those who target a man’s car, and do everything from scratching the body of the car, to holding a side mirror hostage, to puncturing all four tyres. It really is all about creativity and making sure you do not get caught.
Never forgets
Then there is holding his professional papers hostage, everything from his KCPE certificate, all the way to his Masters or PhD. What makes this particular tool of revenge very popular is the opportunity to watch your ex grovel to get his papers back.
Further, there are conniving women who will remain in a marriage or relationship with a man who has wronged them.
A woman may forgive but she never forgets, and so in retaliation she will have a child with another man outside her marriage and then spend the rest of her life watching her husband happily raise a child who is not his own.
And finally there are the extremists who will hire a hit man or chop off their man’s genitals all in the name of revenge.
Of course I do not condone such extremes, but hey, I understand what would drive a woman to such resolutions.
There really is no fury like a woman scorned, so when you go off and wrong us, you better watch your back!
