It is all very well to be a modern day woman, or even a ‘manzi wa Nairobi’ in this metropolis of ours. Many men, these days, are quite okay with a woman who speaks her mind, is aggressive in the pursuit of both happiness and her career goals, and is not afraid to take the world head on.
But there is the world of difference between courage and belligerence, leaning in and sitting on, saying your piece and screaming at the top of your lungs, being free and being loose, having independence of mind, and being clearly out of your freaking mind.
There are women who can scare even a strong rugby player into submission with their mad behaviour; the type of bad woman whom anyone, man or woman, is tempted to slap on sight. “Ukiona yeye …”
One finds it mindboggling to imagine that some of these ‘manzi wa Nairobi’ grew uptown because that belligerence such a manzi displays is the opposite of being a Barbie (girls who grew up playing with Barbie dolls as opposed to kati).
They are the kind you want to paraphrase the Billy Joel and sing for them:
“Uptown girl, she’s been living in her White Bread world, as long as anyone with hot blood can, but now she’s taking a downtown turn …”
Yes, like a fat house cat that has suddenly discovered the pleasures of mixing it up at the bottom of dustbins with mangy midnight felines in Maringo.
Apart from the loudness and belligerence, some ‘manzi wa Nai’ have the, unfortunate, habit of manhandling men and in turn, being mishandled by them.
These stories of shouts followed by slaps is becoming an all too familiar one that makes everyone, even the most die-hard Fida activist, to lose sympathy for the subjects. Such ‘manzi wa Nairobi’ take World War III to the streets, then when slapped, wail ‘Woe is me!’
Dirty linen
Far worse is washing one’s dirty linen outside the home, like going out to hotels with clandestine men of nefarious repute and then beginning tiffs in the halls and corridors of the said lodgings.
But please do not take/let pictures be taken, however modern a ‘manzi wa Nai’ you are. If you/they go viral, you’ll be the laughing stock of the town. Friends will shun you. Colleagues will snicker and snigger behind your back. And God forbid if you have school-going children!
Manzi wa Nairobi, the worst humiliation a woman can bring to her man is to bully and cuckold him so much, he ends up being summoned to some tribal Banyamulenge to explain why he cannot manage his home and why he is ‘bringing shame to men of that community.’
Gentlemen, control the women of your household, even if you have to buy them half a supermarket’s supply to hold them at home. Or just release wild wives into the wild, like KWS does with all wildlife.