Why men spoil mpango wa kando

A woman phoned a popular radio station to give two cents on the topic of the day: Why men squander their fortunes on the mpango wa kando at the expense of their families. She said it was witchcraft because “I have been married for over 20 years and my husband’s sudden change can only be the result of juju.” This story reminded many of the Migori woman who smashed her hubby’s car after she busted him cohabiting with another woman.

A jobless Joyce Kandie deflated the tyres of Peter Murunga’s car and broke his windscreens at Aroso estate for allegedly neglecting her and their four daughters. The woman who claimed her husband had convinced her to quit her job and take care of the family, lamented that the family had gone without food for days and that she was sometimes forced to borrow from neighbours.

Murunga’s ‘squeeze’ lived in a Sh15k per month, while Joyce and the children were putting up in a Sh3,500 per month house, which she claimed, had rent arrears. Murunga was also said to have bought his mpango a car, besides paying fees for her kids in expensive boarding schools.

Jane Wekesa, a Bungoma mother of three who has been married for 15 years, told us how her hubby took a Sh500,000 loan, but refused to be drawn into any discussions after Jane found out that the money was for buying his mpango a car “yet he has no plans for our son who is soon joining secondary school.”

While the mpango flaunts expensive designer clothes and jewellery on social media, where they boldly caption photos ‘proudly sponsored,’ their wives sport mitumba from Ngara. Why do married men do this, playing ‘private developers’ taking ‘side mistresses’ to vacations, as their own languish? Why splash hundreds of thousands of shillings on a mpango, yet you have not sorted your father in-law with bride price? According to self-styled bad boy and radio presenter, Shaffie Weru, there are two scenarios.

“Of course, when a man is dating a single mother, the easiest way to her heart is through the child. This is very dangerous because the child gets attached and eventually starts referring to the man as daddy,” said the self-appointed Mafisi Sacco Secretary General. He adds that the reason some men treat mpangos better than their wives is because they get excited about the new catch and have the money to spoil them. “The second family does not take it for granted that the man is in their lives,” says Shaffie Weru.

Still in Migori, there is a politician who was rumoured to have no house to call his own, yet he ‘sponsored’ different women with whom he would spend nights with in hotels in town, while his rural-based family was holed up in a small excuse for a house. Then there is the Kisumu County official who is said to have neglected his wife, taken the children to boarding schools and bought a car for a ‘sponsee’ who is a student at a university in the town.

Alice Nduta is a secretary in Migori and is being sponsored by a married man from Nyanza who pays her rent, takes her out every weekend and gives her money to revamp her wardrobe. Nduta’s sponsor even borrows from friends to make her happy and “I once saw the picture of his wife and was baffled; she has short hair and wore cheap casual clothes.” When asked about it, Nduta was told that the wife had no business looking good since “Ang’are ndio aonekane na nani na nilishamuoa? (why should she look good for other men, yet I already married her).”

With a mpango, there’s peace, claims James Achiego, a resident of Kisumu who blames wives for sometimes pushing them into neglecting their families as “whenever I come home, all I meet is coldness and disrespect; my wife became a nag who would lambast me with unprintable words whenever we had a slight disagreement. I took to the bottle and one evening in a bar, I met my other woman,” says the father of two who has a daughter with his ‘sponsee.’

His daughter with the mpango attends an academy, his two children go to public schools. “In the other woman, I have found peace, how else can I show her that care than taking good care of her and our daughter?”

A spiritualist with an indigenous church believes men who neglect their families and pamper other women are bewitched. “I get hundreds of clients in that situation and when I check in the spiritual realm, there is always some spirits blinding the man,” says Pamela a spiritual healer; adding that she knew of a woman whose husband built and furnished a house for a sponsee and opened a salon business for her, but when she untied the spirits through prayers, the hubby left his mpango.