Why every woman should take keen interest in what her man does for a living

In Nairobi, and other cosmopolitan towns, women are married to men who masquerade and introduce themselves as “businessmen” but if keenly investigated they would turn out to be gangsters, con men, professional pickpockets or others who “work out of town” but in actual sense are cattle rustlers and related crooks without their wives being the wiser.

So long as bills are paid, tots healthy and school fees paid and food provided, there are men whose wives don’t bother to ask them what they do for a living. And the charade goes on for years.

You think this is one big joke? Well, recently, an ‘office administrator’ died. Funeral arrangements were done and his body taken to his rural home for burial. A big delegation of his Nairobi neighbours travelled all the way to the deceased’s rural home in Nyanza to pay their last respects. Just when mourners were listening to eulogies, the dead ‘administrator’s’ boss arrived to bid one of her most loyal, longest-serving employees farewell. Immediately, she began wailing at the top of her lungs, disrupting the proceedings so much that the speaker momentarily stopped eulogizing. It was in between her wails that dung hit the fan as she unwittingly spilled the beans.

  “Wuuuuwi...wuuuwi...woi...woi...did God have to take away my best watchman? Ajuok was the best gate keeper I ever had, and longest-serving. Wuuuui...Nyasae! Jeso! Uuuuwi! Ajuok, we will miss you. You don’t get vigil watchmen like him nowadays!” she went on to wail, not knowing she was scandalising the dead, who all and sundry including his wife, had known as an office administrator.

Shocked mourners cupped their mouths with embarrassment, others unsuccessfully suppressing giggles and chuckles and some mumbling and whispering things to each other, perhaps expressing their surprise at the fact that the deceased was not an administrator, but a mere watchman. It took the timely intervention of a smart pastor, presiding over the function, who bolted to the podium at maximum speed, snatched the microphone from the tongue-tied speaker and yelled rather loudly, “hey, hey, hey people...lets us close our eyes and pray”.

The man of God launched into a long prayer, diverting the attention of mourners who resorted to discussing the embarrassing revelation in hushed tones throughout the burial ceremony.

 Kenyans have been treated to many other incidents of gangsters who are killed by police only for their wives and children to turn up and claim that the dead were not criminals but this or that, even when incriminating evidence such as pistols, bullets and related crime paraphernalia at crime scenes suggest otherwise. A chat with mortuary attendants can reveal more shocking tales about the dead. For instance, would you believe that the remains of pickpockets who get clobbered to death in mob justice incidents are always claimed by their families including wives who, of course, cry foul and never believe that their dead were actually crooks?

There are so many Kenyan women, who when asked what they husbands do for a living are very likely to respond with, “Siko sure, but anafanya tu vibarua uko town (I am not so sure, but I think he does small time jobs in town)”.

 These writers spoke to a couple of individuals who have absolutely no idea what kind of jobs their spouses do. To them, so long as bills are paid, and food provided, the source of the money is actually the least of their worries. Take for instance a certain Mary. When she first met her ex husband Tosh, he made her believe he was a primary school teacher in Mlolongo, Nairobi County. In fact, on many occasions, she paid him visits at the said school. Surprisingly, she always found him there, though she confesses she never met him inside the staffroom.

She even remembers on one occasion during her visits when an unkempt pupil passed by and ‘Teacher Tosh’ ordered the boy to stop, scolded and asked him to tuck in his shirt and go polish his shoes!

Being the smooth talker that he was, Tosh conned his way into her heart and before long they got married. When she became expectant — with morning sicknesses and other inconveniences that come with pregnancy — Mary still managed to wake up very early every morning to prepare breakfast for ‘Teacher Tosh’ (a stickler for time) lest he were late for ‘work’. A few months after moving in together, they started experiencing financial problems. Mary who was then a housewife could not chip in financially. Tosh began throwing around all sorts of excuses.

“Oh, loans are finishing me! But soon I will repay all of them and we will enjoy life! Kuteseka ni kwa muda tu (Persevere for now, good times lay ahead),” he would whine and encourage her. After a while, the tune changed to: “The school is going through tough times, we have gone without pay for two months now. But I had some savings, that’s how we are surviving! Being the caring wife she was, she suggested he starts offering tuition to school-going children in their neigbourhood, something Tosh was quick to protest.

  “I work so hard and I get home when I am so tired, with one thing on my mind; resting my weary bones!” he protested. One morning, on her way to visit a friend who lives a few blocks from her house, Mary was attracted to a mob meting out (in)justice to a suspected conman whose 40 days had run out dramatically.

Out of curiosity, she walked to the scene to find out what the victim had done only for her to find her husband on the ground being slapped and kicked with others yelling and insisting that he was a well-known pickpocket who deserved to be dispatched to the afterlife.

 Luckily, police on patrol arrived and saved him from the mob, among them three men — victims of his con game — who had lost electronics and cornered him along the path, raising the alarm. That was when she rudely discovered that her husband was actually a conman.

Apparently, according to Mary, he had a friend who was a teacher at the school where he claimed to teach, and he had turned it into a venue for meeting Mary in a bid to raise his social status. “We ended up parting ways one week later after more victims showed up at the police station, claiming to have been conned by him. I never bothered to find out how it all went, I decided to concentrate on bringing up the baby who is about to celebrate her fourth birthday next month,” concludes Mary.

In yet another nutty tale of men leading double lives, Treeza who had all along known that she was engaged to a marketing manager at a reputable firm in Nairobi town, stumbled upon a shocking revelation about him on social media.

 Stephen, Treeza’s ex fiancé, was flashy. Since marketing involves a lot of travelling, Stephen was always on the move. Sometimes even for a month, claiming that he had gone out of the country for work related business. “One time during one of his numerous work trips to ‘Tanzania’, I investigated and found out that he was entertaining a sugar mummy,” narrates Treeza. I also later discovered that my fiancé was not actually a marketing manager, but a jobless gigolo (young man living off an older woman) servicing the aging widow, alleged to be a millionaire.

“The widow was the source of his money. How he managed to keep this affair secret still beats me. Because it seems it’s something that had been going on for a while, probably even before I met him...it was shameful, I did not wait for more evidence. I called off the engagement,” concluded Treeza. Many other related tales have been told. Take for instance Kate who confesses she was once married to a gangster. He masqueraded as a technician at a brewery along Thika Road for close to three years.

 “He would claim he was on night duty and leave the house. At times, he would hurriedly excuse himself, claiming that there was an emergency at work which only he could handle,” says Kate.

Kate adds that she was shocked one evening when she received news from his friends that he had been gunned down in Kayole estate, Nairobi over allegations of robbery with violence. “I fear controversy and scandals. Considering I had been suspicious of his work, I was too scared to bother following up the matter. I packed and moved houses from Zimmerman estate, Nairobi where we used to live in a come-we-stay arrangement. Considering ours was not an official marriage, I didn’t want to scandalise myself by telling my people about the matter. I moved on,” she adds.

 However, it is not just women who secretly live with crooks without knowing exactly what they do for a living, men, too, are victims. A tale is told of a man who once stumbled upon his neighbour’s wife at a brothel. I mean, a house of prostitution is not a place anyone wants to meet someone they know, and it’s very scandalous meeting a neighbour in such a place.

The embarrassed man, who had gone there for the first time, was tongue tied and couldn’t answer when his neighbour, whom he knew as a nurse and seemed unmoved upon seeing him, wondered aloud, “Mhhh! You also visit this place?” He never got the guts to tell her husband about it. Of course, her husband has no idea what she does, besides being a nurse. And maybe she is not even a nurse, who knows? But does knowing what your spouse does for a living really matter? After all Papa Shirandula is a watchman and his wife Wilbroda is clueless, but they’re happy!