Women fighting over a man, please style up!

The first time I ever saw a woman and her ‘gang’ beating up on another woman, over a common man, was around the year 2000 A.D.

We were having a drink, as college boys, outside one of those popular pubs in Nairobi West.

Suddenly, a large car, a Pajero (they were the big ‘in’ car models at the turn of millennium) screeched up outside the pub. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon, but the way that Pajero sprayed pebbles as it shrieked to a halt, I knew things were about to get stormy.

Or ‘elephant,’ as people used to say. Four large women jumped out of the Pajero, one from each door – like gangsters in those heist movies after they have pulled masks over their faces – and stampeded towards one of the tables outside the pub.

At the head of this rhino charge was the Pajero’s driver, breathing with rage like an angry buffalo. She was definitely not heading to the outside table – where a man in his early 50s was sitting with a woman in her early 30s – just to say ‘hallo.’

For our younger readers, these were the days when ‘sponsors’ (they were called ‘sugar daddies’ in those days) were still man enough to take their ‘clandes’ to smoky places which they – the MEN – liked. Like to an outside table on the pavement in Nairobi West. Next to the scent of women cooking fish. As the ‘clande’ sipped her Kingfisher and the man swigged his Pilsner.

These days, the tables have turned, with the empowerment of the ‘girl child.’

That is why you will find a 60-year-old chap with a 20-year-old campus girl in a smoky joint, yes, but this is an expensive lounge ‘serving’ shisha – and the slay queen has no qualms dragging five of her BFFs to join her there, so that the other patrons aren’t sure which girl is with the sponsor.

With shisha banned, maybe they’ll move on to nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, now used as a drug in some countries like the United Kingdom – and soon we’ll find young ladies in clubs gathered around balloons, and laughing like loons, especially after an innocent asks: ‘Whose birthday is it?’

Because laughing gas, as a drug, is dispensed from canisters into balloons, which the user then inhales, and gets all high and giggly. I won’t be surprised if clubs and lounges begin to invest in these NO canisters.

Now that I have given out my six million shilling idea for 2018, let us run back the clock to where we were before – a sunny Saturday afternoon in early 2,000 – when Britney Spears was ruling the charts with that song ‘I Was Born to Make You Happy.’

FYI, I was quite unhappy at the turn of millennium, and not just because of post-party 1999 blues. But that is a story for another Saturday.

So the fifty something year old man looks up, and sees his mad wife bearing down on their table, and she’s bellowing – ‘Baba Ronny, kumbe huu ndio yule malaya unataka alete ukimwi nyumbani? Oooooo …’

Baba Ronny, with a keen instinct for survival, swiftly turned the tables on ‘Mama Ronny.’

As in, he literally overturned the table, sending the Pilsners and Kingfishers crashing to the ground (these were the days of ‘chafua meza!’).

Then dodging a fat punch from his wife, Baba Ronny weaved between the pans of those women cooking fish outside the pub, with the agility of a man half his age. And then, with the speed of Helen Obiri when she gets ‘annoyed,’ he sprinted for the parking lot, jumped into his Mercedes (those vintage old-school ones, I still remember it was cream-coloured, like good coffee) and squealed out of there.

Meanwhile, the poor girl he was with was still sitting on her seat, static in shock. Without the protection of the table in front of her, she looked like a deer caught in headlights. Even her wineglass of Kingfisher was frozen halfway to her lips.

But not for long!

‘Nyinyi ndio mnaiba mabwana na kuvunja nyumba za watu, ehh?’ Mama Ronnie shrieked.

Then she knocked the glass out of the younger woman’s hand, and it was like the starter whistle for a mob. The four women landed on the woman with slaps and blows.

They ripped at the weave on her head, and tore her blouse, so that her breasts hang out.

Watching the women assault another in a video last week, I couldn’t help thinking nothing much has changed in that world.

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