Men only: Did the maid next door snitch?

Last Sunday, on the very last afternoon of September, the lazy quiet of our apartment block was shattered by shrieks.

It had been one of those good Sundays, where a man wakes up super fresh in the morning, the kids are off with Mom in the afternoon for some funny kiddy birthday, and now it is 3pm and a man is seated in his own sitting room, just one Heineken can in hand, ready for the Cardiff City vs Burnley FC EPL kick off on television. Then the sunshine is shattered by shouts and screams!

Now that I have your attention, let this article be like those movies that start with The End. Then go back to the start.

It was January of 2018, and three and two thirds new neighbours had just moved in. A very quiet short dark chap (who I later learned was a city accountant with a big firm), their chocolate brown skinny pimple-faced ‘domestic engineer’ (who I’ll call ‘the maid’ going forward, you’ll see why) and a large ‘yellow yellow’ lady with a big belly, six months pregnant. So, three and two thirds new jiranis!

On April 1, the woman gave birth to a bouncing baby boy at a nearby hospital. And I don’t know why, but perhaps it was April Fools’ Day, the New First Time Daddy celebrated the birth of his boy by banging the maid in the house, while the wife was still at the hospital.

One could argue that it was an awful ‘one off.’ Tension being released by an anxious first-time father (not that it excuses that deplorable behavior). And now that the new mother, a banker by the way, was going to be home for the next three months on maternity leave, the hanky spanky would definitely not be repeated.

But, whaddya know? Our man, Engineer, who had told me once on the staircase that he cannot stand soccer, suddenly develops a love for Sunday afternoon football. The maid would depart Sunday mornings at 9am for her off day.

Baba would then take Mom and infant to church (she’s super religious), buy lunch at a restaurant after service, come home to drop his young family (and change into shorts, sandals and his new Liverpool top - because Mo Salah was a football pharaoh in May) and then, vroom, off he would go. To go meet the maid in a cheap lodge in the adjacent neighbourhood!

Miss Mboch would then depart from the lodge at about 5pm as the chap went off to a nearby bar to catch whichever soccer game they were showing; getting back to the house at 7-8pm to the hearty supper that the maid had prepared.

At this point of the story, you may be wondering how I know all these details to the T. Is Mochama omniscient?

I know, because this rogue mboch was boasting about her affair to all domestic engineers on our block, including ours, saying how ‘her mzee’ was even paying her a second salary behind his wife’s back. Was her intention to make the other maids jealous? To inflame them to make moves on the ‘men of the house’?

Whatever the case, some domestic engineers told the tale to their ‘mama wa nyumba’ (and my missus told me). So that by the time the banker-mom returned to work this July, many jiranis knew why engineer’s car stayed parked in the lot till mid asubuhi, before he left.

Lakini siku za mwizi ni arobanne! Perhaps a (nosy) neighbour couldn’t take the deception right outside her door anymore, and snitched. Whatever the case, last Sunday, banker-mom took the car and baby at 8am, and said she was off to visit her parents (in a neighbouring county) until usiku (night).

She returned at 3pm, silently slipped into the house, only to find her maid had not taken her Sunday off, but with her clothes mostly off, and her hubby in vest and shorts in the living room. Let’s just say Pimply Face nearly died before she fled, never to be seen again.

I want to dedicate this Alaholla song to Engineer: Oh gosh, mi napenda mamboch. Naamua tu ku-play soft, don’t forget to wear socks! Miss Njoki huoga na Rexona, na ye hupenda soda ya Softa!’ Oh, and Burnley beat Cardiff City two/one.