Divorce at midnight and the long sneaky arm of the law

There is nothing more exciting than being pulled over by traffic police when your vehicle and papers are in order.

The man, or woman, hails you with a “good afternoon sir” but you know they don’t wish you one or consider you a sir. “Driving Licence please?” Perfect. Insurance sticker? Up to date. So licence in hand, they begin that chilling gestapo goosestep march around your car. But everything is perfecto. No cracks on the windscreen, tyres good as new, all lights blinking like hell. “Fire extinguisher?” You fish it out and shove it through the window with an evil grin. “Open the boot, sir.” To their annoyance, you have a warning triangle. “Do you have a receipt for this chicken?” Oh yes you do. So the poor fellow is forced to hand over your driving licence and wish you a safe journey while snarling, “Bastard!” beneath his breath.

This lovely skit was playing out in my mind as I drove home on Saturday night way past curfew hours. At that hour, nobody gives a hoot about the state of your car, the alcohol content in your blood or the validity of your driving licence and insurance sticker. They want your curfew pass, the kipande allowing you to break Covid-19 regulations. Being an “essential worker”, (the butcher has to wrap meat, you know) I have one and I couldn’t wait to get stopped and gleefully drive off with someone’s midnight lunch. Only this time though, the joke was on me. There was no curfew roadblock. Damn.

I was, therefore, in a foul mood when I drove through the estate gate. And what is the first thing I see? An elephant-sized, barefoot man in pajamas kicking a ruckus in the parking lot. For inexplicable reasons, he wanted his wife out of his house that very instant – never mind that the clock was ticking towards midnight and rapists, who seem to hang behind every dark bush these days with murder hidden in their trouser pockets, would have had her frilly petticoat for dinner.

The man kept yelling that he was the one who does everything in the house, presumably including making the babies. I have heard many reasons for a midnight divorce, but had no clue that kifo cha mende was one of them. I also assumed it was the usual ruckus men who have imbibed this or smoked that create. But before you could say “fellow Kenyans”, the man charged like an angry bull into his woman and tossed her to the ground like a sack of rags.

I thought about calling the cops to come and collect their pound of flesh (in 48 hours, our Mr Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger would be a filthy, mousy fellow calling everyone to raise Sh20,000 to get his stinky self out of a stinky police cell into which his butt was kicked without record), but unfortunately, a posse of men wrestled him to the ground. I don’t know what happened thereafter because I hurried home to beat the curfew set by the maswali ya polisi owners of the house.

Then I remembered that Nairobi’s July winter is headed my way and I have been considering acquiring a second blanket (wink). But with the economy in the gutter, I shamelessly started coveting my neighbour’s battered wife because she was, in my estimation, a hanging fruit that could be plucked with a mere hug and without the circus of facing village extortionists at a dowry negotiation ceremony. 

Fortunately, before the cock could crow thrice, I remembered recent newspaper headlines and, shaking like a leaf, came back to my senses.    

Having not paid tithe, I would loath to wake up one morning and discover myself dead as the dodo, with a newspaper headline screaming: “Journalist murdered by jealous man seeking to reconcile with estranged wife.”

These things are like a grabbed plot. You never know when the government will arrive with a bulldozer at midnight and flatten your house, kifo cha mende my foot.