Kenya’s male species on the verge of extinction

By Ted Malanda

Frankly, those brothers at the Maendeleo ya Wanaume Organisation are grappling with matters beyond their depth. Truth is the Kenyan male is tittering on the brink of extinction. The only man with what it takes to save this species is former chief game warden Richard Leakey, complete with gun-totting rangers.

Just last week, I heard tales of two Luhya women who were polygamists. In the first case, one woman married a relatively well-off aged widower while she kept a younger husband on the side. Every month, she would arrange to visit her mother for a couple days — time that she actually spent smearing her younger husband’s hut.

polygamous women

The other case was even more spectacular with the young woman in her early 20s keeping one husband in Western Kenya and the other in Mombasa. She divorced the coastal man when he began insisting that she winds up her "business" in Kakamega and joins him in Mombasa.

The same week, a vernacular FM station carried an even more bizarre tale of a man who strolled into his house and asked for a cup of tea. But when he went to the kitchen to investigate why the tea was taking forever, he discovered his wife in the arms of another man — in his own kitchen and in broad daylight too.

But there is more. Two months ago, a woman took a cooperative loan, paid her dowry and put up a modest house in the village. Meanwhile, she was cohabiting with her vagabond of a "husband" in Eldoret whose only contribution to the marriage is siring two tots whose every care is met by their mother.

In Nairobi, a roadside spot check will reveal that drivers of sleek, expensive cars are likely to be young women. And if you imagine that those cars were bought by sugar daddies and husbands, you need to have your head examined. Meanwhile, every decrepit junk you see belching smoke on the highway will be driven by a man.

That’s what men have become — idle, drunken sperm banks whose forte is gossiping about local politics, watching foreign football and working out in the gym. The women, in the meantime are laughing all the way to the bank. When they are not clobbering the daylights out of their men, that is.