‘Go back where you’re from’ taunt to hubby haunts wife for five years

I usually meet an old friend of mine over a couple of beers once in a while. He is my father’s age, but that is beside the point.

So last Friday, we meet up with the old geezer for our monthly drink-up. He was with another mzee and from the way they were talking, they have been bosom buddies for a long time.

His name was David. He called himself the chosen one. I asked him whether he knew there was a certain football manager in England who refers to himself as ‘The Chosen One’. He said that one is a clone, and that this David was very popular with the ladies.

So I was curious to find out how women came to choose him. I did not have to wait for long. After his fourth beer, he opened up like the Nairobi floods.

Once a upon a time, he was married with children. He was a progressive man with a good job and a number of other income-generating activities (what we now call side-hustles).

While he always provided for his family, his wife did not condone his after-work-hours conduct.

He confesses that he had a ‘small home’ in Pangani, while his matrimonial home was in Buru Buru. Since he really cared for the mother of his children, he would pop into the ‘small home’ briefly and make sure that by the crack of dawn he was snoring beside his wife.

HER WISH

This happened for two years. Then one day, feed up by his conduct, his wife waited for him. As usual the man turned up just as the neighbour’s cockerel was crowing, announcing the arrival of a new day. His wife opened the door partially and gave him one of those devilish looks that drill right to the back of your skull.

“Feel free to go back where you’re from. That woman seems to be giving you what I don’t,” she snarled at him.

He looked at her and asked her if indeed that was her wish. She answered in the affirmative. He hesitated at the door waiting to see what she would do. She banged the door closed and bolted the lock.

David sauntered back to his car and drove off. That was in 1996 and mobile phones were rare. As he was instructed, David never came back, not that morning, not the following day or the next week.

After two weeks, his wife turned up at his employer’s office, but David had given the watchman strict instructions never to allow any woman who came looking for him past the gate. To sweeten the deal he had put the watchmen on a retainer.

She wrote him letters begging him to return home, but he would not reply. She tried to consult her ‘in–laws’ but what would a woman tell those traditionalists in the village? Five years later, after a whole parliamentary term, David knocked on the same door, at the same hour that he had done so five years earlier.

It was like his wife had never slept. She bolted to the window, peeped and gladly opened the door. She wrapped herself around him like a woollen blanket.

The moral of the story: Women, don’t dare your man, just watch your words and the way you treat him, or you could be seeing him five years down the line.