Joe worked for an international beverage manufacturer as their VP for Marketing in East, Central, and West Africa. He traveled a lot across the continent and at times to Europe, Asia, and the US where their headquarters were. He has been to Kampala countless times but somehow had never been to this restaurant he was going on and on about. Or he was lying. Just trying to avoid the issue at hand at all costs.

Stacey was barely paying attention. Her mind lost in her own world. She watched every move his hand made with the knife and wondered if one day or even that night he would sneak up on her as she slept and chop her body into tiny pieces like he chopped the capsicums.

She did not have a reason to fear, at least not from past experiences. He had never laid a finger on her. On the contrary, he was a very caring, charming and patient guy. Perhaps the perfect guy. So perfect that he scared the hell out of Stacey in times like this.

Joe did not drink but had no problem with her going out with her friends and drinking till the ungodly-hours of the morning. She would call him at 3.00 Am to pick her up from the club and he would be right there ready to drive her drunk behind to the house. Occasionally he would give in to her dragging him out of the house to the club. In those instances he would always be lost watching the crowd, paying attention to what people in the club were ordering and generally, how they were spending their money. Her friends thought he was a little creepy because he would ask too many questions at times.

Stacey did not find any of that creepy. She knew he was always doing research for new marketing strategies. Joe studied anthropology for his undergrad and has an MBA in marketing. He has taken too long completing his Ph.D. Stacey even thinks he has lost interest in it. He has created very successful marketing campaigns for a variety of the company’s product lines by drawing on his studies of human behavior. Specifically how they make spending decisions.

Joe’s favorite pass-time activity is cooking. He is such a good cook that Stacey at times feels ashamed. She is not such a bad cook, but with a husband like Joe who knows his way around the kitchen, not being a bad cook and being a bad cook could be one and the same thing. Not that he complains about her cooking. He actually likes it when she cooks, but Stacey thinks he pretends. Joe knows so much about food and can go on and on about spices and the places his recipes come from.

“There is this one time before we moved in together that I had gone to his place for dinner,” Stacey says trying to take a journey back into the formative days of their relationship. It’s almost as if she is smiling and not smiling at the same time. There is some sort of sparkle in her eyes. She is not sad at all.

“He was chopping dhania and he was like ‘most people cut away the roots and only use the leaves but that is so wrong. You see, the flavors are concentrated right here around the roots, so, you just need to chop off the tip’ he would say pointing at the roots. I was wowed. Swept,” she says.

Even I did not know that about dhania until this conversation with Stacey.

I have known Stacey for pretty much my entire adult life. Growing up, she was like one of our boys. She always tagged along when we went katiaring chics from other hoods. I still don’t understand why we always rolled like a pack. Me, three other dudes and Stacey. None of us ever hit on her. Not that she wasn’t pretty…We just never saw her that way.

Hanging out with her helped us with chics though. She gave us quite the advice when it came to how to get the ladies interested. We were so good at it that each one of us even had an Indian chic on top of our regular chics. Mine was called Chandni. I had sliced her from one of the other boys. A story for another day.

Looking back, I would say Stacey was that kind of a jackpot chic. She was not too girly – perhaps why we hang out with her. Drove manual cars – those were the only cars we had access to back in the day, thanks to one of our boys whose dad sold second-hand vehicles. She was also very smart, she had scored an A- in KCSE. She was looking forward to going to law school last time we hang out together. Today, I can add she is ravishingly beautiful. I wonder how come we did not notice that back in the day.

Have you ever been in a situation where you meet someone you went to school with or grew up within the same hood but gave them little attention, but when you meet up after five years you find them extremely hot? That was was what I felt like when Stacey tapped my shoulder and said, “you are Ominde, we used to be friends as kids.”

I turned. With a smile on my face. I think my mouth was open for a while before any words could come out of it.

“And you are…” I said in a way like someone wanting the other to complete the sentence for them would.

“Stacey. Stacey Momanyi. We lived in Milimani near Victoria (Primary School). We used to hang out a lot with kina Vic, Sammy, and Alex. How are Sammy and Alex doing?” She asked.

Alex was my high school deskmate, but I still find it difficult calling him Alex. We were more used to referring to him by his last name Tigana. For a moment when she said Alex I thought she was referring to the guy who sells crisps at Kilimani shops. Sammy, Vic and I knew each other from the church our parents went to. Sammy schooled in some private school in Nairobi while the rest of us were classmates. He was the ‘cool kid’ of the gang. Sammy is also the only one who attempted to unsuccessfully hit on Stacey. I haven’t seen Sammy in about thirteen years. Until this moment, I hadn’t seen Stacey for that long too.

“What are you doing in town?” I ask.

“I came to hide after serving my husband with divorce papers,” she responded with a smile that made it all seem like a joke. She laughed. She looked at me in the eye then laughed again before pausing to straighten her eyebrows with her right index finger.

‘Sounds like a big joke,” she said, “but it’s all true.”

“What happened?” I asked, expecting some sob story of how a guy cheated on her with her best friend or cousin or even the mboch – we could be real ass-holes at times. In my mind, I was ready to tell her how any guy that would cheat on a woman half as beautiful and intelligent as she was was the biggest fool of all time.

“He is too nice,” she said.

“What do you mean?” I asked, seemingly confused.

“I am divorcing my husband because he is too nice,” she said wiping her face with her right hand as if it were wet or sweat was forming on it.

By this time she was sitting next to me sipping on some Johnie Walker Green Label that Maureen had just handed her. Maureen is the short, dark, but very pretty waitress who serves me whenever I visit The Roan Garden Restaurant.

Stacey and Joe met about four years ago when Joe was working for a different FMCG company. Stacey was one of the Account executives at a PR firm that was handling one of Joe’s products. Yes, she did not go to law school as she had initially wanted. They had met during a brief at Joe’s office and even though she wasn’t the lead on the project, she kept close contact with Joe. One thing led to another and before they could figure out what was happening they were going on several dates.

“Joe is one of those guys with mysterious personalities. In the office, he is this focussed person who puts the project at hand before anything else, but when you meet him in a social environment, he is a completely different person. Very charming, very patient and welcoming. In the house, he is just your cool buddy. He is even warmer than he is in social settings. It’s like when he gets home he gets into his safe place and you would not imagine he is the same corporate bigshot he is,” she explains.

“A lot of people think I married him because of what being the wife of a corporate magnet like him would do to the career of a young and ambitious PR executive like myself, but I married him because I was attracted to his niceness. His human side. I like how he treated people, especially the people most people look down on society. He called his driver “boss yangu.” At first, I thought He was putting up a show for me but that is who he really is.”

“So why are you divorcing him?” I ask.

“Because I feel that I don’t deserve him. I cheated on him. Not once. I had been doing it for a year when he found out. He asked me about it and I could not deny it. So we agreed I call it off and I did. We have been working on us since then but what creeps me is that he wasn’t really mad about it. I expected him to flip but here he was, as usual, telling me nice stories about what he was up to on his trips or taking me on holidays. I wanted him to get mad. I wanted him to have a fight with me. I wanted him to accuse me of not being loyal to him despite giving me a car and a house and helping my career. I wanted him to be a Kenyan dude but here he was with this cool calm and collected attitude. That drove me insane. It did. Every day I lived under the same roof with him,” she explained.

“Being nice is not grounds for divorce under Kenyan law, so how come you filed?” I ask again.

“We finally got into a fight about money. The money he spends on charity, educating 15 kids each year from his village. I have always known he does that, I admired it. I just needed something to fight over and because I know he is very charitable, that was going to stick. We could not reach a compromise on the issue, so, I am using irreconcilable differences as grounds for my divorce,” she said before pouring herself what looked like three double shots of whiskey and drowning it all.

The post “I Dumped Him for Being too Perfect.” appeared first on Biz Post Daily.

Her ex husband was seriously ill at Aga Khan Hospital, Kisumu. One of his friends had called and begged her to come make peace with the man before he died.

Their relationship had not ended on a good note, scratch that. Their relationship had ended violently. So violent that Nancy was in the hospital for two weeks and her husband in police cells.

But for “the kids” she had decided to withdraw the assault charges, against the wishes of her lawyer, her friends and her family. She did not want to be the woman who sent the father of her 12-year-old son and nine – year old daughter to prison. That is not who she was.

Nancy had been a house wife since graduating from Kenya School of Law (KSL), Nairobi. She studied for her law degree in Uganda, was admitted to the bar as an Advocate of the High Court but had never practiced.

She met George* through a mutual acquaintance while at KSL and their relationship advanced pretty fast it even scared the friend who introduced them.

He was a man hard to resist. In fact, within a month of getting to know each other, George had given Nancy his Mercedes Benz C200 to drive herself to school with and for her errands.

Within another month he had rented an apartment for her in Langata, moving from the one-bedroom house she shared with a friend in Ongata Rongai. The apartment was tastefully furnished.

Nancy had lied to her friends and family that she had gotten a well paying part-time job with an international NGO in Nairobi. George spoilt her rotten.

When they were not spending the weekend in Dubai, they were in Zanzibar or Diani or cooling off at Enashipai Lodge in Naivasha.

Nancy was living in the fast lane. She was sending good money back home to her struggling parents in Adiedo, Kendubay. Her two sisters in high school no longer had fee arrears nor struggled with shopping. Her mother who is a staunch SDA adherent thanked God for her each night.

Her grades at KSL could not keep up, she had had several retakes but she eventually passed and was admitted to the bar. It was a great celebration for her family.

This was also the day she introduced George to them as a friend. They had dinner with her mum and dad, and the aunty who had paid her high school and campus fees at The Intercontinental Hotel, Nairobi. Though they suspected that George was more than a friend, they would not confirm it till later that month when he visited their rural home.

It was not Nancy’s idea to introduce George to her parents at that time, but being who he was he had made it happen his way.

“I remember he had asked me to accompany him to Homabay for a function. We flew to Kisumu on the 6.30 AM flight arriving there just shortly after seven o’clock.

“There was a driver waiting for us. We had breakfast at Imperial Hotel before driving to Homabay Tourist Hotel. While in Homabay he met with a couple of guys, though the meetings did not seem that important to make a man take the first flight out of Nairobi.

“When he was done, which was by about noon, he suggested that since we are passing by Adiedo on our way back to Kisumu, we do some shopping for my mum.”

Nancy had assumed that they would get someone to drop the shopping to her mum’s, but no, they were delivering the gifts by themselves. It was a lot of shopping.

Her mum was happy and excited to see them. Her dad was his usual self – cautious. Read a little too much in everything. Maybe for good reasons. In fact, he had asked George straight what his intentions were with his daughter that day.

“I want to marry her,” George had responded. Nancy was shocked. They had not talked about marriage. The drive back to Kisumu was filled with silence.

She wanted to start a fight, ask questions but she could not do that with their driver in the car. So she looked outside the window, most of the time staring at the moving trees, villagers going about their businesses, at the road-front shops branded with telco logos.

George was lost in his own thoughts too, at times bumping his head to the soft rhumba tunes oozing from the car’s stereo.

When they got to Kisumu George told the driver to stop for more fuel and drive to Gem. He was taking her to meet his mother. He had a beautiful home in the village but no wife.

He had been married before but his wife had left with his two kids. She had asked why but he only claimed it wasn’t working, no details. The children still visited his Nairobi house.

His mother was happy to meet him. His dad had died a while before that. They did not spend the night in the village, drove back to Kisumu that evening and spent the night at Sovereign Hotel.

That is the night he had asked her not to bother looking for a job. He was going to marry her, her job would be to take care of their children.

Other than him forcing his way on people, he seemed to be a good man. Nancy thought that she could even make him a better man.

He had flourishing businesses, interests in private security, real estate, hospitality and a host of other businesses he did with local and national governments thanks to his connections.

They had renovated her mother’s house before her dowry was paid. It was an event villagers in Adiedo spoke about for months. They had not seen that many cars in one place before. There was no church wedding. At the time of the dowry, Nancy was already pregnant with their first child.

Nancy soon started to hear rumors about George’s previous marriage. Claims of extreme cruelty against his ex – wife but she chose to ignore them. The George he knew was incapable of the kind of things they said he did. He wasn’t perfect but to her he was trying to be a good man and she appreciated that.

He took care of everything Nancy and her children needed. They had moved to Kisumu just before the baby was born. Nancy even earned a monthly allowance, an amount that a lot of her colleagues who were working were not making. She used most of it to take care of her parents and siblings. She kept a little for herself.

She was friends with other girls who were married to the city’s tycoons. They had some sort of ‘rich wives of Kisumu club.’ They kept her occupied when George was busy travelling, or when she needed a break from the kids.

They occasionally traveled as a family, mostly during school holidays, but George traveled a lot still. Most of the time, alone.

The little arrogance and forcefulness that Nancy thought she could change grew. George was rarely ever at home, Nancy hardly knew where he was three-quarters of those times.

When he was home he came back when everyone was already asleep. The kids barely knew him anymore. When she asked all he said was “I give you everything you need, what do you want me here for?”

But that was not all, Nancy started hearing stories of him with other younger girls. Girls in campus. At times she saw photos of him with younger girls on other people’s social media pages.

There were times he came to Kisumu for the weekend but never came home. Once when he was home she confronted him, he slapped her so hard she had a ringing sound in her ear for almost an hour. It was the first time he hit her. He never apologized for it.

His philandering ways became so obvious. He was dating a student from Maseno University. He had rented an apartment in Kisumu’s Tom Mboya estate. They were always seen in town together.

His photos were on her Instagram. Nancy had begged him to respect her and the kids and not publicly display his cheating ways. She had made peace with the fact that there was a younger girl in their relationship, what she had not made peace with was him humiliating her in public.

She had reached out to both their parents for help, his mother sympathized with her, her own mother told her to just hang in there, perhaps blinded by George’s generosity. Her father only said, “I warned you.”

One Saturday George had thrown a birthday party for his firstborn son. He had invited both their friends to the party. There was music, food and a lot of drinks. All was going on well until the new girl showed up too.

Nancy was in the kitchen when she was told that she was at the house. She came straight to the living room and asked her to leave her house.

She looked at his husband and asked him why he would bring his “whore” to their son’s party. An ugly scene followed, guests left, George left too with the girl.

That night, George came back drunk and beat Nancy up to a pulp. If it wasn’t for the guard who had called the neighbors for help, Nancy would have died.

She was rushed to the hospital. Her husband was arrested the following day. Nancy stayed for a week in hospital but when she came out she refused to press charges against her husband.

The police had no option but to set him free. She said she was doing it for her children. She packed her bags, took out the money she had been saving and left with the kids to Kampala where she had gone to school to start over.

It had been two years since she had left. She had not talked to George the entire time. She allows the kids to come visit their dad, but she had never been back to Kenya herself.

Two days before this day, George’s best friend had called her apologizing on his behalf. He had told her he could die any minute. He paid for a return flight from Entebbe to Kisumu.

George’s mum was seated on a chair next to his son. Their eyes locked. Christine the new wife was busy wiping his tears. She cleared her throat first and spoke.

“Nancy, I am sorry for what we did to you and the children. Forgive us so that my husband and the father to your children can live.”

Nancy was surprised that she thought that George’s state had anything to do with her. She turned to look at her.

“What did you just say? ” she asked.

“I only asked for forgiveness,” Christine replied.

“I forgave you and your husband the day I walked out of his house. It’s the reason I did not press assault charges. He would now be sick in a crowded public hospital and with a handcuff on his arm.

“I am here not to offer anything beyond what these doctors have been offering. I only came to let you and George know that I had forgiven him.

“To say goodbye the right way, not because I think he will die, but because we never got a chance to. As for you (she said looking at Christine in the eye), I only pitied you, if you knew the things I knew, you would have not done what you did.”

George did not say a word. Only tears flowed from his eyes.

Nancy returned to Kampala the following morning. George died that afternoon. Neither Nancy nor their children attended his funeral.

I met Nancy in Kampala last year. We were at the rooftop of Arcadia Suites Hotel. She sat with her back towards the city, I sat directly opposite her, facing Kampala’s towering buildings in the horizon.

It was one of those quiet evenings, very little traffic on the road below that leads to the British High Commission. Quite the opposite of what it is during the day.

I asked her what her biggest regrets from their relationship was.

“Ignoring what I heard about his previous marriage. Not taking the little signs seriously. I overlooked the subtle arrogance, the rush that he had in getting us married. I regret being blinded by the wealth and the flashy lifestyle,” she says after a brief moment of silence.

“How do you feel about him now that he is gone?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I am at peace with my past I think. I am glad I set him free before he died. It’s not been easy for me and the kids but we are managing. One day we will go lay flowers at his grave,” she says.

*Names have been changed.

The post ‘Let’s say our goodbyes right’ appeared first on Biz Post Daily.

In my line of work, we are trained to be very sensitive about private meetings. I wasn’t sure if this “sensitive” stuff was about work or a personal issue. Either way, I was not going to take chances.

Dave was my boy, the kind of boy who would generously contribute to the M-Changa funeral kitty if I were to die. He would drive up with my other boys to The Ranch the evening before my burial and stay awake till morning telling stories as they sip 21- year old single malt whiskey. None of the conversations would be about me or the two distraught women I am leaving behind. Perhaps they would talk about their friend who has merged his law firm with another British firm, maybe about the other friend’s new Mercedes-AMG C 63′ Sedan teasing him about where he would drive such a low car. The other friend who is bewitched with SUVs will tell him he has just bought himself an expensive women’s car, that real men drive V8s and Range Rover Sports. He would swear to take the car back to the dealership on Monday. They will talk about the weather, wonder if they will get stuck in the morning if the skies make good their threat to open up. They will talk about Olivia’s short dress. Heck one will even have a theory that Olivia and I used to date – that would be the only reference to me in their conversation.

That is how close I and Dave were before this day. At least what I thought of it. We have never had a one on one meeting. We have shared a daram at Barcadia, sheltered under the main dais at Kisumu Showground when the skies opened up after a rugby match, we had shared a bottle of whiskey at a wake for the dad of a mutual acquaintance.

It was getting darker, I had said I would be home by 7 PM but it was now 7.15 PM and Dave had not opened up.

I was about to ask to see him another time when he looked over his shoulders on both sides before lowering his head with his eyes locked into mine. It was as if he wanted to see through my soul as he poured his heart out. They say someone’s eyes are the windows into his soul.

We were seated at a corner at the Buzz Bar at Acacia Hotel. If you ask me it’s one of the most private spaces in this town.

You know a man is about to say something extremely important when he looks over his shoulder to see if someone is watching or listening. Just that this time Dave did not have to. Behind him was nothing but the wall paneling. He still looked through – not once but over both shoulders. I guess it was reflex.

But that did not surprise me as the words that came out of his mouth next.
“Dan, Mitchell* is cheating on me.” He paused for a moment, perhaps to see how I would react to it. Maybe trying to figure out if I had heard anything about it.

I did not know how to react or what to say. You know when a fellow man comes up to you and tells you their wife is cheating, it has taken them a lot of courage. This is a conversation a man would rather have with his close woman friend. Not their boy unless they are accusing you. No, he was not thinking I had anything to do with it. At least I became sure of that when he uttered the next sentence after the ten-second pause that seemed to have lasted a century.

“With another woman.”

I did not know how to react when someone tells me their wife is cheating, leave alone cheating with another woman. I had heard tales of women in Kisumu having secret sex parties but had always dismissed it as the usual idle talk of social media. I have never been the one to take things I see or read on social media too seriously. Most importantly, I have learned to mind my own business.

Dave has a job I would describe as a ‘good job’ by all standards. He is mostly stationed out of town but he is always around on weekends. Hangs out at Barcadia and Roan once in a while. His wife has an equally good job at a bank. She is mostly in Kisumu unless for the few times she travels with the girls or when she is going on vacation with her two kids. She does not go to Barcadia or Roan – maybe Aqua Bar at Acacia for a glass of wine with the girls on a Friday.

They own their Kisumu house. Their two kids go to a private school most Kisumu parents in their income range take their kids to. Dave pays for both their fees even though the first kid is not his. The wife had him before they met, and when he decided to love her, he loved her with everything she came with.

Dave does not describe himself as a saint. He has had a few rendezvous. He has been caught a dozen times but he says it was just meaningless sex with these ‘young bloods.’ His wife had cheated too – I mean, they were a typical Kisumu family.

This, as I came to learn, was different. His wife had not just cheated but left him. Left him for another woman. Left with the son she came with. She did not care about their son or maybe she did not just want to fight over custody knowing how well connected Dave is with the city’s best lawyers.
He says they had been good for a long time. She seemed happy, nothing seemed off other than the numerous trips with the girls. In the photos from the trips, he had seen that his wife was particularly close with one woman. He knew her. She had been to their home a couple of times, both when he was home and when he was away. As far as he was concerned she was her best friend.

The woman was divorced. She had got a beautiful mansion in Milimani from her ex-husband as part of the divorce settlement. The husband had kept the children. Once in a while, she visited them in Nairobi.
Dave did not know her ex-husband. She came into their lives after she was divorced.

Dave became only curious when one of her wife’s lady friends told him his wife was having an affair. She did not divulge the details but since Dave knew this particular friend had been interested in him before he took it with a pinch of salt.

He, however, thought about it more. To confirm this he decided to buy his wife a pre-valentines gift. A brand new iPhone Xs. His wife was not so good with gadgets so she asked him to set it up for her. He went through those processes iPhone owners go through when setting up their expensive gadgets giving it to her every time it required a password or when it asked him to set the device password. She could not suspect anything, but in the process, Dave downloaded one of those phone spy apps you can buy online for $10.

Interestingly, the makers of these spy apps say on their websites that the apps are ” intended for legal uses ONLY. It is a violation of the law to install surveillance software onto a mobile phone you do not have the right to monitor.”

Fact is they know that most people are not using the apps to spy on their children but rather on their spouses and Dave here was one of them.
Over the next four days, Dave would uncover things that shook every single thing he believed about his wife. The affair had been going on for over three years under his nose. The friendship he thought was normal was a little more than that. They had had sexcapades or whatever it is women who sleep with each other had even on their very bed. They professed their love for each other on WhatsApp texts calling each other “wifey.”
Dave would not take it anymore, on the fifth day he came home and confronted his wife of ten years. She did not even deny it. She became livid, asking what right he had to spy on her phone. She threatened to sue him for breach of privacy. She was screaming hysterically. She went to the bedroom, packed a few bags banged the sitting room door and walked to her car, started the engine and drove off. She did not go far, she came back three minutes later like she had forgotten something. Dave, the kids, and their house help were still standing confused in the sitting room. She walked straight to the kids’ room without saying a word. Packed her first son’s clothes, came down the stairs and dragged him by the arm to the car and drove off. That was the last time Dave saw either of them. It was now three weeks.

I asked him “how can I help?” Like the doctor from New Amsterdam – the medical drama series.

Dave opened the sling bag that hung across his chest from the left shoulder. He took out an envelope and slid it across the table towards me. Inside it was a bundle of cash. I did not count but from how it looked must have been Ksh. 100,000. There was a flash drive too.

He knew I was a blogger and he wanted me to help him expose the woman who had stolen his wife.

I Instantly slid the envelope back to him. I told him I can’t. I saw his broad shoulders shrink. Perhaps he thought that if I exposed this woman his wife would have no choice but to come back to him. He looked like he was ready to forgive her, but he also looked like he wasn’t ready to admit that another woman would steal his wife from under his very nose.

As Kisumu people would say ‘atatembea wapi?‘ His boys would never look at him the same way. Drinking with him would be like wasting fine whiskey. What good is a man who loses his woman to another woman?
He stared at me as if to plead. I felt his pain.

” I can’t begin to imagine what is going on in your head. I am really sorry Dave, but I have a policy of only using my blogs to either build people or make people care about certain things. I cannot use that same platform for something like this.”

It was now way past 8 PM, I paid both our bills and excused myself. My women were now worried because it’s unlike me to get home late on a weekday.

That evening I drove home with my car stereo off – very unlike me. I could not help but think about Dave and his son and what they were currently going through.

Featured image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

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