Almost 16 years of being in Nairobi I am a still in a
culture shock; The Nairobi woman shocks me; she
is not like the humble Jerutos I was used to in
Eldoret. The Nairobi woman earns a salary of 10k
yet stays in a bungalow worth 40k... you wonder
how she raises the rent. She will always have flu
yet she has no idea that KenKnit still makes
sweaters that can keep her warm. Well, she made
the petticoat go extinct and now she is working on
eliminating the bra and she will complain that men
are ogling at her breasts...though she is as broke
as a mouse in Kibaki’s Statehouse, you will find
her always at Java...where I come from ‘going out’
means going to the toilet at night but to the Nairobi
woman it is galloping from one club to the other
with her gang of equally confused girls... this
woman shocks me.
Other women would be proud to share their bed
with a child but this woman has a brood of ugly
teddy bears named after her exes that she tells
stories of her escapades ..’you see Johny, today
this jamaa angaliad me and I angaliad him so we
angaliad each other. Imagine’ This woman cares
about her artificial hair more that she cares about
her head...she would rather suffocate herself with a
polythene bag than see water drop on her ‘weave’..
and when she goes to sleep, the stocking on her
head makes mosquitoes think it is Halloween and
they don’t need that woman in the Doom advert to
do her tricks..This woman would tell you she is
‘watching her weight’ when she is watching the
plate full of chips and half chicken that she is
slowly throwing into her mouth at KFC ...The
Nairobi woman would rather quench her thirst
with Smirnoff than cold water..and she does not
feel hungry ,she gets a craving. This craving at
times makes her think ice cream is a meal...
She has this phone that is ‘self –contained’ but she
cannot afford airtime..and when one of her
sweeties sambazas airtime she calls her gang of
girls to tell them how ‘Alehandro’ cried in the
Citizen TV soap and they do their ‘aki woiyees’
together ..she shocks me when updating her status
is not climbing the social ladder to become a more
respectable woman whom a man of my good up
bringing can wish to call ‘Mama Boyi’ but means
changing her relationship status on Facebook from
‘in an open relationship’ to ‘single’ because Johny
forgot that it was the anniversary of when he
bought her a teddy bear...
The Nairobi woman loves pain, she loves to be
pricked, you will find her face with many rivets,
screws and bolts that she calls earrings, nose
rings, eyebrow rings, tongue rings, lip rings etc
and she complains of violence against women
while she violates herself. You may think she loves
rings but try to put a wedding ring on her finger
and her gang of girls will make her disappear
without a trace...The Nairobi woman does not need
to see the size of your wallet to know if you are
loving and caring enough to be her Friday Night
date, she can smell legal tender even if it is 2kms
away. She will make you pay for a 5K ticket to take
her to watch Tarrus Riley yet the crowd would be
so huge that you will not see him and you can buy
his one song album at just 50 bob or better get it
from your friend’s computer...
6 years and truly I need a millennium to learn that
this is Shantal Michelle and not Abiscondita
Mwanyeffnyeff, the girl who migrated
from our village to come to Nairobi for a BA degree
in P.E at one of the Universities.
The way I am