By Boera Bisieri
Published February 13, 2019
You are 26 years old, have graduated from university and are on your first job. You feel important whenever you are invited to those all-white baby shower parties or garden weddings. But the fun ends when you come across a message on Facebook that seems to mock you: “You are 25 years and above, attended 10 weddings and 15 baby showers last year and you are still single; my friend, are you a tent?”
Yeah that was me some time back.
I had been missing my mother’s calls for some time now because I knew our conversation would end with her saying, “My days are numbered” In other words, “Bring your potential husband!”
I knew in my heart that was not about to happen. I was a single woman in Nairobi whose eyes had not yet seen any man worth taking home. But one day, as I travelled in a commuter public service vehicle to town, I saw him. The man I keep seeing in my dreams. A man who made me think of the word “husband”. This man, I hoped, would be the saviour of my poor single self. He stole my heart immediately and I stole his, or so I thought.
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Tall, chocolate and handsome, calmness was in his sense of value as he walked towards the seat next to me and for a moment I thought he was coming to claim me as his. I wanted him to. He sat next to me. I was reading a book and though my heart kept alternating between skipping a beat and beating faster, my body remained calm and my mind pretended to concentrate.
Steve, as his name turned out to be, was reading something on his phone too. The air around us was tense until we got stuck in traffic at the City Stadium area when a candy hawker got into our bus and Steve grabbed the opportunity to buy a packet of chewing gum and he offered me some.
What a gentleman! Something inside me whispered. I took it.
“What book is that you are reading?” he asked.
“Anthills of the Savannah,” I answered.
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Steve was reading the same book by Chinua Achebe! What a sweet coincidence! That thing inside me whispered again.
Steve was my exact idea of perfect husband. He was that kind of man I dreamt of. He had a strange ring of perfection; he had more sense than words and orderliness around him. He was a branch manager in a real estate company. He loved African literature just like I. He had this kind of weird intelligence that found an echo in my own heart; he was literally my soul mate.
We met on several dates in a mall near our estate in the days to come. Blood thrilling dates for that matter. My previous lonely dinners graduated into romantic candle-lit ones and Steve made my place a compulsory stop-over on his way home. Two months down the line and Steve had not once asked to taste a piece of me. I had not been to his house, which now I realize was less than 500 metres away from mine, nor had I met any of his friends. I was sure I would meet his family soon.
We sent short text messages to each other all day. He would say hi every morning when he woke up and we would chat all day. He never missed my calls, not even the late night ones. He brought me chocolates and flowers. He was an enthusiast of Game of Thrones and I was of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. So I called him ‘A man’ and he called me ‘Black woman’.
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One Saturday morning, four months down the line, Steve came bearing gifts to my house and said we were going to Karura Forest on a getaway. We got inside a cave and he held me in his arms. He wrestled with my clothes and my long awaited dream came true. He danced inside my bearded meat.
When he finally vibrated as he held me tight, he whispered, “Black woman, in all fairness and honesty, are you dating?”
I was startled, annoyed even but who throws away their treasure just because they cannot control their emotions?
So I smiled and said, “Of course not!”
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On second thought, I asked him, “…are you?”
“Yes”, the man said.
He had been dating someone else all this time!
Love can be so cruel; it raises your hopes so high in the sky before casting them into an abyss of depression. The crush came with such deep pain. I wanted to plant a hot slap on Steve but on what grounds would I do that? He had not asked me to be his girlfriend. He had not lied to me either. Would I slap him for his honesty?
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When I got back to where I live, I felt a gaping hole in me that only Steve would fill. I decided to pour my heart to him in text messages, tell him how our love was sweet and all he needed in the world was me.
“I am not about to be single any time soon. Right now I am actually focusing on my job and my relationship. I am sorry black woman,” he wrote back.
The next couple of weeks I lay in bed listening to Taylor Swift singing ‘Love is a nightmare dressed like a daydream’.
