STORYMOJA

There once lived a man named Wafula. He resided with his wife in a single bed-roomed apartment in the sprawling Dandora area of Nairobi. His wife’s name was Nafula. She was lean and athletic and had participated in various sporting activities when in high school.

Wafula was a civil servant and worked as an accounts clerk in the Ministry of Finance building on Harambee Avenue, Nairobi. His wife was an entrepreneur and ran a small retail goods kiosk in Dandora. She usually made trips to Nairobi town to procure goods from wholesale stores for her kiosk. She would then transport the goods to her kiosk using a bicycle, a handcart, and sometimes matatu (public transport vehicles.)

Though Wafula was proud of her entrepreneurial spirit, he had grave reservations about the way his wife conducted herself in public. She did things that embarrassed him. Sometimes Wafula had to hide from the neighbours after another embarrassing stunt by his overzealous wife. The neighbours would laugh at Wafula and cheekily whisper amongst themselves when he passed by.

It was their fourth year of marriage and Wafula finally acknowledged the fact that his wife was a scoundrel, a rascal, an accident waiting to happen. “What did I get myself into?” he perennially asked himself.

Though they’d tried fertility treatment, his wife had refused to get pregnant. Their doctor had done tests on her and concluded that she was too acidic for him. Her acidity annihilated his ‘soldiers’, thus restricting them from reaching the eggs and fertilizing them.

On hearing this distressing information, Wafula had thought up a home-made solution to his wife’s acidity. He had recommended that he fills his wife’s private area with warm water using a funnel; she’d then wiggle vigorously for a minute; the water would dilute her acids and then she’d discharge it in the loo; after this, they’d lie down together and get intimate.

But alas, Wafula’s prudent home-made remedy failed to work. His wife didn’t get pregnant. He was deeply disappointed by the thought of not having a child, though he never told his wife. The typical African man’s option of acquiring a second wife didn’t occur to him since he had vowed in front of a church, before God and his gathered family on their wedding day, that he’d love and cherish his sole wife, Nafula, through good times and bad times, till death do them part.

Wafula was also frustrated at his work place. Though he’d worked as an accountant for five years at the Ministry of Finance, he had never been promoted nor had a much needed salary increase. Younger, more educated employees of the Ministry had already been promoted and various workmates secretly spoke of increments on their pay slips.

Wafula was also weary of his boss’s reaction when the boss found out that he hadn’t completed the financial report of a parastatal organization which the Ministry of Finance was auditing. He had been given two weeks to prepare the report and the deadline for submitting it to the boss was the present day. Wafula was thus a depressed and demoralized man. These powerful, chaotic, overwhelming emotions needed a release.

One sunny Friday afternoon at about 2:00 P.M. when Wafula was walking back to his office after eating lunch at a restaurant, he received a call on his mobile phone. The caller was a neighbour who lived on the same apartment building as Wafula.

“Your wife, Nafula, was seen a few minutes ago being chased by a couple of dogs,” the neighbour said with amusement in her voice.

When Wafula heard this, he stopped on the sidewalk of Harambee Avenue and clasped the mobile phone tightly on his ear. He visualized the whole story.

“Dogs!” Wafula exclaimed in bewilderment. “Why was my wife being chased by dogs?”

“Well,” said the neighbour excitedly. “Your wife had locked her kiosk and gone to the butchery shop to buy meat. The pick-up van which brings fresh meat was parked right outside the butchery and everyone in the neighbourhood knows that this is the best time to buy fresh meat.

“Nafula bought a kilo of beef and was returning home to put the meat in the fridge when a couple of stray dogs started stalking her. The dogs were growling and sniffing at the paper bag that she was carrying. She soon saw the dogs and she began to run away from them. She didn’t want them to steal her kilo of fresh beef. The dogs began to run after her, barking loudly and cruelly. Nafula ran like lightning, taking sharp corners and jumping over obstacles on her path. She seemed like a rugby player in a pitch clutching a ball – which in this case was the paper bag of meat – under her arm and ducking and side-stepping the pursuing opposition.

“But the dogs were determined to snatch the kilo of fresh ruddy meat from poor Nafula. Finally one of the dogs, a big white tailless dog named Saddam, managed to catch up with Nafula and trip her. She lost her footing and fell to the ground. Saddam snatched the kilo of meat, which Nafula was planning to cook for you as supper, and triumphantly ran away with it towards the vast Dandora dumpsite.

“Valiantly Nafula hopped to her feet and chased after the evil Saddam, the other dogs running after her barking loudly. Everyone in the neighbourhood came out of their houses to witness the shocking fracas. There were multitudes of people on the balconies of high-rise buildings and others lining the streets, all of them cheering and hollering.

“At a certain point Nafula came across a construction site where there were lots of stones lying around. She picked up a large stone and catapulted it forcefully towards the retreating white dog. The stone landed viciously on the back of Saddam’s head and he passed out. The kilo of meat he was carrying between his teeth fell to the ground. On seeing that their leader had fallen unconscious, the other dogs fled into the vast dumpsite.

“Nafula saw this and dashed to the spot where Saddam was lying and picked up the kilo of fresh meat. The polythene bag wrapping was still intact and the meat was thus not contaminated by the incapacitated dog’s saliva. Nafula took the meat back home. I guess that’s what you’ll be having for dinner today, Mr. Wafula. Bye-bye and have a nice day,” said the neighbour before disconnecting the line.

Baffled, Wafula stared lengthily at the screen of the mobile phone handset. The more he thought about what he’d just heard, the more incensed and aggravated he became. Cumulatively, his wife’s acts of mischief had pushed him to the edge of insanity. In fury Wafula walked to the side of the pavement where there was a line of mature trees. He climbed one of the trees and sat on a thick branch. The branch was at least twenty feet from the ground. The tall tree was located right outside the building where he worked.

Most of Wafula’s workmates had earlier ventured out of their offices to various restaurants to have lunch. As the workmates were returning to the building they worked in, they saw a man in a business suit perched on the branch of a tree. The man seemed calm and the height of the tree wasn’t high enough to allow for a successful suicide attempt. When the workmates came closer, they saw that the man sitting on top of the tree was Johana Wafula, their quiet, soft-spoken, mild-mannered workmate.

The workmates, nearly fifty of them, both men and women, congregated at the bottom of the large tree looking up at Wafula. They desperately tried to convince him to climb down from the tree but he refused. The workmates then appealed to him to explain the reason for climbing the tree.

Tearfully Wafula began to speak to his workmates. Wafula spoke of his frustration with his roguish wife as the main cause of his refusal to climb down from the tree. Repeatedly wiping away his tears, Wafula began to narrate to his shocked workmates how his athletic, nimble, overzealous wife had consistently done embarrassing things in public; things that a married woman should not be doing.

“My wife operates a small kiosk in Dandora,” Wafula began to narrate. “The kiosk mainly retails fast-moving consumer goods; bread, milk, sugar, salt, vegetables, fruits, and things of that nature. To stock these goods, Nafula needs to buy them in bulk from a wholesaler. To transport the bulk goods that she’s bought from the wholesalers to her shop, she uses a bicycle, other times a handcart, and sometimes she uses a matatu. Nafula also rides a bicycle, something considered unusual for a married woman to do in the Kenyan society.

“One early morning Nafula (her first name is Joanna) locked the kiosk, which she’d named Joanna’s Shop, and rode the black mamba bicycle to the place where the bread delivery van stops. All retailers bought crates of bread from the bread van at factory prices, which was lower than the retail price of single loaves sold to consumers. This was how the retailers made profit. The cratered, non-existent roads of the neighbourhood didn’t allow the van access into the inner areas of the housing estate. So retail shop owners had to go to the edge of the main road where the van stopped. When Nafula got there, she saw that the bread van had already left. Being who she is, she decided to chase after the bread delivery van along the busy Outer Ring Road. When she caught up with the van, she rode beside it near the middle of the road, waving and gesturing at the van’s driver to stop.

“Oncoming traffic hooted at her and some cars had to careen off the road to avoid hitting her. Nafula was yelling ‘Simama! Simama!’ meaning ‘Stop! Stop!’ but the driver of the bread van didn’t stop. He instead shifted to higher gear and accelerated to higher speed. Nafula drew close to the speeding van and climbed from her bike and clang onto the large side mirror, her foot stuck in the door’s hollow stepping pad. Nafula kept yelling, ‘Simama! Simama!’ at the stunned driver. With no one to steer it, Nafula’s bicycle veered off the road, lost speed, and fell into a roadside ditch.

“Nafula climbed onto the roof of the cabin of the bread van and lay on it, banging on the windscreen and scaring the poor driver. Seeing that the driver was ignoring her pleas to stop, Nafula stood up and wobblingly walked along the roof of the speeding Mitsubishi Canter van to the back of its carrier. Nafula climbed from the roof to the steel door at the back of the carrier and struggled to open the steel latches. After opening the steel doors, she nimbly climbed into the carrier only to find a stack of empty plastic crates. There was no bread!

“Disappointed, Nafula locked the steel doors and climbed back onto the roof of the van. She poised herself on the left edge of the carrier, her hands taut like a bird in flight, and suddenly hopped onto the neck of a tall street lamp and spiralled downwards until she lost momentum. Then she casually slid down the cylindrical steel pole to the ground and jogged along the side of the road to where her bicycle had fallen into a ditch. She pulled the bike from the ditch, hopped onto it, and casually rode back to her kiosk. She opened her kiosk and continued trading.

“When I got back from work that evening, what do I find everybody in the neighbourhood talking about? My wife! Apparently, she was seen spectacularly hiking a ride on the roof of a bread delivery van. Am I proud of my wife for hiking a ride on the roof of a bread delivery van? No! I’m not proud! I’m shocked, mortified, scandalized!

“Why? you ask. Well, though I hate to admit it, but my wife is a tomboy! An aggressive, hyperactive, tomfoolerying tomboy!”

Upon narrating this disturbing tale, Wafula began to weep loudly and snivel. His bewildered workmates standing on the shade at the foot of the tree consoled him for the sordid antics of his wife. The workmates appealed to Wafula to stop crying and climb down from the tree. But he refused to climb down. He fished out his handkerchief and blew his nose and then wiped his tears.

When Wafula had regained his composure, he began to narrate another incident.

“One afternoon, not long ago, my wife, Nafula, locked her kiosk and took the mkokoteni, or handcart, and pushed it to the local market, about three kilometres away. On Wednesdays, the market day, fresh vegetables are sold at competitive prices. Most of the vegetables sold at the market are farmed in Limuru, Kiambu and other districts bordering Nairobi. Nafula wanted to buy a stock of cabbages, potatoes, kales, onions, and tomatoes for her kiosk which is named Joanna’s Shop.

“Nafula arrived at the market and bought all these things which she’d planned to buy and bundled them on the handcart. The handcart, which had a pair of car wheels and a car axle, couldn’t move because it was too heavy. She had to seek help from some traders at the market to assist her to push the handcart onto the tarmac road. Once on the tarmac, she thanked the traders and struggled down the steep road leading back to her kiosk.

“The handlebar of the handcart kept pulling her up because she was not heavy enough to push the handlebar down. At different times during her laborious trip along the road, the handlebar raised her legs clear off the ground. The bundles of goods on the handcart were too heavy thus tilting the handcart backwards. Steering of the handcart, therefore, became a problem. Vehicles using the tarmac road hooted at her to get off the road since her slow movement created a tailback of traffic. Nafula ignored the hooting and struggled along the road. She was heaving and panting and sweating like a bucolic mule plowing a farm.

“The heavy load at the back of the handcart kept pulling the handlebar up, making Nafula’s body to lift from the road and her feet to flail in the air. But she was determined not to let this anomaly distract her from her quest to deliver the veggies to Joanna’s Shop. She summoned all her strength and pushed down the handlebar and once her feet touched the tarmac, she soldiered on, ignoring the hooting and the taunting from miffed motorists and onlookers.

“Finally Nafula cleared the rise on the road and started down the incline. When she looked up, she could see the bold letters on the signboard nailed to the front of her shop. JOANNA’S SHOP, the bold red letters read. These letters on the signboard spelling her name highlighted the nearness of her destination. She was less than a kilometre from her kiosk. This feeling of nearness spurred her on, her glands releasing a gush of adrenaline into her bloodstream.

“The immense weight of the goods on the handcart pushed it forward down the incline at a speed that began to worry Nafula. She soon realized that she was hurtling at great speed down the incline past the numerous roadside kiosks and stands. Women onlookers and traders saw Nafula and her handcart hurtling down the tarmac and they began to scream in horror. As it had happened before, the weight of the goods tilted the handcart backwards thus raising the handlebar. Nafula’s body was raised in the air and her legs flailed helplessly in the air. She’d lost control of the mkokoteni!

“The handcart veered dangerously off the tarmac and onto the dusty shoulder of Outer Ring Road. At great speed, the handcart ploughed through the displayed wares of the screaming scampering roadside traders and kiosks, trampling and destroying their wooden stands and kiosks and wares. The vicinity looked like a hurricane had just run through it.

“Slowed down by the obstacles in its path, Nafula’s handcart finally came to a stop in front of Joanna’s Shop. Nafula’s hands let go of the handlebar and she fell to the ground and passed out. Miffed and baffled traders and passerbys congregated around Nafula to gawk at her unconscious self.

“When I get off the matatu from work that evening, what do I find on the road leading to my home? Something similar to a bomb blast site. ‘Who caused all this destruction?’ I ask an onlooker. The onlooker points ahead at the only kiosk standing in the vicinity. ‘The owner of Joanna’s Shop caused all this destruction,’ says the onlooker, gazing at me suspiciously. ‘Aren’t you her husband?’ she asks accusingly.

“Conscious of the danger of being identified as the husband of the owner of Joanna’s Shop, I swiftly moved away from the onlooker and mingled with the gathered irate mob of traders and passerbys. Police were soon called to the scene and Nafula and I were arrested and bundled into a police Land Cruiser van. I pleaded with the angry traders not to file a complaint in court against me and my errant wife. As the police van was driving away and carrying me and Nafula to the police station, I yelled desperately at the irate traders that I would compensate all of them for their destroyed stands, kiosks, and wares.

“When the police heard this, they agreed to free me and my wife. The next day I went to the bank and withdrew 100,000 shillings, only leaving 500 shillings in my account – the minimum amount that one is required to maintain an account. I asked for a one day leave from work and spent the day disbursing my life’s savings to the traders whose businesses my wife had destroyed. Something told me that the destroyed wares, wooden kiosks, and stands, were not worth half that money. But being who I am, I sympathized with the traders and paid them what they claimed their destroyed property was worth.”

Upon narrating this sad tale, Nafula broke into a fresh round of weeping and snivelling. His shocked workmates talked spontaneously in various dialects – English, Swahili, Luhya, Bukusu, et cetera – and desperately appealed to the distressed, lachrymose Wafula to climb down from the tree. Wafula refused to climb down. He again used his handkerchief to blow his nose and wipe his tears.

“What do we do?” some workmates whispered amongst themselves.

“Should we call the police? Or maybe we should call the fire brigade; they have ladders, don’t they?” others whispered.

As soon as Wafula regained his composure, he once again began to narrate another incident. The workmates hushed and listened while gazing up at the man on the tree.

“On Christmas day last year, I decided to take Nafula to Uhuru Park, Nairobi, to enjoy the day riding boats on the lake and also have our photographs taken which we would then put in our family’s photo album. Everybody has seen photos of their parents when they were younger and good looking; in a park somewhere grinning and having a good time. I wanted our children to have photographic records of their young, good looking, grinning, joyous parents.

“After attending Christmas mass at the local Catholic Church, we hopped into a matatu and travelled to Nairobi town where we disembarked and walked the rest of the way to Uhuru Park. That day, Nafula had worn a long flowing chiffon dress and she looked feminine and attractive. I was proud to be seen by her side holding her hand, chatting and grinning with her. But Nafula hated wearing dresses. She preferred wearing jeans trousers. Trousers made her lose her appealing, sensuous feminine aura. Trousers made her act aggressively, I’d noted, while dresses coerced her to act like a lady – calm, sophisticated, and sensuous.

“Before sitting on a chair, she would run her hand from the back of her waist, over the wonderful bulge of her bottom, down the back of her thighs, to the back of her knee; then she’d sit, with her knees clasped, and then straighten the dress over her lap. Or, for instance, before climbing a flight of stairs, or climbing into a matatu, she would gather (so as not to step on it) a handful of her dress and slightly raise it over her leg, exposing her shin, knee, and a hint of thigh; then she’d let it down upon climbing the stairs or steps. These two are some of the most alluring and sensual gestures that I’ve had the pleasure to observe in women in public. Women should wear long flowing dresses more often. My father always said: ‘If she acts like a lady, treat her like a lady; if she acts like a crude bitch…..

“A woman wearing jeans and other trousers crudely plops herself onto a chair and sits with her knees apart; her butt crack usually showing above her retracting waistband. I find this crudity offensive and disgusting! The manufacturers of jeans should be censured for creating jeans that cannot fully accommodate the alarmingly ballooning bottoms of urban African women.

“So we arrive at Uhuru Park and head straight to the shed where the cashier collects payments for the hiring of boats. I part with money and Nafula and I are guided to a little white boat which we soon board. Other young couples and family groups are already rowing and floating on their boats in the waters of the lake.

“Being who she is, Nafula grips the oar and starts rowing our wobbly little white boat across the lake. We’ve not even began to enjoy our boat ride when some woman starts screaming from another boat; somewhere near the middle of the lake. ‘Am drowning! Am drowning!’ cries the fat middle-aged woman in distress. ‘Save me! Save me! I can’t swim!’ We look and see that the fat woman’s boat is leaning dangerously to one side. The woman is clinging onto the side of her boat, most of her body submerged. Two children of about ten years, presumably the woman’s children, also start screaming. The children are still in the boat, we see.

“But their mother’s desperate attempts to climb back into the boat are wildly rocking the vessel and it seems that she’ll tip over the boat. Now everyone is yelling – people in the other floating boats on the lake, and onlookers poised on the embankment of the lake, the cashier on the shed, and others on the bridge.

“In full view of all these hollering Kenyans, a married woman, my wife Nafula, stands up on our little white boat and lifts her chiffon dress up and over her head. She throws the dress on my lap and quickly removes her mid-heeled leather shoes. This, too, she dumps on my lap. Momentarily the confused yelling in and around the lake ceases. What’s everyone staring at? I ask myself. Everyone is staring at Nafula, I realize. A married woman, my wife Nafula, is standing there on the boat in her underwear – black brassiere and matching knickers. A married woman has no business removing her dress in public, let alone her underpants be seen in public. Only I and heaven should see her in such attire. I’m so scandalized and embarrassed to be her husband that I now wish that I was the one drowning.

“Nafula nimbly jumps into the water and swims to the middle of the lake. She grips the screaming, drowning fat woman and pulls her hands from the wildly rocking boat. The boat stabilizes and the two children in it seem like they’ll be alright. Nafula turns the fat woman so that her belly faces up and proceeds to drag her across the lake to the embankment where the middle-aged, sodden woman is pulled out by the benevolent onlookers.

“Nafula then swims across the lake and grips the side of the boat containing the two children and pushes it to the concrete embankment of the lake. The onlookers eagerly help to pull the children from the boat. What does Nafula, my wife, a married woman, do next? Nimbly she swims across the lake, climbs back into our little white boat, grabs her dress and shoes from my lap and puts them back on and sits quietly beside me, grinning benignly.

“Some photographers, we soon realize, have been taking pictures of the whole incident. Now the photographers are trying to sell us the damn negatives. ‘I don’t want to see pictures of my naked wife,’ I scream at them in anguish. Only I and heaven should see her in such a state. Cautious of what could happen if the negatives fell into the wrong hands, I hastily purchase all the negatives from the photographers who’d cheekily photographed my wife. That night when we got back home, I destroyed all the negatives.”

After finishing narrating this incident, Wafula sobbed bitterly, his shoulders shaking so rigidly that he lost his balance. Wafula tilted dangerously forward, his hands and legs waving and flailing in the air. His workmates standing at the foot of the tree screamed in horror and clustered together, their hands raised, waiting to catch Wafula. But Wafula’s hands caught some twigs and he managed to steady himself. There was a general sigh of relief amongst the workmates.

An hour had passed since the workmates discovered Wafula sitting on the branch of the tree. It was now 3:00 P.M. The workmates, and Wafula himself, were supposed to have reported back to work at exactly 2:00 P.M. On noticing that his employees were not sitting and working in their workstations, the chief accountant, their boss, happened to look out the window of the third floor of the multi-storey building.

“And what do you think you’re all doing outside?” growled the boss harshly in his deep voice, his face cringed in a sneer. “I order you all to immediately come back to the office and resume work. We don’t pay you to stand leisurely under the shade of a tree.” The boss then saw a man sitting on the branch of the tree. The boss identified him as Johana Wafula, a sedate and reclusive accounts clerk in the accounting department. “And you, Wafula, climb down from that tree. That’s a jacaranda tree. It has no mangoes or oranges or mapera to pick. Come down immediately.”

All eyes looked up to the boss who was sticking his head and torso out through the open window, his tie flapping in the breeze.

“I can’t come down,” Wafula said meekly to the boss.

“And why not?” asked the boss.

“Because of my wife,” answered Wafula.

“Your wife?” gasped the boss, searching amongst the gathered workmates to see if he could identify a face that he didn’t regularly see in the office. But he couldn’t find such a face. All the faces seemed familiar. He turned again to Wafula. “What’s wrong with your wife?”

Maybe this isn’t the appropriate time to inquire about the financial report that I had asked him to prepare and submit to me today morning, the boss thought sympathetically.

Wafula began weeping before he snivelled loudly and composed himself and spoke. “My wife troubles me. She constantly does things that a married woman shouldn’t be doing. My wife…. (sob, sob) ….my wife is a tomboy!”

Upon muttering these painful words, Wafula proceeded to weep openly and freely in the same manner that he would have wept if he’d just received news that his wife had perished in a grisly matatu accident.

The boss sighed loudly. “What do you want us to do? How can we help you, Wafula?” the boss asked in a mild empathetic tone of voice. The boss stopped sneering.

Poor Wafula didn’t respond to this question but kept on weeping and snivelling. It was the saddest thing that one could ever witness on the streets of Nairobi. Motorists driving along Harambee Avenue wound down their windows and slowed down to curiously gaze at the weeping man on the tree and the concerned workmates gathered at the foot of the jacaranda tree. Some pedestrians on either side of the street stopped briefly to ask what was going on before they shook their heads in disbelief and walked away.

Some of the workmates, most of them women, wept and blew their noses on handkerchiefs. They all empathized with Johana Wafula’s baffling quandary. One of the workmates spoke quietly to the one standing next to her. Both of them were middle-aged women. “What if we called his wife? If she was here, she would know what to say to him to make him climb down from the tree,” she whispered.

“Yes, but we don’t have his wife’s phone number,” whispered back the other workmate. “Let’s try to ask him for the number.”

“It would have been wiser to call his wife without him knowing that she’s coming here,” said the workmate concernedly. “She’s the cause of all his pain. I’ve never met her, but I’m sure I don’t like her.”

It was as if the boss was reading the minds of the two workmates. “What’s your wife’s phone number, Wafula?” he asked from the third floor window while fishing out his mobile phone from his pocket.

Wafula had memorized the number and he recited the ten digits to the boss. The boss dialled the number and informed the person on the other end of the line what was transpiring on Harambee Avenue.

Twenty minutes later a boda boda (motorcycle taxi) appeared from a corner on the far end of the avenue. Two people were riding on the motorcycle; the driver and a restless female passenger sitting behind him. The driver and the passenger seemed to be arguing and exchanging harsh words.

“Stop this motor bike,” the female passenger yelled. “I have to alight here.”

“No, I can’t stop here,” yelled the male driver angrily. “There are government buildings on either side of the street. Policemen are everywhere. I could be arrested for stopping to drop off a passenger.”

The workmates and Wafula and the boss watched in horror as the female passenger nimbly got to her feet and stood wobblingly on the seat of the fast-moving motorcycle, her hands held out like the wings of a bird. Street lamps lined both sides of the avenue. A woman passerby screamed in terror when the female passenger standing on the speeding motorbike jumped from it and clasped the smooth cylindrical metal pole of the street lamp. The female passenger spiralled briefly around the pole until she absorbed the momentum that had carried her form the retreating motorbike. She then grasped the pole between her hands and thighs. That done, the female passenger slid casually down the street lamp to the ground. All the people who’d just watched this daring stunt were flabbergasted. They gawked with their mouths ajar.

From the top of the jacaranda tree, Wafula gazed impassively at the female passenger who’d just jumped from a speeding motorcycle. She was wearing tight blue jeans trousers, a tight red polo shirt, and white sneakers. He saw that the female passenger was none other than his wife, Joanna Nafula. Who else could it be? he thought in consternation. What other woman on planet Earth could jump from a speeding motorcycle and not break her spine?

Heaven, why me? he thought, gazing up to the light blue sky. Tears trickled down his droopy cheeks. He looked down in time to see Nafula strutting leisurely across the sidewalk. She cut a path through the dumbfounded, gawking workmates and stood at the foot of the jacaranda tree beside the trunk.

“Why, dear husband, do you want to jump from the tree and kill yourself?” Nafula said in distress while gazing up at her husband with teary eyes. “Haven’t I been a good wife to you?”

Wafula heard this and was momentarily lost for words. After a moment, when he’d gathered his thoughts, he spoke to her in an impassioned harsh voice. “No, Nafula; you have not been a good wife to me. In fact you have been a terrible wife!” Wafula stopped to wipe away his tears using his sodden handkerchief. He then snivelled loudly and went on speaking.

“You know that I love women who wear dresses; but you still insist on wearing those ghastly tight jeans.

“You know that I hate to draw public attention to myself; but that doesn’t stop you from attempting shocking, epic stunts that embarrass me. Because of this embarrassment, I have to wait till it gets dark so that I can go home without running into those pesky neighbours who take pleasure in laughing at me.

“I don’t care if Saddam, the stray dog, steals our meat; for we can buy another kilo of meat.

“I don’t care if the bread delivery van has run out of bread; for we can buy bread the following day.

“I don’t care about that damned mkokoteni; for I, God willing, will buy you a Toyota pick-up someday.

“I don’t care if a fat woman is drowning in the lake; let the caretakers of the park save her and her kids from drowning.”

Wafula stopped speaking and snivelled repeatedly while wiping his streaming tears with his damp hankie.

“Please, dear husband, come down from the tree. I’ll do anything that you ask,” cried Nafula desperately, she too wiping her tears with a handkerchief.

Wafula snivelled and spoke. “Assure me, Nafula, in front of my boss, up there, and my workmates, down there, that you’ll always conduct yourself in a respectful lady-like manner and stop doing crazy things that embarrass me. Assure me of this and I’ll come down from the tree.”

When Nafula heard these words, she wept uncontrollably. She never knew that her aggressive behaviour caused so much embarrassment to her husband. Moments later when she had regained her composure, she looked up and spoke to her husband. “I assure you that I’ll start acting like a lady. I’ll be cautious of how I conduct myself in public. I’ll try not to do things that embarrass you. Please, dear husband, come down from the tree and let’s go home. We can resolve our problems in private.”

Wafula heard this and sighed heavily and dismissively. He abruptly stopped crying. He slowly turned and grasped some branches and stepped cautiously down the trunk of the tree to the ground.

Nafula and Wafula embraced each other tightly and stayed like that for a long moment. On seeing this, the workmates, including the boss, applauded, happy that Wafula had come down from the tree.

It was already 5:00 P.M., the end of the working day, and the workmates strode into their offices to get their coats and handbags and briefcases and other personal effects after which they all spilled out of the building and onto the streets and diverged in different directions leading to their homes.

© Denis Kabi, 2009