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Never be desperate to get married cause others are.
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my journal. Good women are wasted by evil men, there’s a story that wets me with tears this it. Let’s roll it.
In the mid 90s met a young prissy genteel lassie in my stint in KQ. Akello was a pretty daisy, stemmed from Migori & a staunch a SDA. Lady beautiful had an unblemished coffee brown hued skin, hour glass figure, leggy and wadding lakeside hips that magnets any man’s fantasies in frenzy.
A living doll, her English was pristine, her Swahili was letter perfect too, & her Luo lingo darn good for someone raised in the city. She was debonair & raised in Nairobi’s middle class South-C surburbia.
Akello was an IATA graduate, studied cargo sales & tariffs. Sharp & witty, she knew her stuff. Unlike many she didn’t get into airline through the back door, she bolted in her early 20s thru her competency.
Akello was ever perky, buzzy & outdoorsy, and sassy like many airline ladies back in them days.
Being pretty is a curse too, despite her glamor every bloke would steer clear afraid to be her dear, thinking that they can’t meet the bill in her till. The airline rivered with incestuous relationships. Not a bad thing, fun & games many colleagues found their life partners in the workplace.
Others would find their life mistress’s too. Airline people love to date each other, with their free jet travel it’s easy for them to enjoy their sweets in some exotic place & not get nabbed or babbled on, all in the line of duty.
A decade rolling, no longer a spring chicken, & lots of water under the bridge no suitor knocking her door. Her friends were all now married and she stuck out like a sore thumb in numb. She was now doing her early 30s forlorn desperately lonely.
There’s was colleague in the office courting her, who was her age mate, but she was struggling with his immaturity. He wanted to take on as a second wife, but didn’t even have the means to support his first wife.
One day out of the blue a foppishly dressed boho gentleman plodded into the cargo reservations office in Kenya Airfreight terminal @ JKIA with heavy gold chain pedant on his chest that wadded lush with frizzy hair. He piped buzzy skin red tight slacks, that hugged his pogo stick, popping its mega size for all to see & glee.
The bloke donned a thick studded belt with a popping grizzly buckle of a skeleton head. His wrist capitulated by a watch so large it donned on his arm like a wall clock.
Booting his feet were poking cowboy boots that piped all the way to his knees. His fried hair straightened by some chemical was combed in porcupine spike out. Nuttier than a fruitcake, the bloke looked like an over-aged rock star! He wasn’t young, teetering onto 50.
He was flying to Germany with his poodle, and Akello was handling him, this funky dude a Luo diaspora. He was smitten by Akello instantly, his eyes locked on her hips, he desired every piece of her gorgeous beauty.
At the end of the transaction soaped Akello with a USD 100 tip, that wet her lip to her flip. With that, they exchanged contacts, it was the pre-mobile era. Press some flesh, money is the magic door to many women’s sweets.
The next one month he buzzed her land line everyday, no man can jazz a lady with razzmatazz like a Luo man. Tell me? Baked in, Akello was dazzled by his charm, couldn’t concentrate at work.
The next month took flight back to town bagging a wedding dress. He had proposed, the wedding was fast racing in 3 months.
Her wedding was swanky, a beautiful white gold flecked dress gowned, in one of the uppity SDA Church. Love is blind, never seen Akello so pink & perky. Exuberant, head over heels she announced at the wedding show, she will relocating to Norway, to everyone’ shock. She wanted more of him, & she wanted him now.
A malignant macho narcissist, hot to trot, her new hubby wore a red shiny suits with tight pants, unbuttoned shirt in his wedding show. Tongues wagging, he looked rather gaudy for his big day, they definitely were a mismatch.
The crowd was tickled by the antithesis, but what the heck the couple did peck, smooching neck & sealed the wedding union. Someone once said love has no boundaries, this is it.
In plate for his new life mate, was honeymoon ship cruise to Mauritius & Jo’burg. He must have bonked with roaring love on the choppy seas, he hit sweet spot, Akello returned pregnant in quick get.
Airline employees have a privilege, whoever does 10 year unblemished service and retires is entitled for a life ticket together with his/ or her spouse. Few airline staff survive that long to get those benefits.
Akello was definitely a good proposition for any man. He would no longer need to pay for tickets to Germany! On the fly, pearl of a great price he was now married to Mrs. Life Long Free Tickets!
On return from honeymoon Akello handed her resignation. She had a great career in airline, why would she want to ditch it in a huff for man who she met in short puff.
Off the cuff one of her closest office chums Wanjiku wary of her new hubby advised her, rather than make a quick decision, she takes a week leave and visit Germany, and see if it is to her liking. For one swallow doesn’t make summer.
Akello was adamant, folding tent, blurted she was done with airline & Kenya and now a Germanic girl. Let the chips fall where they may.
Norway don’t turn out to be a bed of roses but thorns. A lamb to the slaughter, 3 months into her stay she got the bitters, learning her hubby had 2 other wives in Germany, she was number 3. In Germany he had 6 children with his other wives. It pained her, she was not from a polygamous family.
The shocker in mocker, her hubby had no job! Lie through his teeth, he lived off welfare from the Germany state. The more children he sought, the more welfare quid he got. Akello was fraught, bilked it came to her realization the money he funded her honeymoon was on visa credit card.
Catch 22, she couldn’t return to Kenya, the embarrassment would be too much to stomach.
The freezing weather in Germany depressed her, and her health peppered by the stress was driving her nuts into depression. She struggled to get a job in the airline industry or travel trade, but the employers required knowledge of the German language. Everything was looking bleak & reek.
Make a virtue out of necessity, Akello turned to do a job that is easily available to blacks & no European wants to do, be a care giver in an old aged nursing home.
It was a far cry from the cushy plushy swanky office at KQ that she had worked all her life. Her profession thrown to the dogs. Is this what the glitzy life in diaspora meant to be?
No picnic, working at the old aged nursing home was tortuous, some of the occupants were racial, kept taunting her. Being an emigrant she could do nothing. The job repertoire was monotonous, brushing toilets, soiled pajamas, Akello the once high flier was on crash mode.
With a new born daughter, it became difficultly trippy to juggle her side hustle in jiffy. Stumped, love ‘em & leave ‘em her hubby hardly had any time for her, he was done. No more Mr. Nice Guy.
Languorous of life, three years on in Germany it plopped in a medical examination that she had cancer. With one foot in the grave, the next 6 months she was put chemo. It drained her, hair wilting, beauty gone with a hubby who had lost interest.
Bedraggled she knew she was marking time. Akello with ruthless pragmatism reached out to her co-wife pleading to her in sobs that she tends to her daughter when she’s gone.
On her last legs, Akello died 4 months later. Last gasp she left word that under no circumstances should she be buried in Germany but home sweet home.
Her former airline colleagues were bludgeoned by her death. Airline staff look out for each other, even though she left she was still part of the KQ family. Wanjiku her long term chum, was terribly devastated.
Her diaspora hubby had no quid to ferry her body home. Akello’s KQ colleagues got together to raise money to airfreight their own back home, and cater for her funeral expenses.
The funeral turned out to be a big funeral show. The hubby turned out in a gaudy suit, with his two other wives. His friends were movers & shakers attended too, hideously chauffeured in with big machines.
Nothing to write home about, he had quickly built a mud hut for Akello’s funeral. The home a discordant juxtaposition with uppity cars in his bushed rural Alego home. Shame, Shame… how low can one get. What a sad end.
Life has to continue, shortly after her death he had a new catch, wife number 4, but this one he did not take to Norway. She was there to service him when he visited Kenya.
Akello died before collecting her terminal airline pension benefits, A free lunch, her late hubby promptly did that for her & used the money on his fourth new wife, Nyar Coast a Giriama lassie from beachy Malindi.
Nature abhors a vacuum, Nyar Coast filled Akello’s place for mate. Lay it on the line, she married him & birthed a baby boy together in hope of migrating to Germany, in get of new lease of life.
Lady karma is an awful dharma. There’s a Swahili saying “Malipo ni hapa hapa”. Fast forward to today, Akello hubby is dipping into his mid 60s, sadly he has contracted cancer. He is today battling the same battle she did, a pale frail shadow of his handsome.
One hand washes the other, Akello’s co-wife kept her promise & tended to her daughter. Icing on the cake, Akello’s daughter Akinyi graduated as a doctor.
Fish to fry, Akello’s plight is of many Kenyan women I have encountered. Desperate to be married afraid they may become outcasts if they miss the bus. They get big offers from Kenyan men in diaspora who promises them a forever ritzy life. Go belly up, mea culpa they give up their heirlooms to get zilch!
Live and learn, experience is a great teacher. My darlings, Wuod Baba edging 6th floor, have travelled the globe in trot. Let me boon in high noon, the most solid men to moon are those you know, and many of them are right here at home in Kenya. If the shoe fits wear it. For what you see is what you get.
Akello’s is no fish story, life in diaspora is not all butterflies, roses, and rainbows that they tell you.
#okwiri my journal, my thought, my walk…