Ladies, this is how to be interesting to a Kenyan man

If you are into history, you will discover the one thing that it really seems to teach most strongly: people don’t learn much from history. That is, generations continue to make similar mistakes. I’ve taught you how to be fishers of men, that is if you read last week’s column. But it’s not enough to know how to fish, you have to know how to keep the fish, well, urm…hooked.

I present Exhibit A. Pay attention because we don’t have much time, and fish go bad fast when they are kept waiting.

Call Twitter “Twirra.” Speak English of the nose. Bonus points if you can pull off the how-did-you-know-I-am-a-Kenyan-content-creator starter kit English of: Oh my gash! It’s Toosdee! Guys my Jupiter is in retrograde so I can’t record before 12 pm?” (Full marks if you don’t have a YouTube channel, which is not unique, but catastrophic!)

Say your name is Hannah. Or Patience. Peninnah. The more Biblical (Biblier?) the better. You want to give off prudish vibes, even though, entre nous, we know the pages of the Bible aren’t the only thing that you’ve been turning.

Never pee in front of him. Or fart. Especially that. In fact, when the rubber meets the road, you might sooner die from fart-induced hypnosis than you spicing the air with your scent of love. You might say that farting shows you two are close. Do you know who else is close? Bros. And you never want to be called a bro. Trust me. Let him think that your fart fades into some vaporous pink float on the air that looks like a Barbie doll. Which reminds me, be a doll. Not so smart that you challenge his ego and not too dumb that he’d rather have a conversation with the doorknob instead. You know the proverbial has hit the fan when he defends you as ‘really smart when you get to know her,’. That means you are dumb. Let me break it down for you: you’re really smart for a smokin’-hot girl who is stupid.

Say or post meaningless things like: “Aki babes!” or “I know a lot of you have been asking” or “Penda wewe sana!” Describe your lifestyle with hashtags. #Thepeninnahs. #trusttheprocess #somemenarejusttheworst. Hashtags helped established what has become a very 21st-century phenomenon: it started off as a righteous cause, and then, almost overnight, became a dumpster-fire tabloid fixation.

What’s the name of your favourite colour? That’s right. You forgot. If your favourite colour is blue, say things like, “Aki babes! This is embarrassing…it’s like the colour of the swimming pool? The same colour as my panties but I am not wearing any panties now..” He doesn’t need to know that you are wearing panties, because you’re a grown woman who likes wearing undies. Leave everything to the imagination, much like the panties.

It doesn’t really matter what your favourite colour is anyway, because your best is the home kit of his favourite soccer team. Say ‘soccer’ because everyone else calls it football. That will advertise your sense of humour! Of course, a non-threatening, less funny sense of humour than his. If he doesn’t have a favourite footba…, I mean, soccer team, then why are you even reading this?

Ah, yes. Read well. Or pretend to read well. Like those Instagram sapiosexuals with a dyed-in-the-wool modus operandi: take a picture of a book, show a little skin here and a little wine there. Copy some fake caption from some faux intellectuals online. But be intelligent enough to be a sparkling conversationalist, witty with the comeback, but not overtly intellectually aggressive enough to call him on any of his *expletive removed*.

Drive a kadudu.

Drive a kadudu, very badly.

Drive a kadudu very, very badly he offers to drive you around. Do not know what a carburettor is. Heck, I also don’t know what a carburettor is. In fact, sometimes, confuse your car keys with your house keys, despite the fact that one has a remote and the other is shaped like a house key. Once in a while run out of fuel. It shouldn’t be too hard now (I realise that joke is in bad taste. Laugh anyway). Remember to always pull your seat all the way up to the steering wheel such that you look like an animated cartoon figure with a question mark anvil hanging over your head. Any little scratch and you feel it personally. Especially if it is on the carburettor. By the way, what is a carburettor?

He knows you like eating. So, eat. He can tell you like your food solid, thick, and bloody: a beast with a voracious appetite and a body that suggests the opposite. Ditch the popularism contest of those ludicrous women who insist on eating lettuce, those weak-hearted vegetarians who grow faint at the sight of animal flesh. Or better yet, let him be the (your?) hero and order for you, giving the waiter a sneer that shows he's got it all under control. He’ll ignore your wants, needs and deadly seafood allergy and order oysters (shrimp on the side!).

Now that we are on top of meals, occasionally burn his ugali. Cool his rage by asking for help. Men like to be deferred to when it comes to food.

‘Borrow’ his hoodies and tee-shirts and boxers. On second thought, leave the boxers. Wear his clothes and say they smell like him. If you want to be extra cute, roll up in a ball of affection and have smudgy little eyes whenever you are in his oversized tees (hint: he should be checking his weight) and say how good taste he has in clothes. Even though you picked said clothes. Still, #toocute.

If he is a mama’s boy, which seeing that you’ve read this far, he definitely is, then never cross his mother. In fact, if Netflix documentaries and copious amounts of YouTube ghost-caught-on-cameras shows have taught me anything, is that power is the ultimate aphrodisiac. Thus, go straight to the top. Look for the mother and get comfy with her, carry her favour. You’ll be pathetic for it, but guess what? You’ll be pathetically powerful. Win-win-win.  

Occasionally leave a pregnancy test kit around the house. Wait, don’t do that. That was a bizarre proposition.

Laugh at his jokes. All of them. No exception. But not too hard. (This would make you a fan, not a love interest.)

Men like to be asked things. Just not where he was. Or who is Susan? No. Try asking questions that can change the world. Questions that let him be the man. Your man. Important questions like—what is a carburettor? 

[email protected] @eddyashioya

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