Someone somewhere is doing a Kenyan woman wrong

Have you ever been threatened with singlehood? You know, when your visiting aunty asks you if you made the chapatis on the table and you laugh, because you know that you bought those chapatis at your favourite kibanda. Then your aunt gives you a pitying look and says, ‘Your husband will just bring you back to your mother’s house.’ I’ve always wondered why this is such a big threat. I like my mother’s house, for one thing, and we both like the chapos we’re eating, so what’s the problem?

It can be tiring, sometimes, to be a woman, because it feels like from the day you are born, you are being groomed to be a wife. You have to learn how to make ugali, so that your husband will be ‘full’ properly. You have to keep a clean home, so that you’re not sent back home. You need to figure out where the market is, so that you can wake up early on Sunday mornings to go and bargain for all the vegetables your family will need for the whole week. Everything is always dependent on making someone else happy.

Unfortunately, this also extends to the bedroom. At bridal showers, women are told to always give it up, even if you don’t feel like – which is so silly, because how is this fun if we’re not both enjoying it? Who is this marriage for? The sex aunty comes to tell you how to please your man – meanwhile, at his bachelor party, no one is telling him how to please you, because men mistakenly assume that they know everything about bedminton. No, they’re at the bar, working hard to forget whatever happened the night before, so that they can show up bleary-eyed at the altar the next morning. Hopefully.

And I know life isn’t fair, but truly, this isn’t just. We’re misguided about so many things, aren’t we? Men think they can just show up to bedtime escapades with bravado and a condom. Women think everything we do is meant to be for the man – to the point that, even when we’re learning about our own anatomy, during alone time, we’re telling ourselves – oh, I need to learn this, so that I can show someone else how to do it. How about, we are learning this, for ourselves, by ourselves, with guaranteed results? 

Not that sex is everything, of course not. I’ve said this before – there’s no position you can learn from the Kama Sutra that will save a dying marriage and dead conversation. But there seems to be a real deficit in what men are taught about said Kama Sutra, starting with the fact that all the ‘blue movies’ they watch are in no way close to the real thing. You hear morning radio, you have friends, you’re in Facebook groups all saying the same thing. Someone is doing Kenyan women wrong, as opposed to doing them right. What is that really about? Oh, don’t look at me all judgmentally. We’re African! This is what we talked about in traditional African society. There were rites and social situations where people were guided along the roads of pleasure, explained to what a night of marital (or otherwise) bliss entailed. We had dances for this sort of thing, agreements, customs, entire sets of rules around everyone bumping uglies. 

All of a sudden with the welcoming of Western religion, we’ve become those shy folks who would rather have people walk into something so venerated and delicious completely ignorant? Something’s got to give. Can someone start an initiation business, one that doesn’t involve blood and cutting anything, and only includes consent and free flowing knowledge? Because I think I know a couple of men who need to go back to finishing (!) school…

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