By Edwin Makiche

When Dorothy, a young lawyer in Nairobi, met Mark, a young man from Southern Sudan, it was a case of love at first sight.

He was not only composed and handsome, but also seemed intelligent and focused. He claimed to be a programmes officer with the UN.

He had been injured while serving in Sudan, he said, and was being treated at a Nairobi hospital. He said he had no family or close relatives, having lost them during the war in his country.

Dorothy was touched by the story and determined to assist him emotionally until he was back on his feet.

But what started out as visits by a concerned friend soon blossomed into love.

Mark seemed to fit the profile of the sort of man she had been looking for. After discharge, he wanted to go back home since he was missing ‘his people’ terribly but she would hear none of it.

"Honey, wait till you are fully recovered," she implored. "Sometimes your own life should come before the interests of those you serve."

He agreed and moved into her house in Buru Buru estate.

Every morning he would use her car to drop her at her workplace and pick her up in the evening.

Elusive and evasive

She never bothered to ask what he did with it the rest of the day but believed he was doing fine from the hourly telephone phone calls he made.

The man was a real sweetheart and after a month Dorothy was convinced that she had made the right choice.

She was touched when he offered to help her get a job with an agency that dealt in human rights, her childhood dream career. Head over heels in love, she even entrusted Mark with her ATM card and gave him the green light to withdraw money whenever he needed it.

Three months later the man was still in her house and there was no longer talk of going back to work. She wanted to remind him about it but feared hurting the love of her life.

Then Mark started being elusive and evasive, sometimes not appearing at her house for two days. When she confronted him, he told her about meetings and training sessions he was holding with colleagues. And to back it up, he produced some documents bearing the UN logo.

The he disappeared. Dorothy could not believe it at first. She tried calling but his phone was switched off. She waited for two weeks but he didn’t show up.

Then it dawned on her that she had been dating a conman. The tragedy was, she didn’t even know him by his second name. He had not just wrecked her heart but had drained her savings dry.

When she made inquiries, she discovered that the man was a hopeless job seeker and had vanished from the streets after ‘hitting the jack pot’.

"I felt like punching someone but it was a little bit too late,’’ she says.

Dorothy’s experience is not exceptional. Kemunto, a hair stylist in Nairobi, regrets marrying just such a man.

Many men had approached her but she had turned them down. But one day she met a man who said he was an insurance broker in Nairobi, and something told her that he was her man.

Everything went smoothly until five months into their marriage when the man unaccountably lost his job. At the time Kemunto ran a thriving hotel and shop business. She was secretly pleased when her husband was sacked for they could now settle down and discuss about starting a family. And besides, he could lend her a hand in running the business.

Repaying loan

Eager to expand, she borrowed a Sh250,000 loan to start a bar near Sotik town. She even put her husband in charge of the ‘family business’. She even found him a small office within the town.

"I thought that since he was well educated and had lived in the town, he would profit from having a decent place from which to operate,’’ she says.

The business went well for the first few months but then started experiencing some inexplicable losses. At first she attributed the dwindling sales to the failing rains and famine during at that time. But when tea farmers in the area received a bonus and none of the money came into the business, she started worrying.

When she asked him what the problem was, the man became defensive and blamed the Government for the exorbitant beer prices. Though he assured her that everything would turn out fine, she was downcast.

Apparently, while the woman struggled in Kisii, her man was busy drinking himself silly and entertaining friends and mistresses.

Then her husband called to say that burglars had raided the shop and taken all the money from the cash and emptied the beer store.

It was true that thieves had raided the shop at night but eyewitnesses said that the shelves were as good as empty at the time. Everyone knew how the man had been living it up.

Kemunto, who had to shoulder the burden of repaying the loan, could stand him no more.

I told him to pack and leave,’’ she says.

Catherine, a student at the University of Nairobi, has a good reason to believe that her boyfriend is a gold digger. Though he understands that she is also a student, he has never even pretended to foot the bills. He is perpetually broke, always borrowing ‘soft loans’ from her claiming that he is expecting a large sum of money from uncles and cousins working abroad.

When the debt is due, he comes up with new story such as that his ATM card got jammed or that the Western Union money transfer system is down.

Campus friend

The man also makes surprise appearances during mealtimes claiming to have forgotten something.

"I have been waiting for him to reform for the last six months and now I feel that I might be dating the wrong person,’’ she says.

Lorna, a student at the same university, says she also once dated such a man. She considered herself lucky for hooking an attractive man.

She was the envy of her friends. But the man turned out to be perpetually broke. Every time they went out in the company of his friends, Lorna had to pay the bills.

They would order for food and drinks, but when the bill came, the man would walk out pretending to be taking a call.

The man claimed to own a number of businesses in the city and had several ATM cards, but he had no money on him.

She finally kicked him out after he borrowed money from her saying that his ‘cheque’ had not matured and failed to repay.

"It was my college fees and I almost missed the examination,’’ she says.

Such experiences are not confined to relationships. I had a friend in campus who had a similar habit. He never bothered to book a room claiming that he was too busy to queue for a receipt.

Instead he would spend the semester moving from one friend’s room to another. For this he was nicknamed ‘Pirate’.

He was an engaging storyteller and had a way of convincing people that he had big plans. At one time, he solicited money from us claiming that he had bought a photocopying machine and that all he lacked was capital to start a business.

We gave him the money he wanted only to find out later that he had used it to settle another debt. Another time he came with shocking news that his mother had died and that he had no fare to travel to his home in Western Kenya. We organised a mini fundraiser only to realise later that he had used the money to buy a phone.

Mutua, a media practitioner, works with someone with similar habits. This person always joins him at his table during lunchtime.

They chat while eating but when the bill comes, the fellow asks him to pay claiming that he has a ‘big’ note and would pay back his share once they get back to the office.

Mutua was shocked to discover that the man had told the same story to many other people.