Equatorial Guinea's Engonga, the Bull of Malabo, exposes sex bias in cheating

Baltasar Ebang Engonga. (Courtesy)

The Internet has been rife with the story of Equatorial Guinea man who recorded his sexual escapades with more than four hundred women. The Bull of Malabo was trending above Donald Trump’s win in the USA presidential elections. Many people did not know where the oil rich former Spanish colony is on the African map. Equatorial Guinea is squeezed in the armpit of Africa, between Gabon, Cameroon and the Atlantic Ocean. That man is the wrong ambassador who did a wrong job so well.

His story reminded me of the double standards whenever a husband or wife cheats. The women he slept with include wives of his relatives and prominent people in the country. I know the videos lit fires in many marriages which may not survive. The man’s life is definitely at risk from disgraced husbands in as much as he is a high ranking government officer.

In Kenya one will hear; mke wa mtu ni sumu - Someone’s wife is poison. Though we all know in the African set up, married women were allowed sexual liaisons with other men but under some cultural guidelines. In Western Kenya, a man was prohibited from physically fighting a man who is sleeping with his wife. It is such an accepted line that is applied even where a lady is not married but lives alone.

We have seen cases in the past when men who were suspected to have sexual relationships with married women died under mysterious circumstances. Their deaths are somehow received as self-inflicted because a married woman is a no-go-zone.

On the other hand, we have also seen several women who have been arraigned in court for murdering their husbands. One of the most recent cases was where a high school principal who was charged and sentenced for murdering her husband, also a teacher.

Kenyan’s reaction to that incident was that the lady acted foolishly because she will go to jail and her children will suffer with no one to look after them. The underlying belief is that two women can share a man but a man should not even think of tasting another man’s wife.

It is also based on the belief that a man will cheat on his wife and still love her while a woman who cheats has already left the union. Women cheat to outsource emotional needs while men can compartmentalise sex. What men may not know is that the new breed of women have flipped the game.

There was storm last week that several football players of a local club were driving to training sessions in cars belonging to older women. The rise of women in the economic food web from a producer to a predator changed the whole matrix. Women have been cheating since time immemorial but are good at concealing it than men can hide their wayward tracks.

Women today have their own money which they have earned from corporate careers, which means they can still look good well into middle ages. Back in the day women in their forties were deemed too old for a glance. However, today women in their fifties still attract attention from men hence more opportunities from men. Men can hit on any woman even if just for a thrill.

The woman is often expected to forgive a man for cheating. The wife to the Malabo man was reported to have put up a post that she has forgiven her husband. On the other hand, men are advised never to forgive a woman who has cheated. Men can revert back to monogamy while it is believed women who have stepped out with several men cannot revert back to factory settings.

These are the biases that guide our relationships when faced with cheating.