Snapshots: Miraa is the best thing that ever happened to Nairobi men

Why men forget to shut the door while taking a piss or remember to bin their stinky socks is not what confounds women the most. Why do men chew miraa is what has bothered women since the times of Eve.

Women hate it, but that disdain for khat is, however, misguided. Nothing cements a marriage better than miraa.

Those twigs turn your man into a listener. He will hear your tonal variation when you get to the topic of marriage and notice how you darken and threaten to leave if he won’t put a ring on it after six years of cohabiting. He will let you watch Alejandra, chewing contentedly like a goat throughout the episode.

But that is only when his boys are out of town because when they are around, he gets home at midnight. Of course this leads to another time old question: Do sofas have pins that frighten husbands out of their homes?

Not that women really mind, much as they fuss and sulk over it. When the man is away chewing miraa, the woman can make ugali in peace without some armchair expert trying to teach her how to reduce water and add flour. The nonsense of ‘ugali should be cooked so long that it sticks when flung against a wall’ means La Tormentor starts while the man is still supervising you in the kitchen.

Mark you, this is the same fellow who suddenly realises that it is 9pm and Boyi hasn’t eaten and starts harassing you. It gets so exasperating that you are tempted to call his boys to take him out to wherever to do whatever.

You suspect a man ‘being out with the boys’ involves clandestine relations with young gum-chewing fools who are annoyingly still fit enough tuck their legs behind their heads.

But that is never a bother when your man chews miraa because no matter how virile he is or if every skirt wearer is after him, those twigs kill his sex drive faster than a Kenyan cop downs a suspected gangster that has already surrendered. In short, if Baba Boyi chews miraa, he is all yours.

If Baba Boyi is gloomy man, introduce him to khat, girlfriend. Dry it, grind it and slip it into his evening tea if possible and you will have a comedian for a lover. Humour lies beneath thick layers of fat in every man and all you need to do is scrub, dig it up and brush it to a keen shine with a fistful of miraa.

But there is more to it. If your man is incapable of dreaming, if he just sits there watching foota while his mates run around buying soggy pieces of land in Syokimau, feed him on khat.

In between working that bolus, stripping the bark of the next morsel and sipping soda and munching on peanuts, he will build the cutest castles and dream weddings for his woman.

What more can a girl ask?