In 2014 a New Mexico woman was arrested by officers of the Albuquerque Police Department in an extreme case of stalking.
The 28-year-old woman allegedly called her ex-lover 77,639 times, sent him 1,937 emails, 41,229 text messages, 217 sung messages and 647 letters all in a week. They had only dated for three weeks.
Away from New Mexico, events such as these happen even here in Kenya, with some men forced to change their addresses or jobs when a woman becomes “impossible”.
“It has happened to me,” says Makau, an IT expert working in Nairobi’s central business district. “In January, I met a very beautiful lady who swept me off my feet with her high standards, beauty and mannerisms. It was two months later that I realised it was all a facade.”
According to Makau, the lady took over his life including planning what he would wear for an entire week, his diet, who he would see and who he wouldn’t. She even discouraged him from bonding with his female neighbours, telling him Nyumba Kumi is a failed policy.
What do you love about Kenya?Every woman stalks
“She decided that some of my friends were not good for me and tried to find me new friends who were basically her male friends,” said Makau, who had no choice but to live with the fact that the lady had forcibly moved to his house.
“Three quarters of her clothes and shoes were shipped into my small house three weeks after we met. She only went to her place if her parents or siblings were coming over. She was literally my wife for three weeks.”
When it became too suffocating, Makau, who was not keen on a serious relationship, started coming up with all manner of excuses so that he would not be found at home.
“She started accompanying me to see clients. It was too much.”
What Makau had not anticipated was the reaction after he broke up with her. “She could make a good detective for the Anti-Terrorism police.”
The lady, who works for a leading Mombasa-based State corporation with offices in Nairobi, pitched camp in clubs Makau frequented, the church he goes to and went on to call his relatives in a bid to win him back.
“I figured she did not know she was clingy and insecure. She is a threat to herself. I think she was the reason I was losing weight.”
According to Helen, a social media enthusiast and fashionista, being clingy and stalking is part of a woman’s job description and is embedded in her DNA.
“Every woman stalks. We stalk our crushes, our boyfriends, lovers, husbands and more so, our exes. It just happens,” says the pretty lady, who confesses to following all her boyfriends and exes on social media.
“It happens naturally. If he likes a ‘chick’s’ photo, there are always two scenarios. He is either friends with the woman or he is trying to get her attention. I need to know,” said the lady, who recently went to Masaku 7s to see if his boyfriend was there.
“He had been acting funny all week and I suspected he was planning to take someone other than me there. I braved the traffic. scoured the grounds and basically the entire town without informing him. He was lucky not to be there,” says Helen, who admitted to not knowing where her boyfriend spent his nights that weekend.
In another incident, a lady managed to trace a guy’s name and where he lived, even paying an unannounced visit to his home. This, a day after they had met in a club.
“She dropped me a note with her number and a message that she liked me and within minutes, we were chatting on Whatsapp,” said Timo, a gym enthusiast, who met the lady at a club in Kasarani. “Within minutes she had my name and by the next day, she told me where I worked after I had lied to her that I was jobless.”
Timothy became afraid when he returned home the next day to be informed by the guard that a lady had been at his house twice looking for him. In the evening, she appeared at another club where he had gone with his friends to imbibe.
“She is pretty and sexy but with such stalking ‘tabias’, I don’t intend to date her or to have anything to do with her.”
Tales of ladies stalking men in their places of work are very common. These ladies will ensure they are well acquainted with guards or secretaries, to the point where they are comfortable in offices that are not theirs.
“I met a lady in a coffee shop and within days, she had mastered my schedule. She would always come to the reception area knowing I would leave by 5pm,” said Jerry, a young salesman in Nairobi.
“There was no escaping as the reception was the only way out. She made sure I went home, or wherever I was going, that I would go with her.”
According to Jerry, some ladies confuse being clingy with romance, wanting to be with “their” men without knowing that these actions only invite scorn and ridicule.
I’m a man
“I am the man. I should look for her, not the other way round,” said Jerry, who explained that the said lady had “spies” all over town who would report to her whenever he was seen somewhere else.
“She has, on two occasions, appeared in a club I’m sure she never knew existed. Or she would pretend she is in the neighbourhood and wanted to see me. Must be the spies she has.”
In their defense, Muthoni, who is a chef at a four star hotel on Mombasa Road, said that the modern Nairobi guy is too sneaky to trust.
“He will lie to four different women about his social status and the women will believe him because he has refined his cheating ways. One has to ensure you are random and clingy, otherwise you will be stringed along by a married man without knowing,” said Muthoni, who snoops on her guy’s phone whenever she can.
“I make sure I go to his place unannounced as a safety measure. He has to accept my ways for the relationship to work.”
Ken Omondi was shocked that a woman he had started a harmless chat with one morning on a matatu would end up at his place for three days.
Ken, a real estate agent in Nairobi, said he was convinced that once they reached their destination it would be the last time he would hearing from her.
Luckiest man
But he found the woman, 21, to be quite friendly and he asked for her number with the intention of calling her someday. It did not occur to him that the striking college girl had other ideas.
“Quite frankly, I was a little pleased with myself at first for having had the nerve to start a conversation with this young woman,” Ken said. “She was beautiful and her conversation suggested a person of refined upbringing who would be fun to hang out with. I didn’t mind having her as a friend. God knows, I even entertained thoughts of cheating on my current girlfriend with her.”
At the bus stop he bade her goodbye and walked to his work place. No sooner had he settled in the office than he received the first text from the woman who had told him she was a student in one of the universities in the city centre. It was an innocuous message: “Hey it was nice meeting you!” He replied, “Same here!”
Things started escalating from that moment on. Ken said they exchanged text messages well past midnight that day. The following day in the evening, they met at a club in town before they proceeded to his place. He says his girlfriend was away in Kisumu on a work-related trip for a week.
He was feeling like the luckiest man on the planet the following morning for having bagged what was easily the prettiest woman this side of Tassia. But as he prepared to leave for work, Ken was taken aback by one incident. As he stepped out of the bathroom, he found the woman hard at work ironing his clothes. She had entered his closet and picked out what she thought he should be wearing for the day. What was more perplexing was that as soon as she was done with the ironing she jumped back in bed.
Playing tricks
Ken was expecting that she would also be getting ready to leave the house. She told Ken she didn’t have classes that day. It was a Friday and she saw no reason to leave the house. Ken who was getting late for work so he left her at his place hoping she would leave later in the day and instructed the watchman to look out for anything suspicious. This is Nairobi after all.
He returned home in the evening to the smell of pilau. The lady had cooked and cleaned the house. The laundry was also done. The following day was a Saturday and Ken the lady were holed up home for the rest the weekend.
“She did not seem interested in leaving even after I told her my girlfriend would be back soon. Come Monday I had to use a trick. I came back in the evening from work and asked her to accompany me to the market; I then pretended I had left the money in the house. I asked her to wait for me as I went to collect it.”
Ken went back home, grabbed her “fornication bag”, stuffed her belongings into it and handed it to the watchman with a Sh1000 note. He then bolted the door and left instructions that she should not be allowed in. He then switched off his phone and went to his friend’s place where he spent the night.
“I hear she left after midnight.”