The whole week on Twitter, we have had Kenyans and Nigerians at war. It began with some Oga boy who tried to diminish our country at a time when we are feeling very sensitive to stuff, like high fuel cost at this start of September.
And what a Naija troll starts on social media, you can be sure our online warriors will finish.
We Kenyans were trained in the art of the insult as a primary school extracurricular activity.
Mchongoano was our specialty by the time we did KCPE, the way ‘Mwakenyas’ are for some students in university.
The best one I heard was the one about why you should never take a Nigerian woman out for candlelit dinner.
‘She will think you are performing a ritual, and run away.’
Anyway, here are my observations on where many Naija brodas go wrong with dating.
First of all, a woman can never be sure of the true identity of the Oga guy she is dating.
‘My name is Agu Ajigbotoso,’ he will introduce himself.
Then you go to the club, and everyone, including the waitress, is referring to him as ‘Randy Okigbo.’
If you go to the chap’s place, as you look through a drawer as he sleeps (you are ransacking to look for toothpaste), you find two passports with his picture on them.
In one passport, he is Shaquille Okwechukwu, and in the other he is Andrew Adebayo.
Then one day the dude is arrested, and you find out, on TV, that you’ve been dealing with Chitwel Chinedu.
Secondly, some Ogas can be too much. Does everything have to be flashy and flamboyant?
Women should learn never to trust a chap who is too sharply dressed, and smells strongly of cologne.
An honest man is always a wee bit rugged, or unkempt, or with the shirt over the top of trouser.
Not those ones who are bald, but they cut the beard in a circle around their mouth.
Do not break bread with men who wear white suits with white shoes and white boxers.
With the dust in this city, no one dresses like that, unless one is hiding something dark inside – but wants to appear as ‘mweupe kama cotton wool.’
And why do so many ogas talk in VERY LOUD VOICES, as if they are addressing a sermon? Very annoying.
Thirdly, try not to fall for the hyperbole. We know women fall in love through their ears – the way men do through their eyes – but how desperate for compliments and affirmation must a woman be to believe a man who:
(a) Constantly keeps telling her she is the most blessed, beautiful, bejeweled, brilliant, bedazzling, bespoke, beguiling, beloved, belladonna in the world – before you realise the Oga is full of b.s.? (By the way, belladonna is a very poisonous plant).
(b) He is always waiting for the cargo that will make you two a fortune to arrive from Port Harcourt. And you have already shelled out almost Sh250,000 in the last eight months (since that super slow ship sailed) in thirty thao lots as it made its way down: Pointe Noire, Luanda, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, East London (SA), Durban, Maputo and Beira – but it will get to Mombasa by December!
This ship is the opposite of the swift imaginary ships that brought us maize from ‘Mexico’ last year, when the price of unga had gone through the roof. You must admire the Oga imagination, though, although I wish they would limit it to literature, a la Chimamanda.
Those ‘419’ scam stories they tell on e-mail are like the synopsis of a Nollywood tele-novella.