Date Tales: Woman about town

Trouble started when she borrowed his phone to play a game. Illustration | Igah | Nation Media Group

What you need to know:

  • She would swirl it in the air several times before flogging him with it on the head. Dumbfounded, Collins just sat there, eyes on the tee shirt to duck or block the makeshift whip. 
  • A few revelers had gathered around them to find out what was happening, attention that seemed to give Zainab more vigor in the name of punishing her cheating boyfriend.

Collins, an up and coming news reporter, had deemed it fit to get a woman he could wife, settle, and put his life together without having eyes roving around town.

Experience had shown him that most of his unmarried friends spent their free time smoking illegal things, chasing skirts, and getting arrested, a lifestyle he did not want to sink in.

He had a modest single room flat in Huruma, a residential estate on the outskirts of the city, one he had deliberately invested in to send a message to the lucky woman that he had his eyes set on the future.

Generous with smiles

Four kilometers away, in the sprawling slums of Dandora, lived Zainab; a 24- year old girl who worked as a dancer in one of the famous strip clubs in town. She had a cute gap in her upper teeth, one that came into view whenever she smiled, lighting up her face. Aware that this was one of her strong points, she was generous with her smiles, especially before the male folk, and when she got on stage her waist gyrated like it was earmarked for dismantling. Zainab was tall, of medium build, and curvy, a figure that came out conspicuously when she tossed her buibuis and slid into hot pants before stomping the dance floor for a wiggle. Her milkshake brought all the boys to the yard, among them Collins.

Minor detail

It is after he initiated contact and learnt she had a bubbly personality that got him hooked.

Save for her not-so-attractive way of eking a living, Zainab was the quintessential wife in everything else, so Collins was willing to overlook that little blemish and marry her in the hope that as time went by, he would find something better for her to do.

No human is perfect after all, the difference was that this one’s dirt was on a dance floor for men to ogle at, but in his eyes she looked like an answered prayer to his quest for a wife.

That, as he would find out pretty quick, was as far as the accolades went.

Two seemingly jovial and focused lives had crossed paths, a collision course that would end up in a dramatic manner.


To begin with, Collins learnt that Zainab was one giant ball of insecurity. He had experienced bits and pieces of it when they started dating but never knew how far it could go, until  August 3, 2011 when he took her on a night date at a club on Park Road, Ngara.

The first few hours flew by without incident, and Zainab borrowed his phone to play a game. One text was about to change the tranquility that the lovebirds had enjoyed since hooking up, and by extension the entire relationship. It was from his classmate, Juliet, who was informing him of her upcoming birthday party:

Hi dear, bash itakua next week.’

The word ‘dear’ turned Zainab crazy, and like an angry tigress on rampage dipped his phone into a glass full of beer. It did not matter how much Collins tried to convince her that it was a harmless conversation, her mind had concluded he was seeing another woman named Juliet. That is when the mad woman inside her came alive, a side he had either missed out on or she had done well to hide all along.

Used to dancing before crowds

This was a woman who was used to dancing before crowds half naked, so undressing was as easy as ABC for her. She pulled out her tee shirt and used it as a whip to beat him.

She would swirl it in the air several times before flogging him with it on the head. Dumbfounded, Collins just sat there, eyes on the tee shirt to duck or block the makeshift whip.

A few revelers had gathered around them to find out what was happening, attention that seemed to give Zainab more vigor in the name of punishing her cheating boyfriend.

The bouncers intervened and asked them to solve their issues out of the club, that is when Zainab stormed out and threw the phone onto the roof of an adjacent building. Collins, in his inebriated state, followed, and with the help of the bouncers climbed on the roof to look for his phone. Working in the dark, and with him drunk, his spirited search yielded nothing, so he decided to forget about it and come down. Research into Zainab’s life, which he had overlooked during the honeymoon phase, revealed that she was a mother to two girls aged six and three. Collins told me: 

She was a nice girl. It was just that she was insecure. Add a little alcohol and she became wild. That was a bullet dodged, man.

Zainab is currently a carpenter in another slum called Babadogo. Collins is married and a father of one.