Rice

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I received an email. It was the length of a fish finger. I read it from my phone, at home. I had just watered my plant. Yes, now I’m the guy who has a plant. I bought this potted plant recently. Drove all the way to Galleria Mall with my kids to buy it. Kim was bored. He kept saying, “I’m a bit hungry.” I kept telling him, “Tell me when you are a lot hungry.” So he was sulking a bit because I had also refused to buy him ice cream because it was a bit nippy and I’m not fathers who are told, “Are you serious? You bought him ice cream in this weather? Why didn’t you also buy him a beer?” Tamms picked the plant. It’s called Ponytail palm. I wanted a Bonsai but they didn’t have it. I bought the plant because I’m trying to take care of another living thing. Something that doesn’t eat a whole pizza. Something that won’t try and wear the right shoe on the left leg. Most importantly, something that won’t try and entrap me to buy ice cream when it’s cold.

It’s early days between me and this plant. We are still in the part of the relationship where I sometimes just stare at it. Then I sigh deeply. You must have experienced something like that in your life before; when your car was new. Or the first time you saw your woman without clothes. Anyway, I read the email as I stood at the sink in the kitchen, with my mouth slightly open. That’s how I read emails at the sink. It was from a lady. She said her job is to spike men’s drinks and steal from them. Those ladies of mchele. If you are reading this from Kigali or Helsinki, mchele is an urban slang for the drug that some women put in men’s drinks with intentions of knocking them and stealing from them.

I looked at her email address. It seemed real. I read it again, this time at my desk, my plant next to me looking unbothered. She wrote, “I’m not a prostitute, I think I’m just a thief.” Then she said, “If you are interested in my story, let me know.” We did a few emails then she sent her number. I WhatsApped her and said, “I’m meeting some friends for drinks. Wonna have a drink? Ha-ha.”

She replied, “Is that like a test? You said drinks and guys in one sentence. [Smiley].”

I expected a dodgy-looking chick with eyebrows drawn or tattooed by an alcoholic tattooist and a big furry hat on her head made from Cape Buffalo’s hide but which I only realise later when she’s leaving is actually a weave. I expected a woman with those grievously long and curved nails that you see in those painful Tyler Perry movies, painted some horrid bright colour that attracts bees. I expected her to show up in knee-high boots, chewing gum and with smoky dangerous eyes, carrying a small handbag with a tacky golden chain strap. From her voice on the phone, I placed her at 32-years old and with a forehead that can crack a walnut.

The lady who shows up at my local is 23 years old. I can’t describe her further than that for obvious reasons but she isn’t anything I expected. She looks normal. There’s nothing dangerous or risqué about her. She’s beautiful. But not that in-your-face beauty like Toni Braxton but a kind of beauty that lingers. She has make-up on, foundation, eyeliner. She ran a darkish lipstick across her lips. Her eyes are like looking at a soda you just poured in a glass, what’s it called again, yeah, effervescence. But she also has a hardness about her, a streetwise about her which you will miss if you are just caught up in looking into her eyes. It’s a vibe. She won’t be intimidated. She wouldn’t cry if she broke a nail. We are about seven on our table and the average age is 40 but she’s unfazed. She hooks her purse under the table and orders a whisky, neat. Atta girl.

***
She got into this thing in 2017 when she was 21 years old, a mother to a small baby. She had been dating a married man who suddenly went quiet. Cold turkey. The guy simply stopped picking her calls, what the younger folks nowadays call “ghosting.”He had rented for her a house in a Nairobi suburb and paid her monthly upkeep. She had been seeing him since she was 19 years old and knew him well. He was tall, liked brown belts and always wore a hat. He ran a timber yard. Maybe he liked woody scents as well, we will never know.

So this timber guy falls off the face of the earth leaving her with a child to feed and a house she doesn’t know how to pay for. By this time she’d had one stillbirth at 17 years of age, an abortion at 18 (“it was in Kawangware, horrible place; they made you carry the dead foetus home”), and she would have another abortion at 22. So, yeah, she’d been through the small intestines of life and come out of its anus with a bloodied nose.

There was a chick who lived on the third floor of the apartment who she would sometimes chat with when she was outside basking in the sun with her baby. This chick would always be home all day but work at night. “So one time she asked me why I was so sad and I told her my problems and she asked me if I wanted to make quick money,” she says. She was at the end of her tether, so she said, sure anything. What was it about? “She said kudunga wanaume.”

“Na kisu?” She asked.

“No, na dawa,” She said. “Na mucere.”

It sounded interesting. So she was given a crash course. The following day they hit the bar, a local in Kikuyu. She told me its name but I don’t remember it. It was frequented most by the blue collars. It was loud and smelled of meat and beer. The cashier peered behind a cage. Diamond Platinumz blasted loudly from speakers that croaked and choked. There were always some brave men attempting to dance and failing because they would be dancing to Diamond songs with Mugithi moves.

They held court at a table. She wore a sweater top, polka dot tights and an old trench coat that smelled of paraffin smoke. “Those are the days I was dressing badly.” It was 12:30am and a slow night. They ordered one drink each, a Snap. Time passed. They took very small sips of their drinks, just enough to wet their lips. Shortly, a guy wandered over. He wore a brown jacket, a most useless description because in such bars most people generally wore brown jackets. He was drunk, obviously. He carried an unlit cigarette in his hand. He didn’t excuse himself, just sat and started chatting with them. Her partner gave her a signal. They had a signal if the guy was a mark: she would retrieve a small make-up mirror from her purse and look at her face in it, patting her hair. This guy was a go.

“I knew what I was to do but I was very scared at this point,” she says. “Very very scared. I had stuffed two pills in my bra, two blue and one white pill. We hid the pills in our bras or in our weaves.”

“You never know what can come out of those things,” I say.

She laughs.

“The pills are Dormicum and Stilnox, sleeping pills. The blue pill – Dormicum – knocks you out completely but it has a bitter taste. The white one doesn’t knock one out completely, but it’s great because you can slip it in alcohol or coffee and he’d never know.”

“And where do you get these drugs from?”

“There is a guy who supplies,” she says. “I will come to that.”

“Sawa.”

“So, anyway,” she continues, “we have gum, chewing gum, PK. It has a very strong peppermint taste that masks the bitter taste of the blue pill. You chew the gum until it’s still a half pulp with its sweetness and all then you break the blue pill into pieces, spread them on the gum and cover it. Then stuff it in your bra. When you are ready to strike and you are making out, you slip the gum in his mouth like a playful lover would. At this time, most men are drunk and horny and they will think you are being raunchy so they will chew the gum.

Even better if he takes you home. You will say you are hungry and he will probably say there is food in the fridge, which you will offer to get. If there is meat you will put it into the slice of meat and add a lot of pepper or black pepper on it. You can do this with eggs and whatnot. If it’s his car, because some men want to finish it in the car, you just feed him the gum and before long he will be knocked out so you are free to clean him out. We prefer people who take us to a house, though. That way we can steal electronics and things. I will come to that, later. So, si now I’m now about to put in practice what I was taught?”

The man after a while leans in and says, “Si, twende,” which is a form of foreplay. They walk to his car parked at the edge of the club and drive out. As they pass a section of the road that is dark and secluded, he stops the car by the roadside. “I’m panicking now, this man could kill me,” she says. “He starts touching me and all, saying he wants it there. I retrieve the gum that’s already been prepared. I had hidden it discreetly as soon as he stopped the car. All this while I’m pretending to chew. When I give him the gum, he takes it and throws it out the window. Now, I’m screwed. I’m scared and I’m shaking.”

I tell him that I can’t. That I’ve changed my mind. I plead with him to take me back.

The man somehow agrees to drop her back. She finds her friend there seated with two guys. One of the guys end up taking her back to his place, a rambling block of apartments off Thika Road. There was meat in the house so it wasn’t a problem spiking it and feeding him and he blacked out. “The drug also kills your libido. You just get sleepy and boom!” When he woke up, whatever time that may have been, he found his phone, money and the electronics they (she calls backup) could carry missing. (She forgot the TV remote, which reduces the resale value by like 2K).

“I was scared but also excited that I could make money that easily,” she said.

So she got into it.

There was the dread-locked man who she met at a club on Waiyaki Way on a reggae night.
“He was so handsome, ngai!” She exclaims. “He smelled nice and he was so neat. My friend told me in the loo, ‘Hiyo ni mikono ya laptop.’”

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“It means he most likely has a laptop in his car or house. We can see from your hands. Men with laptops have a kind of hand.”

He took her back to his parents’ house. (“It was such a nice house, mwathani! Very nice house.”) His parents were away, abroad. He was a photographer, so he had all these cameras lying around and laptops. She cleaned him out. There was a man in a car who blacked out faster than he could say, ‘Ponytail Palm.” The men who took her to furnished apartments and woke up confused, missing wallets, phones and their dignities. Men fell like dominoes.

“It’s simple,” she says. “After midnight, which is when we go to the club, most men are drunk and when you are drunk you are not very aware of what’s happening right under your nose. I will be pretending to be drunk but watching you and noting your phone-lock combination, your Mpesa and bank PINs. These details are easy to get because they are already drunk and careless. Once I have access to your phone, your PIN and your ID number, we can access your money from your phone and your account. We can take all the mobile loans we can get. We can wire money from your bank account. We will take your laptop and your TV. If you have CCTV you are lucky because we hate those.”

She broke ranks with the one who introduced her to the game and ventured out alone. She met more girls. (“If I walk into a club, I can tell who’s out working.”) She started hitting many clubs in Kikuyu, Kinoo, Langata, Ongata Rongai, Ngong Road, Dagoretti, Eastlands and Ngong. “When you do a good job, you don’t go back there. You wait a few months.”

She upgraded her wardrobe.

“Men are suspicious when you wear something very short and scandalous,” she says. “So I normally wear a nice pair of fitting jeans, and a simple top just showing my cleavage. I have to look like a normal chick out drinking with her pals. You never drink too much but you give the impression that you are drunk. It helps if you are beautiful, so like me I always get lucky most nights because when men are drunk they are always hitting on me. I’m a very good dancer. If you dance, you are luring them. They will see you dancing and come. Sometimes I pretend I’m not interested. Make them imagine they are working hard for it. Once you sit with him, you start picking details; his phone, is he swiping? What bank is he with? What’s his PIN? What phone does he have? We don’t like IPhone users because IPhone has useless resale value.”

“Are you carrying the tablets now?” I ask her.

She laughs. “No. I’m not working today.”

“But since this is what you do for a living, does your hunting instinct naturally kick in even when not working like now?”

She thinks about it. “Yeah. Of course. I think now it is second nature. I’m always looking, seeing who would make an easy prey.”

“Like who now on this table,” I ask her. “Who would you hit?”

She smiles and looks at the men at the table, oblivious to who she is.

“He would be my first target,” she says looking at my bro, Julius.

“Why?”

“He looks gullible. He looks like I would make him trust me the quickest,” she says.

“Second choice?” I ask.

She points at Maasai with her chin.

“He just looks like a horny guy,” she says. “If you are horny you are weak.”

“How do you know a guy is horny?” I ask laughing. “Is it his bushy beard?”

“No. I can just tell…I don’t know, just how he looks at someone.”

“What about him?” I point at Maasai’s bro, Anthony. He’s visiting from the US. She shakes her head. “Too problematic. Something about him that I find too calm.”

“And him?”

She looks at Kwach. “No. Too loud. I’d not bother with him.” She then looks at Japs and says, “He would also not be too difficult; he looks like he gets high quickly.”

***

There are men she regrets spiking and stealing from. There was a guy, a man in his early 50s, who was very nice to her. He was short and drove a nice car. Looked like those guys who wear their spectacles to read an sms. He was a gentleman; he treated her with respect. “He offered me his jacket when I was cold,” she says. She stole his laptop and a Blackberry phone. “I felt so bad. In the Uber home, I cried all the way.” There have been chaps she feels no remorse stealing from. The crude ones. Or the guys who wear bomber jackets. Or the rough and arrogant ones. If you are showy you are going down. There are the lucky ones who for some reason walked away and were saved. Maybe their mothers really prayed for them that night. “There are also the posh ones, the ‘Si we go grab a KFC takeout?’” She says. After grabbing a KFC she grabs your phone and takes out all your mobile loans.

There have been close shaves. Like when her and her two friends were picked by two guys from a club on Langata road and they ended up in one of the guy’s apartments in Langata. How one of them tasted the meat she cooked (it was 2am) and immediately realised something was off with that meat, that it had been laced. And how he walked out to the balcony and from the 4th floor called out to the watchman telling him that none of us should leave under any circumstances. And she knew shit had fit the fan and this guy started pacing up and down the house, telling his friend (a doctor, he said) to go brush his teeth and touch his teeth. And he kept saying aggressive things to his pal in their mother tongue (jango) which she couldn’t understand and she knew they were going to get beat up. “We were scared!” She says. “This guy, a very tall guy, was drunk and livid, and telling his pal things. “Eventually he calmed down and we all had sex.”

“Even after that?”

“Haha. I know.” She laughs. “What you have to realize is that when a man is drunk and horny he will do the stupidest of things. It’s almost like they are not themselves.”

I ask her if she has any remorse at all, spiking drinks and stealing. “Half my friends would not do the mchele thing. Some are afraid but most don’t have the heart to engage in such disgusting things,” she says.

She never knew her father, she tells me when I ask about him. Doesn’t remember him. He walked out one morning when she was a toddler and never came back. Her grandmother took her in. “My mom came into the picture when I was eight years old. My mom was a drunk who worked in a bar,” she says. “My siblings all have different fathers. One time I came back from school and walked in on my mom having sex with my stepdad. I cried so much. That image haunted me for a long time. It also happened with my other brother, he also saw my mom and another couple, naked. I was exposed to a lot; she would bring home different men drunk. Those were her irresponsible days. She ruined me. I don’t know what my life would have been if my grandma had raised me throughout, I suppose much better. My mom put me in an environment where nothing was wrong, anything went. There is something called ‘thithi” in Kikuyu. It’s zero chills. You don’t care about anything. A friend of mine had an abortion and she was so depressed she had to tell her mom and dad. Her mom spent a lot of money on counselling and medication for her. I had two abortions and my heart doesn’t break a bit.”

“By the way,” I ask, “When you did the abortion in Kawangware and you were given the dead foetus, where did you take it?”

“I threw it in a pit latrine,” she deadpans and I feel my stomach tighten.

“How did that make you feel?”

She’s quiet. “Not human..”

When she was in Form Three third she fell in love with a boy who ran a kinyozi. He was 23 years old and had sideburns. She was in love and school was getting in the way of this love and when it came to choose between school (the Periodic table) and love she chose love. So she quit to go play house with the barber guy and his sideburns. Inevitably, she got pregnant and had that stillborn mentioned earlier. Soon, their love ran into rocky shores. They constantly blamed each other over their dead baby.They fought constantly. Then he shaved another girl. (This is a kinyozi metaphor, guys). They broke up. She then met the married guy who she liked because he was “mature” and seemed “to know what he wanted in life.” (The greatest misconception of married men).

“The married guy also took me for adult education, which was cool. But our relationship was so weird, man.” She says. “It was based on money. He never came when my baby was born, never took me anywhere. When rent was due he sent money, when I wanted money to go to the clinic he sent money, when I wanted clothes for the baby he sent money.”

“Throwing money at a problem,” I say.

“Yeah.” She pauses then slips into a brief silence. I don’t know what she’s thinking about but I’m thinking about the foetus in the pit latrine.

“Men die from being drugged by these pills.” I tell her. “Does that not bother you, that one of these guys you mention might not have woken up?”

There is a long pause.

“A friend of mine says if we go out and we have a good night and make good money and the job was easy then we know God is punishing that person for something.” she says. It brings to my mind that quote from Martin Luther King about the arch of the moral universe. “Some men deserve to be stolen from.”

“Who does?” I ask.

“Some of those we steal from.” Pause. “I don’t know, but some jobs are too easy it’s like you were meant to destroy that person. I think if you are a man and you take me (23 years old) to a room to have sex then you deserve what’s coming. You have a wife at home, if I steal from you then God is punishing you for cheating on your wife.”

The irony is not lost on me, of course that she’s the one picked by God to mete out justice. To bend the moral arc of the universe towards justice. I want to say something sarcastic but I don’t.

“Do you use your number when working at night?”

“No. I have a number for the night that I give these men if they ask for it. I also use a different name when I introduce myself.”

I’m also wondering why people choose to tell their stories. Especially stories like this. What motivates them? Why do they want others to know? Why don’t they just go about their business in silence? Why invite attention?

“The reason why I wanted to tell you my story is because I want to see myself away from myself. As in, I want to read about myself, about these horrible things that I do with the hope of judging the character. I hope that I might read about this person, this girl, and feel remorse. Maybe grow a conscience,” she says. “You know, my mother fucked me up and I could just fuck up my daughter too, so I’m hoping to avert that. I stopped this business late last year. My last job was in December. I hope that someone will read this and vow never to be like me.” Then she adds with a warm smile. “Also, I wanted to meet you. I’ve read you for so long. I like writing. I write once in a while.”

“Won’t telling your story make it harder for girls, your friends, to do business anymore?”

“No. It doesn’t matter, imagine. Men know these things. It’s not like they don’t. A drunk man will always take a strange girl to a room. It won’t stop because you wrote this,” she says suddenly sounding older than her years. “Sex is a powerful. if you pour alcohol in it all reason fly out the window. So no, write it, and that week it runs someone who reads it will pick a girl from a bar.”

She finishes her drink, I call her Uber and leaves into the night that she chose. The table liked her. Even the girls on the table liked her. She was chill and easy. She made light funny jabs at how old the music was, how terribly “ancient” we all seemed, listening to someone called Keith Sweat, who she must have wondered why on earth someone would be called a sweat. Her drink never changed or altered her in anyway. She wore one look, throughout. Of control.

I had earlier asked her if she would take a job and how much she would want in salary to never go back to those activities of the night.

“Maybe 60K a month?” She says uncertainly, in form of a question, as if checking with me if I think she’s worth that.

**
You have a compelling story about life? I’d love to tell it, [email protected]

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210 Comments
  1. Just like you Biko, I’ve always imagined women who spike drinks to have a certain distinct look. Long brightly-colored nails and those glow-in-the-dark colors being among the looks. I was surprised that she is smart enough to know too short a dress can raise an alarm with men. That’s some advanced theory in reverse psychology.

    I hope her life changes for the better. That she finds the satisfaction of raising her child better than she got raised by her mother. This is what most of us want in life. That our kids will walk a better path than us.

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    1. I want to love that young girl and be her mommy and help her take care of her baby. Oh LORD the place of brokenness in our society that only you understand?!!! Please let her find someone to give her a job. God help her help herself and her daughter.

      Now I know where men disappear for 2 days because of mchele and lost phones. I believe there is a type to it too. I have never tasted alcohol but from my friends and relatives I have seen who can be taken for a ride and who can smell the ride a million seconds before it comes.

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  2. The first sight of an empty room is like a scarecrow to a man. If she had mercy on you not to touch your whisky, you gulp more shots and go back into your dreamland.
    Funny enough, as men regret losing items, not having sex with the thief tops the list…
    Anyway, mam must do what a man has to do.

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  3. Shame on her for blaming her mom for ‘ruining’ her life. At what point does one realise it is them who decide on things and simply find someone to blame? Anyway, I kind of hate and admire this lady at the same time. but soon she will be old and not so beautiful anymore right? Maybe it’s time to think about another trade.. Good read Biko.

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  4. Done. Man this world. But she makes sense, if you are a married man trying to sleep with a stranger without a condom, maybe you deserve this kind of punishment before you wipe your whole family out with AIDS.

    I once had this experience with some friends. One of us noticed his had been spiked but we did not sip it or let the girls know. They went to the bathroom and we poured and ordered new drinks chap chap. We then started to act sleepy and told then we had a place. We rented a room with double beds, left our wallets in the car and refused to sleep. The frustration on the girls pretending to sleep was hilarious.

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  5. OH, WOW!!

    “No. It doesn’t matter, imagine. Men know these things. It’s not like they don’t. A drunk man will always take a strange girl to a room. It won’t stop because you wrote this,” “Sex is a powerful. if you pour alcohol in it all reason fly out the window. So no, write it, and that week it runs someone who reads it will pick a girl from a bar.”

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  6. Hi Biko,

    “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.” – St. Augustine of Hippo.

    This, I believe is the reason come forward. No Soul rests until it finds rest in the Lord.

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  7. Men are so gullible and we just never learn. I fail to understand why we know about these things but we still pick girls in clubs for sex. We clearly deserve to be punished.

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  8. O my goodness!! The guts on these streets!! Im just here wondering who supplies the supplier and what is the intended original use of the drugs…

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    1. Usually used postoperatively to help a patient who may be in severe pain to sleep. Only sold with a prescription so I am here wondering about this supplier. Bet he works in a government hospital because such drugs are highly tracked in private institutions.

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  9. I have a ponytail palm. They don’t like too much water. Thats why they have the big bulb at the bottom. Just so you know

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  10. I was wondering when Toni Braxton would make her first annual mentions in the blog and there she is.

    This girl would make a good criminal investigator profiler . She’s got an eye for detail.

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  11. “A friend of mine says if we go out and we have a good night and make good money and the job was easy then we know God is punishing that person for something.” she says. It brings to my mind that quote from Martin Luther King about the arch of the moral universe. “Some men deserve to be stolen from.

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  12. What a story. I pray she finds what she was looking for when she told you this story. There is something about that girl and it is a good thing.

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  13. I have read this article with my mouth wide open I can’t believe this girl was this honest and I applaud her for walking away from what she used to do…

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  14. Broken people raise broken children. she isn’t even 30 and has gone through so much. I have a feeling she will not stop. easy money is addictive and every time life is hard it Will be an easy fix unless she meets a nice guy and settles down.But she is right men will never stop. i have a guy pal who has been spiked three times. once he even had all his clothes robbed and left naked in his car, account cleared.phone and work laptop robbed but that has not stopped him from his ways.

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  15. This is the reason i tell people to just stay in their houses and sleep.
    Hakuna kitu mnatafuta huko nje( unless you also want to be robbed)

    I pray she finds that job she desires.

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  16. Women never get spiked because they look after each other. They would never let their friend leave with stranger. Men and out silly masculinity,pick out a girl, abandon your friends that you came in with and even take a stranger to your house so you can impress them with what you have. Agreed, some men deserve to be stolen from!

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  17. Wa Biko! Quite an eye opener. Back in the day we’d go out dance have fun and go back home safely. The problems of this generation is something else. I keep wondering what our children will have to go through when they come of age. It’s scary!

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  18. Mine was spiked but since I get whisky dick after half a bottle (400ml of 40% alc) I chose to head home by myself . I slept on the wheel and ended up on the concrete drums that block a right turn at the Westlands roundabout.
    I know I was spiked because when I left her at the table , I was sober. I was simply changing drinking venues. Yet I slept and when I woke up with a broken nose from the impact, the tow truck guys had a hard time explaining to me where I was. Westlands was strange yet am there daily. I was towed to parklands police station. Next day, massive headache.

    I now go to pee in the urinal with my glass at hand.

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  19. Guys in bomber jackets be warned you are an easy target. I support the stealing from old married men taking the girls in rooms. You leave a wife at home and go to the bar for girls, bad manners

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  20. I truly hope she finds a way to raise her daughter better than she was raised.
    I will not judge her, she did what she had to do then.

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  21. Reading this story sort reminded me of that serial rapist, the young Indonesian PhD student Reynard Sinaga who scoured a particular street in Manchester (close to his apartment), and preyed vulnerable men, asked them to come up to his apartment if they needed to use his phone, to call a taxi, have a drink, yada yada, then spiked their drinks and raped them. One day he slipped up, and a guy woke up when he was being assaulted and called the cops.
    Unlike this lady though, the guy was just a psycho, a pervert who did it for ‘fun’? And recorded it all on his phones, which was used as evidence against him.
    I’m glad this young lady decided to stop, because I guess she would one day slip up, and be locked up.
    I hope though just like Frank Abagnale whose story was portrayed in the movie “Catch me if you can”; she can turn around and pursue a career in Law enforcement and psychology, and guide the cops in helping to stop mchele and other criminal activities like terrorism.

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  22. This line here; ‘…. been through the small intestines of life and come out of its anus with a bloodied nose..’

    Men will always be robbed, even after reading this. Illicit Sexual drive and alcohol is such a lethal combination.

    I hope she finds some job otherwise she will slide back to what she knows best.

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  23. “A drunk man will always take a strange girl to a room. It won’t stop because you wrote this,” ….wueeh! These are some hard truths.

    I like her…I hope she gets to raise her daughter waaaay better and different than her mother.

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  24. I think she should stop blaming her mum for the path she has chosen.
    I grieve for her poor choices. She needs help and to move away from the cycle that she might put her own child through. She is old enough to distinguish between right and wrong. I think she needs counseling to move on and be who God intended for her to be.
    We as individuals have free will and can actively grow and develop ourselves to the highest potentials towards self-actualization ~Abraham Maslow

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    1. I actually believe her when she says that her mum fucked her up and that is why she ended up like this. How we learnt to love, the trauma we endured and how we were parented affects us in every way, in what we turn out to be as adults. The difference comes up when you recognize how your childhood has affected you and led you to be the way you are, heal that, accept it and reconcile with it and then begin to chart a new path for yourself. Without healing our inner child, you will have a pattern of habits going on and on and you will wonder where they came from! This girl is deeply wounded (not a justification of the things she has done, because our actions have consequences, regardless of the meaning and motive) she needs to heal, and then she will be able to raise her daughter better and the generations to come.

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  25. Life has a funny way of arching the moral bow.she tells this story hoping those who read it would shun this kind of life.on the contrary i find it attractive and challenging. The muchele beat.because it will be for fun i will find a way of returning the loot like the international pick pockets who announce their exploits in a newspaper and MKL will remain unperturbed.

    1
  26. what a read!!!, got me thinking about an article I read about smoking and how its the ‘universe’s way of naturally getting rid of dumb people’..something to the tune of ‘if you have been warned about smoking and its numerous health risks but still go ahead, then should you die of ,say lung cancer, you deserve it.’

    2
  27. You know who should hire this babe, a bar that is serious about its security. She should also ask for twice that much seeing as she would be worth every penny.

    I am slow to judge her because I know what it feels like to be stuck between a rock and a hard place.

    31
  28. Biko, thank you for providing us with insights to the real people in us and among us. And lady, in spite of all that has happened, there’s greatness in you that cannot be silenced.

    6
  29. ……she’d been through the small intestines of life and come out of its anus with a bloodied nose. ….

    This is a chilling story.

    7
  30. “That week it runs,someone will read it and pick a girl from a bar” Let it not be any of us can‍♀️‍♀️

    2
  31. Reading this reminded me about the storo on twitter about a guy who took a chick home and was wekewad mchele on the mchele they cooked, after eating and blacking out was robbed everything and only woke up after 2 days hungry as hell, goes ahead to eat the mcheled mchele as he prepares to go report to the police, gets drossy and sleeps for another 2days. Definately this chicks work. Ha-ha

    59
  32. Now that I know “si twende” is foreplay, I understand why my unamused “twende wapi” response was a dealbreaker

    12
  33. “Sex is a powerful. if you pour alcohol in it all reason fly out the window. So no, write it, and that week it runs someone who reads it will pick a girl from a bar.”
    How true can this be? It might not be today week but someone who will read this will one day forget and pick a girl from a bar.

    Biko Hii Mwaka Unatuchanua. Your reward is in heaven.

    2
  34. She thinks about it. “Yeah. Of course. I think now it is second nature. I’m always looking, seeing who would make an easy prey.”

    Ina run kwa blood yaani.

  35. All this for money. Money is the worst discovery of human life. What is life?
    Also, I read that part where the guys were speaking Jang in Jang

    7
  36. I surprised myself – I read this with great sympathy and understanding. Plus she sounds like a good mom, her kid is lucky. But if I were a judge and she came before my court, I’d throw the book at her (attempted murder, assault, grievous bodily harm etc).

    5
  37. Lakini Bikozulu! Huwa hauogopi kushikwa?! Mara robbers, mara women intentionally infecting others with HIV. Huyu sasa?

    1
  38. woiiii….Biko! tuko duniani kweli.everyone has a story to tell, just that some of us don’t have the courage to call you yet.

    5
  39. If you read this and still picked a girl and got wiped out, trust me, there is nothing between your ears, nothing.

    13
  40. Are victims ashamed of reporting these cases? I am assuming an mpesa statement clearly shows the recipient details which can be traced??????????

    3
  41. “Throwing money to problems”
    My childhood was full of this too.
    I felt this lady. May she get better with every sunrise.
    Biko, You always strike it!

    2
  42. I feel some typa way. My heart is broken. She has gone through so much.. Biko, your art and craft is going such a long way!

    I hope she gets a good job that will sustain her and her child. At least she is willing to put that past behind her.

    5
  43. I refuse to judge her. She doesn’t pick the men from their houses. And as she says….if you are 50 and having sex with someone old enough to be your daughter..then probably you deserve it.

    4
  44. She stopped late last year? No she didn’t, this is Njanuary and last year is 28days ago, and men are yet to get paid. Even pubs are empty. She can resume next week, knowing that she’s living on borrowed time. And she will be caught one day. Karma cant let you walk away.

    5
  45. “There is something called ‘thithi” in Kikuyu. It’s zero chills. You don’t care about anything”

    Actually Thithi is the chills. Zero chills/not caring about a thing is Lack of Thithi (kuaga Thithi)

    I think there is hope for this girl. There is always hope.

    6
  46. If you are reading this from Kigali or Helsinki, mchele is an urban slang for the drug that some women put in men’s drinks with intentions of knocking them and stealing from them….

    Up or out?

    2
  47. Oh,wow..have learnt a few things about sex and alcohol. Glad she is a reformed person.Hope she finds her career path of writing…

    1
  48. She then met the married guy who she liked because he was “mature” and seemed “to know what he wanted in life.” (The greatest misconception of married men).

    2
  49. “So, yeah, she’d been through the small intestines of life and come out of its anus with a bloodied nose.”

    Hehehe. What is this expression!?

  50. If you’ve watched ‘Power’ or/and ‘Empire’ series, parents blame their circumstances (violent neighborhood etc) for their crimes. They tell their kids this to dissuade them from making bad choices. But it doesn’t work. Kids emulate what they see adults do; coz to them- adult stuff is cool.
    Let’s front a better version of ourselves- for the kids.

    2
  51. Reading this left me with a tone of thoughts and feelings..it makes me wonder how you feel about some of the people you meet.

    2
  52. Amuse(amaze)ment! Like this. I’ve been spiked myself, but low scale like, coz mine are not laptop hands. So ok. Great that she quit

  53. She’s good and she’s been quite lucky all these years in that kinda business but luck runs out, she should always have that at the back of her mind. So glad that she’s out of that business, time to be brave and make some clean money honey!

    1
  54. smart broad this one has had to muscle her way through what life has thrown at her, lemons and gin I call it so if her end goal is digging her hand in the cookie jar to feed her baby so be it. Good read. Ever thought of doing a vlog for some of this stories Biko syndication syndication syndication 😉

    3
  55. …”So, yeah, she’d been through the small intestines of life and come out of its anus with a bloodied nose….” What an expression

    1
  56. What is it with Alcohol that make people pick strange girls in a club?
    Why blame alcohol?
    But anyhow, always a great read and yes, I pray that she gets a conscience soon.

    1
  57. A day after and the wait was worthwhile. This writing people’s stories is truly your bailiwick. Keep up the good work Sire.

    I’d love to be your tyro in writing as a way of expression. Basta…

    1
  58. Good read but also leaves a bitter taste to my mouth.2years ago a former schoolmate survived alshabab in Somali only to come and die from an overdose of “rice”.He just forgot to go with his drink and when he came back all hell broke loose.

    1
  59. I think she still has that conscience it’s in there hidden. Sometimes well, most times us women just talk things out to feel lighter, not seeking a solution but to know that another gets us, or tries to anyway. May she know, she is loved and she is well on her way to a better life.

  60. Nice reflection of the underbelly that is our Nairobi.

    Not receiving your notifications of the posts! Got this off a pals WhatsApp status!

    1
  61. Wow!can’t judge!!won’t judge.
    All sad but i pray to God she finds something decent to do and make a living out of it.

  62. “And where do you get these drugs from?”

    “There is a guy who supplies,” she says. “I will come to that.”

    “Sawa.”
    ———————
    Biko, you forgot to interrogate this one further. Good one nonetheless.

    2
  63. About this Tuesday’s Biko’s chosen tools of mass destruction, Dormicum… Dormir happens to be a french verb meaning ‘to sleep’… then cum, cum is just cum in any language…do your math. Stilnox… has an aspect of knocking somebody still, as in immobilising. Either this pharmacologist was trying to make humor or Biko’s picking our senses in broad daylight.

    Anyways, that part where this woke fella tasted the stilnox in the meat, called his doctor friend, raised hell, talked to the watchman, whipped up tension for 2 seconds, then calmed down, ignored all the red flags and had sex… has cracked me open. I think coronavirus is nothing compared to a horny man.

    8
  64. Sadly the men never learn from others mistakes. I know someone who was a victim, I also empathise with why this lady turned to this ‘trade’. I enjoyed the read though.

  65. The fact that she wanted her story told and again read her own story is a return of her consciousness…Change is coming and its a good thing. I pray that she finds her heart to forgive her mother, her past and her new beginning.
    Isaiah 43: 18 – 19, says Forget the former things and do not dwell in the past, See am doing a new thing , now it springs up, do you not perceive it?
    I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland… May Jesus relocate you wherever you are.

    6
  66. I find it funny that Biko initially thought God assigned her the responsibility of bending arc of the universe towards justice. Super sarcastic but too funny! Haha

    1
  67. Two times, my house had been swept clean of electronics by these tricks…. They dress so well and speak perfect English…..
    The first one was in 24th Dec 2017.. Me and my friend picked her from a club, she was buying her own drinks, I love a lady who takes tusker (not GK) then we go to the house and she offers to prepare us coffee to cool off the steam… She spiked the damn coffee. …the only thing I remember was when we went to the bedroom about to bj me and she had a white bra…. The next morning I wake up with no TV, phone, laptop, home theatre and some damn sheets…..
    I hate those tricks…..the next time was 6 months later…. Same case… This time I know better.. Better live with my horniness……
    If I encounter one today. Walai she will have a bullet in her brains

    6
  68. Mayo mayoooo!!!!quite a chilling story Biko. Come to think of it, we’re all capable of becoming wicked, brutish and pitiless inorder to survive,and if caught between a hard place and a rock………………….that man Niccolo Machiavelli was somehow right.

    An interesting piece I must say.

    3
  69. Mayo mayoooo!!!!quite a chilling story Biko. Come to think of it, we’re all capable of becoming wicked, brutish and pitiless inorder to survive,and if caught between a hard place and a rock………………….that man Niccolo Machiavelli was somehow right.

    An interesting piece I must say.

    1
  70. “if I steal from you then God is punishing you for cheating on your wife.”#Blasphemous.
    Repent while you still have time.Judgement day is near and your mum won’t be judged for ypir actions.God is gracious and merciful.

    2
  71. She can go to hell and all her other ‘she-devils’. People die…and she thinks she is carrying out ‘God’ punishment. She serves a dark god. Plain and simple!

  72. I suppose “chipoing” is a disease. It’s an addiction.

    I have a friend who can’t just stop it. He’s been robbed a couple of times. Not to mention being drugged. But he can’t just stop it.

    After the ordeal he vows never to “chipoe” only to resume duty after a month or so.

    For the lady, I hope that she will never go back to the old ways.

  73. ““Sex is a powerful. if you pour alcohol in it all reason fly out the window. So no, write it, and that week it runs someone who reads it will pick a girl from a bar.” My favourite read this far.

    1
  74. Nice story. And for the first time Biko thought about us and explained what mchele means.he always writes Swahili words and leaves it at that.

  75. There is a quote that goes something like “women you can’t live with them or without them”. We conveniently forget that Eve had a closed door meeting with the Devil and probably signed some MoU on behalf of.her dependants.
    Men , never get a break. When women are drugged, the world stops spinning. .an angel was molested by a demon. We howl but when a woman drugs a man..so what…he deserved it for being stupid and the world wobbles with laughter.
    Violence against men by women suffers the same fate. Society allows only one sex victim status but I digress. Women disrespect other women constantly by opening legs to married men but they get a pass. They prostitute themselves out for degrees, jobs, promotions , cars, houses etc because men NEED sex. A billion sperm need jobs they cannot be home unemployed in an SQ near a sewer.

    4
  76. And if you’re reading from Dodoma or Stockholm, ‘mchele’ is also urban slang for a drug some men put in women’s drinks with the intention of taking advantage of their now impaired judgement.

  77. The things desperation will have you do just to survive are crazy; i’m not approving what this lady is doing but i know rearing a child and trying not to disappoint them can take a toll on you. And as a mother, you would do anything to make sure your children have the best in life.
    Someone please give this lady a job.

  78. Such an eye openerBiko! This story for Michele I keep hearing about it…but not the way you have broken it down. I won’t judge her coz only God is the judge & I can only pray that she reforms for her own sake & that of her baby. May God help her to come to terms with her past

  79. Bikozulu, please help me find this lady. This is my humble request. I just have to sit down with her for at least 2 hours.
    I’ll really appreciate.

    Thank you.

    1
  80. I kept wondering how in her theatrics the prey wouldn’t smell that something was a miss, if it was I, you give me gum, and i choose to take it, we are making out with that gum.you cook food and refuse to eat it for whatever reason,i’m not eating it either but then again i’m just a chick.kweli sex+alcohol=zero sense

  81. “Sex is powerful” if you pour alcohol in it all reason fly out a window…. Every person have experienced the hardest part of there lives

    1
  82. What ay story thanx Biko for agreeing to write that story,indeed it’s an eye opener,and taking that journey in the eyes of a Rice giver!Kudos!
    Biko looking forward to your next master piece.

  83. I am so showing my sister this story. There was a time my brother’s house was wiped clean of all electronics and a spare tyre lol and he told us he suspected his girlfriend who we had never met. He lived in Kikuyu at the time. Looool. Now that I think about it, this girl and her workmates must have made him a victim. I don’t know whether to laugh at him or pity him.

    Also, how do they walk out of an apartment block carrying such equipment? Watchman akiwa wapi?

  84. mmhh. The fact that she was blave enough to share the Story somehow Shows she is ready for Change…..my instinct says so.

  85. Hurt people hurt people. Her mom had no business doing all of that in front of her kids. Hope she finds healing cause I sense that this cycle will continue with her child. Oh that poor baby.

  86. The reality that is…… well, life!
    She’s bright……. many men sadly don’t have the ‘brains’ to protect themselves when they are all high and horny.

    She’s definitely broken from the way she was brought up and it’s sad that it could be cycle…… not necessarily of a similar ‘evil.

    I pray that she’ll be OK….. and most importantly, her daughter.
    She seems intentional about this change…..

    1
  87. Am I the only one who thinks it’s a lame excuse to hurt someone because of your upbringing. Most horrible people always blame the way they were brought up as the reason for their actions. It’s a self preservation act and I think we give it too much credit while we can even at a tender age actually do something about it and end up being better human beings. With all the brutal honesty I can possibly gather, I strongly believe if you are a prostitute, a serial killer, a thief etc it’s because you chose to be not because of the way you were brought up..

    1. Even the good Bible says “bring/train up a child in the way you would want them to be”(excuse my paraphrasing).
      It clearly goes to show that our upbringing has the greatest impact on how we turn out.

      1. I agree with you that off course our environment influence a lot of whom we are and end up being. Using Train as the key word from the good book, she wasn’t trained to steal or drug people, she just grew up in a bad environment and ended up making bad choices such as stealing and drugging people but the choices were hers to make. She had the option of learning from her bad environment on what not to do thus avoid making those choices otherwise we would all literary end up in the footsteps of our parents so to speak.

  88. That lady is right. These men deserve such horrible acts. This is the only way they can lean. I’m saying this because certainly someone somewhere has warned them about the dangers of their behaviour and lifestyle, but as usual and they are too proud to listen.

  89. Wow! I am learning new things everyday. For the young lady I hope she gets a job to help her child and avoid the job she was doing before.

    2