Monday, May 20th 2013 When your wife comes home late in the night happy, relaxed and tipsy from a chama (women’s investment club) meeting, she just might have spent a few blissful hours in another man’s arms, writes LINDA KEYA
Initially, chamas were the preserve of rural women who gathered in each other’s houses once a month to socialize over tea and snacks and buy spoons, cups and pans for each other. With time, however, the meetings — which were frowned upon by husbands who reluctantly funded them — rose in stature. Women began buying livestock, building water tanks, buying pieces of land, paying school fees, investing shares on the stock market and even building houses, courtesy of the merry go rounds.
Housewives apart from being an investment club, chamas also became social retreats of sorts, where hardworking but emasculated housewives let their hair down, exhaled, bonded, talked about family and had a jolly good time.
But in towns, it has become routine that after a chama meeting, the women have one for the road, dance and have a blast.
Those in the know say chama members, especially the younger ones, discuss anything, including their sex lives in a language as X-rated as what men use in pubs. Their husbands meanwhile love it because they use their wives’ absence to paint the town red. As a rule, wives in Nairobi rarely come home before 9pm — all giggly and happy — from chama meetings.
Virtuous but it now appears some women have turned the once respectable chama into an avenue for illicit affairs. Increasingly, the investment clubs are becoming a front and an opportunity for secret love, for the romance some women lack in marriage.
Such chamas are the reminiscent of high school peer pressure, where members experiment and share ideas gathered from the Internet, salons, foreign magazines and naughty friends “You mean you only have sex once a fortnight with your husband? What are you telling us? Jipange! What? Ati you have never slept with another man? Bwahahaha!” is a common refrain.
And so a germ is sown in an otherwise, virtuous wife. With time, she discovers she is the odd one out and, with stories flying about how well ‘the other man’ is, how green the grass is across the fence, temptations soar. Before she knows it, she’s bitten the dust. The package, Crazy Monday is reliably informed, comes with trysts in little resorts out of town here familiar faces are unlikely to bump into the adulterous women.
Ironically, married men, whosel wives could be playing similar games, are most preferred because they are deemed to be ‘responsible and reliable’. University graduates still tarmacking are also easy targets. All the young men need to do is to arrive for the rendezvous and everything is paid for. Not surprisingly, this has also created job opportunities for a new breed of ‘service men’ who want to drive good cars, eat in expensive hotels, and get some without spending a dime.
Curiously, few men bother to ask their wives or wives’ friends what they talk about at these meetings, or why they need a whole day to contribute money and discuss only one agenda — the venue of the next meeting.
“It is not easy for a married man to ask his wife such questions. It would suggest that he lacks self-confidence, is obsessed or mistrusts her, which can cause lots of problems in the house. Besides, a woman in a chama meeting is least likely to call her husband, who is enjoying himself in a pub, demanding to know where he is. So men hardly mind their wives long absence,” says Eddie Wamala, an engineer.
Helen, a journalist, wonders why men never ask themselves why their wives spruce up in finery and wear nice perfumes and trendy shoes, yet they are just going to a friend’s house to eat and contribute money. As a matter of fact, while women, especially in Nairobi, actually contribute lots of money and invest heavily through their chamas, the trend has shifted from house meetings to drives out of town to ‘catch up with the girls or inspect pieces of land. But sometimes, the ‘girls’ or ‘plots’ are secret lovers.
Such escapades even extend for a whole weekend. In fact, it has become fashionable for chama members to visit each other’s rural homes or exotic places in national parks for up to three days. The women explain that they need time to socialize with their girlfriends, relax and rejuvenate to ‘get rid of stresses to manage their homes better.
But unknown to their husbands, their boyfriends travel ahead and lodge up in the same hotels .routine so there is no more tea and mandazi or the display of utensils like our mothers did. Husbands, who, at times, finance some of their activities, rarely meet their wives’ chama members because it would be unseemly to ‘sit with women’.
But at what point did chamas evolve from being a Saturday or Sunday afternoon affair in someone’s house to weekend in Nanyuki or Naivasha?“It’s easy. When you tell a man you want to go away for two days, he immediately starts planning to meet his mpango wa kando. In fact, make it a monthly habit such that he knows it is routine. When you want to do your thing, you simply inform your friends to cover for you in case he calls to double check,” says Wakesho, a businesswoman in Nairobi.
Cynthia Kerubo (not her real name), a banker, has walked that path and has no regrets.
“I innocently joined my chama mamas in Naivasha only to discover they had planned to hook up with their boyfriends. I didn’t have one but the next time we met, I gave them a run for their money!” she discloses. But not every husband falls for this lie, though.
“If my wife wants to spend the night out with other women, let her go but she will never step in my house again. Chama is something that should take an hour, not a whole night. Have you heard of ten married men spending two nights in Naivasha without their wives? “Poses James Kimani, a matatu owner in Githurai, Nairobi.
Hide out Kimani narrated to Crazy Monday how he stepped in for his driver recently and drove some women to an exclusive place in Thika for a meeting, only to come face to face with the underhand dealings involved in chamas.
“I was shocked. Those women discussed their husbands throughout the journey. They were not even ashamed of narrating how exciting the escapades with their boyfriends are. ‘My husband is so slow. He is too trusting. Can you believe he agrees to everything say?’ one of the women told the rest who burst out in gregarious laughter,” recalls Kimani.
The official chama meeting ended a few minutes to 1pm. The women had lunch till 3pm before instructing Kimani to drive them to a hideout in the outskirts of Nairobi where they ordered for drinks. Shortly after, Kimani says, sinewy young men started popping in one by one. Within no time, the equation was balanced.
“The men were fairly young; I don’t think there was one more than 25 years old. Couples would disappear one after the other after a few drinks and show up hours later. In fact, it wasn’t before midnight that the women said they were ready to go back to their husbands in Nairobi,” says Kimani.
Notorious But not all chamas are that decadent, though. One group that was interviewed by this writer said they had to expel a member who is a friend because she had become too notorious. “We got concerned because she would lie to her husband that she was with us in a chama meeting yet we knew she was with another man.
“We became afraid that our husbands would get to hear of her conduct and assume all of us were like her,” the group’s chairlady, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said.
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