I’m talking to you, yes you, who’s been busy talking about how it’s time for you to look for a “mubaba” to enhance your life. To heal your broken heart with money.

Saying, “kama mbaya mbaya, hata wash wash ni sawa, you only live once!” You who’s talking about how tired you are of working hard and now you want to work smart. Well, no judgement here, just a word of caution; nothing worth having, nothing worth bragging about, comes freely. Yes, you can definitely have what you’re summoning.

You just better be ready to live anything but a conventional life. Let me explain using a few examples of friends and friends of friends…

Marion is always in bed sleeping, or just waking up every time I call her. This is mostly midmorning and afternoon. I keep a day job, but I enjoy the stories from

Marion’s unconventional life. Marion lives in Lavington, one of the expensive neighborhoods in Nairobi. Her rent is 150 thousand Kenyan shillings. Her kids go to one of the most expensive schools where their schoolmates are kids of the who’s who, where she pays obscene amounts in dollars, an amount you and I would use to buy an acre in Kitengela every term.

If you were to sell her human hair collection, shoes, bags and clothes you’d easily finish that bank loan making your payslip figures look ridiculous. Her nails are always done, her holidays alone or with her kids, locally or internationally, always a given. You’ll never catch her off-guard, without money or plans, yet our girl has no day job that we know of.

So you who’s been struggling to catch up on your twenty thousand a month rent arrears, are also trying to figure out how to be like Marion. So you ask “Sensei” to teach you her ways.

“First of all we’ll start with that skin of yours. My girl Bertha is coming this weekend from Arusha. I’ll ask her to add on my order so you can start working on your appearance” Let’s just say your life changes from there. You start bleaching your skin slowly, you start religiously working out and having only one small meal a day.

According to Marion’s mind, you can only have clear alcohol, no soda, no unnecessary sleep hours, because you have a day job but your new life requires you to be available for exclusive houseparties at any time.

Within no certain amount of time, you start looking the part. You start wondering why Marion is always taking photos of you. Once you get to your first invite only party, it all starts making sense. Those photos were being sent out to potential “sponsors”. Before you decide whether to judge your decisions, you’re holding bottles you only see in international music videos and playing with dollars and euros.

You’re on the fast lane with no specific destination and you love it! You compromise on everything that you ever believed in, just so you can continue to feed your thirst for greatness. You are now addicted to the life. You can’t tell your old friends what you do. You can’t invite them into the “circle”.

You can’t make time for them like you used to. You just can never be able to explain it all, and finally, you can’t go back to your old life. You get used to the new name your new friends gave you. You are swimming in the confusion where you don’t know what these guys of opulence do, but you don’t care because

you are affording things you’d never dreamed of. You can’t listen to Gospel without drinking because damn, you have negatively ticked the whole list of the commandments and you can’t stop. Your family is enjoying money they don’t know where you get from.

Your parents are old and traditional. They’re back home bragging about their daughter’s promotion at work, the new double cab you bought for your father, the fees you’re paying for your small brother in college and your mother’s “chama” wants to know if she is interested in taking more than one “number” because her money is never late, her “vitenges” are expensive and she’s always dropped off by a driver for their meetings. You my dear, will spend years convincing yourself that you’re living life while enabling your family, but you’ll use all sorts of substances in order to numb the

reality. Unfortunately that life, as a woman, your expiry date comes sooner than you expect. New, younger, more beautiful, more daring girls, are always coming onto the scene. The strong ones later go into therapy and church. The aggressive ones get married to local foreigners as 3rd, 4th wives, become “madames” and then it’s downhill from there.

Another friend of mine in moral quagmire is Vivian. She’s fresh from a major character development and feels overwhelmed but will not take time to heal. She has not eaten or slept well since her husband left for according to her, “a less educated woman with no job” She’s hellbent on getting someone to heal her heart with money, on serving her husband “pepe” type of revenge, but I don’t see how it is revenge when it’s her body and mind

getting the beating. You see, every time she meets a man who is interested in her, one, the man is married. Two, the men always make her go for a HIV test. Three, on realising that she’s starting to get too attached, and is obviously looking for a committed partner in bedroom crime, they leave. Of course this is usually after having intimate moments. Vivian has gotten a car from one of these new passers-by. She has paid her rent and her children’s school fees for the whole year.

She has a well paying day job as an accountant, her family is supportive and they all live in the city. After a few months of dealing with heartbreak in her own way, she’s now more depressed than before. She knows her husband won’t take her back. She also knows that with her children, it’s not impossible to get another husband, but it is an uphill task. Then I hear her talking to someone on phone telling her to check for her results on email, which she does. Suddenly she’s on the floor crying, screaming and shouting, “Oh Lord, what have I done?” Your guess is as good as mine.

Working hard is difficult but nothing worth having comes easy. A lot of things we want do come easily sometimes. They just come attached to things that will either change you, or finish you or both, and It’s up to you to decide which route to take. Social media has made a lot of people compromise their beliefs in order to compete with falsehood. You can either believe this or come back to us with your own experiences.