Women And Handbags

After the National park and the museum the other tourist attraction in Nairobi is our women. I like watching women, who doesn’t? Even women like to watch women. If you’re in CBD and you stand around Kencom, ok you might not want to stand because someone might mistake you for their blind date so just walk while casting glances at the fairer sex every now and then and there are things you won’t miss. Their hair, it usually comes in different shapes, sizes and colors. There are those who look like they have a raccoon on their head and others still look like a Peter Marangi paint job gone awry.

They’re those in extremely high heels making that cling, clang sound as they walk and you wonder how they’re managing to maintain their balance when for you, even riding a bicycle is a problem. Then comes the outfits and majority ladies in Kenya have two uniforms, animal print and the black and white maxis and skirts that resemble zebras. What is the obsession with trying to look like wild animal’s girls?

But any who this article is not about hair, clothes nor shoes it’s about handbags the one item that you will almost never miss a woman without.

When I’m taking a bird on a rendezvous I usually just have my keys and my phone, my phone fits perfectly in my skinny jeans (I hope this is not a deal breaker for the lady’s) but my keys are another issue. I feel uncomfortable when they’re in my pockets so I prefer just holding them. Which gets gehls eyeballing me wondering if they’re car keys and they find themselves in my kitchen preparing me a meal before they can finish wondering hehe

But I digress, where were we? Yes, a bird on a rendezvous. I meet my flame for the night who is carrying a mammoth handbag, we exchange niceties and she volunteers to put my keys in her handbag. My heart does a jig and I hand her my keys against my better judgment. She dumps them in her handbag and we enter one of the popular restaurants in Nairobi. P.S. Not the kind where they serve frittata and croissants.

Fast forward to when we’re leaving and my keys are nowhere to be found. She removes a packet of crisps, a whole file of receipts, make-up case still nothing. She’s getting restless and I’m trying not to look but I can’t stop myself because she could get in her handbag and come out with Rihanna and I wouldn’t want to miss that for the world.

[Hyperventilating]

“Did I really put them in my handbag or did I drop them?”

“Come on, I saw you put them in there.”

[Restless]

“Imagine I can’t find them.”

“Ok let me take a look.” (Chaps learn from my mistake and never, ever risk your life like this.)

I pick up the vortex that is the handbag and it feels heavier than a VITZ and I wonder if I have taken the rock out for dinner. Chaps in the restaurant have already started eyeballing me. Feeling sorry for me. Like the kid who cries for a razor blade and the mom hands it to them so they can learn after cutting themselves.

I insert my face into the labyrinth that is the handbag and I’m immediately sucked into the vortex. It’s a whole entire world in there chaps. It’s a self-contained city with stadiums, malls and hospitals. There are tablets, a bottle of cough syrup and Lucozade. There are about four pairs of sunglasses and at least a hundred dozen small pockets with zips on them, I suppose there was a secret one that belonged to ISIS. I get out sweating and panting when I come across horizontal thingamajigs with wiggling tails in the end. The men in the restaurant are wearing knowing faces as if they knew I had flown too close to the sun and gotten burnt.

[Breathing heavily]

“I couldn’t find them either, just see if you can find them I know they’re in there somewhere.”

She shakes the bag and I think it’s in vain because while on my trip to the 8^th continent I had come across coins not only Kenyan currency but other countries too. She shakes the bag again then her entire hand disappears in it and it comes out holding my keys. Phew!

[Smiling]

“They must have been caught up in the bottom of the bag.”

I sit there with my mouth ajar wondering how many floors the bag has, and if they would have found me if I had disappeared in it. Would Jubilee have been kind enough to send in the Israelis with their dogs to find me? I also think out loud that I should be writing her letters because they would take shorter to arrive than the time she would take to locate her phone in her handbag which earns me a punch on the shoulder. Ouch!

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