Bizarre Sleeping Arrangements For Man With Four Wives

Hezekiah (or simply Hez to his friends) is married to four women. That is hardly surprising but what is really fascinating is the fact that Hez lives in a 3 roomed mabati house in Kawangware, Nairobi. And to make matters even more interesting is currently staying with 5 of his children in the same house.

So the big quiz here is what are the sleeping arrangements in the house?

The truth is often stranger than fiction and this case is no exception and will leave you numb with shock.

And before I reveal it to you, maybe I should add the fact that if you see Hez, you will not believe that he is the man of the exploits you are about to read. He is a fairly small man with a balding head. Yet his four wives fear him and know him as a no-nonsense disciplinarian.

What happens is that out of the four wives, one wife is always upcountry in his Western Kenya home (yes Hez is a Luhya like his 4 wives, what did you expect?). Usually wives are sent upcountry for “discipline” reasons where they will work long hours on the shamba and take back a detailed report to Hez when they are finally called out of exile. That means when another wife inevitably commits some “crime” in the house or displeases “King” Hez in some way.

The children sleep in one crowded room with one of the wives while the other wife sleeps in the sitting room on the couch and the other in the bedroom with Hez. Quite often at night Hez will “finish with one wife” and order her to switch places with the other wife in the sitting room. This information is from neighbours who have overheard things at night (those who have lived in mabati houses know that there are very few secrets between neighbors who live in such structures because even a small sigh of pleasure during lovemaking will be clearly audible to your neighbor if they are awake. This means that more noisy lovemaking has to wait for the dead of the night when the neighbors are in deep sleep and maybe snoring).

Usually the other wife is woken up and told unaitwa (meaning they are being summoned).

On some Fridays when Hez has had a few beers at the local bar nearest his house (where rumour has it that he is also pushing with one of the bar maids with an extremely generous backside) he will end up sleeping with all three wives on one night.

Life is not easy for the wives because they have to try very hard to please Hez in bed and poor performers of the week are consigned to the children’s bedroom which has a heavy smell of urine and will be last in line to “appear before the king.” The best performers will of course end up operating between the bedroom and sitting room.

The wife who persists in poor performances in bed will quickly find herself traveling upcountry to relieve the wife there who will arrive back in the city “hungry” and eager to make amends for the poor showing that caused her to be exiled to the rural area.

There is one particular wife of Hez’s a brown beauty who is said to be wife number two who has never been known to travel upcountry. She is said to hold a special place in Hez’s heart and is the only one who will be slapped in the morning over some mistake she made, like serving tea that is not the correct temperature, but will still amazingly end up in pole position in Hez’s bed on the very same night. For all the other wives a slap means the children’s bedroom and very high chances of being on the bus to Western Kenya before the week is out.

All sorts or rumours are circulating about this favourite wife, whose name is Emma. It is said that she uses witchcraft and this is the reason why Hez finds her irresistible and must therefore sample her every night, even when she is going through that wrong time of the month for women.

Incidentally Hez at the time our informant was his neighbour was in his early 40s but was comfortably having sex every night with his wives.

So what is it that keeps these four women in such an inhuman environment sharing a brutal man who regularly slaps them around? That is a puzzle that I cannot solve because the man is by no means rich. He works in some electrical firm in Nairobi and how he supports all the women in his house and their children is another mystery.