In September 2010, Nigerian Pastor Chris Ojigbani, President of Singles and Married Ministries, landed at Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA).

Back then, our airport suffered delusions of grandeur. I mean, regional capitals were landing aircraft in the middle of markets and mud huts. In such circumstances, our JKIA could easily have been mistaken for the pearly gates.

One day, we set the darn thing on fire, and the Rwandans and Ethiopians built massive airports. Before you know it, CNN journalist Larry Madowo was spoiling the country’s good name—airing dispatch after dispatch about leaking roofs, loose wires and cables, peeling paint, and, oh my God, the floods! In our freaking international airport!

In the midst of telling him to go to hell, former prime minister Raila Amolo Odinga, Kenya’s opposition doyen, made a stopover at JKIA on his sojourn to the hereafter, after narrowly escaping cremation in India.

The world recoiled in horror as thousands of people breached airport security to receive him. They hopped aboard his plane and took selfies. One may have farted in the cockpit—for the record.

We wouldn’t have kicked an unholy fuss if the windbreakers were, you know, distinguished members of parliament reeking of French cologne—folks accustomed to airport etiquette. But those people came by matatu, boda boda taxis and, horror of horrors, on foot. They were laden with enough sweat to set off a hydrogen bomb. It is a miracle JKIA didn’t explode.

General Paul Kagame of Rwanda couldn’t help it. He reached for the phone.

“Ssebo,” he saluted his old comrade-in-arms, Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni.  “Look who’s just landed an aircraft in a cowshed!” The two old guerrillas laughed and laughed. 

It was, however, not a laughing matter when Pastor Chris Ojigbani jetted into JKIA. The man of God was on a delicate mission. He wasn’t coming to save souls—his mission was earthly.

Kenya was in the grip of a weather-related crisis: a drought, if you will—a severe “dry spell.” This, uh, dry spell, however, wasn’t roasting the potato and maize-growing fields of Uasin Gishu and Olenguruone. It was an evil, boisterous wind sweeping through women’s bedrooms like a hurricane. Our women weren’t finding husbands—a tad odd, considering all the handsome Kenyan men who suggestively scratch their nether regions in public.

That might look like a non-issue today. But 2010 was the quaint, petticoat age. Only old, wrinkled women smoked, with the lit cigarette end hidden in their mouths—like women. Those who smoked like men were renegades, but they still ducked into toilets for a puff, lest they get struck by lightning. If propositioned, they were expected to be coy; draw lines in the sand with their big toes.  

In fact, how women “behaved” was of such significance that in 2013, the county assembly of Kisumu published a Bill sternly warning them not to sit astride boda boda taxis like “prostitutes”. The mere notion of their delicate lady parts… Get thee behind us, Satan! The thing is, women were required to ride side-saddle, like “ladies”, even if they weren’t.

It would, therefore, have been unthinkable for women, however desperate the circumstances, to proposition men. So, they sat and waited and suffered—in silence.

Somehow, Pastor Chris Ojigbani discerned it, located far as he was. He landed at JKIA, flung off his agbada, and headed straight to the Kenyatta International Conference Centre, as it was known then. Nowadays, they now call it a Convention Centre. The place was packed to the rafters—with single women of all shapes and sizes.

“Lord of Isaac and Jacob,” Ojigbani thundered, “Give my Kenyan sistoz husbands-o-o-o! Let husbands rain, in the name of Ji-zo-s!”

I don’t know if Ojigbani’s prayer reached heaven because the women never bothered to report back with ushuhuda (testimonies). I don’t recall the National Bureau of Statistics recording a sudden surge in wellness occasioned by early-morning cuddles and public displays of affection, either.

Perhaps, Ojigbani’s dispatch found Yahweh on one of his walkabouts with his old nemesis, Satan. St Peter, The Rock, marked it “urgent” and dutifully placed it in His in-tray. Sadly, it remained unattended because the Lord was dealing with serious global calamities, and they were legion: The Eurozone Sovereign Debt Crisis, the Arab Spring, the 2010-2012 World Food Price Crisis, the Fukushima Nuclear disaster… It was bad. Mbaaya.   

And so, in 2020, a decade after sowing seed on barren rock, Pastor Ojigbani jetted once more into JKIA. The man of God looked around and gasped. “What the hell happened here? This place looks like sh…” Fortunately, he stopped himself just in time, flung off his agbada, and strode to Nyayo Stadium in his vest.

The place was packed. Single women were speaking in tongues, praying for husbands. Those who watched the spectacle on television recall a Harmattan billowing off the stadium roof like a whirlwind.

Did the prayers work? I don’t know.  

What I do know is that six years on, young men and women want nothing to do with each other. The boys, 99.999% of whom have never set eyes on a gold nugget, believe all women are gold diggers. The women, on the other hand, believe men are “useless” and not worth their time.

When I first heard about this, I thought kids must be doing what we, their parents, have always demanded of them. Not spoiling their lives with that bad thing of boys and girls. They are focusing on their studies.

Then, I thought, if our children are not spoiling their lives with that bad thing of boys and girls, why the hell are governors building maternity hospitals all over the place? I smiled. Brilliant. Must be asexual reproduction. They are making offspring through binary fission, budding, parthenogenesis, and fragmentation.  Why didn’t we, their parents, think of it?

Suddenly, vicious child-maintenance fights started popping up on social media. Weren’t these confounded kids reproducing asexually?

That is when I stumbled upon data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics and the Kenya Demographic Survey of 2022.  Goddamn it. The kids are sleeping with the enemy, and it isn’t working. Surprise?

Apparently, 34% of all households in Kenya are led by women. Divorce is huge. Eleven per cent of married women and 5% of married men are choosing to walk, instead of strangling each other (hurrah!).

It is chaos in Samburu, Mandera and Turkana, though. Nearly half the warriors step out of the manyatta, pretend to duck behind a bush for number one or two, and then vamoose into thin air—forever.

Pastor Ojigbani? Come back, o-o-o!

Ted Malanda is a consulting writer and editor. He was formerly an associate editor with The Standard in Nairobi, Kenya. Email: ted.malanda@gmail.com

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