Tom Wathika is among the latest of men to fall privy to the knowledge ‘Fear women’. He is the latest case of old men being subdued by young women, only to be left with crumbs.
Aged 60 years, he had just bagged a sum of Sh. 700,000 from selling an asset worth the amount. Within a week, his bank account balance had already begun accumulating some dust, begging to be rejuvenated some more.
Surprisingly, Tom Wathika gave an interview claiming that he wants his story “to be a lesson to others on what to do when you come to cash.”
Briefly put, he advises that any man with unbudgeted cash should avoid getting involved in bars, lodgings and with women not related to you/men pretending to be friendly in bars.
On November 10th, Mr. Wathika cashed in Sh. 700,000 into his bank account, and in the spirit of celebrating a good deal, he decided to head for a bar in Maragua town.
“I own some assets here and there and in my retirement, I decided to sell one of them so as to welcome myself into the world of senior citizens and pensioners,” he said
He thought maybe he could party a day or two before pursuing his dream business venture; a boiled meat business. Little did he know that on November 17th, he would be a cashless folk stranded with bills to pay.
At Maragua town, Mr. Wathika says due to the safety nature of the locality, he decided to club just 100m from a police station that he knew its officers would once in a while visit.
“For those who know Maragua town well, it is a cardinal rule that if you are not streetwise, you make merry near a police station in case you find yourself staring at machetes in the hands of deranged teen criminals,” he stated.
Within one hour his table was full of people and he recounts having taken 8 beers and paying a sum total of Sh. 6,320; just a drop in the ocean of money his bank was filled with, right?
“I’m a popular fella around here and it was not long before I had company, firstly males and then some females…within an hour, my table was a mini party,” he narrates.
Mr. Wathika met one woman at the bar who remain glued to his side. She kept on warning him that being rich and drunk was perilous.
“She appeared genuinely concerned and I trusted her,” he says.
A while later, at around 10:45 pm, bar attendants announce the closure of the bar as license policy strictly indicated they had to close by 11:00 pm.
Mr. Wathika decided to take a room at the bar as lodgings were available and only cost Sh. 300. The woman who was with her was definitely not having it, and instead invited him over to her house that she termed ‘spacious’ and she wouldn’t mind hosting him.
Trounced by the alcohol bottles that he had taken, he was in no state to make a critical decision.
“That is how I ended up not remembering that trusting too much was suicidal and that when the deal is too good, think twice. All those pieces of advice were fairy tales in my intoxicated mind,” he narrates.
He just agreed to go to the woman’s place without opposing, despite a friend he was with at the bar warning him about the woman. The warnings fell on deaf ears after a single kiss. Another kiss and the man was hit by cupid’s love arrow, and hypnotically followed the woman to her home.
“She kissed me on the lips and I forgot the warning. After another kiss, I was following her outside the bar to board a motorcycle and within ten minutes I was in her house watching TV. She lived alone.”
Mr. Wathika did not reveal much about the house he stayed in with the woman. All he had to say was, “It is safe to tell you that I bathed, ate and slept like a king.”
He had just forgotten that the party was meant to last for two days…it went on to six days. He says that God created the universe in six days and rested the seventh, the same period it took him to be white-washed his entire bank account, to be left with shillings that can’t even buy a painkiller to ease his pain.
“The daily routine was waking up, praying together with the woman, bathing, taking breakfast, conversing about this and that, venturing out and into different bars and retiring back to the house for the night,” he says.
The woman paid attention to his business plan (The boiled meat business) and seemed very supportive of it. She drew him a budget of Sh. 250,000. Factoring in miscellaneous expenses, she advised him to withdraw Sh. 350,000. Mr. Wathika was caught in her charm.
“I presented myself to my bank and withdrew the amount and handed it to her. Plus earlier withdrawals, my account balance by day three was slightly over Sh260,000,” he says.
On day four, the woman announced that she had paid for the business premises and she was shopping for qualified workers suited to the job.
“She also told me there were licenses to be paid for and I had to part with a further Sh100,000. She also wanted me to loan her Sh50,000 for an emergency. I honored those demands. So far so good, I thought,” he says.
“On day five, I made several withdrawals because I had decided that too many trips to the bank were tedious.”
On the sixth day, at around 4 pm while they were at the bar, the woman told Mr. Wathika that she had an emergency, something important came up and she would return an hour later.
“She handed back my ATM card. I did not sense anything amiss. I also noticed that there was a parcel that she left behind and it contained my clothes. I did not give it much thought. I continued ordering more beer,” he narrates.
He waited and waited until 10 pm when he tried calling her. Her phone was switched off.
“There was a crisis now because there was a bill of Sh3,100 staring at me and I had no cash in my pocket. I had exhausted what was in my pockets. The rest of the cash was with ‘my woman’,” he says.
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He now says he realized wisdom comes late in life after stupidity has unleashed its venom and done the damage.
“I now had to take charge of my situation. A crisis sometimes sobers people up … I felt sober as a nagging discomfort hit my stomach and at a distance, I could feel a headache building. Things were certainly elephant,” he says.
Still at the bar, he asked for permission from management to go withdraw his cash from the ATM. It was granted on condition that he was escorted by an employee and a motorcyclist chosen by the bar manager.
“In the ATM lobby, the first shock was that of ‘you have insufficient funds to withdraw Sh. 10,000. He asked for the balance and the second shock hit him like a thunderbolt. I had Sh. 8.78 as the available balance,” he says.
That was at around 10:30 pm on November 16th. He went back to the woman’s house and found it locked from the outside. He called her number and she casually picked up and informed him that her military husband from Somalia had come home and they were lodged in a nearby bar.
“I immediately knew I had become yet another boy child to be conquered by the girl child … Not by force, by very peaceful means. I knew the moment of reckoning was here with me,” he says.
To pay the bar, Mr. Wathika called his brother who bailed him out by sending him Sh. 10,000 which he used to pay all pending arrears.
“We went back to the bar. I paid my bill and took a room. The following morning, I was back to my Ruiru home to take stock of my six days in hell,” he says.
The next day as he was leaving for his Ruiru home, and without the woman to defend him, Mr. Wathika was mugged in broad daylight. The muggers said to him, “for all those days you have been accessible owing to that criminal woman you had recruited as your guard”.
They robbed him of all his cash and National ID. Mr. Wathika remains optimistic that now he will get a lot more cash than ever before as he had been well organized during his productive days in the working class.
“But this time round, I am going to do three things: get born again in the Christian faith, cease my love for alcohol and keep away from adventure. The spirits have revealed to me that if I succeeded in doing that, I will live long to see 2065,” he muses, adding that he is not remorseful and harbors no vengeance.
This story has been sourced from the Daily Nation. The Daily Nation is a publication of Nation Media Group.