FELGONAH OYUGA: Why do many men want to con women?

Before I write about men today, let me tell you about them.

Child! So, a man will want to have no strings attached sex with you. Not care about your favourite colour, not even know your last name or where you live or if you are illuminati.

He will want to do the least, like send you a porn clip or a naughty meme or tell you how you are an amazing woman after knowing you for all of three minutes and expect you to be ready to have your feet behind your ears.

Meanwhile, he has a whole wife at home with whom he tied a knot, where no strings sex should be happening. Where he provides a name, a roof, meals and whatever else. Is she a member of the royal family?

Nani, please go home to your wife or go to those who provide sexual services at a fee. At the very least you can support small and sexual businesses. Otherwise, the rest of us have strings all over, we have even braided our hairs with string, we will expect attachment.

Speaking of business, being in it is no walk in the park. Someone said the other day on Twitter that if you want to know God intimately, you should become an entrepreneur. My friend, I will add that you will also work closely with all the voices in your head and maybe five other gods from other religions.

Look, entrepreneurship in this country can make you eat leaves from a strange tree as long as you have been promised that the emotional abuse will stop.

There is always someone wanting to reap where they did not sow: The police, the city council, better known as Kanjo, any relevant government agencies, the weather, clients, employees, your spouse, children, friends, enemies and your village witches. The list is endless.

Everyone thinks that because you have registered a company, you signed up for free-flowing cash from a bottomless well and they all want some of it.

Now, add being a woman in business to that mix.

Many men - many not all - think women only know how to wear bras and panties and count yellow cars in Nairobi. That you cannot know much despite putting together an outfit that actually generates money.

One of my clients had a customer that would literally give her anxiety. He would call to make an order and talk to her like he was talking to a child. Threaten not to pay if it was delivered even five minutes late. Call her insistently at whatever hours. You and I know he would not do this if he was dealing with his fellow man.

So, I asked her to get a man to respond to him and explain to him that he would be handling his orders and that they should be sent by text or email. The man followed instructions and now makes his orders via text to her. But he thinks he is talking to his fellow man.

I learnt that trick when I created an email account for ‘Mike’ my no-nonsense accountant who wrote scathing emails when it was time to collect payments. No man ever complained about him.

Many men have been brought up to think that women and children are on the same wavelength when it comes to thinking. So, you will find a man from wherever who will just decide that he knows more than you and he will not hide it.

I worked for a female-owned microfinance some years back. Our biggest product was asset financing for boda bodas. We would go for functions and be asked where the director was because how could it be a woman?

Once one of our clients, sitting atop his motorbike in Kondele, called the director to declare, “Nataka kufunsa wewe kupanga kasi upate pesa mingi!” The bike that he was paying her for.

A lot of it is really disrespectful. As if we do not get screwed enough by everything else, a man will almost always think he can easily steal from you. I am still trying to figure out if many men are just conmen or bullies.

How else would you explain trying to swindle a woman until she introduces a man to the picture? Suddenly everyone remembers their manners.