Mke wa Bwana
"Bwana works overseas eleven months a year. His thick wife supervises the estate alone—including the gardener who tends more than the flowers. Her bedroom window overlooks his work. She watches. Then she calls him inside."
Bwana Karanja lives in Dubai.
Oil money. Construction contracts. Eleven months a year in the desert, building someone else's kingdom. He comes home for three weeks in December—checks the estate, sees his wife, flies back.
I'm the gardener.
I'm here every day.
Bi Wanjiku is forty-six years old.
Married to Bwana Karanja for twenty-three years. Gave him children who are now grown and gone. Lives alone in a twelve-room mansion on a five-acre estate in Karen.
I maintain those five acres.
I also maintain her.
She watches me from her bedroom window.
I know because I've started looking up. Every morning, while I trim the hedges and tend the roses, her curtain twitches. Her silhouette appears. She's watching.
For a year, that's all she did.
Then she called me inside.
"The roses need attention," she said.
I was standing in her kitchen, dirty from the garden, confused about why the madam wanted to discuss roses indoors.
"I fertilized them last week—"
"Not those roses." She moved closer. "My roses."
Her hand found my chest—gardener's shirt, sweaty from work. She didn't seem to mind.
"Bwana—"
"Is in Dubai." Her fingers traced down my stomach. "Building towers. Making millions. Forgetting he has a wife."
"Madam—"
"Don't call me Madam." She unbuttoned my shirt. "Call me Wanjiku. Call me the woman you watch every time you look up at my window."
"You know I look?"
"I know everything that happens on my estate." She smiled. "Including what's about to happen."
I took the master's wife in her kitchen.
Lifted her onto the counter where she supervises the cook, spread her thick thighs, and tasted her while she gripped my hair.
"Yes—I knew you'd know how—a man who works with his hands—"
I work with my mouth first.
Eat her until she comes twice, until she's shaking, until she begs for more.
"Inside me—please—a year of watching you—"
I give her what she's been watching for.
She's tighter than I expected.
Bwana Karanja clearly hasn't touched her in years. She clenches around me like she's forgotten what this feels like—maybe she has.
"Three weeks a year—that's all he gives me—and even then he's tired—"
"He's a fool—"
"He's rich." She bounces on me, her thick body overwhelming. "Rich men think money is enough. They forget what women really need."
"What do you need?"
"This." She comes on me, screaming. "This. Every day. While he builds his towers."
Every day becomes our rhythm.
Nine AM—I arrive for work. Ten AM—she calls me inside for "garden consultations." Two PM—we meet in the gazebo she had built "for shade." Five PM—before I leave, one more session in whichever room she's chosen.
"The staff must know," I say one day.
"The staff knows." She's riding me in the master bedroom, in the bed Bwana Karanja sleeps in for three weeks a year. "They're paid to know nothing."
"And Bwana?"
"Bwana calls once a week. Talks about construction. Never asks about me." She clenches around me. "Why would he? I'm just another property. Another asset to be maintained."
"You're more than that."
"To you." She comes, shaking. "Only to you."
December approaches.
"He's coming home," she tells me.
We're in the garden—her bedroom is visible above. For three weeks, I won't be able to look up and see her.
"Three weeks without—"
"Without touching me." She takes my hand. "But you'll still work. I'll still watch. And when he leaves..."
"I'll be here."
"You'll always be here." She kisses me softly. "You're not an employee anymore, Kamau. You're the man who keeps me alive."
Bwana Karanja arrives on December 1st.
I work in the garden while he walks the estate—inspecting, approving, never really seeing. He nods at me once.
"Garden looks good."
"Thank you, Bwana."
"Wanjiku must keep you busy."
He has no idea.
I see them through the windows.
Dinners together, sitting in silence. Nights in separate rooms—he sleeps in the master, she sleeps in the guest bedroom. "His snoring," she explained once. "I can't stand it."
She can stand my snoring.
She's proven that.
He leaves on December 23rd.
I'm trimming the hedges when his car pulls out. Within an hour, she's at her window, beckoning.
I'm inside before the car reaches the highway.
"Three weeks of nothing," she gasps.
We're in the master bedroom—his side of the bed, deliberately. She's riding me with three weeks of desperation.
"He didn't touch me once—"
"He never does—"
"Never." She bounces harder. "Eleven years since he touched me. Eleven years of being furniture."
"You're not furniture—"
"To him I am." She comes, screaming. "To you, I'm everything."
The years pass.
Bwana Karanja makes more money. Comes home less—two weeks now, sometimes just ten days. I maintain the estate. I maintain his wife.
"I've been thinking," she says one day. "About the future."
"What future?"
"He's getting older. His health is failing." She traces a finger down my chest. "The money will be mine eventually. The estate. Everything."
"And me?"
"You'll be more than a gardener." She kisses me deeply. "You'll be the man who built everything while he built towers in the desert."
Bwana Karanja dies in Dubai.
Heart attack. Sudden. The money comes home, even though he never really did. Bi Wanjiku inherits everything—the estate, the accounts, the life he built without her.
"I'm no longer the Bwana's wife," she tells me.
"Who are you?"
"Just Wanjiku." She pulls me into her arms. "Your Wanjiku. Finally, completely, yours."
I no longer live in the servant's quarters.
I live in the master bedroom. The bed is ours now. The estate is ours. I still garden—I like the work—but now I garden for us.
"The roses need attention," she says sometimes.
I know what she means.
I always give her roses all the attention they need.
The master is gone.
The gardener remains.
And the master's wife?
She's not a wife anymore.
She's just a woman.
A woman who gets everything she needs.
Every day.
From the man who tends her garden.