The story on everybody’s lips right now is that of highly TV anchor Jacque Maribe and her fiancé, and murder suspect, Joe ‘Jowie’ Irungu.
Jacque, a star in her career, met and fell in love with the obviously good looking Joe (I refuse to call a grown man ‘Jowie’) and, in under a year, he had proposed to her.
And she had accepted, he had moved into her house, was driving her car and using her ATM card for his expenses.
All this before later entangling her in a murder case leading to her being locked up.
I do not blame Maribe, women want a good-looking man who can protect and make them feel safe and boast of contacts in high places.
They want men who wield influence and power, even if those men are dumb as bats. And so I have no fight with Maribe.
Being an aspiring journalist myself, I admire all she has achieved and I hope I get to where she is (or was before all this drama) someday.
However, I do feel there are a few lessons campus girls should learn from her story to avoid falling into the same hole.
I don’t understand what the fascination is about ‘bad boys’. Date that nerdy boy that always sits at the front of the class.
Leave that loud noisy kid at the back sporting flashy rings and neat sneakers; that boy is full of trouble.
The nerdy kid is calm, collected, and may not always act like he knows what he wants in life but he does. Trust me, he’s got his stuff all figured out.
Second, stop enabling lazy boys. Being a man entails handling your responsibilities.
Stop walking around school with that ‘little boy’ who cannot even break a sweat to buy you a decent dinner at the school cafeteria but wants to break your bones in bed. Go for that engineering chap who sells charcoal on the side. That one will amount to something, trust me.
Keep your relationship off social media. You may get a lot of likes but not everybody who double taps on your photo is actually rooting for you; most of them are waiting for the day something happens between you two so they can say “na vile walikuwa wanajiringa” and fetch evidence from your Instagram feed.
And, finally, no matter how many friends you have, know that it’s parents and family who will always come through for you.
So, if a sponsor gives you Sh50,000, don’t splash it all on your friends at Kiza, buy your mama a dress and your old man a suit.
Because they will be there when the engine halts, those friends praising you after buying two rounds won’t.