DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES!

I love "Desperate Housewives". Some people will tell me that its an american show that will never apply to a mwananchi but I beg to differ. I have already seen similar personalities in my friends that those women in that show have. They may not be the same personality exactly but there's some things there...

I remember thinking about Linnet and the way she handles her kids...and thinking that some of those mama nightmares of feedings at midnight...never dressing up or putting on make up coz baby will just throw up on her anyway...and i can relate...i think about gabrielle solice and her "shopping, clothes and shoes" personality...in the beginning i thought she was just vain...but on going deeper you find out theres a reason why she hides behind the shoes..

But most recently as I was in my kamapartment block it just occured to me, this is kinda a kenyan version of desparate housewives...i shuddered at the thought that in some weird way, i had become surburban...u know, the kind of person who knows their neighbours (not just the say hi type) and even sits down to drink tea as we talk about "stuff". This is something difficult for me to really come to terms with coz well, i live in an apartment, aren't people not meant to know people in apartments?

So there am I watching my baby run around the kacompound with the other neighbour kids and im so deep in conversation with other mamas and mboches that i think...hmmm...whats happening here?

What is worse, I know whose baby went for immunization, who just gave birth, who is now taking baby to boarding school in class 7, who quit her job...aaah..the list is endless. Now, im not meant to know these things...i like to mind my own business...but when some girl is knocking on my door everyday at the same time to play with aliana and is giving me a back-to-back relay of how her day went "including mama yangu alinipatia chips"...i find im integrating into this murky world...then there the birthdays..."mama aliana, aliana anaitwa kwa birthday ya linda", there's one of those every month...

but this was the icing on the cake, during one of those "taking baby out to play in the compound" things, one mama decides to gossip about another one of our neighbors to me! Wait a minute...huh?! Ok, how did she just read me as the type to be interested in that mambo jambo? I made up some flimsy excuse about my ndengu burning and fled! (ok, ndengu burning? yah, its part of the wife/mama portfolio, brides to be...dont dismiss this part)

so now the denial is over...i know my neighbours..the good, bad and the ugly (like the drunk man who was shouting unprintable words to everyone in the apt block and his wife trying to get him to shut up and go home) and the one with advise on everything (mrs bree vandekamp)...and theres this gabrielle solice who is in some serious denial that she is a mom of 3 kids and keeps going shopping and stuff...they are all here.

On coming to this conclusion, my first thought was to pack up and move...but then i thought...whose to say that the next 'wisteria lane' i move to will not be as crazy? so now i have resigned to my fate...and ask myself..."which desperate housewife are the neighbours saying I am?"