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Writer's pictureStephen Osieyo

AFRICAN FIRST LADIES WHO REIGNED BUT NEVER RULED

Updated: Dec 15, 2022


1. THE STRIPPER FIRST LADY.



She had Nam Lolwe sounding names and lived by Nam Lolwe rituals. She was not raised very far from Nam Lolwe. In fact she bathed on the rivers draining and diverting toxics from Nam Lolwe to maintain a good habitable chemical balance for life and fresh water fish. These rivers must have been part of Nam Lolwe millenniums ago. And if draining rivers were not there, topologically Nam Lolwe would have burst her banks to the nearest ocean without following the circuitous torturous River Nile. That would mean No civilization, No Egypt, No Jews and No Middle East Wars.




They met when she was an activist in her own right fighting for independence. The husband to be had a debilitating weakness. He is one of these men who can never look you in the eye. He avoided eye contact like plague. Against well cultured Africans like Luo girls they will have you for breakfast. But she had other more important matters on her mind than play seductive games.


Using the musicians the husband worked the dance halls and was a community organizer without a rally while the wife worked the public rally.

All the speeches they wrote together were kept by this musician to translate into campaign materials and national anthems. The pan Africanism lyrics were permanently engraved in toxic lyrics that alerted the west. The unity words in the lyrics alerted the imperialists who wanted a fragmented Majimbo country to exploit. This set the future leader and the first lady in deadly confrontation with the Neo-colonisers and their local colonial stooges.


In a January he was assassinated, his wife in the custom typical to that of a cultured Luo woman married while a virgin, stripped off her clothes and marched in the streets of the capital on a street later named after the fallen hero.


2. THE SACRIFICIAL FIRST LADY She bathed in the calming waters of Nam Lolwe but grew up listening to a lullaby of Nam Lolwe waters as it forced it way out seeking freedom. It appears the clamor for freedom is not only a preserve of the inhabitants of Nam Lolwe land. Everything in Nam Lolwe basin loves freedom.



She was married off to pacify a warring dynasties on the throes of a compromised federal government. The incoming president needed her as stake to rope in a solid unmoved and unforgiving sectarian opposition. Raised from a culture where women were meek but guile she was adept at mothering diplomacy luring brides from her to tribe to marry off to her new ruling marital tribesmen.


Publicly the president always threw her name. "If I really hated your people, how could I marry one of you? Or the president could milk the sentiments of the solid opposition, "how can I hate half of my children in hating you?”


And the boisterous gullible noisy opposition would join in, "Our daughters could marry no less than a head of state from these lowly rulers".


And because of her the new republic held and was more prosperous than the neighbors in the region. In fact history will one day reward her that this first lady made a modern republic out of a jigsaw of random dynasties. No other woman on the face of the earth has achieved that.


When the good times ended she tried to run away with her 3 children to seek asylum out of the country. On three separate occasions she was captured and sent back to die. And every time because of her popular reign she managed another escape. On fourth attempt she escaped being sacrificed by using a different route.


3. THE MISCARRYING FIRST LADY.

She was almost miscarried in her mother’s womb. The saving witch-doctor whispered to the mother and the birth attendant, “You have escaped a curse and because of this curse, even this daughter will never bear more than one child.”


She attracted adoring fans. All over the world men kissed the ground on which she walked. She even composed and sang a song that pacified the federalists threatening to split an emerging African country. The song galvanized the young nation into a republic. In return she was invited to tour the young republic.

After leaving her only child behind in a far land she was caught in a love triangle between an ageing octogenarian sitting president and a succulent delicious future president. She spurned years of empty gold beds for a hot steaming hot future bed. After a series of miscarriages that even sent her to a local nyamrerua based in Kendu Bay on the shores of Nam Lolwe she acknowledged that she will never be happy in a child-less marriage. She remembered the words of her mother’s ajuoga as narrated by the jacholo and turned her back to botched marriage, botched motherhood and botched presidency. She walked away never to return to botched unhappiness on the shores of Nam Lolwe.


4. THE CRADLE CLUTCHING FIRST LADY

The cradle was robbed when very early teens. She married a future president. She was married away clutching the cradle and has always clutched on to the cradle. She hung on to the serial polygamist and lived a life time rocking the cradle. She dutifully took celibacy in her torrid 20’s to give her more time to rock the cradle.



Then eventual tragedy struck and she was widowed in late 20’s. She turned the pent up emotion to even more cradle rocking and to extending her reign for another 10 years in a pseudo first lady role.


After many years of false first lady role, she ended up a first lady for another 8 years after a break of 10 years from the seat of power.


Her style of reigns keeping the government out her house and bedroom. She let state apparatus run like nowhere in Africa. The vacuum she created by running away with the president allowed the state executive, legislature and judiciary to operate without undue influence therefore strengthening the checks and balances where even elections did not need returning officers because there was no rigging in or out of candidates.


5. THE ABSENT FIRST LADY

She served decades not even by sitting in her throne for one minute. Why? She was too proud to reign without reigning. It appears she had an overdose of Malcolm X’s teaching for she believed that ‘a seating at the dining table does not make you a diner”. She preferably walked of the dining table rather eat left overs. She preferred not to dance than read lip lover’s whispers on the dance floor.

But she was the conscious of the reign and stuck to the word of God even when prelates supporting her were being murdered. In her absence she gave a mirage of being absent but nobody took her place. For sure she reigned because the president took women issues seriously except abortion which she also never liked.


And when she died first a deeply grieving husband scoffed at feminist journalist, “She will be buried at my home where I will also be buried, Next to her”


Two Lessons in Nam Lolwe:

Lesson 1: Kik idonj I wach dhako gi chuore

Lesson 2. Dhako kata oduogo ka oa dwaro ria to podi igero ne dala.

In summarize: Don't be fooled with brouhaha there is no divorce in Nam Lolwe.


6. FISHY FIRST LADY.

We could call her the Fishy First Lady. She was born eating Ngege. She grew up on a diet of ngege and she lived a marital life of eating ngege. Correction. She still eats ngege at 90 years of age. In fact she prefers the big ngege locally known as karewe or fondly as “nyamami”.



She was bathed in Nam Lolwe, She grew up bathing in Nam Lolwe. She lived bathing in the sunrise and sunset of Nam Lolwe. In her sunset years in the 90s she is still bathing the sunset years of Nam Lolwe.


In her reign, she was there and she was not there. She was invisible first lady. She never shopped home or overseas. She never chaperoned any organization. She never hosted parties. She was never a patron of any foundation. She was like air. She filled every vacuum in the president’s life. There was no room for any other woman. The president never needed to moonlight. Nobody knows her, nobody asked about her and there was nothing to tell anyway.


It’s her life that the president transformed to rule the country. Loyalty to local way of life. Loyalty to African society. Loyalty to African values. Loyalty to African causes. Loyalty only to issues that matter to Africa (no pro west and no pro east). Loyalty to humility. The president even designed the presidential terms after her 7 siblings and 7 children. That is not a coincidence.


When the president’s rule ended she went back to Nam Lolwe basin to continue fishy lifestyle.


7. SHOPAHOLIC FIRST LADY

She was a stunning beauty. She was black and she was gifted in humanism. She dominated the husband to falsely rule the country by sheer popularity. Internationally she, like any mothering wife had seen that the colonizers still had the country in their back pockets. So like any pretty woman she knew the powerful colonizer must be approached with a policy of “your money for our honey”. This required a high degree of mothering called smothering. So wherever the president went, she went. She had to forego luxury shopping but instead worked for popularity back home. Wherever the President went, she went.



She henpecked him like a bad wife but she was a good wife. She harassed the president with punishments for poor public services management!

· For a bad road, the president will not sleep as she complained in the bedroom.

· For dilapidated school, that is even worse punishment that I will not mention.

· For run down hospital, she will also be sick and ask to be attended in the same hospital

· For Beggars on the streets, there will not no stipend for relative and hangers on


On international tours in Europe she was a manic shopaholic for public investments and public services. 1. If she sights a good national hospital in Europe; she wants one like that at home and the colonizers must pay. 2. A Basilica in Rome... mmmmh she wants one one like that 3. A working airport... and that too 4. All weather roads ... she wants that; 5. Free Public Education and school lunches.... Yes that one to 6. Regular Free and Fair election.... oh yes, just like US.

Anything good in Europe she also wanted one in her country as well or else there will be a mosquito in the President's bedroom.


In the end she became more popular than the president. She never bothered with shopping for Gucci, Prada and the rest. Maybe it is because she was too pretty.


8. TRAITOR FIRST LADY.

She wrote the armed struggle speeches. When she met him, he was nothing but a bookworm buried in books and degrees. He was also jail bird and a convict. She introduced him to armed struggle. She wrote speeches for him. She followed him to harm’s way. She bore babies in the bush for him. She was his think tank in the bedroom and boardroom.




And much later in Independence negotiations when the President was being lured into a trap she gave a war cry in a public rally against the President. "You can reconcile with an enemy but you can NOT reconcile with a TRAITOR because that is the medium a traitor germinates in.......I am telling the President like a woman because wooing is our expertise and co-wife's lethal weapon. Stop this coalition nonsense to protect our hard earned struggle".


9. STD FIRST LADY

She married a son of prostitute and mummy’s boy. The son of prostitute rose to power buy selling out nationalists and heroes. She therefore knew the number game in president’s family when she married into them. Her only sister in law used state machinery not for political power of financial gains. She stole and exchanged husbands. My auntie’s son literally got hunted and locked in that country for 5 years. She was not locked in a cell but in a 5 star hotel. In fact Nam Lolwe husbands were an endangered species in that country. She only dealt in disposable married men.

As morality arguments were irrelevant in the family First Lady resorted to health reasons. Her greatest weapon was to accuse the president of passing STD to her the moment she hears the president is about to make a political suicide/ mischief. All the in-laws will be invited to a tribunal discuss the latest episode.




When the president wanted to eliminate a political rival she kept him busy with tribunals in her home district to evade a possible national strife. The President had to get somebody else to do it in far district where their movement will not be detected.


And when the president publicly executed dissidents causing a national flare up he hid in the city for a week feigning a very contagious STD that can be passed just by being in the same room.


When later on the president showed up after the executions she cursed the husband, "How could you allow that execution. May your infested genital drag you to your grave?" And it did.


10. THE FOOTBALL FANATIC FIRST LADY.

She met the president while he was still married. She was a believer in eating your cake and still having it. She believed in burning the candle at both ends. Actually she did not mind burning anything even a human being.



She loved her local football club and never missed a football game. Sometimes she officiated at games and at other times she kicked off the games. And the players and fans loved her to bits.


She was pretty like a picture. But she hated divorce because she believed in leaving in her own time. She spent 30 years fighting separation let alone a real divorce. She waited and waited. And after finishing waiting she fought some more. And when it finally arrived it killed her spirits.


She was so brave that when the President went on a long walk for a long time in a lonesome place, she led men and held the country together.


11. THE TWO TIMING FIRST, SECOND-FIRST LADY.

She was the First Lady. She was the second lady. In fact at one time she decided to be First and Second at the same time. That is a test to her wifely acumen.

She dated a national leaders and future presidents only because she was made to order for First Lady roles. When the future president was assassinated by a parcel bomb, she simply took the next in line of presidency. And when that was also assassinated she took the next available great president.

Where educated ladies vilify polygamy she embraces it. When side chicks walk in the dark, she walks tall to defy scorn. And she held the hands of stuttering main chicks.


She was elegant and walked tall like Jackie Kennedy because of her love for the ordinary people. She came to Nairobi twice. The first visit was to celebrate while adorning 'matuta' hairdo. The other time was to deliberate in 'matata' do-or-die where she whipped random women leaders and duping memorandum men into a national government. She was indeed a reigning first, second lady.



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