The faithful askari Kamau has gone on a ten-day holiday: he has returned to his village in the north to rejoin his large tribe.
He also took his wife and five children with him.
I advised him to be careful not to be a sixth and he laughed and shook his head.
"Look I won't give you a raise if you make another one ... do you understand?"
I threatened him trying to keep a straight face.
"Oh mama...if God wants more baby for Kamau...me happy, wife happy."
And he looks devoutly at the sky, raising his arms.
What a melodramatic actor!
"I don't think your wife so happy." I object cynically.
But he rambles on, convinced that women are only made to bear children, that's all. And even the gardener Mungo who prunes the hedge agrees.
And it makes me want to reverse and run them both over...
"Well Kamau, have a good holiday... and pull your finger out of your nose!"
He hangs his head and lazily closes the gate behind me, wrapped in the cloud of dust from my skidding.
In the evening, when I returned from work, I found a younger askari, strutting inside his new uniform.
He opened the gate for me, snapped to attention and even gave me a military salute while clicking his heels.
I thought to myself: there's a real askari!
"Jambo, what's your name?"
"Edward." And he smiled at me, he had all his teeth.
For the time being, good old Edward stays up at night to guard the gate, and every hour he makes his rounds up and down the garden; while good old Kamau often takes a nap perched inside the hedge.
Edward doesn't spit marungi here and there and keeps his shirt buttoned up to his neck, but more importantly: he doesn't chat with the other staff who arrive at seven in the morning, right under my window.
What could they possibly have that's so important to talk about every single morning? Well ...
Today I came back with a case of water bottles, Edward immediately offered to bring them up to the house. When I greeted him on the doorstep it seemed to me that he winked at me...no, I must have been mistaken, surely something entered him.
Later I went down to the garden to throw out the taka taka, there he was.
"Can I apply?"
"Sure, tell me."
"You married?"
I'm speechless for a moment, then decide to tell him the truth and already regret it because I see him glowing with false hope.
The next day, as I started the car, I noticed a sprig of bougainvillea stuck under the windscreen wiper.
How did it get there?
I see Mungo laughing under his moustache and pointing at the askari, who greets me with a hand and then sends me a kiss.
Oh my goodness, what is this guy thinking now?
I thank him just because I'm a nice person, he leans a little into the window and makes me an invitation.
"Thursday is my day off, you know mama? I take you my village by the river, you know mama and baba, we eat boiled goat head and have party, eh?"
"Are you crazy?"
He leans in a little more and tells me in a low voice with great complicity:
"I have secret to make you mama so happy!"
"Oh yeah? Come on... what would that be?"
When have I ever asked him.
"I have big black mamba for you."
Oh my goodness my askari has gone crazy!
I electrocute him with an ogre-like stare and shift into first gear and drive away.
I wonder: do these men seduce and conquer their women by flaunting the size of their genitals?
Or do they only do it with us white women?
I arrive at work and tell a colleague about the episode.
"But you know my new askari just hit on me?"
"My cook has been trying it for a while too: he started baking heart-shaped chapatis... of course it always comes out wrong."
"So that's it, they've got a habit."
"But no, they're just trying to settle down, you know we're a passport to wealth. They're smart."
"Not so much."
In the evening I come home and Edward opens the gate with his big smile and whispers: "I love you".
I don't even answer him.
I go up to the house and close the door with seven bolts, just in case I find him on the landing ...
The next morning no flowers on the car, and no askari at the gate, but what happened?
The neighbour tells me they sent him away last night.
"And why? Was he sleeping inside Kamau's hedge?"
"But no, he was bothering Mrs Wanda, he made obscene love proposals, poor thing..."
"But who?  Wanda the slightly deaf and hunchbacked old lady renting the ground floor?"
"Yes yes, that's the one."
"Nooooo, I can't believe it ..."
"But how Claudia, don't you know the famous saying that love is blind?"
I laugh and feel relieved.
Luckily in three days that crazy, macho, wonderful devoted good old Kamau is back.