Karani never thought for even a second that his behavior at the office was predatory. Looking across the open space where staff members of the department he led were seated, a satisfied smile occupied his face. Only recently had he been feted by the group CEO as being the manager who had excelled in executing SDG (Sustainable Development Goal) number 5 on gender equality. In the department he led of over 50 staff members, about 32 were ladies, something that had eluded most of the other departments. So illustrious and noticable was his achievement that the top level management took notice and gave him the coveted award during the company's annual dinner party.
Karani was very elaborate when recruiting. Besides the standard qualifications that most applicants possessed, he was on the lookout for outstanding feminine physical features. Whenever HR presented him a shortlist, he'd make sure to comb through to ensure that those who faced him in the interview process met his aesthetic needs. And that's how it ended that much of his team resembled the African version of the Playboy Mansion.
The rest of the company knew which department had the most beautiful girls. It was not uncommon to see droves of young men crisscrossing the 4th floor, which is where the team sat, trying to catch the attention of the girls. A common joke doing rounds within the organization was that, it took the IT team 5 minutes to dispatch someone to 4th floor but 5 days to any other floor!
Back to Karani. Not only did he have a roving eye for the fairer sex, he also had a perverted sense of power. His satisfaction lay in casting eyes across the floor in the knowledge that he had slept with about 20 of the 32 women that he had recruited. Of the remaining 12, 5 were his relatives while the rest had been working there before he joined. In his little cubicle he'd spend his time gazing at the girls, reminiscing on the great, the good, the average and the below average sexual encounters he'd had during recruitment. That gave him immense satisfaction. It's during moments like that that he would decide which of the girls in this harem he had built, would be summoned that evening or earn that trip to the workshop he was attending.
At the moment he was staring at Pamela, a thick well endowed broad from the lakeside. He recalled how shocked she had been at first when he'd began hinting about what needed to be done "in the face of stiff competition by other candidates".
She was a church girl, very qualified for the job and still innocent on the murky corporate world that Karani and others player in. Her view of Karani had been that of a paternal figure -wise, firm and deeply caring of his team members' welfare. She almost laughed when he asked her to meet him for some drinks, thinking it was a trap.
Slowly she'd come around. They'd had drinks and at one point invited she'd him to her house, where she lived with her twin daughters. They'd spent the afternoon in her living room and later bedroom - after the househelp had been given terse instructions to take the kids swimming, and "only come back when asked to". The househelp had given her a knowing look and quickly prepared the protesting girls, who had been absorbed in a movie.
Once out, Pamela had retreated to the bathroom and reappeared shortly after in a skimpy negligee, smiling at her future boss seductively. Mr. Karani, despite his lustful nature, was very conservative in his ways. At his insistence she had to close the bedroom curtains, keep the lights off and could not convince him to fully undress. He screwed her silently and only produced a little wimper towards the end. She'd started moaning but he'd held his hand on her mouth as a way to tell her to STFU. She lay there sad, looking at the ceiling thinking maybe she'd disappointed him and didn't pass the enterview.
"Come for your letter on Monday", he'd quipped as he got into his car. She was relieved.
Shiko walked over to speak to Pamela and his thoughts were suddenly distracted. He recalled meeting Shiko's mother in their rural church. She had, like most parents with sons and daughters who are through with school, tried severally to seek his help in getting her some job or internship. He hadn't met Shiko by then but the mother was quite persistent. Trying to brush her off, he scrolled his phone number and email address and instructed her to send the daughter's CV. Elated, Mama Shiko instructed her daughter to send her CV and make follow up calls after some time, knowing that Karani was a busy man.
Shiko had done as instructed but instead of calling -as she was unsure of how to address a mdosi- decided to WhatsApp.
Karani was having a drink with another potential recruit when the WhatsApp message came in. The pretty and youthful profile picture caught his eye. Shiko was recruited in about a month. Three days of that month were spent holed in a hotel room in Karatina. He had developed a soft spot for Shiko, moreso because she was from his village and kept him abreast of what was going on among his surbodinates.
As Shiko catwalked back to her desk, conscious of his lustful look and smiling inwardly, she stopped over Peter's desk, ostensibly for a chitchat but also aware that the boss was surveying her nice behind.
Peter was a dependable worker. Karani had recruited him together with his fiancee, Mary. Well Mary got the job first but then convinced Karani to take in Peter. By then Karani did not know that the two were engaged. Mary was a beautiful girl who'd caught his eye during the interview process. He knew he wanted her and once he made sure she was in the shortlist, he began dangling the job to her as was his modus operandi. Mary was not prepared to cheat on her fiance and so a protracted battle of wills ensued. The last straw was when her fiance Peter was laid off, and it now looked like both of them would be jobless. She had confided to one of her girls on what was going on and the advice she got was "sio sabuni, haiishi!"
And so 3 months later she was begging Karani to take her in (pun intended). And here she was now, working alongside her fiance while having to accede to her boss's sexual demands occasionally. For Karani this was the perfect power game. Screwing another man's woman and watching her play innocent in his presence.
But he had heard some grapevine from Shiko that Peter was also seeing another girl in the office. Her name was Lemayan. She was a beautiful masai girl, with a dark smooth skin and perfect white teeth. He'd gone out with her once but ended up disliking her for becoming clingy. She was hotheaded and had started trying to own him. They'd jostled for a while, him contemplating sacking her, her contemplating spilling the beans of their brief affair to his family, whom she had tracked on social media. This stalemate was resolved by the appearance of Peter and his fiance. Peter was in her section, which was sales-oriented, and so they found themselves spending time together in the field. Their friendship blossomed and she was entertaining thoughts of taking Peter from Mary. Karani was relieved by the distraction and secretly cheered Peter on, while trying to poison his relationship with Mary by keeping her away from Peter through overseas travels which he came along.
"Morning Karani!" it was Chebet, the office administrator.
Chebet was one of the few married women in his team. She was married to his college roommate. He'd secured her the position as a favor to his friend. Their relationship was warm and friendly. She knew his wife and was aware of his indiscretions. She however chose to remain ambivalent.
She silently watched as the ladies competed for his attention, favors and promotions. She'd seen a few edged out during appraisals for trying to reject his advances once they had secured the job. Her office best friend, Mwende, was also in Karani's web of subordinate lovers.
For Mwende, her current job was unbelievably above her punching weight, thanks to Karani. She'd met Karani while hawking men's boxers in a bar. They'd struck a conversation as he haggled and made lewd jokes on the sizes of the boxers. He'd paid her via Mpesa and sent her to drop the stuff in hid car, which was parked outside. She'd saved his number, contacted and actively flirted with him. Her credentials were not solid but she compensated with an amenable personality and an irresistible spider shaped figure. She was also an agressive go-getter. Karani found himself so enthralled that he helped her forge academic papers, just to have her around him. She got the job of an assistant administrator. When it came to Mwende, he could get quite jealous. As Wafula discovered during a team building. Several bottles down and with everyone having loosened up, Mwende and Wafula became the star dancers of the night.
Ensconced in his powerful arms while gyrating to a Vybez Kartel track, he suddenly felt a powerful pull of the girl from his arms. While readying himself to fight, he looked to see his Head of Department, Karani, giving him the most hostile stare while dragging Mwende away. Karani led Mwende to a dark part of the party venue and, to Wafula's shock, gave her a hard slap on the face, before leaving the party.
A number of the party people witnessed the drama too.
Everything went quiet. Even the DJ stopped the music. Chebet rushed over to Mwende to console her. Wafula sensed his goose may have been overcooked!
"Hujuangi hio ni kitu ya mdosi?", whispered Ochie, his colleague, "itabidi umechorea huyo ngeus"
Chebet tried to restore the fun environment, coaxing everyone to join a mugithi train and blaming alcohol on the little scuffle. The party resumed though without the earlier mojo.
Mwende must have followed Karani to his room, for she was no longer in the party.
That particular event was a turning point in the delicate balance that Karani had maintained in the office among his girlfriends. The ladies that he'd had trysts, and who had harbored hopes of relationship with him, must have realised that his heart was with Mwende. And therefore the grumbling began. And it was carried over to 4th floor, spreading like a wildfire across the organization. The noose was tightening on the serial philanderer who was using his position to get laid.
Karani had grown up in abject poverty, at a village right on the slopes of Mt. Kenya. What he lacked materially and in the looks department was compensated by a sharp brain, which saw him get a good education, thanks to bursaries and scholarships. Karani had suffered rejection after rejection from girls like many other campus boys with meagre resources. His drive to succeed was partly powered by his desire to turn tables. His dream was to conquer any girl that came on his radar. Thanks to his tenacity, he rose quickly in the corporate world, finding himself at the crossroads of money and power. His youthful dream to conquer girls was still at the fore, despite having gotten himself a family.
And so the corporate was the playground on which he'd right the historical injustices of yore.
Three months after the infamous team building, a haggard looking Karani was in a room with his CEO, COO and HR Director, facing of a myriad of sexual harassment and misconduct accusation that snowballed from a single anonymous call to the company helpline, to almost 20 #MeToo revelations on email and even social media. A young intern had shared on her experience with Karani to her manager after witnessing the skirmish during the team building. Ironically, the manager too had had a thing with Karani. Seething at the obvious interplay, she'd advised the intern to make a complaint via the anonymous helpline.
As it became clear that this was an intricate web of sexually transmitted jobs and promotions, the manager began quietly encouraging her female colleagues to come out with their stories. All except Mwende and Shiko did share their ordeals.
The CEO was livid that he'd been misled to fete Karani only a few months earlier for his efforts with SDG goal number 5 on gender equality. One after another, testimonies by the aggrieved ladies were heard. Most memorable was Marjorie who, in a moment of fury, attacked Karani physically during the hearings. Her marriage had irretrievably broken down once her husband discovered that Karani was taking her with him for workshops, not for furtherance of skill and knowledge, but for penile bliss. Thanks to the efforts of a private investigator, who produced photographic and video evidence of the two frolicking in heated pool naked. She recounted how a protracted divorce case had left her wounded and broke, without spousal support. It was even revealed that Karani had been enjoined in the divorce suit.
Many broke down while testifying, recalling how much they had invested emotionally thinking they were the only side plates on Karani's table. On further prodding, and by their admission, none had been coerced - the transactional relationship was driven by the need to bag a job, internship or a promotion and sometimes romantic expectations. However this was still in contravention of company policy.
The story found it's way into the mainstream media, blogs and gutter press. Petrified shareholders and the public began to press for major action. While Karani got his matching orders, other departments in the organization began to open up, with similar accusations coming up. A lady executive was accused of aggressively hitting on her subordinates, and running her department like her personal turf. Young men trooped to the HR offices recounting tales of how some were forced to bang her on the office desk. One tearily recounted how he was forced to administer cunnilingus in unhygienic vaginal conditions as the aggressive middle-aged female executive urged him on. A pattern of deliberate use of sex as a tool of power in this organization was becoming clearer.
A company wide probe was called, that lasted several months and conducted by an independent firm. The report swept half of the top level executives including, surprisingly, the CEO. Screenshots of a conversation he had had with a voluptuous salesgirl begging for lewd videos was the nail in his coffin and made for sensational reporting, which caught the attention of a parliamentary committee and even attracted the outrage of the self-anointed moral policeman, bwana Ezekiel.
A new executive team was put in place and more stringent hiring policies enforced. Whistleblowing was also actively encouraged.
As for Karani, he took a one year sabbatical from the corporate world, before crossing borders to a neighboring country where he now leads a multinational's country operations. The multinational is either unaware or uninterested in his past, as long as he can deliver on the numbers.
