By Daniel KakuruÂ
I accompanied my father to his eternal resting place on the last day of last year’s month of November. Prior to that, I had lived with that man under the same roof for six and twenty years; for me, a lifetime. By the time of his dissolution, he had roamed this earth for sixty-six years – forty more than I had.
I would be an award-winning liar if I claimed that I quite well comprehended the kind of relationship he had with his wife, the love of his life, my mother. Because man, those guys lived like siblings. I never ever caught them doing the clandestine manual work that happens in bed. I never saw them hugging. Never saw them kissing. They were just there, looking standoffish, at least in the eyes of all the onlookers.
Whenever my father arrived at home shortly after dark, it’s us the kids that rushed to welcome him. My mother either stuck to whatever she was at or suddenly busied herself with something not necessarily important; like wiping windowsills. Sorting the already washed plates. Shifting chairs from here to there. Until we were done with rubbing ourselves around her husband, getting up his shoulders, checking if he was actually still bald, and asking foolish questions like, why doesn’t your hair grow? When are you taking us to Kampala as you promised? When are you bringing the airplane you told us you had purchased? Where is your pistol; Rambo always has one around his waist? Like that, like that.
Then once in a while, he would open his briefcase, give us biscuits or Kenafric sweets or toffees before disappearing into his bedroom – a place we were forbidden from entering because in one of the countless fabricated stories he had narrated to us, we had been assured there was a lion that lived in there and it didn’t like children unless it was hungry. You know what else that means? A lion liking children only when it’s hungry?
As soon as he walked into his bedroom and shut the door behind him – to make sure his lion never leapt out and devoured us – our mother followed him inside. And they would not be beheld again until it was time for us to gather for supper.
This modus operando was certainly not unique to our household. In many traditional African homes, you will never see a man getting cozy with his wife. They won’t hug or kiss when anyone is around. And by the way, they will not even hold each other by the hands when strolling around together. But you will close your eyes and by the time you open them, the woman is heavy with an eighth child. You will be left wondering how she actually conceives. Does this couple even play sex? Where’s the evidence that they do? For they live as though they were siblings afraid of committing the abominable act of incest.
Twenty-four hours (or so) back, I stumbled upon a photograph. Needless to say, it was of a man kissing a woman. Incorrectly, of course. In a public space; most probably a bar. In the photo, he wraps his large lips around the nose of the woman in whose company he is. I’m certain that while the incorrect kiss rages on, the poor woman holds her breath and hopes against hope that it ends before she needs to draw another breath; for how is she going to? Of course, the kiss was always going to be wrong. And it’s for an obvious reason – the difference between their ages. Whereas the man looks old as a dinosaur with firsthand stories from the time Noah built The Ark, the girl looks like someone born as recently as 2004 – around the time a certain football team in London remained unbeaten for the entirety of a season on their way to the very last title in their rich storied history. Judging by the age his appearance reflects, this is not the kind of man that should kiss a human being, more so in public. Obviously, some of his teeth are missing. And those that have stood the test of time are on the verge of giving up on the struggle. His breath can’t be trusted either; it might be bad enough to have fungicidal and bactericidal properties.
The order of nature is such that elders should be looked up to for inspiration. For advice. For replenishing faded hope. For everything beyond our ken. We need their opinions on complex political matters and repressive policies. But this particular man, in addition to falling short on being exemplary, does it in a way that baffles the onlookers. And it’s exactly why this photo goes viral.
Why should an African man who watched as Seyyid Said moved his capital from Muscat to Zanzibar be kissing his granddaughter in public? Where did he copy that hooliganism from? Why doesn’t he notice the fact that she’s barely clothed and that her neck and shoulder are dotted with ringworm? Is this one of the reasons people tell us to not take old people’s advice seriously because even fools grow old?
When the colonialists came to Africa and imposed themselves on us, they made us embrace some of the stupidest things that can ever be imagined. They told us it was abominable to have more than one wives but turned around and said homosexuality is a human right that should not only be decriminalized but also funded. They told us to embrace feminism but before long, this whole idea of feminism was more aimed at weakening and subjugating men than it was about advocating for the rights of women. Such effrontery!
The new family that that just moved into the house next-door is headed by a man that does not greet his children when he gets home. It never appears like his children are eager to see him either. All he does is hug his wife, lift her high up and kiss her deeply. The children can go and sort themselves after a cold ritual of fist pumping.
Of late, netizens are wagging their tongues. Another trio of sextapes has leaked from Kitende once again and this time, a young girl only identified as Linda Cynthia is the protagonist. For most of the time in the videos, she does things that are both unnatural and nauseating. She holds her male partner’s weapon, puts it in her mouth and imbibes several liters of semen from it. Last year a rich fool from Masaka gave the world a Christmas bonanza. In his perennial pursuit of cheap popularity, Emmanuel Lwasa leaked a ghastly bedroom video of himself going down between a woman’s legs and licking the hell out of her reproductive organs. Only he knows what he was thinking.
Who tells African people that in order to prove that they love their partners, they have to first lick their reproductive organs? Who tells them that swapping saliva is an act of love? How does it feel to kiss and consume someone’s morning breath in order to prove that you love them? Where did Africans copy these unnatural things from and how much more are they going to copy? At this rate, aren’t we going to eat fecal matter just to prove we love whosoever it is? God is probably seated comfortably in heaven, wearing a white robe, and just laughing at us.
The writer is a worthless MugOfPorridge. His articles have appeared sporadically in print and online. He drinks and smokes and hopes to die by suicide.Â
