Women and the sweet things
By Moses Odokonyero
April 23 - 29, 2004
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According to the folklore of a certain tribe in Uganda, women were once rulers. But all that came to a sudden and dramatic end when one young man, Balaba, went hunting. To keep the pangs of hunger at bay, he carried with him sugarcane and honey. After several hours of hunting he sat under a tree to have a bite of the goodies he had carried. Then three devastatingly beautiful women came carrying firewood for their queen. Hungry too, they asked Balaba to give them a bite of whatever he was eating. Without any hesitation, Balaba gave them small pieces of sugarcane �It tastes so nice,� said the women in chorus. �You haven�t tasted something nice yet,� roared Balaba as he doled out honey to the young women. �My, my, my, this is even sweeter,� the women again in chorus exclaimed. �I have something much sweeter,� Balaba shot back. �We want it,� the women asked in unison. And so Balaba gave all of them a dose of something sweeter in private. Intrigued that such sweet things existed in this world, the women unanimously decided to take Balaba to their queen so that she too could have a taste of the sweet things they had had. And women�s love for sweet things has never ceased ever since except that �sweet things� have now increased in range and number. Today a Grandpa can be found swapping saliva and exchanging pleasantries with a young but extremely bold little nosed girl. Nikos Kazantzakis, a Greek writer, wrote in his Zorba The Greek. �When I was young the first thing I did was to pinch and play with them (women). Now I am old the first thing is to spend money, be gallant and open fisted�the women always go crazy. You can be a hunchbacked, old and ugly as a louse, but the girls will forget all that.
Not so long ago, an ageing royal stunned many when he married a little girl old enough to be his granddaughter. Many made noise but I celebrated because I thought that was a blessing of sorts to we men. You might be as old as those Mivule trees that were grown by Semei Kakukungulu during the colonial era, or as Kazantzakis says �as ugly as a louse� but you will never fail to get a woman as long as you have what it takes. The challenge to men who are not in a hurry to marry like I am, is this: hurry to acquire the sweet things like Balaba because the babes like them, work hard and get more and more money. Then be gallant and open fisted and the babes will come even if you are as dead as old wood, bony as a bone itself and as ugly as sin for our new world spins proper on the principles of capitalism. |
� 2004 The Monitor Publications
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