Bisho joins women’s association, I become ‘Bushoke’

Once upon a time, in a distant past, the difference between being Peter or Suzan was as thin as a stitching thread. My voice and that of the girl next door was no different – our voices were indeed chirpy bird’s sounds. The smoothness of my face too was similar to that of Suzan. The only difference was the anatomy of our regions below the belly button, and that I preferred to play with toy cars while she was in love with a doll called Barbie.

As they say that time will always tell, it really did tell. Features that differentiated me from Susan and Caroline did begin to show in earnest. I developed a forest of ugly hairs on my face and my voice turned into croaks of a thirsty toad!

She, on the other hand developed huge “tomatoes” on her chest and her hips became the size of beer crates. Further on, our roles also became markedly different. She became John’s Mama while I become Jenny’s Papa. But not for long! I have become what Uswaz calls a “Bushoke”. This kind of a guy is whipped!

My learned friend Winchinslauss Rwegoshora (PhD, MA, BA, Dip UDSM) philosophizes that any real man’s ambition is to ‘own’ a Tanzanian wife, a German car, an American house and earn a British salary. I managed to ‘buy’ one of the four – a Tanzanian wife who now rides on my back. The other three dreams are to me the same as crying to have the moon on my table for breakfast.

Let’s go back to how I ‘bought’ my slave driver. First, my biological clock started ticking away. I thought that it was important to pair up with someone. After singing myself hoarse in the church choir to impress my-one-and-only woman Bisho Ntongo, the dimpled woman from Katerero on the shores of Lake Victoria, I thought I had reached the apex of my ambitions – sort of won jackpot biko. Of course, most men pair up with women simply because they are in need of someone to cook and clean for them and I did it for the same reason.

Before marrying Bisho, I had reached the nadir of my existence. I floated around life like a zombie, ate at Mama Lishe’s shack, dressed shabbily and was plain dirty. See, I needed someone to organize me. She was god sent. I suddenly became somehow organized, clean and my face was well-rounded. I had claimed my position among the men. Recently however, she has become completely transformed from the woman who used to curtsy in my presence. This happened after she joined a group of women gone mad called Uswaz Liberated Women’s Association (ULWA). She has joined this cult where the man, according to her, is supposed to reverse the roles.

Put otherwise, the cult spells the gospel of men taking over the jobs that were traditionally women’s. I wake up as soon as the Muezzin calls the faithful for prayers and starts by making breakfast for the family, starting with warming baby’s milk.

All that time, Bisho Ntongo is happily dreaming away in sleep. I cook, wash and change diapers. I have become a “Bushoke”.

Bisho tells me that we should share the responsibility of taking care of the baby; after all, we shared the same bed to bring her into being. She argues that since she carried the baby for nine months, it is now my duty to the same.