THE PUB: It’s wedding season and we’re all roped in!

We’re winding up the 48th week of 2024 AD, meaning there are only four weeks to go before saying bye to this year and welcoming 2025. Big deal, eh? Not really. Why, for the likes of Wa Muyanza, a year-end means nothing other than coming to the realisation that it’s time to get a new calendar.

Yeah, you need a fresh wall calendar to colour your otherwise empty sitting room walls and a desk calendar to sit on your weather-beaten desk in your study room. A desk calendar is very important for the likes of this scribbling son of hillsides who’s so deskbound and cut off from the world out there. And when a man is cut off the way you are, he easily forgets to take note of his pending social obligations, which are a myriad when you’re an elder.

Obligations such as visiting sick relatives and associates—very noble obligations, these! Or some less noble and yet very important obligations, like attending vikao leading to send-off ceremonies, wedding ceremonies, and all manner of functions that come with year ends. It’s like, come November-December part of the year, and we've got everybody marrying off a child.

In your drawer, you've got countless cards inviting you to contribute something towards “mwanetu,” who’s soon getting married on this or that date. As we all know, “mwanetu” is Kiswahili for “our child.” It’s forgiveable to see a con game when a man whose association with you is that, now and then, you simply greet each other casually at some drinking place you both frequent.

"Hello, Mzee Muyanza,” such a drinker will address you while handing you a beautiful customised card, “This is a mchango card for the wedding ceremony of OUR son.” Ha! Our son indeed!

But that’s okay. It’s a culture we’ve developed from the mid-90s or thereabout, and few can run away from it. Even when a man is financially challenged like Wa Muyanza, leading a hand-to-mouth existence, he’ll still plan to stage a princely send-off or wedding bash for his offspring.

How, you ask? Well, he’ll raise the massive amount required by soliciting money from close and even the not-so-close associates. We’re socialists, aren’t we?

Being an elder who was born well before independence, a lot is expected from you. Well, not that you honour every supposed obligation—you dodge quite a number. Yeah, especially those that provide a minimum amount of mchango, which qualifies you for either “single” or “double.” Eti, single, Sh70,000; double for Sh100,000! With this kind of absurd solicitation, you subscribe to your ndugu and frequent drinking buddy Esaya’s counselling: send them a mere Sh50k or less so that they don’t invite you to their ceremony!

But in all, November-December is a wonderful season whose activities bring Wabongo together to jubilate.

As men of wisdom are apt to tell us, you are what you are because there are others.

Jubilation season is here, and we’ll all be in it. And that may as well be, despite yourself!