Bodyguards for wives
.... for lives!Bodyguards for wives
.... for lives!By Valentine Marc Nkwame
Everyone around here knows this very simple but quite important rule! That the surest way of committing suicide in Arusha is simply by stealing someone’s wife.
Now it usually doesn’t matter much if the lady in question is actually the wife, or just somebody’s "Nyumba ndogo!"
"Nyumba ndogo", (small house), is the local term for concubine and apparently, experience has proved that any healthy Arushan male, is usually more in "love" with the "Nyumba ndogo" than his official wife.
Experience has also proved that even if the Arusha guy happens to be very much tired of his wife and loathes her, he will still feel extremely threatened and badly insulted when another fellow takes that same wife, even if it is just for a few hours.
We all remember the serial murders which used to take place here, in the nineties, whose main victims happened to be local taxi drivers.
Every now and then, a Taxi driver would be hired by some familiar guys, only to be discovered strangled, butchered or shot dead, inside his car’s boot .... Some were even castrated.
It later came to light that these serial murders had something to do with some other people’s wives .. Or maybe "Nyumba ndogos!" The Taxi driver were being suspected of either running cycles with other guy’s wives or used to transport them to their illegal lovers.
You see, the Arusha love pattern usually runs in cycle, which means, one man’s wife could very well turn out to be another person’s "Nyumba ndogo," and so on and so forth!
Due to this therefore, it is becoming very vital, for Arusha men to protect their wives from becoming some other people’s "Nyumba ndogos."
And while at that they should ensure that their own "Nyumba ndogos" also don’t end up being some other fellows’ wives.
But unless one is prepared to spend the whole day fully armed, guarding his front door, the mission may prove to be quite impossible to accomplish.
As you know, a man has to eat which means he has to work, in order to eat and drink, thus he definitely can’t spend the whole day at home or at his small house guarding some ladies.
This is where body guards come in. Hire a watchman, whose sole duty will be to ensure that your wife remains such and so does your concubine next street.
An effective bodyguard as we all know, should be a well built figure, like those "Bouncers" who usually take care of safety issues in local night clubs.
This raises another problem no sane person will leave his wife to spend all time with another well-built male who could easily remind her of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
I mean, the wife may end up being a "Nyumba ndogo," to that same bodyguard who was hired to protect her in the first place.
If you think that’s impossible, ask Whitney Houston or Kevin Costner, but better still, watch their 1992 film, "The Bodyguard!"
However, the Arabs who ruled the Zanzibar Isles during the colonial era, had also encountered this problem but somehow managed to come up with an ultimate solution.
The Arabs hired African youths to watch over their wives, but before allowing the youths to venture anywhere near the ladies, the Arabs would castrate them ... or in simple language, they chopped off the youth genitals, making them eunuchs.
Now, if you are a man, and somebody chopped off your "Things" it usually means that, from then henceforth, you are going to be singing a Soprano falsetto!
It also means that, people can now trust you to escort their wives to the market and their daughters to school, without necessarily fearing that you will convert them into becoming your "small houses!"
Anyway, this is what the Arabs of Pemba used to do, and they called these youths "Watwana" (singular Mtwana) meaning, a "Castrated wives companions."
In Arusha, however it is not only impossible, but also unnecessary to reduce a healthy male into a "Mtwana," in order for him to protect your wife from other guys.
Nowadays, the town boasts some self-made, "Watwanas" or Soprano singers, known in the modern term of "Wapambe!" who will always be prepared to guard your wife free of charge, by spying over her furnishing you with details of her whereabouts.
Which brings us back to where we started. You may just end up killing a few Taxi drivers if you rely on the reports from the local "Wapambes!"
.... Come to think of it. Why not hire Kevin Costner to be her Bodyguard?
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Last
modified:
July 08, 2004
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