Great bores of today

Last week, as always, I was sitting, minding my own business and watchig the world go by. I sat watching this budding new middle class which is fast developing in Bongo.

On my left was a fellow loudly talking about the virtue of his car. His vehicle was so-fast that it could hit Arusha town in northern Tanzania in two hours, he lied. Naturally, his listeners were nodding in agreement. Understandably so, the star was buying the booze.

If I was one of his listeners I would simply have asked him why should he risk life and limb attempting to zoom his way to Arusha when he could have flown there in half an hour.

Then the bore changed and started talking about his house. It had three bars, four sitting rooms, a TV room, 3 master bed-rooms. The guy kept droning on and on about his possessions. I chuckled under my breath and mentally asked him how many coffins had he amassed for himself.

The he announced, rather grandly, that his missus was coming to join them. Er, she had her own car, you see. After great deliberation, they had decided to have three cars. One for baba, one for mamaz and a sporting car for totos. Most amusing, I thought. Fisadi!

Then the wife walked into the restaurant, a sturdy chair was pulled for her by one of the grateful hangers-on. Maybe it’s in our culture that most African men like big bums on their women’s derriere.

One look at her ladyship and I decided that this was no ordinary big bum. This was a booster, a big booster. It could literally lift her body from planet earth straight to the geo-stationary orbit in space in no time. My imagination just went to the size of their bed. It certainly must have been a king-sized bed, for the man was not so small himself. But that was hardly my business.

What bothered me was when a couple came in with a baby. Junior was hardly 4 months old and the parents were exposing the cute thing to the elements in this open aired restaurant.

This was certainly wrong. The young couple wanted to be parents and beat-nicks at the same time. You simply are not allowed to raise babies in bars with guys guzzling booze and music blaring from speakers.

There is an old by-law which stipulates that kids under 18 are not allowed into bars. In Bongo almost all new-born babies are allowed to go and be tortured in bars!

Things really happen here. We are told that drunken driving is strictly forbidden. A joke, of course, since drunken driving is de rigueur in town. Watch how everyone who is anyone try to park their cars on vantage points near bars. The law usually shrugs offs and simply looks the other way.

Maybe we should make that a tourist attraction. Something like: ‘Welcome to Tanzania the land of Kilimanjaro, Zanzibar and drunken-driving. You may also mistreat your baby by going to booze with your bambino in noisy bars’

That will definitely attract all those wierdos from foreign lands to come and spend their green backs in Bongo! Get drunk while changing nappies. Mungu ibariki Tanzania!