Married But Available

by B. Nyamnjoh

  “I’ll write again tomorrow if the Internet connection is faster.

  “I just closed my eyes and touched my lips gently to receive my birthday kiss from you. I felt the sensation. I am filled with emotions of love, friendship, respect for you as well as gratitude and admiration. As a lover you are the best, as a... you are the best, and especially you are just like a big brother I never had. I am very happy God sent me your way. It’s been so fruitful and I will only be fooling myself if I don’t tell you that you are the best thing that has happened to me since my daddy died.”

  12

  Bobinga Iroko had been busy for the past three days attending a workshop on an exciting new initiative. He had been delegated by his colleagues at The Talking Drum to lead discussions with some dynamic Mimbolanders in Muzunguland who want to introduce affordable blogging technology to give a solid online presence to powerful Mimboland voices – creative people, trendsetters, academics, journalists, etc. – through personal blogs that could easily be updated even from Mimboland where connectivity is as weak as the legs of a Mimboman neck deep in Mimbo. He has embraced the initiative wholeheartedly, and can be seen at drinking places explaining to everyone who cares to listen how The Talking Drum is going to be transformed within months. “The simplicity of the software involved entails that one does not need more than basic computer skills to be relevant, an aspect critical in our context where many newsrooms still can’t afford computers and the necessary technical sophistication to maximize their use.” Because he speaks and speaks over and over again about this initiative, those around him such as Lilly Loveless and Britney have picked up much about the Internet, blogging and citizen journalism.

  Bobinga Iroko feels that this technology is particularly useful for Mimboland, where repressive laws and censorship have contributed to stifling freedom of expression and drying out vital sources of meaningful news and information. The press has been reduced to a level of underdevelopment that makes print runs perpetually difficult to predict, and yields little profits beyond what it takes to barely subsist. No substantive print runs have meant little advertisement revenue, which in turn has pushed journalists to cut corners to make ends meet through brown envelope journalism and other forms of prostitution. The Talking Drum thus welcomes the initiative, which it hopes to use to bypass conventional channels of repression and gate keeping by the government and its praise singers. In this way The Talking Drum will be better able to reach out to its diaspora readership, while relying at the same time on the expertise and resources of the diaspora in the development and administration of its website. The most exciting thing Bobinga Iroko has picked up, so he says, is the fact that “the blogs are very democratic in their design. Blog owners do not have to rely on a webmaster to update the blog as is the case with standard websites; the reader is not just a passive consumer but an interactive participant who is free to comment on any story – usually anonymously – with little or no restriction.” Bobinga Iroko could fathom what a Godsend blogging would be to The Talking Drum and to the striking students and its other readership whose lips have been zipped by dictatorship masquerading as democracy.

  With Bobinga Iroko busy on the new initiative, Lilly Loveless has had more time to spend exclusively with Britney, Prince Anointed of the Archives, and other informants she comes across more by chance than by design.

  This morning, Britney agreed to help Lilly Loveless pick out fabric for her tailor-made outfits. They just left the market, satisfied with their selections of beautifully designed fabric by the renowned Mimbo Fabrics International Company and settled at a nearby snack bar for some work.

  ***

  “David is a government official in service in Puttkamerstown,” began Britney even before drinks were ordered.

  Lilly Loveless fumbled for her recorder and notebook and pen.

  “Aged about 45, handsome and gentle in appearance, he is married, and the father of many children. He has many girlfriends of varying ages despite his reputation as ‘Japanese handbrake,’ which means a man who is slow at providing financial assistance to women. To people who don’t know him, he likes to boast: ‘Men may have their shortcomings as far as women are concerned, but none of the girls one sees around these days is woman enough to cause trouble in my home.’

  “A few months ago, he met Sandra, and they started dating. Sandra, who was living in relative harmony with her neighbours, all of a sudden became proud. She would hardly greet them any more and would look at them as though from a pedestal. Her neighbours started hating her, and talking badly about her affair with David.”

  Lilly Loveless took the recorder from the table and asked Britney to hold it and speak into it so her voice wouldn’t get buried by the noise spilling over from the chatty market men and women and passers-by in the street.

  “David visited Sandra more frequently,” continued Britney, and “stayed with her in her room, and took her out to places. Many of Sandra’s friends were annoyed because Sandra was only about 19, and was now neglecting her bookwork to provide more time for a relationship from which she reaped practically no material benefits. They tried to speak to her, but she was blinded by love.”

  “So the girl is 26 years his junior,” Lilly Loveless contemplated out loud.

  “One day, David’s wife came to hear about this ‘little girl who had practically seized her husband.’ She wanted to talk to her husband, but felt it was mean to see a 19 year old girl – about the age of her own daughter – as a threatening potential rival. She nevertheless asked a relation of hers to show her the girl’s place. Every now and then when she passed around the Catholic Church area where she was told Sandra lived, she would check for her husband’s car.

  “Most often, the car was parked near the girl’s mini-cité. She had had enough of her husband always being with his girlfriend. One blessed afternoon, she saw her husband’s car, rushed home, took the spare key, and hired a taxi to the Catholic Church. She then took the car away.

  “Neighbours had seen his wife, but all decided to teach Sandra a lesson, by pretending not to have witnessed anything.

  “Clever …” noted Lilly Loveless.

  “When David and Sandra came out of Sandra’s room, they were shocked not to find the car. David started shouting that thieves had stolen his car. He made effective use of his position as government official and called top army officials in and around Puttkamerstown. Policemen came and made a ‘constat’, and he –David –rushed all over the place with hopes of tracing the car. He used his cell phone to call everybody and alert them to watch out for his car. At 2am, completely drained by the experience, exhausted and desperate, he realised that ‘home is home.’ He had to go home and face his wife with the story of the stolen car. Reluctantly, he took a taxi home. He was so overwhelmed by circumstances that he hung his coat on his shoulder, not knowing exactly what to tell his wife about the whereabouts of his car. What was his car doing where it was stolen? What was he himself doing there?”

  “A whole host of questions nagging him,” Lilly Loveless mused.

  “On reaching his house, he was dumbfounded to find his Mercedes SE nicely parked in the garage. The problem now shifted from his wife to his collaborators. Where would he tell them he had found his car? And what about the unnecessary scandal and alarm he had raised virtually everywhere? How would he tell them to stop searching?”

  “Another whole new set of questions, isn’t it?” Lilly Loveless remarked.

  “Ashamed of himself, and feeling miserable, he hesitantly knocked at his daughter’s window to let him in.

  “She came to open the door, and greeted her father. He hardly answered. His authority and credibility had left him without as much as saying goodbye.

  “He went to his room and found his wife fast asleep. He sneaked into bed, taking all necessary precautions not to wake her up. He was afraid. He dreaded another scandal.

  “There was no scandal. In the morning, the woman got up, and started her day like any other day.
She did not cough about the incident. Neither did David. His worry was his children might hear of their father’s exploits, and withdraw the respect they had invested in him. The message had passed through.”

  “Pretty sly of his wife,” commented Lilly Loveless.

  “I thought so too,” said Britney, “but no behaviour by a woman surprises me, given what our men can be up to. What I didn’t get is whether his relationship with Sandra continues. Does he still visit her? With his car? And for how long? These are all questions of interest, but for which I have no answers. Stories are stories only to the extent that they end somewhere, isn’t it?”

  Lilly Loveless nodded. “In research you can’t harvest more than you are told, or give more than what you know without doing the subject matter a disservice. So never feel under pressure to inflate or invent data just because you must give me what you think should qualify as a story. Better a short story well told, better the ugly truth than a beautiful lie. That’s the golden rule of research,” Lilly Loveless lectured.

  After what seemed like an eternity, a young man in baggy trousers finally asked Britney and Lilly Loveless what they wanted to drink. Britney requested Pamplemousse and Lilly Loveless her Mimbo-Wanda.

  “Isn’t it a bit early for a young woman to be drinking beer?” asked the man with a sly grin on his face, but with an audacity that would cost him his job if his employer were to learn of it. For, how could anyone in the land of Mimbo prescribe drinking hours and get away with it?

  Lilly Loveless met his eyes and said, “Only for a woman who hasn’t already put in a day’s work.”

  They all laughed.

  “Could you also bring us two roasted plums and plantains from across the road?” she asked as she extended a few coins. She was amazed by how affordable Puttkamerstown was to a Muzungulander in terms of food and drinks.

  ***

  “Let’s keep going,” said Britney. “Paul, he’s a Sawang based businessman, quite rich. He owns flashy cars, apartments, bank accounts at home and abroad, and a lot more. He is also very generous to those he loves. In fact, when he loves he gives.”

  “And it flows when he gives?” teased Lilly Loveless.

  “Yes, he gives as much as he loves. The only thing he does not give a woman for whom he falls is liberty.”

  “Hmmm…”

  “Paul and Annabelle had been dating for six months, when Paul proposed, or was asked, to provide Annabelle with better living conditions. She left the ghetto where she lived to an apartment in a high class area. Everything, from bed to TV, DVD player, deck and flashy cell phone, was bought for her. She was living in unprecedented luxury.

  “Let it flow,” teased Lilly Loveless again.

  “But with all this wealth,” continued Britney, by now used to Lilly Loveless’ sometimes irritating interventions, “she was restricted to staying at home. There was a houseboy, as well as a night watchman at her service.

  “All that?” remarked Lilly Loveless.

  “Yes, to ensure that she never aspires to liberty. Paul visited her after work, each afternoon, between 4 and 5pm. Any absence on her part was not tolerated. In fact, she did not have the right to go out, even for shopping, without prior authorization by her boyfriend. Even granted this permission, she would be accompanied by someone sent by Paul.

  “She’s under pretty tight watch,” Lilly Loveless couldn’t help but note.

  “Yes, and her apartment soon felt like a prison to her. The only way she could escape from Paul’s regulations was with the complicity of her houseboy. She made friends with him, and often gave him generous tokens.

  “Soon after, her former boyfriend, the one she had before Paul, started paying her visits occasionally, then more and more frequently. They would go to her room, and ‘play cards.’

  “Games of hearts, I suppose?” asked Lilly Loveless.

  Britney smiled and continued, still holding the recorder. “It so happened that Annabelle badly needed her houseboy to cook for her young boyfriend’s birthday, which she was celebrating in his studio. Just at that period, the houseboy had asked for a three-day permission to go and visit his parents who were sick back in the village. Annabelle refused, and the boy insisted, but Annabelle was categorical. She even went on to remind him that she was the boss, and that he had to obey.

  “The houseboy stayed, but told Paul about Annabelle’s evasions, although Annabelle had given him some compensation for having stayed. The day just after the birthday, when Annabelle and her boyfriend were in her room reminiscing on the birthday, the houseboy called Paul on his cell phone.”

  “Oh, trouble,” insisted Lilly Loveless.

  “By the time Paul arrived, they were through. On seeing Paul’s limousine through the window, she asked her boyfriend to run out while

  Paul parked in the garage. But Paul was smart enough, so that he met the young man just as he was coming out of the apartment. “Paul stormed in and asked Annabelle who the young man was, and she tried to tell him that he was a relative of hers. Paul reminded her of the fact that he had control over who could visit her. Besides, why had he never met or heard about this relative before, if relative he was?

  “Annabelle changed the subject, brought a drink, and tried to make him forget what she had done by being exceedingly kind and caring. Paul resisted going to bed with her, and left after a few minutes.

  “An hour or two later, a lorry parked in the compound and huge men came out to remove everything Paul had bought. In 30 minutes, the house was as clear as if nobody had ever lived in it. Even her cell phone, which she was fond of telling whoever could listen, was the cutest and most modern around, was taken from her under instructions by Paul.”

  “Everything over and done with just like that after the houseboy’s phone call? She sure misjudged his loyalties, didn’t she?” asked Lilly Loveless.

  “So, in the end,” Britney concluded, “Annabelle had to go back to the ghetto, to live with her parents as penniless as she had left them. It was as if she had retired from a brief exposure to sunlight back into a cave of darkness. There is no need to recount the mockeries of her age mates who could not bear the ‘luck’ she had had, and prayed ardently for a reverse of situation.”

  “Really? They prayed for her renewed material comfort even if she had to suffer draconian conditions?” asked Lilly Loveless sincerely.

  Before Britney could attempt a reply, the young man finally showed up with their drinks and the freshly roasted plums and plantains they ordered, wrapped in an old copy of The Talking Drum. Neither Bobinga Iroko nor Prince Anointed would be pleased to see this, Lilly Loveless thought to herself. She was particularly embarrassed when the page her eyes fell on contained a mutilated article captioned: ‘Politics and Intellectual Prostitution in Mimboland: Varsity Dons Shame the Ivory Tower’. She would have to procure a copy from Bobinga Iroko or Prince Anointed to read the commentary.

  “But we’re ready to go now,” said Lilly Loveless.

  The young man set everything down in front of them on the wobbly wooden table and explained that he had been called off on an errand.

  He opened the two bottles quickly before his clients could run off after sitting so long for free and disappeared again himself. They bit into the plums, the first ones of the season, and took a bite of the plantains. The two, eaten together, were very delicious.

  ***

  “The next stories are pretty strange,” Britney prepared Lilly Loveless. “I’m glad there’s no one here to overhear us. You see, there is a Muzungu man who, like most cooperation workers, is neither rich nor poor. The field in which his country had sent him to assist Mimboland was not clear. Nevertheless, one thing was clear to girls of the town where he lived and worked: he was very generous with conquests.”

  “Good expression,” remarked Lilly Loveless. She could almost see the guy splashing everyone with showers of conquest.

  “His wife was often going back to Muzunguland, and he was known as a rod that spared no girl. They c
alled him ‘frappeur’. He is said to have told a beautiful girl who came looking for work: ‘I’m looking for an experienced cleaner with a thorough and practiced broom that can reach out to the hidden and neglected corners of my abode. If you can ensure that and be at the heart of things, then you’ve got yourself a job. Whatever you do, however excited you get, never call your employer by name.’”

  “Sounds like a trap to me,” said Lilly Loveless.

  “One evening, an upper-sixth high school girl, after initially telling him ‘I usually am friends with someone before I go out with them’, eventually yielded and followed him to his house. He offered her a drink, and they moved to his room. He kissed her, undressed her and aroused her to the point where she claimed: ‘When I’m truly aroused, I’m intoxicated by sensations of love and loving’. But what she expected was not what she got. By their side, the Muzungu’s dog was wagging its tail expectantly. When he had laid her on his bed he simply explained that he would concede his place to his dog.”

  “What!?” Lilly Loveless couldn’t believe her ears.

  “The girl got up, but the door was locked. The Muzungu held the key. He then started his bargain. He proposed Mim$ 50,000, the girl refused. 100,000, she still did not want to hear about it. 150,000, 200,000, the girl was stubborn. 250,000, she accepted, reluctantly. It is said, by those who know better, that if she had refused further, he would have menaced her with a gun.

  “So she accepted?” Lilly Loveless grimaced.

  “Did she have a choice?” asked Britney. “Her party with the Muzungu’s dog was filmed, and her money given her. Apparently, the man was fond of filming such practices. He earned a lot of money by sending his recordings to his country, where they were sold to the highest bidder for perverse pleasures.”

  “My goodness…” sighed Lilly Loveless, not knowing what to make of the saddening story.

  “The girl failed her exams that year, but passed it the following year. ‘Watat,’, as students called her – imitating the sound produced by the dog while on her, don’t ask me where they got that detail from, – eventually proceeded to the university, apparently in full possession of all her senses, and has since moved on to a normal relationship with a more regular Mboma who brushes aside as rumour everything he hears about her.”