Married But Available

by B. Nyamnjoh

  Lilly Loveless looked across the street to the market, a bit mesmerized.

  ***

  Britney looked around to make sure no one was listening and continued. “Cathy is a pretty girl working with a company in Sawang. She had sworn that she would never have any sentimental dealing with a Muzungu man, because most of them are crooks and evil.

  “One day, as she was coming back from work, she felt overwhelmingly tired. She called taxis, proposed even, but none would take her. At last a car, a nice car with a Muzungu man stopped by her side. He invited her to come in, telling her that she looked so tired, and that taxis were sometimes very naughty. She convinced herself that this one sounded quite different, kind, even. She got into the car.”

  “Not only tired, but naïve,” guessed Lilly Loveless.

  “The man dropped her at her parent’s house,” explained Britney. “She invited him to say hello to her father. Since the man had proposed to take her out for a drink, she went to her room, took a bath and changed her clothes. She then came to the parlour, and told her father that she was going out for a drink. Her father told her to be prudent, and wished her a nice time.”

  “Just like that?” asked Lilly Loveless.

  “What did you expect? Her father to cage her like a bird? A big girl like that, and going out with a Muzungu on top of that?”

  “Not that,” Lilly Loveless defended herself. “But I’m rather surprised the father did not even ask to know more.”

  “What more is there to know?” asked Britney. “Don’t forget that this is not just a land of Mimbo, it is also a land of snatchers. If you spend time asking questions and seeking answers, lots of things would pass you by. In the world of getting and keeping a man, a certain amount of risk is necessary.”

  Lilly Loveless jotted down what Britney had just said and her interpretation of it.

  “In the car, the Muzungu said it would be good that Cathy knows his house too. He took her to his place. Thirty metres from the main gate, a servant hurriedly opened the door. They got into the house and the man went to get something from his room.

  “She felt thirsty. Luckily there was a fridge in the corner. She got up and tried to open it. A little hard at first, it nevertheless gave in. She was shocked out of her wits at what she saw in the fridge. There were heads, female heads with rasta and greffe...”

  Lilly Loveless put her hand to her bosom in disbelief. She was lost for words.

  “Cathy recollected herself,” Britney continued, “and sat on the sofa where she was before standing up. She then had a bright idea. She took out a coin from her purse and left the house. She walked straight to the gateman and told him that his boss had asked her to send him to buy matches.

  “The gateman said it was quite unusual, and refused to go. His boss bought matches in carton, not in single little match boxes like a market woman roasting corn by the roadside. Cathy told him that she did not know what was usual or not in their house, but that all she was sure of was that his boss had sent her to him. The man refused again. Cathy went back to the parlour. As she was ascending the stairs, the gateman came up to her, and apologetically took the money and hastened out of the compound.”

  “As soon as he left, she too ran out of the gate and onto the street in search of a taxi. Just then, the Muzungu man saw her from afar and got into his car to chase her. The gateman realised what was happening, and ran back to open the gate for him. A Godsend taxi came by, and she jumped into it. ‘The nearest police station,’ she said, struggling to catch her breathe.

  “As they arrived, she jumped out of the car, still running, because the Muzungu man was right behind her. She entered the commissioner’s secretariat, and asked to see him. They wouldn’t let her! She walked to his door, knocked and opened. The commissioner asked her to wait a minute.

  “As she sat in the secretariat the Muzungu man came in. Shunning her, he bribed the secretaries, and got into the office.”

  “Just like that?” screamed Lilly Loveless.

  “Yes, and three minutes later he was out, all smiles.”

  “And he was allowed to go?”

  “When at last it was her turn to be received, Cathy told the commissioner her story. He said that was how things were now, and that she should just go home. She explained that her bag and all her personal documents were there in the Muzungu’s house. The commissioner asked her to find a way to go home, assuring that nothing would happen to her. She left hurt, and had to leave for faraway Nyamandem, a more secure town for her. As you can see, men who go after women don’t always have the same thing in mind,” Britney concluded. “That said, there are lots of more normal Muzungu men with normal ambitions when they attract young Mimbo girls. This man just happened to be weird, and Cathy got the shock of her life.”

  “Let’s get going,” said Lilly Loveless. Her head was spinning.

  ***

  They hailed a taxi on the busy street in front of the market and rode silently to where Britney’s tailor had a big workshop where he made his popular trademarked ‘Desired Dresses’, with the assistance of several apprentices. As the tailor took her measurements, Lilly Loveless still had her thoughts on Cathy, wondering how the latter was faring after her nightmare experience with the weird Muzungu, her supposed dream come true.

  “This tailor is full of funny stories,” said Britney to Lilly Loveless, as they left the tailor’s crowded workshop. “If he wasn’t too busy today, he would have told us a joke or two.”

  “Do you remember any of his past jokes related to my research?” Lilly Loveless enquired.

  “Just two quick ones for now,” replied Britney, stopping a taxi.

  They got in.

  “I’m listening,” said Lilly Loveless.

  “A man was dying,” began Britney. “His wife sat at his bedside. With weakened eyes he looked up and said in a feeble voice: ‘I have something I must confess.’ ‘There’s no need to,’ his wife replied. ‘No,’ insisted the man, ‘I want to die in peace. I slept with your sister, your best friend, and your mother!’ ‘I know,’ replied the wife, ‘now just rest and let the poison work.’”

  “Dat man na hélélé. Scratch yi eye show yi pepper,” said the Taxi man, when Britney finished.

  The second story Britney told in a hurry as the taxi was approaching their stop, and she didn’t want to deprive the interested taxi man of the pleasure of hearing the story: “There was this polygamist with five wives and over 100 girlfriends. His wives could not bear their sexual marginalisation any longer. One day they assembled their children and their father, and told the children: ‘Ask your father, when was the last time he came to our bedrooms? Even when he comes, it is only to sleep and snore. What is the likely outcome of bees locked out of their hives by illicit harvesters of honey?’ With the help of their children, they threatened to castrate their husband, if he didn’t change. Their message to him was clear: You are free to give whatever you want to your lovers, but you are duty bound to fulfil our needs and desires as your wives and the mothers of your children.”

  “Did he change?” asked Lilly Loveless, a sceptical look on her face.

  “I never asked the tailor,” replied Britney. “But the man is said to have told a bachelor friend: ‘If you sleep at night and sweat, then you can imagine what those of us with wives go through.’ Do remind me to ask him when we come back for your clothes,” she added, as they came off the taxi.

  Lilly Loveless noticed that her cell phone was not with her. She must have left it in the taxi. They screamed for the taxi to stop, but the man did not seem to hear them. They immediately took another taxi to follow, calling her phone as they did, from Britney’s phone. After chasing for half a kilometre or so, they lost track of the taxi and gave up.

  “The phone is now history,” said Britney.

  “But it rings when you call it,” replied Lilly Loveless, marvelled. “Can’t the taxi man just answer the call and allow us to tell him we are chasing him for the phone?”

 
“You must live in a dreamland,” said Britney. “Is that what happens where you come from?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Here in Mimboland we thank God for being lucky when we pick something like that. The reasoning is simple: If you really needed it, you wouldn’t lose it.”

  “That’s cynical.”

  “But true. It is the responsibility of the rich to take care of what they value.”

  “What makes the taxi man think that I am richer than him?”

  “Simple. You let go of your phone. If it really mattered to you, it would still be with you as we speak.

  “I give up,” said Lilly Loveless, angry with herself for not being careful enough. Yet, how could she have thought that an apparently friendly taxi man sharing jokes with them would be a lion in sheepskin with her cell phone? She felt terrible. All her phone numbers were gone, making her feel naked, without ties and vulnerable. She felt as if a vital part of her person had fled.

  “I need a new phone right away. Could you take me to a cell phone retailer to buy another?” she pleaded with Britney. “My mom would worry herself to death if she can’t reach me by phone.”

  They boarded another taxi to Global Mobile Connections, the most popular cell phone dealer in town. It was a very big shop with phones and accessories of all shapes and sizes, from the most basic and cheapest to the trendiest and costliest.

  To mitigate her frustration for losing her phone, Lilly Loveless decided to ask the proprietor a few questions about his business.

  “This is an impressive shop you’ve got here,” she started with a compliment.

  “I’m trying my best,” replied the shop owner. “There’s little to complain about. Business is booming, we thank God.”

  “So cell phones are very popular?”

  “Popular?” he laughed. “They’ve revolutionised the landscape in Mimboland,” he told her. “Since graduating from Mimbo two years ago, I haven’t looked back. All I needed was the initial push by my parents to kick start the business. It took a single trip to Dubai and I was able to triple what my parents lent me, and in less than no time, had paid them back. Today I’m my own boss with three employees…”

  “Like someone who interacts on a daily basis with clients and also with cell phone users out there, what can you tell me about cell phone use in Mimboland?”

  “My best customers are women. They go for the latest, slickest and most expensive. When I go to Dubai, it is them I seek to please the most. When a man walks in and wants a phone for a woman, I know instantly, just as I know if he is buying for himself, although even men seem to give up on the bigger the better when it comes to cell phones.” He laughed as if there was much more to what he said.

  Lilly Loveless recalled the words of a politician back home in Muzunguland who declared some years back that the cell phone is one of those rare items for which men are ready to compete on who has got the smallest.

  “So tell me what phone I’m going to buy now,” Lilly Loveless challenged, teasingly.

  “That’s easy. You are paying for it yourself, and you are Muzungu, so I swear you’ll go for the cheapest Nokia, Motorola or Samsung,” he laughed, his fat jaws quivering with underpinning comfort. “That’s what amazes me about you the Muzungu. You make all of these things, yet are so frugal and crafty in your consumption of them. We make nothing and we don’t have the kind of money Muzungu have, but we settle for kingly consumption of what we can’t even repair or maximise use of. If it isn’t the most expensive in the world, and if it isn’t coming from abroad, we aren’t going to touch it. Beggars with the choices of kings, we are!”

  “You are right,” agreed Lilly Loveless. “I’ll go for your cheapest Nokia, not because I don’t like a sophisticated phone, but just because all I want is a phone that works, and in any case, I would hate having to lose an expensive phone yet again.”

  Lilly Loveless paid for the phone, bought a new sim card and airtime, and as one of the shop assistants was busy configuring her new phone under Britney’s supervision, she continued her conversation with the shop owner.

  “Tell me more about cell phone use here in Puttkamerstown,” she urged.

  “I don’t know the percentage of ownership between men and women, but I can say that most of the women who own phones get them from men, who also feed the phones regularly with airtime. The interesting thing is that usually when you transfer airtime electronically to a lady, you get a very quick call or an SMS from her to thank you for the airtime. Thereafter, you don’t hear from her again and the next time she calls you is to tell you that her airtime is finished and she wants to have some more.”

  “So whom do they call with this airtime? Shouldn’t it be for you who have supplied it?”

  “That’s the question the men are asking.”

  “Who are these men buying phones and airtime?”

  “Boyfriends, husbands, Mbomas… Sometimes somebody gets into a serious crisis with the wife or girlfriend because he has refused to buy her a phone or to pay for airtime.”

  “What perceptions of cell phones are popular?”

  “The cell phone is considered a luxury and as a tool of prestige, but also as something with much practical value. But because it is expensive to run, you sometimes find people with cell phones who go for months without making a single call. Still they are proud of their phones and usually they want to display it for people to notice that they have a cell phone. Although their bags and pockets are empty and indeed actually safer, people often prefer to carry their phones so others can see and admire or envy them.”

  “How exactly do they expose these phones?”

  “They carry it in their palms or they hang it on their neck. I sell pouches and lots of accessories for that purpose. They display it where it would be very visible for anyone to see. You need to see people at workshops, conferences, churches and other public occasions, refusing to switch off their phones. Sometimes in church, phones interrupt prayers with funny ring tones, despite notices pasted all over asking members of the congregation to switch off their cell phones. Just last Sunday, my pastor asked if those who leave their phones on during service are desperately waiting for an urgent call from Satan. Women are particularly guilty. When they are not busy displaying their phones for others to admire, they leave them on and put them deep inside their handbags such that before they get to take the call, they have disturbed almost everybody around. People hardly respect notices and instructions telling them to put off their cell phones. To them, it is like being asked to switch off one’s ambitions for prestige and social status.”

  “What do you have to tell me about ring tones?”

  “Ring tones have gone wild these days, and tastes vary as much as human character. In general though, people prefer tones that are melodious, that are music, not simply signals. Once they buy their phones, they usually ask us or technicians to give them a rich variety of ring tones that they think are attractive and unique. If they get their fancy ring tones, sometimes they like to put the ring tones very high and to let the phone ring for long to attract passers-by to know that they are receiving a call. You have to be important and well connected to receive a call, you know?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I remember when cell phones were still relatively new, students would arrange with others to beep them in lecture halls so they could pretend to be receiving important calls from family or friends abroad.”

  “Really?”

  “Absolutely. Also, when there were not that many ring tones to choose from and everyone wanted the privilege of receiving a call, there was much anxiety when the phone rang in a public place. The tendency was for everyone to rush for their phones. Even today, women especially are always very anxious, as if they sit in permanent expectation of the phone ringing. They rush to unzip their bags and remove their cell phones even before they’ve ascertained that it is their ring tone. In certain instances, some people carry several phones by different servic
e providers on them. You need to see them totally confused when one rings, worse still, if several ring at the same time.”

  “That’s funny,” Lilly Loveless giggled, visualising someone totally wired up, vibrating with a cacophony of ring tones. “So the phones are hardly on silent even when they have a silent feature?”

  “No. Most people do not even know that the silent thing is there, and those who do don’t care to use it, because to them when you receive a phone silently people do not know that you are around, and what is the point of being important, around and silent?”

  “You are too critical for a businessman and dealer in cell phones,” remarked Lilly Loveless.

  “I went into business to survive, but my heart is with sociology,” said the proprietor. “When I’ve made enough money, I intend to go to Muzunguland for further studies.”

  “So you want to fall bush?”

  “You know about bushfalling?”

  “Britney has told me all about it.”

  “It is the latest Gospel in town. Everyone is craving to fall bush. We believe in bushfalling, and are proud to be referred to not by name, but simply as bushfallers.”

  “How interesting,” remarked Lilly Loveless, her mind not wanting to let go of the central theme of cell phones. “How many cell phones do you have personally?”

  “I sell them, so I can have as many as I fancy. There are some with room for two or more sim cards, others with possibility for Internet, digital camera, word processing, graphics, games, Bluetooth, and so on. In general however, most people prefer to have two cell phones, since we have two main network service providers. They have one for this provider and a second for the other. This is understandable as both networks are hardly working well simultaneously, but I am sure people would still have two phones even if the networks were healthy all year round, just so others know that they can possess two phones. In some rare occasions, people who travel a lot and between countries could have a phone for each country, rather than having to juggle sim cards each time they travel.”