Whoever you are, I hope you missed me. I know you are fine because not even Njaanuary could consume you (since you bought this paper or accessed the Internet on that phone to read my yappings about life). Even if it doesn’t belong to you, you still have eyes to read and I swear I have heard my more enlightened friends say your eyes cannot work if you are extremely hungry. So at least you are not extremely hungry. Mean January is over. Thank God. Nonetheless, the prospects of doing anything worthwhile with the money you earned slaving away for Njaanuary (on an empty or scantily fed stomach) are very slim. February as we know it is the month you pay the debts for which we must blame December’s Christmas, your urbanised brood and the neighbour’s kids for whom you must keep up the 'fine' show (for their nosy parents’ sake). So you have bought bread and jam and pizza with money from the local red-eyed loan shark.
I am ignoring the fact that January is over while I force my resolution story here because it’s not my fault I get to write it in February. It’s a good story, I promise. I am also aware that to the bulk of us, the resolutions we made on January 1, 2016, are already old, wrinkly and on their deathbed – or they are virtually non-existent. You owe it to yourself to be truthful. Did you gain 10 kilos on top of the 10 you gained last year? Did you lie to get rid of that annoying associate at work? Did you become wiser? Did you start that business you have been meaning to start since the year 2000? Are you still stuck on the resolution you made on January 1, 2015? The fundamental question is, have you kept up with your annual resolve making or not? Did you bite your tongue, arch your eyebrows, or feign seriousness while you made new resolutions? If you didn’t, the better alternative for you is to resolve not to make resolutions.
Someone I know has made this year’s mission a 366-day journey to making her mother in-law’s life difficult. The decision, though unspoken between them, is mutual. If you are familiar with jealousy and cold war tendencies among females of any species, then this wouldn’t be a problem to comprehend. As you know, females everywhere engage in meaningless supremacy battles. You look at ants and you think of how identical they are, but I promise you that in their antsy world of small waists, there is still one, just one 'Kardashian' that every female antlet aspires to look like. And who knows what they will do; perhaps they will tie grass on their waists so tight or starve themselves or whatever – you get the idea. Apparently, there has been a wild 'marking-of-territory thing' going on between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law and the ultimate price is the confused male caught in the middle. So, mother in-law came over for the holidays on a mission to spend time with her grandchildren, and her mission changed when she saw her son.
“Why are you so thin?” she asked.
“May and I started this diet. We are trying to support each other to be healthy,” he answered.
“So she is starving you, eh? Just because she is fat doesn’t mean the whole world should join in getting thin. She is lazy. She does nothing around the house, that’s why she is fat.”
Now, May was not in the house when this unfolded because she had gone to the neighbourhood chama meeting. But the whole incident still got to her through her six-year-old daughter later that evening.
“Mum, are you fat?” she asked.
“No honey, I have just gained weight because I was carrying your brother here,” May answered pointing to her tummy.
“Then why does grandma say you are fat and lazy?” Her daughter asked.
And this was even before she found her mother-in-law in the kitchen cooking what looked like a heart attack (chicken with the yucky cholesterol-laden skin!) after she had made a vegetable salad for dinner. I don’t know much about wars, but I’m convinced that all wars start this way.
Lillian Kwamboka MoturiEmail: [email protected]