During the mid ’90s, Aggrey and I were living in the poor section of Kiyovu. We shared a nice house which came with a mega huge fridge packed with all tribes of booze!

For us, it was a dream come true! With this kind of healthy stock in our house, we began to attract both friends and foes all in the name of boozing.

In the process, Aggrey and I gained a girlfriend each. The only trouble we had with these girlfriends is that they were so possessive. As Mfashumwana correctly coins it, these chicks had become real chain keepers!

Our girlfriends insisted on going with us everywhere we went. Even when dancing away at the famous Black and White discotheque, our chain keepers trailed us all the way to the toilets. Never mind that the toilets were stinking!

This habit became a bit nagging. That is why we started to dodge them in the name of ‘meetings’. Whenever Aggrey and I needed some space, we told our chain keepers that we would be busy in a meeting at our offices. As you know, our offices were in a form of a huge tent somewhere in Gikondo where we worked for a foreign NGO.

Anyways, the chicks were so stubborn that they insisted on waiting for us at the NGO compound. After the so called meetings, Aggrey and I would sneak back to Gikondo and pretend to emerge out of the tent.

One day, Aggrey and I were invited to a party of Butare University students. It was a bachelor’s party and guys were promising themselves to have a super great night of dancing and merry making.

Aggrey and I made a hasty and unanimous decision; our girlfriends were not coming to the party. IBAZE! All those chicks from Butare University!

Aggrey and I hatched up a plan. We decided that we would both fall sick and stay in bed. The sickness that we created was called mumps. This is a highly contagious disease which turns your face into a roundish ball.

The traditional medicine for such diseases is to smear oneself in soot! We assured our chicks that we had caught this terrible disease from Gikondo and were shivering in our beds.

"Please do not come near us otherwise you will follow suit!”

But the ladies insisted that since they were so much in love with us, they had to visit us and watch from a distance. OK! We were forced to fine tune our plan.

Two house boys were hired and smeared in soot. We told them to tuck themselves under the blankets and make sure that they didn’t reveal their true identities.

As for us, we fled of for the bachelors’ party! Later that night, our chicks came to our house to check on their patients. Indeed the houseboys were in bed shivering with their funny looking faces smeared with soot!

They whispered to the ladies about their sickness and warned them from coming closer. Engulfed by pity, our ladies decided to leave us alone and find something else that would distract them from this misery.

So they decided to go to a party in town. Ooops! This happened to be the same party that we had gone for! And there we were guzzling booze like there was no tomorrow!

Our chain keepers approached the dancing floor and were shocked to see their two sick guys performing a ‘paka chini’ stint. Indeed, we had been caught red handed.
 
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