The tale of a wannabe Kardashian and a REAL African brother

I had no idea Kigali ladies had a sense of humor that can make Jim Carrey and Chris Rock look like amateurs. A few days ago, I shared a seat on a city-bound taxi with a lady who had an awful half-baked western accent and matching looks.

Thursday, November 15, 2012
Martin bishop

I had no idea Kigali ladies had a sense of humor that can make Jim Carrey and Chris Rock look like amateurs. A few days ago, I shared a seat on a city-bound taxi with a lady who had an awful half-baked western accent and matching looks.She was bragging on her sleek cell phone about how she dumped her fiancé because he was so unromantic and ancient, didn’t like beach camping or clubbing and never bought her flowers. The ‘muzungu’ wannabe rattled on and on. Unless my memory is failing me, since when did Africans make flowers a big deal?  I know girls love flowers and we grew up seeing our sisters tending to flower gardens or crying for flowery dresses in shops but that’s about it! Some things that just don’t take our time - that includes worshiping flowers! A big percentage grew up in villages or city suburbs surrounded by real flower gardens, beautiful trees and running streams with birds chirping away. Deny it if you want or call yourself ‘city-born’ but the truth is, flowers are not an African technique! Take bird-watching for example; the only reason a true African brother would pay money to watch birds is if he was writing a leisure article, accompanied by a foreigner, or using bird watching binge as a d-coy! It’s not that we don’t love birds, we literally grew up with hundreds of different species and to this day, we are still neighbours! Talk about things like mountain/rock climbing. What about them? We used and still do climb mountains and gigantic rocks and hills, but not as a sport or for fun. But when going to school, fetching water or visiting relatives on the other side. Yes, we find things like sunsets, moonlight or waterfalls amazing but it’s not in our nature to dwell on them. It is the same reason we reluctantly pay to watch animals in the zoo, because we don’t see why we should when we have goats, hens and other creatures walking around!The love for dogs is for ‘bazungu’. Yes, we might have them, but only for security’s sake and not because we love watching how adorable they look wagging their tails! We do not open bank accounts or make them heirs to our hard earned dime! Also, as Africans, we make a lot of mistakes, but never will we mistake a house for a kennel.   As for the wannabe Kardashian, before getting off the taxi, I sent a silent laudatory massage to my true African brother for showing her what a true African brother is made of.