HUMOUR : “Madness in the House”

The other day, I went back home and happened to find my children at home relaxing in the comfort of my sitting room. They had turned on the music so loud as if they were in a disco. As if that was not bad enough, they kept talking or rather shouting on top of their voices so that they could hear each other. I was really baffled, in the first place, if these youngsters wanted to talk so that they could hear each other, why the hell then were they playing the music so loud? It was as if they were trying to compete with the music system to find out who of the two (human and machine) was louder than the other. In our days, my dad did not as much as own a simple radio cassette player, all he owned was an old National radio receiver whose age could be guessed from the amount of dust that has accumulated on the cloth-like material covering the so called loud speaker. And even with such a radio home, it could not play any music because, there were no FM (frequency modulation) radio stations; the available stations only relayed news broadcasts, personal announcements and a few musical programmes and that was that. Most of our parents could only afford to buy dry batteries to power their radio sets for news and personal announcements after which they switched the radio sets off! Whenever I am at home, I normally tune in to the likes of Radio Rwanda, Contact FM, Flash and City FM, BBC and VOA for news and talk shows. Believe me or not, the children cannot bring themselves to listen to any of this “nonsense”. They prefer the music only. Imagine what kind of music they tune in to? They tend to enjoy music where the singers or rather talkers keep shouting words with the letter “F” rather than sing some soul searching hits. You hear them talking of their favourite musicians as being “50 Cents” or “Sean Paul” or “Snoopy Doggy”, “Pussy Cat Dolls”, “Chameleons”, “Wine”, sijui what other names these singers have! Watch them dance and you might develop a heart attack, the guys jump up and down making so many erotic movements. Just a second, have you noticed how many of them dress? In Kigali, we either have a dry season where the roads are a bit dusty or we have a rainy season wherethe roads are muddy. The girls put on trousers so long that, they go stepping on them irrespective of the weather. As for the boys, they don trousers that have their flyway hanging as low as the knees and the waist way hanging loosely on to the hips area. It is as if these trousers are about to fall off their wearers! Can we say that the trousers are wearing their owners? As for the girls, they walk while tossing their heads left or right in a bid to rid them of falling hair (like the whites do). This is copying at its highest level. As you might notice, many of them have even adopted the American accent. The girls dress so offensively, with their breasts almost popping out of their “braless” chests; as if this is not enough, they expose their “malnourished” stomachs in the name of fashion and style, what a shame! Now a days, when I have elders in the house, more so, those from places like Karangazi in Mutara, I make sure, the children are well dressed before they can come to greet the elders. , they simply utter a few “Hi, hi, hi (read hayi, hayi, hayi)” and off they go! Mfashumwana@fastmail.fm