I am a man who loves his job and my degree of professionalism is not questionable just like you can testify from what you have been following in this column. But what do you do when you are between a rock and a hard place at your place of work and making the matter worse when the issue is between you and the boss. We were together in high school for six years with Omuntu. We met during the rainy month of February in 1968 as very young teens and it is this great school that brought us together. That is when I was beginning to learn this foreign language since I was new in that country and all the success that I registered was due to this wonderful young girl. With my uniqueness as a foreigner and her good reception of me, the relationship became so ballistic that everyone at school was wondering what these “kids” were up to. So fast time moves that before we could celebrate our 19th birthday, six years of high school were done and separation, who knows whether for a life time, was eminent. Honestly speaking we had had a puppy romance with Omuntu and it seemed it would never end. After our final exam, we were all lost for what to say to each other instead we sobbed and went our separate ways.It was hard to forget my Omuntu but as they say “time is a healer”. I settled for the bitter truth that I would never see her again. I returned to my native Rwanda and got a job as a tour guide like I have shared with you before. My immediate boss was a hefty fellow with a thick beard, Rambo-like muscles, so he would be an imposing nightmare around you. But on a good day he would pass as generous as Santa Claus. Six years into my job, we had struck a wonderful working relationship with my boss until Omuntu came to Rwanda to see the Karisimbi Mountain. Holy God, she was still as beautiful and you would think she was fresh from God’s workshop but this time I would have to compete with my monster boss. They had known each other in the six years. “My friend Omuntu is visiting Rwanda,” my boss had bragged one evening as we shared a cold primus. Omuntu!! The name was sweet melody to my ears but I ignored the whole thing. Of course it can’t be the Omuntu I had known six years ago. I even consoled myself that the Omuntu I knew would not come to see this…words fail me. Low and behold it was her; we met while on my duty of guiding her around the tallest mountain in the country. Of course my boss had come along. “Shooteeeeeeeer,” she screamed aloud on seeing me. The boss got concerned given that he knew how deadly I was.Instinctively she jumped into my embrace where I kept her for what should have seemed an eternity to my boss. “No it must be your ghost!” she could not believe her eyes. “It’s not a ghost sweetheart, am your real life time love.” After my assurance, the boss would not take this “insubordination” while lying down so he devised means to eliminate me practically or technically. But before that, she introduced me to my boss as “the man she had been missing for the last six years…remember, I told you about him?” So they had even talked about me. Immediately my boss assigned me to the headquarters so he could “guide” Omuntu himself. Imagine this! True to her love she would call off the trip if the Shooter was not part of the crew. Steve, my boss, had no choice but to helplessly watch as his employee was ripping his heart apart. Like the Shooter I am, I took centre stage until she went back with all the contacts and promising me that “we would never miss each other again”. That she was planning to settle in Rwanda. However, my boss was professional enough since he ate his humble pie and never fired me. I initially thought I was done for. Sorry boss, the girls had always been mine, so is Omuntu Naburiya. Ends
