The importance of being yourself

I am the subject of rumours and suspicion, the scandal I am involved in is curious indeed. The problem is I have no scandalous behaviour to report, I do not sleep around, nor do I do my business in public. When I got to my thirties, I realised what a futile pursuit loose women are. I might sound naive but I wanted more; to be loved. When I came to Rwanda, I found the dating pool to be very small and incestuous. Friends sleep with friends and friends of friends of friends; if one of you has a virus then you all get it. So imagine my surprise when people started to question my manhood, and there I was thinking I was being a good guy, trying to avoid a bad reputation. In Rwanda there are two types of girls, the “good-time girls” who do the circuit and the other type who are marry-able. I always say that men with a playboy image have some deep insecurity that makes them hyper-sexual as a means of feeling power. Then there are others who just want to fit in, who just want to be like the rest, who judge themselves by other people’s standards. So in Rwanda, a “real man” should be married, drive a Prado or a new Rav4, have as many women on the side as possible, meet these women at sleazy hotels during their lunch breaks, have a slight pot belly, a blackberry and all this time they assume that their wives can’t do the same. I was tempted to do a “Mike Ezra” and silence my doubters by ravaging a woman at Rondpoint at noon in front of a live audience. But that wouldn’t be me, and it wouldn’t prove anything to anyone. Above all, I wouldn’t be proving anything to myself. It is so important to be yourself, no matter what people say about you, people will always try to make you feel insecure and convince you that you are less of a man or woman. How you have lived your life is not wrong, it is what you find comfortable, so why change? If you do change, then do so for your own reasons, not for outside pressure. Rwanda is like High School which lasts forever, people trying to impress, to be seen, to talk about others and above all to conform to other people’s stereotypes. Psychologists divide the human character into 3 parts, the “it”, the animal in you, the one who eats when it’s hungry and generally follows urges and instincts. Then there is the “Ego” the person who only you know, the one who looks back at you in the mirror. Then there is the “super-ego” the fake persona that each of us projects to the world. In Rwanda, one gets the feeling that the “it” and the “super-ego” are one and the same; and they are used to masking the inadequacies of the “ego” or your true self. In the end you just have to be yourself because you’ll never keep up with people’s expectations of you. Ends