EMPTY WALLETS DO TALK!

Dating tends to be akin to walking through a murky, reptile infested stream in an equatorial jungle. You have to tread carefully, lest you be mauled by an alligator or you get swallowed by a humongous snake out to get an early breakfast. This is always so, especially when your financial skeletal system is a little bit below the average national levels of calcium required. You plan meticulously before you can part with a shilling which is almost every time you get to see your better half or the better half to be. Men are instinctual providers, this means that even in the event of her being well to do, it is hard to let her foot the bill two times in a row. You will begin to feel inadequate.

You have spent a week without seeing her and it is almost inevitable that you have to visit her. You will be there by five in the post meridian you say, but for some reason it is four forty five and you have not started on your journey. She texts you, demanding to know where you have reached and you will confidently tell her that you are at the taxi stage. You speed up, hurry to the taxi stage and the particular taxi in the lead only has two people in it. You cannot take the boda boda because it will end up consuming five times the portion of the budget allocated to transport. You take the front seat, pull out your Tecno M6, switch on the mobile data and it vibrates twelve times, that must be her.

“Are you coming or not?” She will break the silence.
“Of course am coming baby. What kind of question is that?” You will reply.
“Well you said you would be here by five p.m. if at all you had a watch, you should have realised that it is five minutes past your arrival time.”

The taxi starts moving and you will be filled with energy. Then you will turn around the corner and you will see the longest line of cars you have ever seen. Traffic Jam. God’s timing never seems so imperfect until now. It is coming to six. The phone will ring.
“Where are you?”
 “I am at Spear now sweetheart.” You will reply, trying to incorporate a hearty lilt in your voice, unsuccessfully so.
Everyone in the taxi will turn and train their eyes towards you. It is not because you have green eyes or webbed hands. It is because you are stuck in jam at clock tower, a long way from your location on the phone. You will start feeling like a lying idiot for a minute until the back seat is filled with the ringing of a phone. The person will claim they are in Ntinda. Perfect, time has vindicated you.

There are times which are so bad the devil will not take credit for it. This one time she will be sick. You will head there thinking it is only a cold, only to find she is down with the worst fever you have ever seen. You will head out looking for a pharmacy but the place being upscale, the only one you will find is Vine Pharmaceuticals. No mom and pop drug shops around here. When the pompous young lady behind the counter tells you that half a dose of Coartem goes for 10,000 shillings ‘only’, you will smile, pull out your wallet and train it towards the light and see the lone five thousand shilling note carefully folded in the corner, and then you will clear your voice and ask for quarter dose. I tell you.

Oh the sound, of an empty wallet!

A friend of a friend of a friend of mine has a girlfriend. She is one of these upstate cute little things that has become so assimilated to the city that she ‘craves’ pizza despite lacking a foetus in her belly. Pizza, not chicken! For if it were the in the latter’s case, eleven thousand shillings on the streets of Kitintale could get you a whole chicken. Pizza. Reminds me of the time father used to equip me for a school term with fifty thousand shillings. That is a four month’s budget down the drain at Nandos, excluding transport to and fro.

For people that were tempted only by a third party in the Garden of Eden. God punishes men far too worse.