Marrying pensioner for his money
The bride put on terse mien that she tried to cover up with a wide smile as well-wishers ululated. The wedding was typical of unreasonably expensive charades we see daily in Dar es Salaam.
She was in her mid-twenties, her dark skin glowing in the peak of her youth while the groom was in his late seventies, his pink skin and wrinkles bespoke of one who probably fought in the Second World War – talk of real mismatch (no racist slur intended).
Lately, young Tanzanian women are literally banging themselves onto the frail bosoms of old white men after having bounced many Tanzanian men’s bosoms. While I would like to believe that the reason for is love, deep inside I know that this trend is solely material driven.
I don’t fit the profile of a racist but what I see does not augur very well with tenets of decency. There have been growing misconstrued notions that “white” people are tickets to riches – some kind of cash cows.
There is nothing wrong with unions of people of different races but it stinks to the high heavens if the sole reason of such happens to be material.
The humour of it is that some of the white men are as penniless as this writer. The colour of the skin does not necessarily connote wealth. Even if one would hit the sack with pensioner, white men have propensity to live longer than Africans meaning that he might even outlive you.
Sexually, the man is twilight years while the woman is budding – another mismatch. It will not be long before she takes a sideways lover!
The possibility of inheriting his pension might be as bleak as the darkest night. How many women have ended up in brothels in Europe with their travel documents withheld after a fancy wedding locally? How well do you know the man you are clinging to?
Majority of women have argued that Tanzanian men lack in common decency and don’t know how to treat women but that is fallacy – a lame excuse that holds no water.
The problem is that love based on materialism is likely to wane some day. But women are not the only culprits. There are men who have joined the bandwagon of gigolos.
A while ago, on the beach in Kigamboni, I noticed a certain young man in the company of a white woman whom, from the varicose and veins twining her bare legs must have been in her late nineties. She did not have any allure.
Indeed, I inwardly wondered why the young man would brook so low to become a gigolo.
