That is not the only reason why I hate the aforesaid junk. Any time there is this stupid Pilipino soap opera where actors do nothing but sigh, cry and moan, the entire Uswaz settles in my house nodding their heads, ‘enjoying’ the episodes though their English proficiency borders on minimal.
Nothing can elicit so much joy and sometimes annoyance in a Uswaz home than owning a second-hand something, especially in the family of electronics.
That was the case a month ago when I combed the entire Kariakoo in Dar es Salaam, in search of a second-hand TV that has since been gracing my living room-cum-bedroom.
The one I had before this just went kaput and could not be repaired no matter which fundi worked on it. That is how I settled for the junk I now use.
The thing is on the other hand causing me untold sorrow. Why in God’s name should I arrive home, only to find Jenny, my one and only daughter, without a care furiously gyrating, wagging her tail to ominous and loathsome sex-laden tunes from the junk?
Recently, while Bisho Ntongo was busy “eating” chalk at the Uswaz International School, and I, wearing my fingers on the keyboard in the office, my daughter was home practising some dance. She feigned sickness, complaining that she was on the brink of death suffering from an undisclosed disease.
That morning, she threw tantrums, convulsed, vomited and cried her stupid head off. By a stroke of luck, her temperature had shot through the roof, suggesting that she was dying of malaria and something had to be done – and quickly
As sure as the sun rises in the east, her mother Bisho Ntongo and I whisked her to the local dispensary to see Lightness Ndesumbwa, a housemaid-turned nurse for treatment .
She was to our horror pronounced to have ‘four malarias’ (in Uswaz we quantify malaria too). Little did I know that a ten-year-old fourth-grader had outsmarted us, two people boasting college education. She had the TV and needed not go to school.
That is not the only reason why I hate the aforesaid junk. Any time there is this stupid Pilipino soap opera where actors do nothing but sigh, cry and moan, the entire Uswaz settles in my house nodding their heads, ‘enjoying’ the episodes though their English proficiency borders on minimal.
In my two-roomed hovel there is a ‘reasonable’ number of inhabitants who are official. That included Bisho Ntongo, her daughter, her maid Koku and I. Because of the tenth-hand junk of the TV, whenever there are any of the popular programmes, the entire Uswaz pitches tent in my house, denying me basic liberty to do anything. More irritating is that when I need to get to the bedroom I have to jump over scores of legs strewn all over the place - including women’s legs – all because of the TV.
