The Fighting Temptations

I am convinced Uganda has the most beautiful women in the world.

A few weeks ago, I was at a new bar to see off a friend who was leaving the country for the umpteenth time. I think he's an attention-seeker, but we love him. Also, we understood: it’s hard to leave Ugandan women. He's an over-6-feet brolic West African man with a full beard and a full bank account. Our women had him for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It was stamped all over his face and his passport.

This was a bar I don't frequent, which is rare for me. I’ve become a creature of habit and I don’t like it. My main reason for frequenting the same places is security. Not the kind you're thinking, though. Ok, it helps to go to bars where you can set your phone on the table without worrying about reviewing CCTV footage in the morning and squinting at pixelated motion pictures with vague remembrance.

However, the main reason I frequent the same places is that my friends frequent the same places. The secondary reason is my friends are a social shield for me:

When I got married, I still had gas in the tank to drive through the streets taking names, numbers, and dates. As I alluded to in this post, I didn't expect to meet my wife as early as I did. I was targeting 35 before the tarots told this tantalizing tale of love and restraint.

Being married to someone you like and love makes you want to follow the rules. You know, fidelity and whatnot. However, just because you love someone, beautiful women don't stop being beautiful. Some lovebirds talk about how their all-consuming love strikes them with selective blindness and honestly, I think they are liars. You cannot attend a brunch in Kampala without at some point seeing a woman with show-stopping beauty. The kind of beauty that demands acknowledgment by everyone in the room. The kind that walks in and people start whispering contrived accounts just to tether tenuous ties to this beauty.

“I heard she used to date so and so,” they whisper. Please, just shut up and stare like the rest of us.

Being with my friends offers accountability. These people have known me since the days I picked my nose in public, soiled my PE shorts, and picked basketball over football to impress the ladies. My friends know me well. My friends can quell the odd ol’ habit that can rear its ugly head when the right (or wrong?) mix of tequila and Burna Boy is found.

I’m typing this post in my surprisingly roomy aisle seat on a LONG flight to Dakar, Senegal. My wife always wanted to visit Senegal, so I ate sweet potatoes every day for 11 months this year to make this happen. I bloviated about the numerous benefits of a sweet potato-laden diet to anyone with ears but there’s no use posturing any longer: sweet potatoes are cheap and hotel rooms are dear.

While waiting in line at Entebbe airport a few minutes ago, I saw a young lady, who turned out to be the worst person ever. Hitler and Trump's lovechild would act shy around her. She wasn't a great person, but the way she wore her jeans? Wow! The way her body embraced the denim with congeniality is the kind of compatibility teenage girls and boys dreamt about after watching 10 Things I Hate About You for the tenth time.

I don't like to keep such thoughts bottled up. I expel them quickly so they don't linger and lurk in my limbic system. So I told my wife: "But Ugandan women have bums!" She was fidgeting in her purse looking for her vaccination certificate or some other unnecessary document airport folk fancy, so she missed it. Poor her. But she would get another chance.

A few minutes later, the terrible but big-bummed lady cut the queue, weaving in and out of the line like an undeserving government worker's police convoy. I say “but” as though her bum was her redeeming quality, but you should’ve seen that bum. I am ashamed, but chastise me later.

The big-bummed lady now had her back to my wife. My wife turned to me and said: "But Ugandan women have bums!" This is what we are dealing with in Uganda. The beauty of Ugandan women will unite us sooner than infectious diseases, alcohol, and concerts.

Sometimes these beautiful women disregard the giant ring on one’s ring finger and charge forward to destabilize the thousand-year-long institution of prison, er, marriage. Of course, the responsibility of restraint rests with the married person, but just pass the other side, madam. Ask someone else to disentangle that stray hair caught in your neck jewelry.

My friends warned me on the eve of my traditional wedding:

“The second you get married, the attention you get from women increases A LOT.”

I didn’t believe them. It didn't make sense. It felt like a cruel joke by the gods. A lifetime of rejection by women from all walks of life culminates in last-gasp advances at the altar? Sigh.

But I tell you, while at my introduction ceremony in Fort Portal, after kneeling more times than Moses atop Mt. Sinai, and mumbling unintelligible words in Rutooro, [something something mugurusi. Something something boojo] I posted a picture of my entourage on my Instagram story, and to this day, that post has more engagement than anything else I have posted on Instagram. Excel hacks-and-all. Women descended upon my DMs in droves with suggestive comments and remarks. As if checking my resolve. Perhaps my peripheral troubled and tribalistic in-laws sicced them on me? Fire, in Jesus’ name!

Practicing restraint reminds me of that one time I topped the class in Primary 5 and asked my mum to buy me a soda:

"So you want me to reward you for doing what you're supposed to do?" my mum replied quizzically.

Kampala has a lot of attractive women and honestly, restraint is an Olympic Sport with no medals. Because there are no participation trophies for doing what you're supposed to do.

Have a good week and keep your hands out of the cookie jar✌🏾