DAR ER SALAAM! I WISH THIS WAS HOME(Gents Edition)

Everyone always fought to be dad. You know why? Because you always had the opportunity to be the leader. You had the chance to get yourself the best toys. I always prayed that Mercy (the most beautiful girl), could accept to be mum. I slept and she brought breakfast to the table and I had to send my little brothers to the field and bring hunts home. If you grew up on planet earth I guess you know how it used to be back in the day. I will never be satisfied with technology until it’s possible to relive those moments without dying like the traditional African society tells us.

It was all okay until I saw momma fighting with dad. That’s when I questioned who the man was. As if that wasn’t enough, Mercy left me for John, simply because my parents couldn’t afford an oxford mathematical set in class four. I was lonely and didn’t have anyone to tell any of the pains my heart was in as I graduated all past high school. Every girl wanted a challenge. And as time went on, I began doubting the sanity of the man that ever wrote the word love. I knew my little brothers were going to pass through the same thing but couldn’t have anyone to tell(dad and mom divorced and my brothers opted to go with mom because she knew haow to cook chapati). Each time I came home from the day-school I was in I knew what my responsibilities were. I became a great cook the hard way because I stayed on with dad. I think someday I will even teach my daughter how to cook. Dad worked hard to support the other family as they said in the court. That is why I ended up in a day-school, so he could afford it. Growing up Dad knew I was a genius, a curse that momma rejected me for. She said I was hard to relate because all I did was temper with the TV and at night it would be black and white because I put it in place in a hurry. Toys were my girl friends because all of them said I didn’t know how to have fun.

When I joined The Dynasty University, I went to take Telecommunications and Networks. I could hack into any system without even waking the watchdogs. Unfortunately my day came and I was expelled at my second year for helping friends leak an examination from the university’s systems. At this point I was alone because dad had died a year before then from high blood pressure. Sorry to say, but the old man loved mom a lot that for all that long he never got over the divorce. When I was expelled and charged in a court of law, they gave me 5 and a half years behind bars. I didn’t see any sense in the bail the judge place for me to be free because I couldn’t anyway afford it. Mom was nowhere to be found. All I knew was that she got married to some rich spoilt guy. I could judge this by the type of car my brothers came to my hearing in. They were what if dad was alive then would say, “They got some breathing cars, son.”

Many years later, I turn around in my office chair and look through the large glass wall in my office and see the city that gave me a chance to be a man. I just sent my very gorgeous wife, who serves as my P.A too, to go and get me some tea. I’m a foreigner in this country that was many miles behind in technology yet it was filled with the aroma of love even when there was no meal to place on the table. Dar er salaam. I feel a warm tear flow down my eye. Before I wipe it, Judy (my wife), asks from the door, “The milk-guy isn’t here yet, would you have a hot coffee as you love it back in the day?” Before I answer she is already by my side and has noticed the tear in my eye. She wipes the tear and before long this turns to a moment of reminding ourselves how we went without food for days with her. “I build this company with my own hands…” I can’t stop the tremor in my voice because of the emotions. “But I wish I were home. My family couldn’t be the laughing story in town.” I remember what a great and caring family we found here and wish it was back home. I wish I could change the society back home, but then, I can’t do a thing about it. The systems blocked my entry into the market. The best I could do was deport my brothers to this country and find them a fortune since they burned all their wealth on pleasure before I even left prison.

“Your daughter Cynthia and son Baraka will bring that home one day. You are David, they are Solomon,” Judy whisphers in my ear and it brings me back to reality. “I wish this was back home,” I say as she leaves to make me that back in the day coffee. I look at her as she leaves my office and I just wish every man in my country had just a half of a woman like her. Then Home Would Be Home.

I AM IN DAR, BUT I WISH THIS WAS HOME.

Codeset: In the old days women saw their men as conquerors, providers and heroes, but somewhere along the line that changed. Women started becoming their own heroes. Maybe it is because their men forgot how to be heroes. Or because women didn’t want to be protected anymore. Or maybe women had to be their own heroes because of the pain they had to endure in life. But whatever the course, the world took away the man’s reasons for being a man. They told him he wasn’t important anymore, and when that happened, it turned the whole world upside down. When will a man ever answer his wife’s call instead of saying she was nagging because she messed her youth? When will home ever feel like home.