How Not To Have A Conversation.

Part 2: Do Not Speak To Me, I'm A Stranger

Bob is a company client and as a company employee I'm professionally obliged to demonstrate exceptional kindness with Bob. I only dealt with Bob once at his office a few weeks into my job. He was an ideal client; a jovial recipient of my proffered concept up until the time a positively conclusive handshake hang in the space between us. Bob remembered then that the nondefinitive tone of my accent slightly bothered him. He wanted to know my origins. Bob would soon discover that we were tribemates and he'd take advantage of this little fact to impart his life story on me and divulge all his plans. Bob wanted a wife, to be precise.
By his vague estimation, my age, my intelligence, my walk and talk but most importantly that ethnic coincidence would simply do. I was perfect by Bob's somewhat high standards. His lifelong prayer had been answered. He had recently acquired land in a remote part of Busoga which needed tending and monitoring. A seemingly trustworthy girl like myself could be planted at the property to take care of things. He'd remain in Kampala while I retreated to the village to handle business. I'd naturally tend to the farm or any kids should our union be blessed with a few of those. He'd visit every once in a while to evaluate and say hello. He'd provide most of everything, I merely had to name the time and day and he'd bundle me off to his plot in Busembatya. Bob's perspective on life is definitely on opposing ends with my own but I sat through an hour of chauvinistic pre-planned ideas from this stranger because more than anything I was hugely intrigued. An equal measure of shock easily frustrated all attempts at reprehensive speech. I needed to know where Bob would end with his narrative. I numbly stared at him as he verbally sketched a vivid picture of what his life was like, what it had been and what his future held for the both of us. He made me aware of all his relatives, dead or alive. My opinion was reverently beseeched on the agonizing state of his sister's forced marriage. He was the man of his clan as I soon discovered; courageously bearing the heavy burden of three generations whilst brushing off malevolent advances from "Kampala girls". He had found the real deal in me, or so he declared an hour after meeting me. And Bob, above all else, was supremely convinced he was the epitome of irresistible real deal for the opposite sex. It didn't occur to him that I could refuse; that anyone could refuse him. I only needed time, and that time as he so thoroughly urged, was for easing this new development onto my relatives. When I finally extricated myself and braved the harsh drizzle outside, I was certain Bob was mad.

Rajab was my neighbour in a taxi on a recent slow traffic filled journey. He said salaam and absent-minded though I was, I couldn't ignore that. So I replied smoothly and refocussed on my phone. Rajab, as his persistently detailed monologue revealed, was headed to the far East. He told me about the demanding nature of his job and the contradicting wonder that is his boss. He recounted for me (more like the side of my face) escapades from his times in the North and Southern parts of the country. When he started to talk about his siblings, however, I developed a slow but persistent headache and by the time he sought to regale me with plans for a bright future, when he started referring to me as "my hajat", I very nearly jumped out of the speeding car through a window.

Why, I wonder, didn't Bob and Rajab's parents emphasize the time old caution that speaking to strangers at such intimate lengths is abominably wrong? Or why haven't Bob and Rajab paid any heed to their sengas on the rites of passage to acquiring a wife? Why still, do the Bobs and Rajabs of the world equate brief courteous smiles to promises of life long commitment?