A Luo Man

I can never date a Luo man. Simple. (I have Luo genes so my reason’s totally out-side tribal).Luo men are too clean for my liking. A man should be a little bit unkempt especially when not at work. I had a number of friends in campus whom I visited occasionally and the white sheets and white towels and white ‘you know what’ made me feel sorry for their girlfriends. I mean really, what is right with these guys?

They cook and I’m talking real cooking not the boiling of eggs and using the same water to make tea. Real cooking. What do they need wives for if they are so good at female stuff? (I know I sound a little old fashioned there). Once I visited an Oti, he liked me. I didn’t him. I knew what he was doing but being a dry season in campus I agreed to go have lunch with him. Kuon bel and Omena cooked in coconut oil. Finger liking. That day I accepted there was someone who comes second after me in African culinary arts.

A friend of mine tells me about her husband who wakes up earlier than her and by the time she is up she finds all is done. Breakfast made, clothes in the laundry machine, trash can emptied. For this reason she has severally faked headache just to cushion the embarrassment. Her man has no problem with what he does. He doesn’t even know it’s right and that right is just not acceptable sometimes. In their earlier years of marriage her neighbors said she had given him chapatti. (Read medicine) Seems her medicine was very potent; 7yrs on and it hasn’t worn out. People always have theories to explain everything.

In my opinion,a real man should intentionally oversleep just to allow his wife to wake up and execute what’s on her job description. Being a wife is a job. No debate about that. When you rise up earlier than her and take her job, what exactly is it you are looking for. Seriously what? Because there has to be something motivating you so. A woman is now forced to get pregnant intentionally so it can be said it’s because she’s expectant, that’s why he’s doing all the work. Only she knows why she got pregnant again so fast.

It would be very difficult for me to date let alone marry a Luo man. For some of us, throwing tantrums keeps us sane. How on earth am I supposed to stay normal with a man who doesn’t leave his socks everywhere and who cleans his plate after use and who suggests we eat out when he notices I’m fatigued after work and who doesn’t leave his wet towel somewhere on bed after showering and who showers without being asked to and who cheats on me but is caring enough not to let me know. Just how…?

Luo men, don’t we all love them. They walk in town and around the estate on weekends in shorts that expose their beautifully curved masculine legs and Gor mahia jerseys that display their love for the game and for their mothers.There is always a jersey with either a name and/or a phrase that begins ‘wuod’. – wuod nyalego,wuod nyaseme,woud nyarodi and occasionally you’ll get friend of Raila or  ‘nyiri gomba’ which means women wish they could have me. Ha! We can’t resist them and the only way to is to pretend to hate them by saying things like,they are full of themselves. Like it’s a crime.

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Truth be told I like their mastery of the English language, their taste for fine things, their passion for fairness and the fact that they do not fear poverty- one would rather remain penniless than live with not having bought his girlfriend a Ferrari for her birthday. Even so, I still can never be equally yoked to a Luo man for I need to feel like a woman, the real black African woman that I am but a Luo man  will just change me.