Last week in Kampala, while listening to Radio One FM 90’s Great Morning He/She, I caught part of a conversation in which a woman seemed to be struggling with her husband and in-laws over building a wall around a family home. I missed the beginning of the story, so I cannot claim to have grasped all the details. From the snippets I caught during the advice session, however, the woman appeared to be an engineer who offered technical advice on the construction, but whose input seemed to be disregarded. There also seemed to be an expectation that she would contribute financially to the project.
What struck me was the possibility that a woman could be expected to contribute to a family project while having her professional knowledge and expertise disregarded in the decisions surrounding it. I may not have captured the full story, but that fragment and the advice from different callers were enough to get me thinking.
Some listeners advised the woman to stay out of her husband’s family issues. Some listeners said she should contribute money to her husband’s family for the construction but keep her mouth shut about the wall's technical issues. Some listeners advised her not to offer any technical advice and to let the wall collapse. One lady noted that women’s voices are often disregarded in family settings, even though they are professionals in the subject.
One particular caller who struck me was a man who said that, in Banyankole culture, they have a saying: if, for example, you are going to bathe with water, the water said, “Don’t use me to bathe,” you should tell the water that, “I wasn’t even dirty anyway.” He urged her to mind her own business and stop advising her in-laws.
This amused me because I immediately started thinking about how, as humans, we try to save face. His Banyankole saying is an interesting scenario because, look, you have taken water, you want to bathe, and then, all of a sudden, you turn around and say, “I wasn’t even dirty anyway”, which is classic face-saving.
It reminded me of my high school days. We had a classmate. For the sake of this article, I will call him Mike.
Mike is a guy who, from an early age, was already into girls. We were 14–15. While some of us were shy and cowardly and wouldn’t even try talking to girls, he was already vibing with girls. He was looking out for the beautiful girls in the neighbouring schools and always wanted to talk to them.
And something with Mike at the time was that if Mike tried to stop a beautiful girl. she refused to stop, or if Mike tried to call her and make his advances, she rejected him; Mike would actually switch to the Acholi language. He would say, “Ah, wek la lik ni ociti,” which translated to, “Let this ugly girl go.” “Alwongi mere me temo wii wek lalik bene olok ki awobi ma leng calo an”, meaning: I was only tempting you to give an ugly girl a chance to talk to a handsome boy like me. Most confident girls would ignore him and walk away. Other girls would confront him, and whenever they dared to talk, he would retort, “anyaka in I tamo ni awobi maleng calo an ni romo cuni”, loosely translated as: do you really think a handsome boy like me can be interested in you? This was classic Mike, and he would do it all the time. And to some of us, this was actually rather embarrassing to see something like this. The truth is that Mike wasn’t even handsome.
And in some situations, when the girl actually stopped, talked to him, but rejected him, Mike would say, “ono bene pe amiti. Atemo mere wii atema wek lalik iye obed yom.” Which loosely translates to, “I wasn’t actually interested in you.” I only wanted to say nice words to make an ugly girl happy.
We found Mike’s behaviour strange because he wanted the girl enough to approach her. Still, after he was rejected, he’s now trying to portray her as ugly, himself as exceptionally handsome, and that he wouldn’t fall for her.
I thought about this, which is similar to what the man said on the radio, which made me feel like it is just a situation where Mike has been rejected by the bathing water, but immediately is telling the water that, you know, “I wasn’t dirty anyway. I wasn’t even going to bathe.”
This radio caller and my former schoolmate Mike’s behaviour got me thinking about human behaviour and our inability to simply say, I wanted that; I didn’t get it, but it was disappointing. Instead, we often change the facts after rejection.
But years earlier, a pastor also inadvertently taught me something about humans' capacity to manufacture explanations.
Back then, in rural and peri-urban Uganda, many bathrooms were outside the main house, often made of grass thatch, banana fibre, or whatever other local material was available. Whatever material was used, it provided privacy when someone was bathing. No one on the ground could see that person, but from above, privacy was more theoretical.
I remember a particular pastor in Kitgum district who preached on the radio. During one sermon, he spoke about young men who would climb trees to spy on women bathing in the neighbourhood. One fellow in the pastor’s imagination climbs a pawpaw tree to get a better view of somebody’s wife who is bathing. And then, unfortunately, somebody catches him, and then they ask him, “What are you doing up there?”
Now, because he’s panicking, this man needs an innocent explanation so that he doesn’t reveal that he was spying on somebody’s wife who is bathing. So, he quickly responds, “Ah, I climbed the tree to pick up some mangoes.” But then there’s a big problem. He’s actually not on a mango tree. He’s on a pawpaw tree. Worse, it’s not even mango season. Then the pastor would ask, “Child of God, how does this behaviour help you? How can you get mangoes from a pawpaw tree?”
So, as you can see, the man who went to bathe changes his story and says, “I wasn’t even dirty. I wasn’t going to bathe.” My former classmate Mike changes his story and says, “I wasn’t interested in you anyway. I just wanted to tempt you to see if you would fall for me.” Then the man caught climbing a pawpaw tree changes his story and says, “You know, I was just trying to get some mangoes.”
But sometimes the explanation we manufacture is even more embarrassing than admitting the truth. The man caught spying on somebody’s wife bathing now has to explain how on earth you climb a pawpaw tree to pick mangoes.
But if we are being completely honest, we’ve all, in one way or another, been in situations where we tried to find excuses.
But maybe, maybe saving face actually has a purpose. I’m thinking Mike’s turnaround words probably made him walk back to us, the group of boys, laughing instead of feeling humiliated by those girls. And I think it was exactly that he was trying to achieve. But the problem is that if every rejection means something wasn’t worth it, then it might keep us from asking why we didn’t get it in the first place.
If every failed application turns out to be a job that doesn’t pay well anyway, it might keep us from improving our CVs and cover letters.
If everyone who doesn’t want to date us turns out to be ugly, or we defect to say that they’re ugly anyway, then it doesn’t help us to examine our own behaviour.
And if we are sitting halfway up a pawpaw tree insisting we were up there looking for mangoes, then perhaps the problem is no longer the person who caught us.
But to me, dignity is acknowledging that yes, I wanted it. Yes, I was disappointed. Yes, the rejection really bruised my ego. But I will be fine. So, the next time life tells us we can’t bathe in this water, maybe we don’t need to insist we’re not dirty. We just need to admit that we wanted to bathe. But then we can still pick up our basin and go and look for water elsewhere.
You don’t have to pretend that you didn’t admire the girl. You don’t have to start looking for mangoes on a pawpaw tree. Being true is a much stronger form of dignity.
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