My Taxi Tales: The Male Gender in Trouble

Paul Aruho R.

I recently traveled with two ladies in a taxi on not quite a short journey. They both, to me, represented a class of women we call the working class.

In our journey, both of them received phone calls at different intervals. These calls revealed to me what they are and what they do.

The first one received a call twice. The first one, according to the conversation seemed to be from her Pastor. As they conversed, I came to know she was a teacher.

“Mukama asiimwe,” the other person greeted in that known Balokole (born again) greetings as she picked the call. They started talking about what seemed to be related to family and marriage challenges. She would answer between laughter and then later said, “Pastor, I am in a taxi, let me call you when I reach home.

“It is okay,” the Pastor was heard saying, adding “I will be waiting,” before canceling the call.

This same woman received another call. This one seemed to be from her brother. The taxi occupants came to know that she was coming from the hospital to see her father-in-law who had been operated on.

“He is alright but still weak,” she said. “However, he sounded tired of the hospital and wanted to go home. I don’t know whether his caretaker will manage to keep him there any longer as per the doctors’ advice,” she said.

She went on to tell her brother how she had to spend her hard-earned money to buy drugs for the old man.

“You can't imagine I had to part with my 70,000 for drugs?! I must look for a way on how I can recover my money,” she said before she ended the call.

The second woman later picked up her phone as it rang. “Hullo, your package was ready by 3pm. I couldn’t wait any longer, after calling and you never responded. But drive to the office I will tell Disan (not real name) to wait for you,” she said.

After dropping the call, she rang Disan.

“Disan, are you still at the office? She inquired adding that, “the other gentleman of the package is about to reach the office. Please wait for him.”

“No please,” Disan replied. It is passed 5 and I am rushing to pick my kids from school,” Disan added sounding pleading.

“The man wants to travel to Fort Portal tomorrow with it. He can’t leave it behind. Get back to the office and give it to him,” she said with her raised voice.

The young man at the end of the call tried to beg he would be at the office early the following day. He said that it would be costly to get back to the office and his kids have been waiting for long.

“You know I have been engaged at the office so much. My kids have been waiting and this makes them stressed when their classmates leave them at school alone. Why can’t he pick it the early tomorrow? Disan pleaded.

“But why do you take long to understand? Can you for once listen to me? Stop what you are doing and get back to office. Your family can wait but business can’t. You know you expect to be paid as the month closes,” she said in a commanding voice and canceled the call.

A few distance later, the driver stopped seemingly to deliver some luggage to a lady standing a long the road. She seemed to either be her wife or something else. They hugged and he picked a box at the back of the taxi and started some little conversation as he handed it over to the woman.

“Oba abasajja mwabaki? (what really happened to you, men)? You want every skirt that passes your way. You try to give a man everything but he will move on to have another woman. What do you want in life,” the woman who wanted the package picked up from her office said.

The second woman who was talking with the Pastor surprised me. I had thought that since sounded Christian, she was better off than the other who almost slapped her colleague on the phone.

“We try to do our best. We try to be committed to you. But the way we get surprised along the way, no one can imagine,” she said.

I intervened and asked to tell me what they do to these ungrateful men/husbands. It was as if I had opened a lead of a pressure cooker.

“What haven't we done for them? We cook, do house chores, give them sex but still you hear he has gone running after another woman,” one of the women said.

“We have done what we can as women. We are even providing for our families. For them it is about football and coming home late. It is getting terrible in families,” another interjected.

Men need more than what these women are talking about. Men want to stay in a peaceful home/house. Even if a man has done something seemingly wrong, he needs to be confronted peacefully.

In some cases, men have been accused of what they don’t do. Coming late in the evening doesn’t necessarily mean that your husband is going out with other women. Sometimes they are involved in discussions that are helpful to their families.

Women are responsible for creating a peaceful environment at home, do that and everything will be well. No man will tolerate an arrogant, nagging woman. Do this, and you will thank me later. I told them and the conversation stopped there. Everyone went silent and the noisy taxi was this time as quiet as a graveyard for the rest of the journey.

Working women have continued to harass their husbands at home. When a woman gets a paying job, she will be unruly to the extent of bullying her husband. A man can accommodate an unemployed woman but the reverse isn't true. Such scenarios will tell that the equality we have been singing all these years is a wasted melody.

 

  Police, get Close Interest in Media Reports

PAUL R. ARUHO

Media plays several roles in society. These roles have always been summarised into three. That is to inform, educate, and entertain. The first one, to inform stands out of all the three. This is because the media gives us news, which is new information less known to the public (us).

In its information role, the media acts as a watchdog in society. A watchdog is different from a sniffer dog. A sniffer dog is trained to use its senses to detect substances such as explosives, and illegal drugs to mention a few. The most common sense mostly used by a sniffer dog is smell. On the contrary, a watchdog is that one kept to watch over private property.

When you have a watchdog at home, its role is, to watch and report to the owner of any intruder into the homestead. It just barks and hardly runs after the intruder. But for a sniffer dog goes beyond that. It can detect something foreign and at times does the chasing.

Media plays a watchdog role. As a watchdog, the media has always highlighted many things in our society. Some of these issues have been good while others are extremely bad.

Media does not work in isolation. As a fourth estate, the media works closely with other arms of government. It works closely with police and other security organs. According to the United Nations, the police force or service performs the duties assigned to them by the law of protecting the public against violence, crime, and other harmful acts. Policing is all about maintaining public order and safety, enforcing the law, and preventing, detecting, and investigating criminal activities.

I am writing this in relation to a story in Mbarara that was reported in the media a few months ago. A man chased his wife and their two children out of the marital house. The woman started to sleep on the veranda with her children. This report was aired on several media including a regional television. This report showed that the woman and her children were in danger and vulnerable to anything.

It never took long, before the same media reported that the woman was attacked and hacked to near death. The images of her in Mbarara Referral Hospital were gruesome. It was very absurd.

This is where I base myself to ask what went wrong? Why didn’t the police detect that this woman was in danger and protect her against the man who almost killed her? Did the police ignore media reports? Where were the local leaders in that area? This shows that the different sections of security failed this poor woman, but more so, they failed to protect the woman who should have been protected under the laws of Uganda.

The media did its part, of informing the public of what the woman was going through. However, there are those who never came in to save the life of the woman and her children. There have been a number of issues that happen because we have not taken media reports seriously. Security organs should always take crime-related media reports seriously to prevent further damage.