Valentine’s Vexations

A young man, dressed in burgundy jeans, red t-shirt and crimson baseball cap disembarks a boda-boda outside a flower stall. He joins the back of the long, bustling queue. It is nothing short of a frenzy and it is clear that the flower seller is ill-equipped to handle such a large number of customers. After all, how often do Ugandans buy flowers riyaleh?? 30 minutes later, our young Maroon Man hops onto another boda with a bunch of flowers that had been ignored by all the people ahead of him in the queue. He dodges the stares in town as people stare, point at him and laugh. If it were not for his black skin, his face would be a very visible shade of red too.

Not this Maroon Man

He visits his friend Ssalongo who owns a special hire taxi. He asks Ssalongo to lend him his spesho for the evening. Ssalongo agrees but of course, at an extortionate fee.  Our ruby baby drives the spesho to Mary Stuart Hall in Makerere to pick up his date for the evening. Her name wasn’t Scarlet, but the dress she wore, was. He hands over the card that today cost 9,800/= when every other day, cards in that particular shop never exceed 4k. He receives a warm embrace and a peck. They drive into town to a nice restaurant for dinner. It’s fancier than he could normally afford, but he had managed to borrow enough money to make it possible. However, when they arrived, they were told they hadn’t made a reservation and so would have to wait at the bar until a table became available. By the time they managed to get seating over an hour later, the buffet was cold and all the good stuff was already consumed. The total bill was also somehow slightly more than our Cherry Chum expected. Something to do with adding VAT. He used the money he had put aside for emergency petrol.

In the evening, they get back to Lumumba Hall. Our young hero had to pay his Valentine-less roommate to make himself scarce for the night. Our Ketchup Couple proceed to get intimate on the bed. The day in general had not gone according to plan, but at least it was finally paying off now. As our young man’s hand reaches under the lady’s dress, she stops him. She tells him that it’s that time of the month so they shall spend the whole night cuddling instead. The boy saw red.

Who is St. Valentine? Why does he have a day dedicated to him on our calendars? Why do we all get ourselves caught up in the hype, drama and expectation of this day? Is it even relevant to us in Africa? Perhaps someone should table a motion in Parliament to have this day abolished? Actually, with all the financial activity that occurs on this one day, that is one thing I am sure will never happen.

Hope you all had a Happy Valentine’s day