You do not have to wait for Valentine’s to show love to your partner
By Bob G. Kisiki
TODAY is February 9, meaning that in only five days, this Sunday; it will be Valentine’s Day. I know that even merely reading it here, many people can hardly let the intervening days come and go, because God, why did the 14 have to come after all of 13 unromantic days?
And, no offence meant, but majority of the people counting down the days are not male, you bet. Really, this is no sexist remark; it’s just that in all the years I have heard about this Valentine thingummy, I have never quite understood why women are crazy about it.
Valentine is only a name, or so I used to think, when I first met my schoolmate Valentine Rwegasira, God bless his gentle heart. He was as harmless as they come; not causing anybody discomfort or worry about this or that.
But years later, I met the name in a totally new light and oh, what blinding light! Or should we say what dim light? For only then would it make sense, having all these people with eyes to see, but not seeing a single point about the need not to pour out on the streets en masse, all clad in bloody crimson and deathly black, stilettos cracking the thin Kampala bitumen, heading to nowhere definite, but out to display love.
Love? Let’s leave that word out of it. And for a start (I don’t even know where to start from on this), let’s question a few things:
What do you girls know about Valentine (and don’t start us on that tired story The New Vision reproduces annually, conjecturing on who St. Valentine was, what he did and why. No, I would like you Lady in Red, suffocating under layers of all manner of hues of make-up and hanging on the arm of a lost man — lost in wonder as to how he got himself into all this foolery — to explain to the rest of us, who or what Valentine is/was to you.
Before he was, where was love? What had become of romance? Or dating, or eating out for lovers? Before the idea of Valentine’s ambushed you, taking you by storm, what were boutiques doing with all that red, black and white? Conversely, what do you do with those outfits the other 364 days of every shocked year; shocked because poor years, they just can’t figure out why some humans just can’t get it? Do I sound harsh? Am I rationalising?
You judge me wrong. All I want to know is, year in, year out, men are wooing women; every day which passes, these men take these women out to all manner of fancy places, to love their women and show off their romance; all the time, flower shops are in business, selling bouquets, single roses and other breeds of flowers… to lovers and other flower users. Just what is the big deal about Valentine’s? I am itching to know. I would like the day to make some sense to me and the rest of us tormented, overwhelmed men.
There’s something, if you must know, sick about contrived love. See, the way love was meant, it should be as spontaneous as possible. Using that word spontaneous, I am constrained to tell a story I had only told to a few, about an incident which happened to me soon after my wedding, way back in ’99. Sorry Paul, gotta tell.
Anyhow, there was this little boy who, looked at from a distance, exuded innocence and reticence. He was an S.1 pupil at the time. So he sees me at a distance one day and he shouts after me, begging that I stop. I did and, when he ran up to me, said: “I know this may shock you, sir, but I wanted you to know that the best sex is spontaneous sex.”
Did he say he knew it would shock me? If only I had merely been shocked! But the point is, some things were meant to come that way. Not contrived. Not forced. Not marked on a calendar. No.
Spontaneity is never planned; it’s never taken out there for the public to look upon and say: My, how that girl can kiss her date! Because if you do kiss at that coffee house (do Valentine dates go to coffee places, too?), you might get what a French couple got once, at Makerere.
This friend of mine was still oozing village upbringing and naiveté, when he chanced upon this couple, possibly in their 60s, walking hand-in-hand, going up the road to the Makerere University main building. Then at some point, they tarried, the elderly man drew his elderly woman forward, and there, as the glorious sun hung in the sky, lighting the way for the righteous and unrighteous, he administered the Frenchest of all French kisses to her.
Utterly astounded but angered at this molestation of good manners, this young man rushed to the osculating couple and barked at them: “Stop it! Stop it right now! This is Africa, and WE don’t do THAT in public!”
Are you listening, ye girls warming up to public kisses and more, come Valentine’s Day?
