Agony of being a bachelor
STAYING alone is one life experience that is filled with trials and tribulations. While loneliness is largely part of the game, cooking and doing laundry are among the challenges one has to contend with.
Divorce, death, family challenges and work considerations are among the reasons people find themselves having to stay alone.
Agreed, there are some few hard nuts to crack that stay alone for mischief, but it is not a one size fits all because some loners are just victims of circumstances.
Society in general, however, is sceptical of people who stay alone, hence the endless names it gives to men and women who live alone.
“Chisinahama”, “Zindoga”, “Mugara Negative”, “Humburukwa” and “Mr Lonely” feature prominently among the names often given to men and women who stay alone.
People sometimes use the houses of people who stay alone as signposts to direct lost visitors.
“On your way from town, turn left at the fat bachelor’s house and from there you count four houses, and you would have arrived,” you often hear people saying.
Others will quip: “My house is just next to the unmarried woman’s house.”
But do you know that people who live alone are accused of all sorts of crimes, from being wife snatchers to drug dealers and even robbers?
You can actually be ridiculed for staying alone.
“I have no time to waste talking to a bachelor like you,” some people will tell you to your face.
Others will set companionship and/or marriage as a condition to offer someone accommodation.
“Accommodation is available, but my husband is not comfortable with us staying with an unmarried man. Besides, it will be difficult for you to perform duties like cleaning the toilet,” I heard a colleague being told.
Even at parties, single people are given piles of food — enough for an eating competition. The individual is even told: “Idya ugute; unozobikirwa naani?”
As I commit pen to paper, gentle reader, an unmarried bloke is sitting on the horns of a dilemma after his landlord’s wife was found under the bed in his room.
What happened is that the woman used spare keys to gain entry and help herself to cooking oil. The unsuspecting tenant, a bachelor, fell ill at work and returned home to sleep, forcing the woman to hide under the bed.
When the woman’s husband returned from work, the wailing kids said their mother was in the tenant’s room and village investigations found the bloke guilty yet he was innocent.
Such are the challenges bachelors face.
Unmarried people are also accused of being womanisers yet they will just be sifting through the masses to arrive at the best find.
Oh, this business of staying alone is just like a dog’s life, but someone has got to live it.
Inotambika mughetto.