I was very lucky that my cousin invited me to his birthday party last weekend. The venue of the party was somewhere on the outskirts of the city, in a compound full of one-roomed houses. The place is Mugadishu or something. There were very few incidents, except when one of the occupants almost spilled used water on our braai stand. She got out of one of the rooms, with a towel around her waist and a container half full of bath water. She did not utter a word to us – I mean no greetings whatsoever. In Mugadishu, there are many instances where more than three families share a compound but they do not talk to each other. We later learned that the ‘water bowser’ was in actual fact, not on good terms with my cousin’s ‘wife’.
To my pleasure, my cousin has truly reconciled with his ‘wife’ and love was in the air. Apparently she has accepted that my cousin has to service his Toyota Cressida more than her. She has also accepted that they are yet to marry, so my cousin is still a free agent and entitled to a logbook of his life. She has also accepted that the man is the king of the family irrespective of the couple’s marital status. But it was not the birthday party that made my life good during the month of April. It was my journey home. I have learned to save a few Pula every month and my post office book reflects good numbers nearing four digits. I am very careful with the money and hardly visit the post-office. One weekend I got home under the cover of darkness and woke up the following morning to a knock on my door. This time it wasn’t Uncle Sporo, but my mom. She had come to remind me about a case between my two siblings. It was resolved a week earlier. Apparently, one of the weekends, my little brother came home with a plastic bag full of meat, which he requested the elder sister to cook. He went away for hours and when he came back he found that the sister only dished two very small pieces of meat for him. He was not very amused at the size of the pieces, in comparison to what he brought home. When he enquired, the sister gave him a nasty response and they exchanged a few unprintables before getting physical. It was an unpleasant scene. What intrigued me when I got out of my house was the jubilant mood in which I found Sporo. He has bought a pen, which he puts in his shirt pocket. As Uncle, he was assigned to be the prosecutor, and judge. You know how it is at home! He also updated me on the matter and told me that he handled it so perfectly that he is now interested in pursuing a career as a headman of records, or arbitration. Sporo shared with me how he conducted the trial:
