By KENAN MIRUKA
Residents of Mogonga market in Gucha were treated to free drama when a cobbler’s wife undressed at a bus terminus claiming her husband had failed in his conjugal duties.
Trouble began when the cobbler was alerted that his wife, a fruit seller in the town, had been seen drinking with man at a local bar.
He hurriedly closed his business and rushed to the bar to confront his wife, but on arrival, waiters informed him that the couple had departed.
Outside the bar, he saw his wife enter a red saloon car and bang the door although it was getting dark.
The visibly exasperated cobbler literally flung himself at the car, yanked the drunken wife out and descended on her with kicks and blows.
“Wewe ni bibi yangu. Tafadhali unaenda wapi na mwanamme mwingine saa hizi (you are my wife please. Where are you going with another man at this hour)?” shouted the wailing cobbler.
Travellers and boda boda operators thronged the scene to witness the free drama, egging on and cheering the well-known cobbler as he fought his wife.
Unable to withstand the hard blows from her husband, the drunken woman shocked the crowed when she tore off her clothes as she hurled insults at the cobbler.
“Wewe ni mwanamme kweli? Hata nikikutolea saa hizi huwezi kitu kabisa. Naenda kutafuta haki yangu (you not a man. Even if I undress right now, there is nothing you will do. You can’t manage anything. I am off to seek my right),” shouted the woman amid peals of laughter from the gathered crowd.
Efforts by the cobbler to prevent his wife from undressing bore no fruit as she proceeded to strip to her undergarments.
In the ensuing confusion, the woman hopped onto a boda boda taxi, which sped off in the direction her lover’s car had disappeared with the cobbler in hot pursuit aboard another boda boda.
He caught up with her 500metres ahead and resumed raining blows on her until elders, who intervened to save the woman from the cobbler’s vicious attacks, separated the couple.
Meanwhile, market women and boda boda operators engaged in animated discussion about what had transpired, with some claiming the woman had used a love potion to restrain her husband’s philandering ways. Unfortunately, it backfired, killing the cobbler’s libido, the women gossiped.
“She is to blame for listening to advice from spoilt women in this market. Now her husband can’t perform his duties and the end result is what we have seen today,” said a boda boda rider.
It was not clear whether the couple reunited after the altercation, but the cobbler returned to his place of work unflustered by the incident.
Whether it really is true the he was neutralised by his wife’s misfiring juju is also a matter of conjecture. But the man in a red car will certainly not be entertaining the cobbler’s wife in the same local any time soon.
