Being a celibate man in some of these our plots can be very testing, I imagine.
You leave your house in the morning to go to, say, church, for the morning devotion fellowship, since you are the praise and worship team leader, or the keyboard player, or a junior pastor stepping in for the reverend, or something else churchy.
As you stride towards the gate, you see the woman who lives three houses from you. She has only a leso tied around her chest, with wet patches here and there.
You can see some droplets of water on her upper arms and upper back, which tells you that she has just had a shower in one of the communal bathrooms.
She is hanging some clothes on the clothesline and you can see the contours of her body underneath the thin, old leso, and how that light material tightly hugs the lower part of her body whenever she bends down to pick a peg from that mkebe of Toss.
You discreetly watch how the leso gets caught between her buttocks as she stands up to wring and hang that towel. You can tell that she is wearing nothing else underneath the leso, giving you a mental image for which you are immediately repentant.
So you look away, because before leaving the house, you had a little chat with God and you asked him to keep you strong in your celibacy vow, and lead you not into temptation.
But you look away only to see another woman, in only a leso as well, bent over a karai of water at her doorstep, wiping and cleaning some shoes while singing cheerfully.
Clear outline
Because she is bending over, the leso is stretched and pulled up her back so that the back of her thighs are exposed, all the way up to where they begin.
Her backside, thankfully, is covered, but you can see the clear outline of her hips. Her breasts are swinging with every movement of her arm, as she wipes and scrubs the inner sole of a shoe, and she stands upright from time to time to open then tighten the grip of her leso around her chest.
Then while bending over again, she squeezes part of the leso covering the front between her knees, which in turn, makes the leso tighten around her backside, making you imagine something you cannot unimagine.
You don’t want to look at her but you keep finding yourself glancing at her backside against your will. She greets you, startling you from your reverie, and you choke on your saliva as your brain goes into a state of panic, trying to find the appropriate words for a response.
You look away again because you swore that you would only look at women through the eyes of Christ, but again, you look away only to see another woman in only a light, cream or pink, see-through nightdress walking across the verandah, yawning, to pick up her mtungi at the tap.
The brown stockings on her head doesn’t prevent you from seeing what you are sure is her underwear, underneath the nightdress, and you can tell what colour it is.
You see how her posterior wobbles beneath the smooth, light fabric with every step she takes. You see how the nightdress sways this way and that way in respect to her gait, and giving you brief glimpses of the seductive, feminine shape of her body.
Cautiously, from the corners of your eyes, you see her mammaries wiggle and jiggle on her chest, and how they move when she heaves upon picking up her mtungiful of water.
You mentally review your chastity vows for any loophole(s) that might allow you to break those vows under certain circumstances. Because you are beginning to strongly feel that this might be one of those certain circumstances.
It is 7:30am and you are already wiping perspiration off your forehead and temple, and containing the palpitations threatening to break open your chest. Your armpits are constructing a salty dam of sweat, and the knot on your tie feels too tight.
Your grip on your Bible gets tighter as you resolve to focus on looking at the gate, and not give in to such distractions by your neighbours.
But because your spirit is strong, yet your flesh weak, your focus is fast hijacked by another neighbour, a woman wearing very tiny silk shorts with little pictures of stars and crescent moons and ‘sweet dreams’ all over it, and a matching spaghetti top, sweeping dirt from her doorstep.
Pawpaw smoothie
The tiny sleeping shorts are, well, tiny, and you can almost see little, soft hairs above the waistband at the front.
You see her thighs, looking smooth like the pawpaw smoothie your mother would feed you when you were an infant, and you suddenly feel hungry. You try to greet her “Bwana asifiwe” (praise the Lord) while you pass her by, but you find yourself saying, “Ah, mambo Cindy? We uko na stima kwako ama ni mimi tu?” (Hi Cindy, is there power in your house or are we suffering together?)