After the 'fat' talk, your wife is starving you to death

You should have thought twice before you told Carol that she was adding too much weight a little too fast. When you told her, you had the best of intentions and she took it positively. Or so you thought.

Now you have noticed a pattern. You have been unknowingly recruited into her diet plans. For the past few weeks, you thought she was being lazy, or crazy, but it just dawned on you that she is really crazy and wants to feed you on carrot and lemon juice as she tries to shed the kilos.

Women can be bat-crazy. Someone has advised her that wheat products are the devil and all of sudden, there are no chapatis on your dinner table, three weeks and counting. No mandazi. No biscuits. Someone whispered to her to cut on the carbs, that means ugali too has been banished from the dinner table.

Lately, all you see are plenty of salads. Pudding. Funny juices. And an occasional indulgence in some cake. Occasionally, she prepares yams and sweet potatoes for you, in the way of your starch servings.

“What is going on here, will we ever have a proper meal in this house?” you ask in exasperation after arriving home after a particularly difficult day in office. And what is she serving? Literally, four potatoes served in soya meat soup...Soya meat, what crap is that!

Does she know you come from Western Kenya where if there is no ugali on the table, that is not a meal at all?

“Come on, that food is more nutritious than anything else I have ever made...”

“I want my stomach full, damn the nutrition crap!” you notice you have shouted at her, rather rudely, but it is the pent up anger of being fed nothing - literally - for the last few weeks.

“You know where the kitchen is, and you are a grown-ass man, go make yourself what you want!” She bangs the bedroom door in your face.

Well that went South pretty fast. You want to apologise, but it is too late and either way, you can’t apologise on an empty stomach.

It is 9pm and you wonder if your local butchery is still open. Down you walk and go to the shopping centre and luckily he is still there. But only bones are on display. He is able to chop for you some meaty portions, which you pay for, pass by the shop and buy some flour and spices. You  beg the mama mboga now closing shop to chop you some spinach and throw in some pepper. Onward home you march.

Now the child is asleep and the househelp too, you try to be a modern husband and enter the kitchen in a vest and a shirt and you whistle as you whip a meal for yourself. For it is written that a man cannot live on carrot juice alone. Carol is unmoved in all the drama you are causing.

An hour later, you love the work of your hands, and you slump in your sofa, as you watch Chelsea make mincemeat of Manchester United. It is a good night for you and for humanity. You have stood for your rights.

@nyanchwani

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