playing with the tassel of her small beaded purse on the table, begins anxiously: “Here at the University of Mimbo, we use the term ‘Mboma,’ to refer to a married man who is usually older and with children and who just can’t resist what younger university, high or secondary school girls offer.”
Lilly Loveless fidgeted with her recorder to be sure it was recording. Satisfied, she sat back and listened, taking down notes from time to time, and scrutinizing Britney to determine if she had made the right choice of research assistant.
Britney started with an opinion: “First and foremost, affairs in our environment are encouraged by money. And we know money is the source of all evil. Money is the machinery behind most cases mentioned of this nature, as you’ll see from the interviews I have conducted. Nevertheless, it does not wipe out the fact that there are other aspects attached to affairs.”
Lilly Loveless didn’t interrupt, but she would have to ask Britney to keep her opinions in check in future interviews. Scholarship is not about subjectivities. Objectivity is paramount, and a good researcher is one who sterilises her personal opinions the way a zombie without a tongue does her words.
“I know a girl, Emma,” Britney continued, presenting her first interview. “She is a dark, beautiful girl of average height. She reads Life Sciences and lives not faraway from here, with her junior sister who is also in the university and reads the Bilingual Series. She is going out with a 55 year-old Mboma in town. I shall call him Innocent. Let me add right away that other Mbomas I know are much younger than this man, and given their lucrative jobs as customs inspectors and state treasurers in Sawang, they are certainly much more competitive with girls here in Puttkamerstown than Innocent could ever be on his meagre salary and lousy bribes as an ordinary civil servant. But since he can’t simply allow them to beat him hands down, he invests as much of his salary and bribes as he can into these fountains of delight, if you don’t mind the expression.”
“So it is all about competing for the attention of the girls?” asked Lilly Loveless, taking a sip of her Mimbo-Wanda.
Britney nodded and added, “He wants to prove himself to his competitors and to himself, that he is a force to reckon with, despite his modest means.”
“Interesting, very interesting,” Lilly Loveless noted in her notebook.
Britney continued: “Innocent’s wife of 35 years, a beauty in her days, complains, using the fact of their children’s education, five of them, to appeal to his conscience. But he just can’t see himself giving up on such exciting encounters with ever more beautiful girls at the university and schools around. That doesn’t mean he totally neglects his wife or kids. No, he couldn’t do that for the world! He claims all over that he gives them as much as possible the lifestyle they aspire to, which isn’t negligible, believe me. His eldest daughter is in high school, and they rent and live in what by every standard should pass for a comfortable house, which is just like the personal retirement house he built in his home village up country during his days as a top civil servant when bribes and salaries used to be hefty and distractions not as plentiful.
“Emma’s parents are not poor by any means. Her Mboma, Innocent, met her at a students’ party organised at the M&G nightclub, commonly known amongst students as ‘Mbomas and Girls.’ That was during the second semester of her first year at UM. Innocent, although at the party with his wife, still managed to make an appointment with Emma. Men can be as cunning and subtle as a serpent. Before the party he is said to have practised well-known dance steps used by young boys to attract and impress young babes.
“Even then, Innocent had to go out on several dates with Emma before she yielded to date him regularly. He promised to take good care of her. If the material possessions of Emma are used as an index for Innocent’s ability to take good care of a woman, then Emma has no need to complain.
“Innocent gives Emma a lot of money. As noted above, Emma lives with her junior sister and this used to disturb Innocent. So in the fourth semester, Innocent asked her to move to an apartment which he equipped with good sofas and a family size bed. She is from a rich family no doubt, but her parents refused to provide certain things for her on the basis that these were luxuries for a student. These things were however rapidly provided by Innocent. They included a TV set, a compact disc set, a fan, a Moulinex blender, a fridge, and a wool carpet, just to name a few. He also feeds and clothes her. He buys her expensive body lotions, perfumes, shoes, jewellery, clothes and airtime for the cute little cell phone he bought her as a birthday present.
“Health-wise, Innocent takes good care of Emma whenever she is sick. It should be noted that his ‘generosity’ extends to Emma’s junior sister. He settles their hospital bills and pays their transport back home during vacation, among other things here and there, now and again. This keeps Emma’s junior sister happy and stops her from reporting her elder sister to their parents, and perhaps from aspiring to be like her sister.
“Innocent takes Emma to social gatherings like parties and also to nightclubs, like Black & White in Sakersbeach, M&G in Puttkamerstown, Biblos in Sawang and even Libidinal in distant Nyamandem. At times he takes her friends and junior sister along with them.
“Socially, Innocent does his best to satisfy Emma but she is always annoyed. She never seems to have enough since he is not usually there when she needs him. As a ‘responsible’ married man, he has to spend time with his family, but as a lover, she needs him just as much. And he loves the way she makes him feel proud, especially when she says things like: ‘You may not be the only man I have known, but you are certainly the only one who has marked me’.
“Word reached Innocent’s wife that he was having an affair with Emma. Like a puff adder she stayed cool initially and pleaded with her informant to watch them at close range. It was therefore not surprising when she surprised her husband at Emma’s apartment one weekend. Innocent had left the house saying he was going to their home village for an urgent funeral, only for his wife to meet his car parked outside Emma’s apartment. She rapped at the door continuously, shouting her husband’s name, claiming that their baby son was critically sick. But Innocent didn’t answer. She left, and I don’t have any details how they resolved matters that day.
“If you permit, I would add here that in other instances where wives have met their husbands in similar situations, they have destroyed their cars and caused quite a scene. There is the story of a university professor whose wife caught him in the act at a resting place, destroyed his car, stormed the door and pulled the girl out of bed and went into a fight with her. She then drove the car home, making her husband bear the shame of taking a taxi home to face her wrath.”
Britney watched Lilly Loveless take notes and was impressed. Even with the recorder on, Lilly Loveless wrote frantically as if she distrusted her very own recorder terribly. Britney could see that Lilly Loveless was intimate with her subject matter, reading far more in the account Britney was sharing than Britney who collected the data. It would be great to read that notebook of hers some day, Britney wished. In a beautiful and mysterious way, she imagined the words in the pages of Lilly Loveless’ notebook reaching out and touching her, saying: ‘welcome to the life of Lilly Loveless, our beloved foster mother’. Britney wondered what would happen if Lilly Loveless were to lose her notebook.
She continued with the story. “Emma was not happy with what Innocent’s wife did, and with the fact that Innocent stayed married to his wife despite claiming he loved her more. How could he swear by the moon and the stars in the skies, and by his dead father and the Almighty God how much he loved and would love her till the end of time, yet do little about the fact that he was a married man and she a spinster desperately seeking marriage? So, to get even with him, she dated a student, what we normally call at the university a ‘flying-shirt’ – no wallet, no power, easily disposable – a man of no consequence. Someone who has
