Dishonourable Plaque

I don’t approve of the slave trade, obviously, but I do agree with ONE of the assumptions they worked on. I’ll tell you what that is. When slave masters went out to buy new slaves, they would always inspect their purchase’s teeth and the better the teeth, the more they were willing to pay. Good dentition equaled a good buy, because it apparently it was a good health indicator.

I agree very much with this sentiment now. I mean, let’s be clear; I am not in the business of buying or selling slaves, but I do look very closely at people’s teeth, and I form opinions about them based on what I see. Who else does this? Hands up. Surely, I can’t be the only one.

This week has been particularly challenging because I have noticed, in conversation with various people, ridges of plaque wedged into their gum line. What distresses me is I have been noticing this on people whom I previously esteemed to have good personal hygiene. Being observant is a curse, and when coupled with a keen sense of smell, like it is with me, life is altogether a bit more difficult. I now know the smell of plaque a bit too well, and I wish I didn’t.

When mouths hang open in laughter over a shared joke, that high, ever so slightly tangy smell of fermentation just wafts out, and you know for absolute certain that the smell is attributable to those defiant little mounds of yellow hugging your friend’s molars. I really wish this weren’t the case because it is deeply embarrassing, on the person’s behalf.

Because it just tells me that you don’t brush your teeth very carefully. And whether you are my boss, or my friend, or a stranger I just met, I despair of you. Brushing one’s teeth is one of the most refreshing activities in the world, and I simply cannot understand why or indeed HOW people are not embarrassed to wear their dental negligence like a badge of honour.

Last time I checked, toothpaste and good, firm toothbrushes were available at all good supermarkets, and failing that, there’s always the idea of using the point of a pin to scrape the offending matter off your pearlies. Ladies and gents, please let’s do better. Inspect your teeth today and stop working so hard to remain in the ‘tufiakwa – unkissable’ category. This goes for both the ladies and the gents. If someone gets way up close and then changes their mind, then you have a fair idea why.

Thank me later.

How Arranged Marriage Can Go Very Wrong

Before you all go of on one, telling me how wrong I am for making such a blanket statement, allow me to finish, please. I have always been skeptical of arranged marriages. I plan to live long, and I just cannot bear the thought of having to spend the rest of my days with some random stranger that someone picked for me. I’m sorry. I know that in some parts of the world it is the norm, but no bueno. I need to size the guy up for myself and see whether I can deal with his wahala forever; and indeed whether he will be able to deal with mine.


For the last few months, by Grandmother (bless her cotton socks) has been on my case about this amazing young gentleman who lives in her building. She has been waxing lyrical to me about him, how respectful he is, how he always comes to greet her, how he is from a good family, how she went to school with his mother or aunty or someone, how he is ambitious, how he is well turned out, and how all his business interests are going well. She is constantly on my case, trying to get us to meet, and so far I have managed to avoid all her attempts to introduce us.

Eugh.

Shudder.

Luckily, every time I go and see her, he is out of the compound or not visiting at that time, or whatever. News has broken that recently, my poor Grandma and everyone else in her block of flats was rudely awoken at about 2am by loud banging on the gate. The generator was on, so of course it took a while for the noise to register, but once it did, it was all anyone could hear. Who comes banging on your gate at 2 o’clock in the morning, screaming, brandishing a steel rod and threatening to kill the gateman? The answer you’re thinking is what they were all thinking – armed robbers! So of course, calls started flying around and valuables were stashed away as fear and bile rose.

But how wrong you are. How wrong they were. It was not armed robbers. It was this guy – the one who appeared to be such a catch and who my Grandma thought might make a good guy for me. He had forgotten his keys, got locked out, and arrived home off his face on goodness knows what. My issue is not that he was off his face. Most people coming back home on a Friday night after a party are a little happy. No problem there. My issue is that this guy is obviously a little deranged. OK so you get locked out of your house, is that reason to threaten to kill people? He actually had to be restrained and escorted to his flat, or he would have done the poor gateman serious harm.

I don’t even want to know whether the crow bar was an impromptu tool he found on the road outside the gate, or one he keeps in his car for those choice moments when he feels like killing. I know it’s a quantum leap, but this incident got me thinking… If we lived in a society where arranged marriages were de rigeur, then I may have been signed over to this fellow by my dear Granny in a smooth little transaction. She had no reason to doubt his normalcy, but now, after this incident, it has become clear that he is very, very, unsuitable.

Can you imagine hitching your wagon to such a guy, with all his good credentials and what not. And then one day, inevitably, unintentionally you annoy him, and then you’re in a dark corner pleading for your life. Imagine you blindly married this guy because people in your family know his family from way back and he seems like a good bet. And then you wake up one day to find you’ve been beaten to a pulp with a mallet. God actually forbid.

This here is why I don’t believe in or agree with arranged marriage – the potential for too many alarming surprises. No matter how much you love me or how well you know me, you cannot instruct me to marry some dude I don’t know because you have vetted him. I will vet him myself, thank you very much. And then family and friends can chip in on why or why not. I will always listen to advice, because marriages go wrong sometimes, even when you choose your own guy, but to marry Mr X because you said so? Hahahahahah. Erm, no.