Mr Ernest Bazanye

So, by now you and I have both scoffed at @Man’s ideology. The gall, the sheer barefaced mputtu, to think that manliness means being a soft, little monarch of wet tissue paper who is morally entitled to night-time spoon-feeding.

We have sneered: “LOL, see this one! Since when? Of where?” By now you think that we are in agreement that the pride of a real man is independence.

Independence! Self-sufficiency! I am my own man! I stand on my own two feet! Independence! That is the defining characteristic of a real man!
But no, we don’t agree. First of all, because being independent and self-sufficient is not a masculine thing. Several other genders have independent members and there are multitudes of self-made women and women who are their own man (except for one detail).

First let me tell you how independence is not always a strength and how in fact it is often a weakness:

If there is one thing I learned since I became a man, it is that you can stick out your whole chest, with all its macho hair and huff and puff about being your own man, but a single naked chest, open, unarmoured and unprotected before the blows of life is just a fool’s ribcage waiting to be punctured through and deflated, because in life, bro, for real, dude, I’m telling you, my guy, in life, fam, you are better off with people.

No one can go far enough alone: You will need help. You will, you do need other people. Balls are glamorous, but not as useful as you would imagine. Much more essential metaphorical body parts are hands to hold, shoulders to lean on, ears to bend, arms to embrace, backs to have in exchange for yours.

Independence will get you this far, and you will be proud of yourself for having got this far, but that pride is what will stop you from going further. Because one thing that breaks men is that being too proud to ask for help.
We, because now I am done with the objective satirist detachment, now we are talking man-to-man-and-other-interested parties, we need help, and need it often, but if we think asking for it makes us weak, or that it diminishes this essential identifier of ourselves that we call our Manhood that we cherish so, so much that we would walk to our doom with it, rather than let go of it and grasp our own redemption, then it is not just a weakness, it is a fatal one.

Less independent people do it all the time: they ask for help, and as a result they achieve more for both themselves and their allies than a Manly Man who insists on going it alone. But independence is shiny and glamorous. It looks cool on you. It’s a Fortrunner you drive with sunglasses on, it looks good on a man.

And there is a sturdy sexiness in saying “I did my own thing.” “I got my own thing.” “I did it on my own.” “I did it my way”. It is a valiant defiance of the world. It is a badge of strength. No, not strength: might. No, not might: Power. In a world full of failures and losers and victims broken and cast down by that world, to be standing, in spite of it all, and to be standing alone? That means strength. Might. Power. You da man.

But anyone who has had to pay for parts while still servicing the car loan knows that a Fortrunner can be more trouble than it’s worth. Independence is not a wise way to live your life, certainly not if you’re going to make it the linchpin of something as central to your identity as your manliness and, if you got this far on your own, you only got half as far as you would have gone if you weren’t alone.

The truth is people are not strong, people need other people.

So, let’s look at that tweet again. Let’s have a different man tweet it.

Sometimes it’s been a long day. You have been out battling Kampala, fighting its unrelenting chaos and treachery, you are weary from a long day of dodging, ducking and parrying the shit this city throws at all of us, all day. When you get home, you need rest, you need respite, you need something different from the burdens Kampala heaps onto your head every merciless day you live in it.

And so you get home and find the person who chose to share her life with you, the person who sees your life as part of theirs, the person you share life with, the person who loves you. She sees you tired and worn and weary, and she sees what you need: you need someone to remind you that you are not just the battered body life has chewed and spat out onto her
veranda. She sees that you need someone to show you that you are treasured, that what you fight for is worth it, that you mean something.
So she says the words Ugandans say to their loved ones that mean,”I care about you.”
She says, “Jangu tulye.”

So you tweet
This is how it would go:

@Man: Whatever time I come home, my wife has to serve me supper. Because she is kind to me. I’m a lucky fellow. I’m a lucky man.