Mixed Scenarios

by Aluta Nite

  He stopped her gently with his right hand and said, “Take these two pills and this glass of water and nothing bad will happen to you,” as he held them out to her in his left hand.

  She bent down as if to pick something up, slipped away from him, rushed to her desk, took her bag and left immediately. Fortunately, the main door was not locked.

  She never returned to work at that office. Again, her father picked up her outstanding pay, to avoid the loss of her hard-earned money to another licentious supervisor. However, in both cases, he never raised the issue when he picked up her pay, as he expected to get nowhere.

  After these bad experiences in the city, Lydia decided to go and live in the countryside, where her mother was, and find work there, which she did.

  It is well known that many women have suffered and still suffer sexual harassment at work. Worst of all, almost no authority will take their claims seriously, if they report them, because women were and still are often taken for granted in their work places.

  An appropriate reaction would only be elicited by physical abuse that results in hospitalization. Moreover, if a legal case were to be established, the deliberations in court about the specifics of the harassment suffered; would be demeaning and humiliating to the women concerned.

  Therefore, some suffer silently for years, for fear of losing their livelihoods as they have children, parents or younger siblings to take care of. Others stay quiet because they have been threatened in some way.

  It is indeed long overdue that this issue be given due consideration in work-places, labor unions and occupational health and safety organizations, globally. Though significant strides have been made in Western countries, little has changed for many women elsewhere.

  Dysmenorrhea and Fear

  Pamela was the first-born in a low income family. Her mother was her father’s first wife, and she had six children. Her father resided with his second wife and went with her wherever he worked. He also had several other children with her. His job involved a lot of travel, so he rarely stayed in one place for a long time.

  Pamela’s mother, on the other hand, was a housewife in the countryside, who did some subsistence farming. She lived with all her children. Pamela’s father visited their family perhaps once a year for a few days, when he got his annual vacation.

  Life was not easy for Pamela because their financial means were limited. Her mother could feed her and her siblings, but could not guarantee that their other needs, such as tuition, would be met. It was a significant struggle because her father was negligent of her and her siblings.

  Pamela had an older uncle who had good standing in society because he was well educated and had a good job that led to a successful career. He was a teacher initially, then advanced his education in a different field, and became a leading figure who headed various influential institutions. He was therefore identified among the elite, and had his own large family of two wives and several children.

  Pamela’s uncle realized that she was a bright student, because she qualified to go to the same prestigious schools as his two daughters and outperformed them. He therefore decided to pay her tuition to give her a fair chance at a good education; so that she could later help her siblings achieve the same. He put her through boarding schools, from middle to high school. She also stayed with him and his family during school vacations, in addition to buying her clothes and giving her spending money.

  Pamela was a very pleasant, likeable girl and made many friends at school. She was also responsible and disciplined. Moreover, she worked hard as a student and always got good grades. However, she had two problems.

  To begin with, Pamela had serious dysmenorrhea, the medical term, for painful cramping during menstruation. In addition, she bled profusely for over two weeks and therefore used up a considerable amount of extra-large padding to prevent accidental leakage. Besides being miserable with abdominal pain and excessive menstrual flow, she also developed headaches, nausea, dizziness, loss of appetite and weight loss, which sometimes led to her staying in the sickroom at school. The nurses could only give her painkillers, however.

  She was thus exempt from physical education classes during such times. On the other hand, she was able to sleep like a log during menstruation when pain subsided and had a break of two to three weeks between cycles. Despite all this, she was a dedicated student.

  Secondly, Pamela had a serious phobia. Her roommates were amused at her, but also pitied her. Dormitory wardrobes had cloth screens in place of wooden doors. These screens could therefore be pulled open or shut just like window curtains. Pamela used to make sure to close the wardrobe screens before getting into bed every night. If someone pulled them open and forgot to close them after that, drama would ensue later.

  It would begin with Pamela waking up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom.

  Upon seeing the open wardrobe screen, she would shout, “Someone, please, quickly close the curtains! They are coming towards me! They are coming for me! Hurry up! Please!”

  She would then scream loudly while covering her face and thus wake everybody up. It appeared to her that the clothes hanging in the wardrobe, hers included, were people coming towards her and reaching for her. One of her roommates would then get up quickly and close the screen.

  Then she would say, “Somebody, please accompany me to the loo?” and someone would walk with her to the bathroom.

  Before she entered she would say, “Please don’t leave me here. Please wait until I’m done so we can go back together.”

  To and from the bathroom, she would cling to her companion. Peace would only return once she was safely in her bed again. During the day, her roommates would make fun of her phobia, but at night nobody talked about it. Someone just did the necessary before going to bed or upon waking up to her fearful cries in the middle of the night.

  Her friends and colleagues never got to know the root of this phobia, as she had no explanation when asked. Her cousins also did not know how it came about. Perhaps only her parents or siblings knew.

  Pamela finished high school, went on to college, graduated and secured a good job with the government. She never got married or had any children, because someone told her that she would not conceive given the health problems she experienced during menstruation.

  It remained unknown, whether she confirmed her status medically, but she decided to remain single to her dying day. At least she lived long enough for menopause to relieve her menstrual anguish, but it is not known whether she recovered from her phobia.

  Thieving Stepmother

  Terry was a career woman who lived in the city with her husband and children. She had a brother-in-law, Mani and several sisters-in-law, some of who she was very close to. She had lived with some of them as they attended school or worked and they got along quite well.

  Some got married and moved elsewhere after having lived with her, but their bond remained strong, so they spoke on phone and visited for a week or two when on vacation. When they eventually had children, the bond extended to their children. Some of her in-laws’ children stayed with her for short periods of time, when their mothers needed an extra hand.

  It happened that her unmarried brother-in-law, Mani, lived and worked in another town. On his way to and from seeing his parents, he always passed by Terry’s house in the city, and stayed for two to three days. The city where Terry lived happened to be situated in between his place of work and his parents’ home.

  During one such visit to Terry’s, and on his way to see his parents, Terry gave him three beautiful little girls’ outfits to take to one of his nieces. His younger sister, the mother of the niece who the gifts were for, lived in a town en route from Terry’s to his parents’ village. As agreed upon with Terry, Mani was therefore supposed to stop at his sister’s house to deliver the gifts, before leaving for his parents’ village.

 
Instead, Mani decided to go to his parents’ home first and then visit his younger sister a day or two later to deliver the gifts. He reached his parent’s home early in the morning. Perhaps he did not want to pass by his sister’s place too early in the morning, before going to his parents’ place. Perhaps he felt too tired to pass by his sister’s place after traveling over night by bus from Terry’s. This change of plans, nevertheless, led to a regrettable outcome.

  At his father’s house lived Mani’s stepmother and her six children, five of who were Mani’s step-siblings. His stepmother’s last-born and four other adult children were from previous marriages. Her adult children and their children, her grandchildren, did not live with her.

  Mani was warmly welcomed by the whole family when he arrived at his father’s house. He rested, ate and later decided to visit other relatives and friends. He was therefore gone all afternoon until six in the evening. Meanwhile, he left his traveling bag in the bedroom where he would be spending the night for the duration of his stay. When he arrived, he only removed a handful of items from his bag, to use to freshen up.

  When he went back in the evening, after visiting friends and relatives, he opened his bag again to take out whatever he needed to prepare for bed. It appeared that his bag had been tampered with, because things were not as he had left them earlier. In addition, the dresses that were intended as gifts for his niece were missing!

  Mani checked and re-checked his bag and the room and thought through his movements after arriving at his father’s house and before leaving temporarily in the afternoon. His nieces’ gifts were nowhere to be found.

  He did not know what to do, as he did not have the guts to ask and thus implicitly accuse anyone. He realized that he could only blame himself for not stopping at his younger sister’s house first, before proceeding to his father’s house, which was what he and Terry had agreed on.

  The following morning, he travelled to visit his younger sister empty-handed and let her and his niece know what had happened. He felt guilty and was even more worried about how Terry would react when he eventually broke the news to her, upon his return to the city.

  Because Terry was personally invested in selecting and purchasing the beautiful gifts for his niece and had agreed with him about how he was to proceed on the rest of his journey, in order to deliver the gifts as quickly as possible, she was angry at him.

  It was later deduced that his stepmother had ransacked his bag and taken the gifts for her own grandchildren. Mani never brought up the issue, not even to his father for fear of conflict between his father and stepmother.

  Terry, however, preferred that Mani mention the incident to his father, to deter any future recurrence. Nevertheless, this served as a cautionary tale for Terry, whenever she was a guest in her father-in-law’s house.

  Her father-in-law’s wife offered several times to put Terry’s bag away in one of the bedrooms whenever she visited, but Terry always said, “There is no need to as I’m about to leave,” or, “I’m on my way out.”

  Moreover, Terry never spent a single night there as a guest, which was upsetting to her father-in-law’s wife. However, there was little she could do at that juncture, after all her father-in-law’s wife had tarnished her own reputation.

  Because nobody wanted to rock the boat or suffer reprisal, the matter was neither reported to Mani’s father by Terry’s husband, who was also Mani’s brother, nor by Mani’s younger sister, whose daughter the gifts were intended for. Those who knew were just very cautious with their belongings when they went to Mani’s father’s house.

  What an example Mani’s stepmother was setting for her children and grandchildren!

  Cloth Traders

  These traders sold bed sheets, blankets, bed covers, curtains and dress cloth. Fabrics were their specialty. They rode on motorcycles with their wares bundled on the passenger seat behind them. They all lived in a certain part of the city, East Leigh, and spoke the same language.

  They were typically bearded or unshaven and wore shirts with sarongs or wraps fastened around their waists. They also wore colourful turban-like headgear, and belts that held daggers in pouches. They preferred flip-flops or closed shoes without laces or socks.

  They usually smoked and chewed a reddish-brown substance that discoloured their teeth and caused them to spit a lot. In addition, humming Semitic tunes seemed to come naturally to them.

  They sold to housewives whose husbands were at work. Therefore, they did business in the mid-morning and mid-afternoon, but never at lunchtime or after conventional work hours.

  They rarely sold for cash because their customers were not well off. Sales were paid for in monthly instalments, after wages were received by workers whose wives did the buying. For instance, a blanket would typically take four to six monthly instalments to pay off, after the initial deposit.

  Depending on one’s financial ability, one could take a few items all at once or in succession, from month to month. Customers preferred the traders’ products because they accepted instalments payments, whereas shopkeepers did not. Moreover, because the traders did not pay rent, they passed on fewer costs to customers, hence their products were cheaper.

  However, all these benefits came at an additional price to customers. The sellers were very licentious. They flirted openly, touched themselves inappropriately, touched their customers unnecessarily, winked at, serenaded and lewdly scanned their customers.

  There was, therefore, a golden rule among the customers. The men were never allowed inside their houses. Buying took place in the open. Customers came together in front of a particular house, where the traders had parked their motorcycles. This, however, did not deter the traders from making advances.

  Furthermore, the traders kept records of customers’ door numbers, and if one failed to pay as promised, for whatever reason, they did not take kindly to excuses. They threatened to reach for their daggers and insulted their customers. Sometimes, husbands got involved when situations escalated.

  All in all, it turned out that some of the traders obtained their wares from big shopkeepers downtown, who paid them on commission to sell door-to-door in residential areas, whereas others bought them cheaply from wholesalers for retail sale.

  Licentious Liberties on and off College Campus

  Going to college was fun, but it was also an eye-opener to many oddities in life. People in college came from all walks of life and from all corners of the world. All ethnicities and races coexisted comfortably, working together and learning from each other. The rainbow community was truly beautiful. Nevertheless, in this mosaic utopia, some strange things happened.

  Some female students did not want to do their assignments or study for end-of-year examinations. They simply sold their bodies to willing male professors and lecturers to achieve academic excellence.

  Woe unto the male student that had their eye on these lazy, promiscuous female students. They would be failed, forced to take supplementary examinations or even discontinued, because they were competing with their male professors and lecturers for their female colleagues’ affection.

  Some ladies never fooled around with male professors or lecturers, but they were never on-campus on the weekends and sometimes during weekdays, particularly in the evenings. Older rich men, sugar daddies, picked them up in beautiful, expensive cars and disappeared with them in the city or further afield in the suburbs.

  They dressed stylishly, wore excessive make-up, and carried themselves with the sophistication of career women. They shunned less worldly colleagues and talked big. But, while they were on-campus, they also immersed themselves in their studies to catch up on their schoolwork.

  Sugar daddies also seduced teenage girls in colleges and high schools, impregnating some and causing them to drop out of school. They showered the girls with money and trinkets initially.

  Because they were tender in age,
this confused their priorities and got them addicted to the high life, for which they were then willing to surrender their bodies.

  Sadly, most sugar daddies had wives and children, who were sometimes unaware of their infidelity. In some cases, families fell apart because wives discovered their husbands’ deceptive ways. Money that could be spent on family affairs was being spent on affairs with female students.

  Some of these students got so spoiled that, if their sugar daddies did not pick them up, they took taxis to their destinations, because they felt that public transportation was beneath them. Some rejected cafeteria food, because they preferred the gourmet food from upscale city eateries.

  Others could not watch campus movies or attend college dances, because they enjoyed luxurious entertainment hot-spots in the city much more. Moreover, when school terms ended and vacations began, some girls did not go home, but instead took full advantage of spending their leisure time with their sugar daddies.

  Their families were fooled into believing they were on-campus, when they had gone on long trips or spending sprees, locally and even overseas, with their sugar daddies. They were not easily discovered because cell phones did not exist at the time.

  However, sugar daddies’ chauffeurs knew about these secretive liaisons and were familiar with the couples’ movements. After all they were often sent to pick the women up and drop them off, as well as to deliver goodies to them on-campus during the week. Therefore, sugar daddies often tipped chauffeurs handsomely to conceal their affairs.

  Nevertheless, during these long school vacations the threat of getting caught was greater with increased travel. Though chauffeurs typically remained silent, a friend or acquaintance spotted a couple at an airport or resort and exposed the sugar daddy’s lie about being on a business trip to his wife and hell then broke loose.