By Daimone Siulapwa & C.M
This time around, forget the politics for a moment and let us look at the social aspect of life…. Am sure my newly acquired blog friends like, Red Card-Free at Last, Senior Citizen , Mr. Capitalist – 3 E’s steering economic growth , msana wanzili , Observer , Zed Patriot , MB, realist, Maestro Hhehhehhehhe for 2011 would-b President of Zambia HH, Independent Observer, georgeWbush will enjoy this one and continue to guide us in our free of insult discussions.
WHAT would the world be without women?
They encompass everything that makes man able to face another day. They are child bearers, home-makers, multi-taskers, intelligent human beings and everything that a woman should be.
They are nurturers who have this inborn quality to face any trial and temptation and still come out the victor. Women face many battles and many a man has been impressed at the resilience of a woman.
But women nowadays are throwing all those powerful traits to the wind and adopting a vice so bad that mother Theresa would weep if she saw the state of things now.[pullquote]These women walk into kitchen parties and ask the first person they meet, ‘where’s the booze and thank you for inviting me to Mwaka’s kitchen party’. The person they ask usually looks bewildered and stammers, ‘uhm! The booze is to your left and it’s not Mwaka’s kitchen party, it’s actually Daniel’s funeral’.[/pullquote]
Sobriety has flown out of the window with that once virtuous nature of a woman. Show me a woman without an alcoholic bottle in her hand and I will show you 10 women with almost five in one hand. Zambian women have re-defined the term, ‘party hard or not at all’.
The question is has it always been there and we just did not notice or it is actually on an increase now. Women in this day and age do not need a man for anything. They are all work smart and strutting around in heels clocking endless hours at the office trying to make more and more money to fund a rather expensive lifestyle. They are becoming even more powerful than men and are able to hold their own, be it conversation or liquor. Women are a powerful species. They are able to see past the dirt and muck and bring out the best in their children, husbands, workmates or even friends. Women have been gifted with the undeniable ability to see through the sand and pick out the diamond. That was back in the day, lately Zambian women are so boozed out, and they wouldn’t even be able to distinguish the difference between a diamond and a rotten apple.
Zambian women have taking drinking to another level. What was once seen as unacceptable and almost taboo is now an everyday thing. The rare woman that doesn’t drink is seen as an outcast and a party pooper while the drunken nut boob falling out of her shirt is seen as the ‘in’ thing. It’s a sad day when women drink like they are fish trying to drink all the water in the Kafue River, but it’s a heartbreaking day when girls start emulating what they see. Kids see what adults do and they copy that. A young girl sees the so called joy a drunken woman goes through and they envy that. Instead of being the upstanding and brilliant pupil they were meant to be, you find them sitting next to sixty year olds in the bar. It’s a vicious circle and once ensnared by its sharp claws, very few manage to climb out sober and carrying bruises only.
Now drinking for recreation is understandable and social drinking is acceptable. No one wants Zambian women to become the Pope. It’s just that even social drinking now turns into ten tequila shots and fifteen castles all in one hour at the club. Zambian women are drinking like there’s no tomorrow. Some say they drink to forget the hardships of life. Others drink because they feel it will make them an equal to men who still greatly dominant the peaks of the business world. Some women drink for fun and lose all their inhibitions in the process. Some women drink as an escape from the entrapment of poverty whilst others drink out of peer pressure.
They are many reasons why women drink. Zambian women drink to relax and party with their friends. There’s nothing wrong with that. The only qualm that arises is when Zambian women start drinking more than they are able to stand straight. Drinking from sun up till sun down is almost a cry for help and drinking from sunrise till sunset is almost like driving from Kitwe to Lusaka and using a route through Malawi; taking the longer route to solve a problem that should never have existed.
Could it be that Zambian women are competing with men? Are they trying to set their mark and set the pace for this new 21st century? Now, I’m not categorizing every Zambian woman under a drunken stupor umbrella. There are four categories of Zambian women drinkers that I have come across. They could be more but I don’t have the brain space to sit in every bar in the country with a notebook writing it down. The first are the no nonsense ‘I will drink until I drop and you will only stop me if you shoot me first’ women. They are obese, loud and obviously proud though lo and behold, no one really knows why. They dream of the next kitchen party, bridal shower, wedding, heck even funeral, to have a good time. They move around in packs and when one is drunk, look no further, for the rest of the pack is equally inebriated. They do not even wake up with hangovers anymore. They are so used; they wake up with talk time so they can call their pack up and find out where the next kitchen party is. These women walk into kitchen parties and ask the first person they meet, ‘where’s the booze and thank you for inviting me to Mwaka’s kitchen party’. The person they ask usually looks bewildered and stammers, ‘uhm! The booze is to your left and it’s not Mwaka’s kitchen party, it’s actually Daniel’s funeral’.
The second category is the calm and normal Zambian woman. She works hard and gets by. She has plenty friends and is generally a nice person. One, two, six bottles later and she’s the vampire from the dark side. Once drunk, she will beat up anything in sight and will argue with anyone who questions her intelligent thought. She goes from the woman you could take to meet your parents to the woman your parents would have arrested if they met her. All normal thought evades her mind and she becomes loud and boisterous sharing all her so-called ingenious abilities. She could be a student, a mother, a working class woman but once drunk, she resembles a monkey fighting for a half eaten banana. These women are on the rampant and they are unstoppable. Lo and behold you get on their wrong side when they are drunk for they will whip you with a bottle of booze and hug the broken pieces hoping to catch the last sip of the alcohol you made them waste on your head.
The third category is the Zambian woman who has it all. She’s hot by any man’s measure and she knows it. The more she drinks the louder she gets and even the wedding ring on her finger will not remind her when she gets all cozy with the stranger in the bar that she actually is married. No one knows where she fits all that alcohol in because at the rate she drinks, you’d think the whisky would be pouring out her ears. She’s the kind of woman who doesn’t pay for her own alcohol. Men, entrapped by her beauty and skin revealing attire will be at her mercy and they will buy drink after drink hoping they will be rewarded by night end.
The fourth and final category by my standings is the generally all right Zambian woman. She does her own thing and struts her stuff proudly because she’s a woman on the go. She parties hard and still keeps on going. She’s one who knows her limits and even if she goes overboard, she has a plan that will see her ending up in her own bed at the end of the night and not in the dustbin at the back of the club. She drinks to have fun and she knows that at the end of the day, its only alcohol and if it comes for free, then right on, pass me that Redds and if it comes at a cost, ‘thank you but I’ll pass’. She wants to fit in and she does so well, be it a barbeque or a social drink-up with the big boys. She knows her worth and doesn’t let alcohol dictate the order of her day. She uses booze as a relaxation technique rather than a life or death weapon.
Now I know, some who will read this article will be baying for my blood and calling for my head. They’ll probably be the same boozers that feel I’ve unjustly discriminated against Zambian women who just want to have fun. All I say is go on and have fun. Drink and socialize and enjoy the day. Just don’t drink to the point of shameless agony. Don’t drink like the sun will never rise again. Some will argue that who am I to say the things I’ve said. Well, I’m a nobody but I’m a nobody that’s hoping that Zambian women will regain that dignity they once possessed and that gift that men once envied. I’m hoping Zambian women will sober up and dress up.
