So what if she can’t express herself

I would never, never have imagined that I would ever date a girl who could not communicate in English, at least with a certain level of fluency.

Yeah yeah, I know English is an imported language and I shouldn’t use it as a measure in the spirit of pan Africanism and local languages, blah blah, but unfortunately, this is easier said than done. See, we have quite a number of local languages, and unlike the Kenyans and Tanzanians who also have Swahili, we only default to English.

So, it was in English that I said, “hello, how are you?” to this beautiful lady, she responded “I am fine,” like anyone else would, but she said it quietly, barely audible. I introduced myself, and asked her name, her repose was a plain “Sarah”.

I desired to engage her in a conversation, which would see me get her contacts for a follow up. But, she wasn’t being very communicative, despite not showing any signs that I was being a bother to her. Her responses were all single words, consisting of not more than “yes”, “no,” “ok.”

It started getting irritating. I mean, surely she could manage a sentence of more than two words! But then again, perhaps she is the kind that doesn’t talk much. Those tend to be good girls. In an attempt to get her to say something longer, I asked her what she does for a living. The answer was “student.” To which I asked, “where, and studying what”.

Then things got a bit strange; she gave me a name of some technical college or institute that I was not familiar with, and for the course, Hotel Management. Again, the way she said “management”, as if she would prefer saying it in her local dialect.

I was beginning to get an idea of her English communication skills when she received a phone call. It wasn’t very long, but it was revealing. She spoke in Luganda, throwing in an English word here and there.

Then she hang up. I then decided to change our language of interaction to Luganda. And she lit up like a Christmas tree.

Suddenly, she became very talkative; she answered all my previous questions in full, the ones where I had only got a single word answer in English.

She even asked me a few questions in return! I was pleasantly surprised. Having figured out that I spoke Luganda, she totally cut out the English.
A true Pan Ugandan, one would say, only that the truth was that she wasn’t comfortable communicating in English. Because she hardly knew any.

That would have been a major issue, but for her looks! My goodness! Half the time she spoke I wasn’t even listening to what she was saying, I was staring at her.

She was gifted with a smooth complexion, pure African features and shape. It was a complete package. I decided that she doesn’t need to be able to communicate in English and I was very ok with it. But of course, most other people were not, the shallow snobs.

Even those who spoke perfect Luganda still wanted to talk to her in English just so they could see her get uncomfortable. It became a constant source of amusement to them, to my utter chagrin.

Soon, it was known that I was dating a school dropout. I didn’t mind, because as they said these things, I could see them looking at her with lustful eyes, the envy in their words, and of course, they knew that my African Queen was loyal, not like their artificial snobbish cheating girls who thought just because they had gone to good schools, were better than everyone else.