Money is part of the equation

I met James when I had just finished school. Both of us did not have jobs yet, but for me, that was not an issue since we were still young and had the whole of our lives ahead to figure out how to make money.

He was a good person, he gave me a lot of attention - probably because he had nothing else to do - which I appreciated a lot since my former boyfriend had hardly noticed that I existed. We were broke but happy.

Then I got a job. He was not happy that I was the one earning in the relationship, but after a while he realised it had not changed the status quo. He also refused to let me help out when he was in a tight spot, but after a while he gave in.

We both thought it was a matter of time before he got a job, and all would be well. But it was to take three years before anything showed up on the horizon. In those three years, I saw him transform from a jolly optimistic person to a bitter, resentful, spiteful man.

We could blame it on frustration of failing to get a job in this country, but he wasn’t the only one I knew who had failed to get a job.

Others had realised they needed to think wider, and had tried to start small businesses, or even looked for jobs outside what they had studied.

But my Mr Engineer wanted an engineering job, and from the look of things, he was willing to wait for forever for this job. In the meantime, I got two promotions and started earning some real good money. Then he proposed to marry me.
It was as unexpected as it was not practical; how exactly was he planning to finance this. I loved the man, but I am a realist too; this was not feasible. And it’s not like there was any pressure to get married. I wanted to work for a while before getting married.

On his part, he did not even have a job that earned him a thousand shillings a month. But he had proposed, and he wanted an answer. It surprised both him and myself when I told him that I would have to think of it and get back to him. May be he took this to mean that I did not love him enough, he kept asking me every time what I had decided.

Finally, more to get him off my back than anything, I told him yes. He couldn’t afford a ring, so he did not give me one. But he told everyone we were engaged. I would have been happy about this, but over the years I had realised that while money might not buy love, in our dusty city of Kampala, it was part of the equation.
One cannot live on love alone. He too had figured this out, but it was based on the money I was making. He figured that with that money, we were okay.
His was a worrying thing; he had stopped applying for jobs sometime back, all he did all day was watch TV at my place and text his friends. He no longer had problems with me giving him money, had on a number of times even asked that I give him more ‘allowance’.

Then a few months back, he had permanently moved into my house. I left him sleeping when I went to work and sometimes found him sleeping when I came back late. He did nothing all day. It was driving me mad. I asked one of my bosses to help me connect him to a job in another company.

An interview was organised for him, he passed it but when they told him how much money he would be earning, he turned it down.
His reason was that he did study for an engineering course to work as an ‘office messenger’. That’s when I told him to pack his things and leave my house. I was through with him.
He called me a mean b* who thought money was everything, but I had made my decision. I was not going to settle for someone who had lost his sense of purpose.