Marriage: flatulence, warts and back hair.

Women spend a lot of time looking for their soulmate. The “One”, the proverbial knight in shining armour, the man with the golden member. Whatever. Guys might think they’re looking for the “One” (you know: cooks, cleans, is contracted to wipe your mother’s backside when she becomes too old to eat solid food, etc. Oral sex is a plus.), but in reality, most guys will settle for whatever they land up with, as long as it has nice breasts.

The truth is, there's no such thing as a soulmate. There's simply a process that must be followed in marriage, and not everyone has the stomach for it. Sometimes the mixture goes green and has to be thrown out.

Guys don’t often look at the long-term picture here. Breasts hardly ever last forever - even the fake ones. Usually they are so surprised that a real live woman lets him touch her, he will, after enough nagging, settle down and have 2.5 kids. Trouble is, Married Utopia is like cheese – it may taste pretty nice, but after a while it gets stale and eventually, slightly furry. Especially after 2.5 kids.

Women have a knack for working with what they have. They will take that weedy underpaid office clerk and make him into that knight in shining armour, or he will die trying. Women see men as malleable lumps of clay, waiting to be moulded into a desirable shape with a late model car. She dutifully reminds him daily of his shortcomings and inspires him to be a richer, more successful man who will give her more money. She never gives up until he has become a tortured shadow of the dream she married. Still, by the time she has it, it is hard to deny the fact that he is balding and farts when he is nervous.

Men, on the other hand, tend to get disheartened quite easily. Just one year into the future, your glamorous sexy wife is transformed into a lumpy, misshapen mutant that either cries when you touch her or leaks milk out of her breasts, which, incidentally, used to be the object of desire of all the guys but now resembles uncooked dough in two long plastic bags.

So, you’ve been married ten years and your husband has avoided all your attempts to murder him and collect the inheritance. You’ve twice caught him texting other women and he now has enough scars and just enough brain cells left not to try it again. Your kids are big enough to start becoming their own people, and you have both realised that they are the kind of people you don’t really want to know. Getting to that plateau is the key. It is only then that the two of you will finally unite in mind, cellulite-stricken body and capitulating soul. The war is over. It is time to call a truce, wax each other’s backs and avoid your kids at all costs.

It’s all gone pear-shaped…

It’s been nearly a year since I came back from England and the thing that’s probably the most terrible thing about that fact is that I haven’t really walked anywhere. For a year. Walking around in a mall just doesn’t count, and anyway, what’s the point of walking around a mall when you have a wallet that would resemble Kate Moss’ cranium if you opened it up and peeked inside?

I can’t afford the luxury of a gym – not even the dodgy ones you see in the movies where they have cockfights in the basement. Going for a quick run in the neighbourhood would be a cheaper alternative, but the problem comes in when the police have to identify my remaining body parts to notify the next of kin. Yeah, this is Jo’burg baby! Love it or hate it, you can’t run in it.

The point is, I haven’t exactly been very active of late, and when your primary function in life is sitting in front of a computer all day and the highlight of your week is driving down the road to Checkers for groceries, you are going to end up with a flabby, square butt. Things tend to atrophy, and then gravity takes over.

Okay, I’m probably lying – my trip to Checkers every week isn’t really the highlight, but it does come a close second. I also go to my mother’s at some point during the weekend, and when that happens, I invariably end up stuffing my face with Mother’s Food. So it gets worse.

During the week my lovely husband is fond of having chocolates, ice-cream and popcorn (not necessarily in that order) after supper in front of the television before going to bed. Naturally I participate in this tradition because I wouldn’t want him to feel lonely, eating all those terrible, terrible things by himself.

It’s pretty darn obvious from reading the above that I needed to make a bit of a change in the way I live. When I realised that I could no longer walk in front of the full-length mirror in the hall without my eyes closed, I decided something had to be done.

I’m not terribly large. I wear a size 10 (34). But the thing is, I’m really short. Like really, really, really tall to the negative power of 5 billion. Dwarves would be allowed on the roller-coaster before me. I’m 147cm tall (about 4ft 8in, I think). Twelve-year-olds tower above me. Ominously. That’s why, even though I now weigh 56kg, I still have to lose about 10kg to look proportionately normal.

To make matters worse, I’m naturally pear-shaped. I have hips that make Oprah look like a catwalk model. Well, in my mind, anyway. It probably looks worse when you’re looking down at them all the time. When I was around thirteen I woke up one day and boom! Hips for Africa. I’m still waiting for the boobs, fifteen years later.

But lately, when small objects started to gravitate to and orbit around me, I knew that the time for action had come. So, I started The Diet yesterday. So far, apart from a bit of muscle ache from jumping around in my lounge like an simpleton with a skipping rope, it is going pretty well, but it’s still early days yet.

When I start fantasising about biting Francois Pienaar dressed up as a giant Lays potato crisp, you might just see me standing at the traffic lights with a cardboard sign which reads: “will write Mills & Boon novels for lipo”. Please spare some change...

Ten types of South African Muslims

Lately I’ve been having a good giggle over Hamish’s blog and something he said today reminded me that we South African Muslims are stranger than fiction. So, even at the peril of mortally offending everyone’s sensibilities, I have made a tongue-in-cheek list of the different types of Muslims you get in this country. This is by no means an exhaustive list, so feel free to contribute to it in the comments box.

The Dariwallah

This guy wears pyjamas in public and has a long, usually unkempt beard. I’ve seen beards that could hide small mammals in them. Biologists could spend years studying what’s in them. I digress. He usually starts sentences with “Bismillah” and more often than not finds a way to justify his chauvinistic and warped opinions by quoting from an obscure Hadith or from allegorical verses of the Qur’an. Dariwallahs usually find it hard to sit down when speaking. Flecks of foam usually emerge at the sides of the Dariwallah’s mouth and large veins begin to bulge in his forehead and neck when he is riled up, and he usually gets riled up about everything. It’s often a good idea to keep the paramedics on speed dial and sharp objects hidden when trying to defend your non-jamiat approved view of a certain aspect of Islam. Won’t look directly at, speak to or save a woman from drowning because it might awake carnal desires and send him directly to jahannum. The Dariwallah often gets a hard-on from watching the Oprah Winfrey Show.

The Lesser-Spotted Niqabi

The Lesser-Spotted Niqabi is rarely seen in urban areas, and when she does make an appearance, she often seems to labour under the misapprehension that every woman she recognises, even someone she met briefly at a book fair ten years ago, will recognise her simply by noticing her veiled face and muffled voice. In the company of other Muslim females, the niqab comes off and the devil comes out. Possibly the wickedest group of Muslim women I have ever come across. The best place to observe her outside her natural habitat is usually at Adult World, where she can be observed furtively purchasing studded underwear.

The Taliban-Wannabe

Usually young and inexperienced, this boy is typically the son of a Dariwallah. He can be found in sheep’s Western clothing, having developed a severe distaste for his father’s kurta-pyjama from an early age. He normally has a short, neat beard and looks like the kind of boy you’d want your daughter to marry. Until he opens his mouth, that is. Taliban-Wannabe is obsessed with guns, killing people and defending Islam (not necessarily in that order) and often expresses a desire to go to Afghanistan to fight for his Taliban brothers, but will never really end up going. What’s in his pants is normally a disappointment and is the most likely to end up murdering his own wife and kids. Quotes incessantly from the Qur’an but is a notorious skirt-chaser.

The Beauty Queen

Strikingly beautiful, slim and intelligent, this woman is a sight to behold. Sadly, she knows it and will remind you of it every chance she gets. She likes to put millions of beautiful profile pictures up on Facebook so that her army of unattractive male “friends” can gush creepily about how much they would like to get her into bed pretty and amazing she is. She is also fond of updating her status with deep, intelligent statements in the hope that one day, people will like her for her brains and not her beauty. Usually has daddy issues and is cold in bed.

The Player

Not normally the brightest kid on the block, the Player relies on his good looks, pimped ride and the money from Daddy’s hardware store to get him by in life. The Player usually gets married before he develops pubic hair, more often than not to his first cousin in order to keep the money in the family, but doesn’t see that as an obstacle to pursuing his ambition: being the biggest slut on the face of the earth. He has been known in the past to get involved in wife-swapping activities with his Player friends and has a predilection for paying for sex with transvestites. The Player often has nasty personal habits and is most likely to get arrested in a public toilet with George Michael.

The Harassed Mother

The poor soul is worn out from having four to six children and spends her whole life cooking, cleaning up puke, lactating and changing nappies containing sloppy green stools. She lost her figure after the second child, doesn’t have time for makeup and can often be found snoring during sex. She hates her husband for being able to leave the kids behind and go to work. She has forgotten what the second-last kid’s name is and he grows up thinking his real name is Bhaiyya.

The Repressed Nerd

Usually the guy all the girls want to be friends with. Often writes in programming language better than he can write in English. Is obsessed with gadgets and technology and spends hours searching for javascript arrays, SQL injections and porn. Repressed Nerd finds it difficult to communicate human emotions to others. His mother phones him once a week to ask him when he’s going to get married and give her grandchildren. Whenever he works up the courage to make a move on a girl, the typical response includes contorted facial expressions and pepper spray. Will remain a virgin until he realises it’s better to just pay for it.

Manhattan Wife

The Manhattan Wife is usually married to the Player. She knows her husband is a man-whore and sees more vaginas in a week than the average gynaecologist sees in a year, so the only thing she has left is his money. She would be hideous if it wasn’t for her regular visits to the cosmetic surgeon. Fond of Dolce & Gabbana, Louboutins and the South of France. The Manhattan Wife drives a gas-guzzling SUV that is far, far too big for her and wouldn’t know a prayer mat if someone flagellated her with one. Sandton City has given her VIP parking. Often has sex with random people and of course is no stranger to the wife-swapping phenomenon mentioned earlier. Manhattan Wife spends more time in rehab than out and has invariably had butt-fat injected into her lips.

The Sap

The Sap will always work for a fellow Muslim because he has been made to believe it is his moral obligation to be enslaved for a fifth of his market-related salary. Can be typically found working seven days a week in hardware stores, supermarkets and for charitable organisations. Has no ambition and his only thrill in life is from sexually harassing dolly birds at the shop. The Sap thinks it’s his right to steal from his boss because he is paid so little. Is usually married to the Harassed Mother and also can’t remember the second-last born’s name without having to consult the birth certificate folder.

The Hardcore Thinker

The Hardcore Thinker is a woman that will nag and annoy any man or child unlucky enough to be near her to the brink of suicide. She is fond of overly sentimental and hardcore religious status updates and thinks her poo smells like roses. She can often be found lamenting that she is misunderstood. The Hardcore Thinker is very fond of drama and can be found to be stirring pots of shit in a variety of different locations simultaneously. She is not afraid to embarrass others. She tries very hard to give off the impression that she is a serious person who contemplates very serious things all the time. Quick to judge and lose her temper. If any man ever has the balls to dump her she will most likely take out a billboard ad to tell the world how he did her wrong and how small his penis is.

If you have been offended by this blog post it’s a sign that you probably take yourself too seriously. Go and be a Nazi on someone else’s blog.

The ten essential qualities of a real woman

One of the many things that bugs me is adult females who act in ways which I think disqualifies them from the honour of calling themselves real women. I wish I could have given myself this advice when I was in my late teens / early twenties. So here are the qualities that I think every woman should possess, in no particular order:

1. Take responsibility: whether you have kids, are in a marriage / long-term relationship, are working or studying, you need to take responsibility for yourself and any dependants you may have. Being older than 20 and expecting your family to pick up the pieces every time you drop the ball is not on. Feeling a sense of entitlement without earning it is rubbish on every level. If you can vote, you are responsible for your own actions. If you feel that your private life is nobody’s business but your own, don’t expect anyone to pay your bills or fix your mess if you stuff up.

2. Be reliable: of all the words you would like people to describe you with, “flaky” is probably not one of them. Don’t let people down, don’t be late for meetings, appointments, work or exams and perform tasks and responsibilities on time.

3. Show honour: as an adult you must see all people as human beings and respect them equally as such. Put other people first and put yourself forward as an upstanding member of your community, your company and your family. Don’t follow; lead instead.

4. Find your dignity: this is not self-righteousness. Dignity comes from others respecting you as a person, and you perpetuating that respect. If something negative happens to you, don’t react negatively. Don’t drag yourself down to the antagonist’s level. If you feel angry or hurt, try to keep a cool head, don’t spit out abuse and go somewhere to cool off before you respond to the situation. Also, expect others to treat you with dignity. Don't allow your partner to treat you unequitably. If he can't treat you right, it's time to move on.

5. Lose the drama: I have known of plenty of women (whom I have since "unfriended") of all ages who share their sob stories with everyone to get sympathy. Their Facebook and Twitter statuses are filled with sordid details of make-ups, break-ups and insults aimed at in-laws, bosses, colleagues and friends. But often, making your personal issues public to the world can only cause more conflict, because gossip spreads like wildfire. Ultimately, you will come off worse for being immature.

6. Give instead of taking: Don’t expect everything to always be done for you. People who work and earn without depending on others for bailouts generally are much more independent, driven, ambitious and successful. In addition to this work ethic, helping others in any way (it doesn’t have to be financially) helps you to be a more compassionate person. Being a selfish human being is not a particularly desirable or attractive personality trait. When you become more considerate and helpful, you will find people will be more willing to help you when you need support. Remember, being negative attracts people who will respond negatively in turn and being positive attracts people who will react positively towards you.

7. Empower yourself: Don’t be a vegetable and wallow in misery or boredom. Get out there in the world and have a can-do attitude. Always expand your horizons and be willing to learn new things. Even if your current circumstances prevent you from fulfilling a dream, there is always an alternative, another path to travel that will lead you towards what you really want. It doesn't mean you have to be a ball-breaking business executive, though. Whatever makes you happy and boosts your self-confidence is just as good. Don’t put yourself down and say you’re not intelligent enough. Prove your inner demon wrong.

8. Be comfortable being alone: Don’t ever, ever allow a man to affect your happiness. If for some reason your relationship doesn’t work out, don’t abase your dignity and crawl back to him just because you can’t see yourself without him. And if it’s really over, don’t go jumping into the arms of the next man that makes a pass at you. You are a human being in your own right and if you can’t stand the thought of being a lone unit, one whole person that doesn’t need another to survive, then you need to talk to a qualified counsellor to figure out why you feel invalid as a single person.

9. Accept blame: Don’t blame your parents or your ex for your personality problems. You are an adult and as adults we all have to accept responsibility for our actions as adults. Yes, all of us have mother and father issues, sibling rivalries, previous boyfriend/husband issues. I’d guess over half of the readers here would consider themselves having had a ‘tough childhood’ or ‘bad parents’. However, any person should be able to work through their issues, learn from them and become better people, not worse. It’s a poor example of a woman that blames someone else for her inadequacies when it comes to life choices.

10. Do what is right: No matter what our religious background or family dysfunction, we have all learned the difference between right and wrong. Period. There are no excuses for lying, stealing, committing adultery, etc. A strong moral foundation is essential to being a strong woman. You can pretend to be a good, strong woman, but if you keep breaking the rules and acting unethically, one day the truth will come knocking and you will be exposed.

We all need time and experience to reach maturity after leaving school. Some people, however, can die of old age before they get there. So beef up and take responsibility for your actions before it’s too late!

Oh, and in case any guys are sitting back in their chairs comfortably, smiling at this post, your turn is coming…

Ashes of a woman

She bears the burden no man can know. Her hands, dry and cracked from her toil, move busily as she bends over her ceaseless work.

A nursemaid, caregiver and nurturer to her children, constantly on call day and night, worrying, fretting, preparing. Wiping tears from their eyes when the children fall, dispensing wisdom, nerves fraying at silly questions and chores not yet done. Mending clothes, stretching the food, making do when all she wants is a time to close her eyes and be at peace.

Her own tears fall when solitude eventually finds her in a woozy, exhausted state, but there is no-one to wipe them from her eyes. As she pours the warm water from the cracked jug over her ravaged body, her mind still races with the thoughts of the children she must feed and shelter.

There were times when she thought that surely death would be a welcome reprieve from the endless violence, the humiliation and the pain of bruises and shattered bones left to heal themselves. From the pain of the petrol he poured onto her body and set alight, laughing at the sound of her screams of agony and the sight of her begging him for help.

She sees it anew as though it were yesterday. Feels the excruciating coolness of the water her son throws on her burning, smouldering flesh. His anxious young voice cracking with pity and despair. Being rushed to hospital and waking up with only memories of pain where her legs once were.

The police want her to lay a charge against him but her children beg her to spare their father. As always, the mother’s heart, not blackened by the flames that licked her flesh, succumbs to their pleas.

A burnt shell, she arrives back home to find out he has left her and is living with another woman nearby. Oh Allah, why do you test me with such hardship? How can I bear so much pain? Where is Your mercy? I am Your servant. Deliver me from this torture!

The wheels of the low metal trolley squeak and turn with excruciating heaviness as she uses her rough hands on the hard tar to propel her along the road. Each day she pushes herself into central Johannesburg to buy the brooms and mops she sells from her home to support her children. She does not complain any longer. She is still a woman, looking after her children, like all other mothers do. So does the phoenix rise from the ashes of violence.