When it rains

They lied to us. They said if we wanted good points, we should always take paper-bags with us when we visited our mothers-in-law.

Who, in his right mind, would not want to be liked by his mother-in-law?
So, we went in search of paper-bags – but alas, they were nowhere to be found!
We went to Spar and there were no paper-bags. We went to Shoprite, Buy & Save and The Gables Shopping Complex down at Ezulwini.

We even went around town, virtually ransacking all the One-Price stores.
Run mostly by Asians, these outlets usually stock most of the stuff you will never get to find at your regular supermarket. There were no paper-bags.

We cannot lie. We found some good stuff at all these places.
They had cornflakes, Russian sausages, ready-made frozen French fries and ever-ready Swazi buns.
There were bargains too, on stuff like powdered milk, three kilograms packets of sugar, Sunlight soap and loaves of brown bread.
These are all the things mothers-in-law are known to love.

They also love their jam, margarine, Five Roses teabags and Lucky Star pilchards without chilli.
Most of these shops have fresh vegetables, too, which come quite cheap – and we all know what a cabbage head costs at the corner market, don’t we? An arm and a leg!
Purchasing such stuff from the supermarkets was easy. After all, impressing your mother–in-law should not be about prices.

In fact, the women we are dating (or married to, if anybody is still married to anybody else out there after last week’s High Court judgement) always say: “If you have to ask the price; you probably cannot afford it.”
We did not ask what the prices were. We just bought stuff.

Trouble came when we got to the cash registers, known elsewhere as ‘tills’.
The normally unhappy-looking women with long, sad faces who pack customers’ groceries after every purchase stuffed our groceries into white, yellow-and-red or black plastic bags.
They said nothing about paper-bags.

We asked if we could buy one of two such bags but the response was negative.
“Uwakuphi wena ufuna i-paper-bag, kulomnyaka lo?” (Do they still have paper-bags where you come from?) they asked, half in jest – but the sarcasm was not lost on us.
We would have cared less but our relationships with our mothers-in-law were at stake here. This was no laughing matter.

The usually monstrous but sometimes lovable women were waiting for their grocery-laden paper-bags back at the villages.
So, where were the paper-bags? What had happened to them?
Had they suddenly become unpopular? If so, why?

If they have become so unpopular, why is everybody out there still insisting that we should carry them when we visit our monsters…eh, mothers-in-law?
Is everybody still trapped in the past? Is it the in-laws themselves back there who still demand paper-bags?
When was the last time they came to town?

Do they know that stores no longer stock paper-bags?
Would they, by any chance, take the white-green-red, yellow-red or white-and-blue plastic bags we bring with us in lieu of the paper-bags?
We would really appreciate that.

Sparks, my faithful friend, suggests that there should be some sort of common ground here.
“You guys need to reach a compromise with your mothers-in-law,” he says.
“If you really want them to like you as a son-in-law, take the plastic bags from Spar and The Gables to the village but explain to them, before you unpack all those groceries, that you did not find any paper-bags.”

Sparks, who finds a silver lining even in the darkest of clouds, advises that men should alert their in-laws to the fact that paper-bags are a liability, after all.
“With all the recycling frenzy going around, the return of the paper bag is being widely advocated. However, we should never lose sight of the fact that, when it rains, people who carry paper bags find themselves with nothing to hold those precious groceries,” he says.

He says unless you own a car, taking a chance with a paper-bag full of groceries in rainy seasons like this one is a huge risk.
The rain, says Sparks, will pelt your bag until you are left holding only a tin of pilchards on one hand and a brick of margarine on the other. The rest of the groceries will be in the mud.
But seriously now…is the absence of paper-bags the reason most mothers-in-law have turned to monsters? Is it why they do not like us?

Where are the fathers-in-law in all this?
Do they also want their own paper-bags – with what, inside them…Boxer tobacco, J&B whisky, two kilograms boerewors and safety shoes?

If not, are they the ones pushing the mothers-in-law to ‘demand’ paper-bags from us, subtle though the aging women may be with these requests?
Speaking of which, do all mothers-in-law out there expect groceries (whether in plastic or paper bags) whenever we drop by – or is it just a myth?   

If it is not a myth, should our mothers also demand (in the spirit of 50/50) the same from our pretty partners; their dainty daughters-in-law? Kuphi ngukuphi?