An Uncle Rwamiti Story from Horizons Café

People think old men go to cafés because the coffee is good.

They are mistaken.

An old man goes where conversations accidentally reveal the future.

That morning I had chosen a corner table at Horizons Café. Around me sat the modern tribe of educated youth. One was conducting a Zoom meeting through expensive headphones. Another stared thoughtfully at a laptop that had remained on the same spreadsheet for almost an hour. Two young ladies were discussing postgraduate scholarships. A young man in a suit refreshed his email every few minutes, perhaps waiting for the message that would finally begin his life.

Hope has many disguises.

As I stirred my African tea, a familiar voice interrupted my thoughts.

“Uncle Rwamiti.”

It was David. I had known him since he was a schoolboy. Today he was thirty-one: first-class degree, master’s degree, polite, intelligent… and still living at home.

He sat opposite me.

“Uncle,” he sighed, “everyone keeps asking when I will settle down.”

I smiled.

“The old Ugandan question.”

He laughed.

“My mother has stopped asking directly. Now she simply tells me about daughters of her friends.”

“And?”

“I have met some wonderful women.”

“Then what troubles you?”

He hesitated.

“I keep thinking perhaps marriage will finally give my life direction.”

I looked across the café. A young couple sat together. Both were staring at their phones. Neither was looking at the other.

I turned back to David.

“My grandson, before you look for someone to walk beside you, learn first to enjoy the sound of your own footsteps.”

He frowned.

“I don’t understand.”

“Marriage can multiply happiness. It can also multiply confusion. What it rarely does is manufacture purpose.”

He remained silent.

“When a person has not learned to enjoy his own company,” I continued, “he quietly appoints another human being as the manager of his happiness.”

“That is a job no one should ever be asked to perform.”

The waitress arrived with fresh coffee.

After she left, I continued.

“When I was young, we thought marriage completed a person. Age has taught me something different.”

“A healthy marriage does not complete two incomplete people. It allows two already-growing people to continue growing together.”

David smiled.

“You always have a proverb for everything.”

“I have another.”

He laughed.

“Go on.”

“The person who cannot keep himself company will eventually demand that another person entertain his emptiness.”

He looked around the café. People sat together. People sat alone. Some looked peaceful. Others looked restless despite having company.

“Perhaps,” he said slowly, “I have been searching for a wife when I should first have been building a life.”

I nodded.

“Exactly. The happiest relationships are rarely rescue missions. They are partnerships.”

As he stood to leave, he thanked me. I watched him disappear into the lunchtime bustle.

Then I finished my tea.

People often ask why some marriages flourish while others struggle.

Perhaps we ask the wrong question.

Instead of asking whether two people love each other enough to marry, perhaps we should first ask whether each has learned to enjoy the quiet companionship of his own soul.

Because the longest relationship any of us will ever have…

…is the one we have with ourselves.

— Uncle Rwamiti