Burdened by the weight of being an adult, my brain has had to offload a lot of unnecessary academic stuff to create space for survival tactics. Now, I know that besides a regular job, a bale of mtumba clothes can fetch some profit. I have also internalised that spending some fuel to drive to the ghettos to buy food supplies can actually reflect as genius saving plan.

To calculate the price of each unit of mtumba cloth in a secured bale by relying purely on speculation set against the risk factors is an intricate mathematical formula that no mwalimu wa maths can comprehend. It explains why such practical elements of life did not feature in our entire syllabus of mathematics despite being the most frequent subject in the timetable. For many, school was largely a scam.

However, in separating the wheat from the chuff, there are elements we have found practically applicable from mwalimu wa Commerce. One, is that a met need is not a need anymore and the other is that wants are insatiable. Maybe Commerce could have used human relationships to drive home some of these points instead of relying on boring insights from scholars like Maslow.

In fact, male teachers could have used their own experiences to make the young learners prepare better for life especially the aspect of competition. It is an age-old tact that every husband is kept afraid of the alternative men, ostensibly better, waiting on the reserve bench to take his woman should he slacken.

Female teachers alike could have used some of their experiences with men to underscore the fact that in life expectations are dynamic and constantly changing. The problem is that they thought our minds were too young then to understand certain things yet some of us had already experienced more heartbreak than the teachers by the time we were in Grade 11. You see, a young smitten woman hoping that she is the only thing that a man’s eyes can see soon realises that the man actually sees and appreciates everything else on offer. We are left confused about the true standards of a man, if any.

The same man who appreciates young, petite white girls with blond hair can also accommodate plumb ebony cougars with heavy backsides. Some women have been shocked to find out that their husbands are sugar boys to some random old grannies. Of course, it would traumatise any woman to find out that their husbands are intimate with a woman as old as their own mothers. It leaves us confused about our own beauty and what a man really wants.

When we imagine they are looking for youthfulness, we suddenly realise that they draw some unique pleasure from experienced women too who may know things we do not.  The younger woman would never tell if the experienced hands work better magic in milking the king or in kitchen recipes. Maybe it is the deepest of geysers that make better aquifers for drillers. It could be the composed mien that comes with age and diminishing beauty. Well, something has to kill a man!

Men on the other hand would use women to exemplify the dynamism of needs. A woman who in her difficult youth needed only food and shelter morphs into a demanding personality with standards set way above the rooftop. Once the basics are sorted, the goalpost automatically shifts to greater demands. With rising income, he realises that suddenly his woman is no longer comfortable in his old Axio and starts pushing for a Pardo TX. The luxury vehicle suddenly becomes a risk in Dandora and the family has to move to Lavington where people of similar class stay. With that move, kids have to move to expensive schools.

Strangely, even these magnificent changes can only excite a woman in the short term before she finds out her immediate neighbour draws more money than the husband, drives an even more lavish car and is still interested in her ample backside whenever their paths cross at the supermarket.

He cannot stop stealing telling glances once his Caucasian wife walks ahead of him with the shopping trolley. What follows is a relentless pursuit of everything delusional, underlining the principal that human needs are insatiable. What women want remains amorphous and confusing; yet, women too are at a loss in trying to understand what men really want.