Reason I need new neighbours

When I had just moved to the place I stay, life was good, we were all single and young, hosted drink ups, sat together on Saturday nights and brought the bar to the compound. I know Ugandans barely compliment their super heroes but word has it that the surrounding homesteads wanted to be like us.

Then one neighbour moved and was replaced by a married man, another one got hitched, the girlfriend joined the crew but then they broke up and things got very complicated when she showed up one evening with extra luggage, and the ex was housing us that day.
The rest of the evening was silent, we did not know what our buddy was thinking and oh, how we always looked at each other every time her dude asked for a drink refill.

That was one of the last Saturday evening meets, almost three years later, only a few of us are still in the hood, we have new neighbours, some are married, others are not.
Not that I miss the Saturday banters that much, but being single in a place that is full of couples has not been easy, for instance, married neighbours can be nosy!

It’s like they will peep through the windows every time you come home and they notice it is more than your voice they are hearing, and can you imagine, like they are on a mission, they will all wake up early enough to wash something on their verandahs.
In that morning, boy child will stroll through their stares with a stranger they are probably admiring, loathing and critiquing in equal measures. But still, none of this got to me.
In fact, it was only last week that I indeed considered getting new neighbors, I came home early and at about 9pm, as I was getting ready to enjoy local news, drama kicked in.

It turns out, my neighbour’s woman had learnt that her man had in the past slept with all his current best friends – she was loud that even when you did not want to listen, the entire conversation haunted you.
You should have noticed how music in the neighborhood went silent until we learnt that the number she meant by ‘all’ was two. Yes she meant two girls, just two.
“Is this babe even serious? Wasted anxiety just,” one of the neighbors texted.

It was not the first time we were putting things on hold to mind people’s businesses, there was this other time one of the female neighbors started criticising the other’s food, her tool for judgment was the food scent; “you can’t convince me that good food can smell like that, no way.”
On other days one will compliment your sister thinking they are ‘strangers’ not even convincing them that they are prayer partners works.
After the incident with the neighbour’s girlfriend, we all believed this was a false alarm but just like that, I realised this kind of drama was too much for me to stomach, I need new neighbours.