Marigas are hard to hold on to

By Tony Mochama

NAIROBI, KENYA: Last week, the grapevine and media was awash with the news that Ariane Umutumi, the long-term girlfriend of Parma soccer star MacDonald Mariga, had moved out of the plush upmarket apartment he had rented for her; that she was returning to Rwanda.

Rumour had it that his family had pressurised her into leaving. Whatever the truth, there is one lesson lasses can learn here — a good man is hard to find … but a man going places is hard to hold onto.

Think of a rocket, like the Russian Sputnik! It starts off with one long booster that helps it explode out of the ground, and into the sky. Once out there high in the atmosphere, it dumps the first booster, which falls to earth.

A second booster then helps it skyrocket farther into the stratosphere — and this booster too is dumped, once the rocket has comfortably straddled the stratosphere. A third booster then sets the rocket off into space, but it is also literally left floating in the middle of nowhere. Get the picture?

A man like, but not Mariga, meets a woman like, but not Ariane. They are young, so probably poor. But they have dreams, sex, and each other. It is them against the world. And the family does not much mind the young woman. She is polite.

Maybe he plays football for a local team. In their humble abode every night, he shares his dreams of global conquest, how, one day, he’ll play football in Italy’s  Serie A. How they’ll go for holidays in pretty cities like Venice.

Then comes The Call. Someone watched him score a goal in Calabar against Nigeria, and now he has been invited for try-outs in Rome.

He ‘wows’ the football gods there, and joins Roma. So what if he spends most of his first season there, warming the bench? There is lots of money rolling in, warming his bank account.

His first holiday back home, after lavishing his family with money, he moves his lady from the SQ in Buru straight to an apartment in Kileleshwa, furnishes it, and buys her a car –  not a Vitz. He leaves for ‘Serie A: Season 2.’

She stays, she is happy, but not for long. Her in-laws, led by the family matriarch, are not happy that their ‘son’ is wasting money buying fancy wheels for a ‘young gal who wasn’t there when I was washing choo to take him to school.’ Meantime in Roma, our man is not only making a strong impression on the field, and now earning a million bob a week; off pitch, he has learned a little Italiano. He goes to clubs. One night he meets this hot Italian woman . . .

Season Three …

There is no Season Three!

My advice to women clutching onto comets, and riding meteors? Don’t try and marry him right at that moment, as it will look like you’re now a gold-digger (no one will remember your Buru SQ days) and will be fought.

Get his baby, pronto! And tell him it’s his legacy.