This year’s resolution for me…no resolutions

DAR ES SALAAM: I know most of you have set up your new year resolutions by now, but on my side, the exercise of coming up with new resolutions has always been futile.

Somehow it is always customary for me to always sit back and reflect on the previous year as we start a new one, and this year has not been an exception.

I always do this not because I am wise, but because my head still has dents in it that tell the story better than any history book.

If archaeologists ever dig me up thousands of years from now, they will not need carbon dating, they will simply count the pan-shaped craters on my skull and conclude that this poor man was married.

As always, 2025 was a year of great ambition and even greater disappointment, mostly to my wife and the mother of my clan, Mama Boyi.

It was a year in which I promised many things with the confidence of a politician during campaign season and delivered on almost none of them.

Funny enough, I promised to come home early. I promised to reduce my visits to Zakayo’s Pub in Manzese. I promised to drink less beer, eat more vegetables and sleep earlier.

Instead, I drank more beer, ate nyama choma at midnight and slept only when the cocks were already warming up their voices for morning prayers.

Let me start with the most accurate statistic of 2025. The number of times Mama Boyi landed her favourite weapon, the legendary greasy frying pan on my poor bald head.

I did not keep an official count, but based on the ringing in my ears and the way my head shines unevenly now, I estimate it was somewhere between too many and record-breaking.

Each strike was deserved, according to Mama Boyi and according to the neighbours who heard the shouting.

The most frequent cause of these attacks was my tendency to appear home very late, smelling like a walking brewery, with a smile that said I know I am in trouble, but let me try anyway.

Zakayo’s Pub, my favourite watering hole in Manzese, was both my refuge and my downfall last year.

Zakayo himself knows me so well that he starts pouring my beer when he sees me from across the road.

Sometimes I go there just for one bottle, to wet my throat to remove the cobwebs, as I lie to myself, but one bottle in Zakayo’s Pub is like one chapter in a very interesting novel. You cannot stop at one. In 2025, I perfected the art of creative excuses.

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If I arrived home at 11pm, I said there was traffic. If it was midnight, I blamed a puncture. If it was 2am, I said we were discussing very important community matters.

Mama Boyi, a woman with the intelligence of three professors combined, would listen quietly, nod and then reach for the frying pan.

The pan, always slightly greasy no matter how much it was washed, would fly with the accuracy of a trained missile.

My bald head, having no hair for protection, received the full message. There was the night I staggered home singing an old rumba song, thinking I was romantic.

Mama Boyi did not agree. There was the night I forgot my phone at Zakayo’s Pub and came home empty handed, claiming it was charging at a friend’s place.

There was even a time I came home early, around 9pm, but unfortunately, I came home drunk early.

Mama Boyi said this was even worse, because it showed commitment to bad behavior. As I now sit in the new year, rubbing my head and my conscience, I think about resolutions.

Resolutions, those beautiful lies we tell ourselves on January 1st. I have a long history with failed resolutions my friend.

I have failed so many times that failure now greets me like an old friend and says, “Ah Baba Boyi, back again?” One of my most famous resolutions is giving up the frothy, cold liquid from Ilala known as beer.

Every year, I stand tall on January 1st, chest out, stomach in (for about five seconds) and declare that I am done with alcohol. I even say things like, “From today, I drink water.”

This resolution usually lasts until January 3rd, sometimes January 5th if I am very serious. Then one evening, I just pass by Zakayo’s Pub ‘to greet people,’ and before I know it, a cold bottle is sweating in front of me, whispering my name.

Another ambitious resolution I have entertained is becoming a priest at an old age. Yes, me, yours truly, Baba Boyi, future man of God.

I imagine myself in a long robe, speaking in calm tones, advising young couples about patience and forgiveness. Mama Boyi laughs loudly whenever I mention this.

She says, if I can manage to survive one year without beer, then we will talk about heavenly matters. She has a point. Still, the idea makes me feel holy for at least ten minutes every January.

Then there is the resolution about my car, if you can call it a car. It is more accurately a collection of metal that happens to move sometimes. It coughs and wheezes like an asthmatic patient every time you try to start it.

In the mornings, when other cars start with a smooth purr, mine clears its throat, complains loudly and produces toxic smoke from the exhaust pipe that could chase away mosquitoes in the entire neighborhood.

Every year, I promise to sell this mechanical embarrassment and buy a real car.

A car that starts without prayer. A car that does not require pushing by three neighbors and my whole family.

A car that does not announce my arrival with black smoke and loud suffering noises. In 2025, I even took photos of it to post online for sale.

But every time I looked at it closely, I felt sorry for it. We have been through a lot together.

It has broken down with me in the rain. It has embarrassed me in front of important people. It has taught me patience. And so, once again, I kept it.

Looking back, 2025 was not just a year of mistakes, it was a year of lessons, lessons that I may or may not apply in 2026. I learned that Mama Boyi’s patience has limits and those limits are measured in frying-pan swings.

As I make new resolutions this year, I try to be realistic. Instead of saying I will stop drinking beer completely, maybe I say I will drink less, or at least come home before the frying pan warms up.

Instead of saying I will become a priest, maybe I say I will behave in a way that does not require immediate divine intervention. Instead of promising to buy a new car, maybe I promise to service the old one… twice.

After all, if I can survive 2025 with my bald head still intact, my marriage still standing and my car still moving (sometimes), then surely there is hope. And if I fail again, at least I will have stories to tell, assuming Mama Boyi lets me live long enough to tell them.