This Thing Called Marriage

They say marriage is the most wonderful thing in the world. I feel sorry when I see young people rushing into this trap called marriage. Deep down in my heart, I simply say let them go ahead; don’t  the wise ones say if a kid wants to make a gourd out of nsatsi let him make it so that he can learn a lesson when it wilts in his hands?

So I skin my teeth when I see lovebirds posting on Facebook or WhatsApp their cleverly photo shopped pictures with fancy announcements: wife to be, save the date. Welcome to hell, I chuckle to myself.

I don’t discourage them. What I do is to change my money into the smallest denominations possible, zokasupira, then take my stomach and mouth to munch the snacks at the wedding ceremony while I maliciously watch the young man and woman jump willingly into the pit of fire.

There’s no family where both the husband and wife can be happy. If you hear the wife boasting that her marriage’s sweet, then just know it is the husband who’s suffering. If it is the husband who’s happy, then it’s the wife who’s is in hell. It is as simple as that.

I don’t think God ever planned that man and woman should live together as husband and wife. Marriage came out of sin when Eve ate the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. And my common sense has always told me that nothing good comes out of something that originates from sin. If you don’t believe me, read the book of Genesis in the good old book. Along with that original sin, came curses and damnation on man and woman.

Don’t be quick to scoff ‘what do I know of marriages?’ I’m talking from experience. I’d also believed that marriage was heaven on earth and threw myself into this fiery pit with the willingness of a suicide bomber.

You see, when I was marrying Maria, I was satisfied I’d found the woman of my dreams. I won’t describe her looks because I don’t want to wake those lusting devils in you but put succinctly she could even beat goddesses of beauty in any contest. When she was walking and swinging her buxom behind, my heart would always do a somersault.

Even though we were just boy friend and girl friend, she showed me the kind of respect that even my grandmother was proud of. She always addressed me by my clan name, always knelt when giving me things. Sometimes she even came home to cook for my three brothers who were staying with me. I also imbibe this drink that makes you intoxicated. No matter how I got drunk, she’d never reprimand me. Friends, if this is not the definition of a good woman, then I don’t know what else is.

I didn’t do za bowa bwanga; I dragged Maria to the altar at the speed of a run away truck. It all seemed the best thing to do. But I didn’t know that the crafty female, like all species of her kind, was waiting for me to bite her bait. The moment she became my wife, she pulled the fishing line and I landed on the beach thrashing helplessly the way a fish does. Just married was soon to turn into just imprisoned!

Eish, I was naïve enough to believe the crap marriage counsellors give that once married the husband and wife becomes one body. Take it from me, bro, don’t believe that nonsense. I believed it with all the innocence of a goat trusting a hyena’s solemn promise not to eat it.

It started with the cellphone. I didn’t put a password. After all, I didn’t have anything to hide or so I believed. But not to Maria. Every day she’d go through my phone with the thoroughness of a detective, going through my call logs, checking all messages and profile pictures of every female contact.

Now, as I’ve already said, I thought I’d nothing to hide. But we all have skeletons; female friends or ex-girlfriends who still hang along even after you’re married. Some of these would call or text. You really can’t control what they say. Some would put in an innocent ‘honey’ or ‘darling’. And that would be the beginning of a fight. Maria called all females she suspected of having an affair with me, ‘my bitches’ although she never had any proof that I was cheating on her. I ended up putting the most complex password on the phone.

But that did not really help. I was chatting with my friend John, joking about how jealousy women are when it comes to phones. I don’t know how my smile looked like but her hand snaked out with the speed of a striking cobra and snatched my phone.

“Let me see what you’re talking with your bitches,” she screamed.

She found out that it wasn’t any of my so called bitches. But that didn’t exonerate me. “I know you’ve deleted whatever the messages you were exchanging with the ugly bitch.”

I told her I didn’t delete anything. “Then what’s here to smile about? Let me warn you, when I discover whoever the bitch is, I will grind both of you to pulp!”

How’s she going to find someone who’s not there? Women! Any name she sees in my phone book means I’ve to offer an explanation. Who’s Rose? Who’s Aisha? Why is her name in your contacts lists? Wrong numbers makes things even worse. Why did she pick your number out of the thousands of phone numbers? She asks irrelevantly. How would I know when I didn’t even know the caller?

Above all, always remember that a woman’s eyesight improves when it comes to reading phone messages. She can read a phone message from a distance where not even a sharp eyed man can make sense of what is on the phone screen. So don’t be fooled by distance, brothers. When a woman is around, just assume that she can see the texts on your phone from wherever she’s. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. It will save you from going into an early grave, dude.

When you’re marrying, they will advise you that you should let your wife know how much you earn. They say this helps your partner control spending as she’s aware of how much goes into your pocket. Sounds good. But learn from me, bro, don’t do it. With all the stupidity of a hen showing all her eggs to a dog, I handed her my pay slip.

Man, I regret that decision up to now. It’s far much easier to embezzle money at the office and get away with it than to account your expenditure with your wife. Maria audits my expenditures in a way that would make any auditor proud. But the problem is that you can’t remember all your expenses. You buy a drink here, send your niece a little something and so on. You can’t be telling your wife all this. Now, when I can’t account for a tambala, to her it means I am spending it with my bitches. With that hell breaks loose.

Friends pose another serious problem. Maria forgets or deliberately forgets that I had friends before we got married. Of course marriage counsellors in their foolish wisdom say you must get rid of your old ‘bad friends’ for the sake of the marriage. But how can they be ‘bad friends’ if they’re your friends? And why should people who have been your friends for years be abandoned just because you have married?

You know I’m one of those men who are very friendly with the bottle. I don’t have a car so my friends comes and picks me up for drinking and drop me later.  I fail to understand how she arrives at it but she declares that I’m a good man and it’s my friends who are spoiling me. Maybe it’s my fault, but I don’t tell her that I’m the one who plans all our drinking sprees.

“Mahule amene aja amafuna azikakupezera ma bitchi,” she declares. “I’ll deal with them once and for all.”

I’m foolish enough to take this as an idle threat. This other day my friends come to pick me up. I’m about to jump into their car when a voice cracks, “Msowakwakuya!”

I turn in the direction of the voice only to see Maria advancing menacingly towards me. She never wears trousers but for this occasion she’s dressed in combat shorts and a T-Shirt with the face of RAMBO. Her face looks as dangerous as that of any female protecting her offspring.

“Chikatere?”

What sort of question was this? Can’t she see I’m going out to drink beer with my friends? I foolishly tell her so.

Had I known, I’d have zipped my mouth. Man, I don’t know how I never noticed it but the woman has a deep vocabulary of foul words that would even beat the devil’s own dictionary.  She spews it like a gushing broken sewerage line, fouling the air like smell in a rubbish dump.

“Don’t you ever show your ugly faces here again,” she concludes. “Ruin other peoples marriages not mine.”

My friends looks at me, expecting me to say something. But my sixth sense warns me if I dare speak, she’ll undress me to a point that I’ll be unable to face my friends again. So I stay dumb.

A satisfied look crosses her face. Slowly, as if daring my friends to do or say something, she puts her hand in mine and leads me back into the house leaving my friends open mouthed. From that day, none of my friends dares to show their faces at my house again.

I decide to raise the white flag. After knocking off from home, I go straight home. I even spend the entire weekend home. For a few weeks this seems to work. However, whenever I arrive home, I find Maria chatting with her friends. They always leave when I arrive. Even during weekends, when they come and find me home, they also leave.

Now this other weekend, I go for a stroll. When I come back, Maria and her friends are chatting on the verandah. I sneak into the house through the back door and go to the sitting room to read the weekend paper.

As they don’t do not know that I’m back, they are gossiping about their husbands. “He’s a useless fool, to get it up you’ve to crank it up like the engine of a diesel maize meal,” I overhear one of them say spitefully.

“Mine is an AK47, when it starts firing, I’ve trouble stopping it,” someone chirps in, supporting her statement with a rat-a-tat sound of a machine gun.

They all giggle like little girls. A sneeze grips me suddenly. I try to stop it but out it comes loudly and repeatedly. Achoo,achoo,achoo!

Silence descends on the group outside. Even though I’m not there, I can feel disappointment fall over the group like a shroud.

“What’s the problem with your husband?” an annoyed voice asks harshly, “Akutani pakhomo mmalo moti azikacheza ndi anzake?”

Then I hear Maria’s voice, “Oh my gosh! I thought he’d gone for a walk.”

The harsh voice come in again. “Akuonjeza galu ameneyu, akuti tizichezera kuti?”

I thought Maria would defend me but the daughter of a snake hands me over to the Philistines the way Delilah did with Samson. “Simukunama, asisi. Akufuna anthu aziti ndidamudyetsa zungulira khonde chonsecho akachoka pano amakhala zungulizunguli ndi ma bitchi. Foolish man!”

Soon the group disperses. When Maria comes back, she asks me if I don’t want to go and watch a football match at a nearby bar. Women!

The most ticklish area is the issue of bedroom activities. Young people think it’s something you can enjoy doing every day. But let me tell you the truth. Under certain circumstances, that activity is no different from doing hard labour.

While Maria just stays at home gossiping with her stupid friends, I’ve to go to work and sweat to make money. When I come back home very tired, she still wants us to make love. You know what happens at work, bwana amakhala kuti akukalipira and things like that. When I say I’m tired, she snaps that I was with my bitches. To make love when you’re tired is very punitive. But knowing very well that if I don’t fulfill my matrimonial obligations I risk having them usurped by garden boys, amakala, atchipisi, ophwanya miyala and such other people who seem to have an insatiable appetite and libido, I force myself do the job like a prisoner working at gun point.

The horror is that when I’m in the mood to do the job with my entire body and mind, it’s when Maria brings up some issues. “Next week there’s the engagement ceremony of Grace. I’ve seen a very nice suit in Hanif’s store. I want you to buy it for me.”

“I thought last week I bought you another suit which you wore to Kadima’s wedding ceremony?”

“I hope you’re not suggesting that I, Maria, your legally wedded wife should not wear a new suit at my cousin’s engagement ceremony?”

“You’ve got a lot of suits…”

“You’re going to buy that suit. Otherwise then forget it.”

“Forget what?”

“Supaona mpaka suti imene ija utagula. Munthu wake sindine Maria mwana wa a Betha!” she screams.  “I can’t be providing free services when the ones enjoying your money are your bitches!”

Hey, is this not the same person that demands that I make love to her when I’m dead tired?  And why do women always pretend as if they don’t like sex? Kufuna kubera azibambo?

The other issue is about relatives. Whenever my relatives visit us, I get a lot of negative reports. They waste electricity, water. They don’t assist with household chores. This house is small. They don’t respect me. When are they going to leave? But when it’s her relatives, I get no reports. Really, are my relatives the difficult ones only?

I can go on and on. But I believe you’ve got the gist of what I’m trying to say. I know you’re wondering why I’m still with Maria if marriage is hell.

Well, when you enter into marriage it is as if you’ve fallen into a pit you cannot get out of. There are a lot of reasons why marriages drag on. People stay together because they’ve got children, they don’t want the kids to suffer. The wife may claim she has wasted a lot of time therefore she cannot leave. Nthawi zina ndi manyazi, anthu aziti chiani; nobody wants to be associated with a failed marriage. Sometimes even if you complain to marriage counsellors, they say banja nkupilira.

On the surface my marriage appears a happy one. When you see us at church or dancing at weddings you cannot guess that at home we hardly speak to each other. We even post pictures displaying a happy family on the social media just to fool people. But inside the marriage is dead. Stone cold dead. Eish, this thing called marriage is hell, brother!

End