Sikaman Palava: Marital sense and nonsense
A man returns home from work and finds his wife packing her belongings into another man's van.
The bewildered husband enquires what the hell is up and is told "the goddamn I marriage is over!" That is the simplicity with which some marriages end in the United States and parts of Europe. There is no parting ceremony. No small chops.
Of course, when the woman packs away, the marriage is far from over. It still has to be legally annulled through divorce proceedings during which adultery or irreconcilable differences could be cited.
In Sikaman, marriages do not end that simply.
It must be stretched beyond its elastic limit. It starts with shadow-boxing that may end in a domestic championship fight and a hospital card. The woman is not likely to tell the doctor that her husband decked her by technical knockout.
“I fell from the stairs." And the doctor will wonder what kind of falling can cause such bruising and a black-eye.
"You must have some wonderful stairs there," the doctor will observe.
“It has some rough edges."
When she gets back home, the battered woman is likely to seek vengeance if she is the type who believes in 'do-me-I-do-you."
She'll put water into the kettle when the husband is having a nap, and make sure the temperature of the water is far above boiling I point. It must be able to cause second degree tissue damage.
Meanwhile, the woman makes sure she is bedecked in a pair of jeans shorts and pullover to match. She'll also wear a pair of canvass shoes ready for a 1300-metre dash.
The idea is to also send her husband to hospital to treat a laceration of no mean proportion. And the injury will be inflicted at great cost, meaning she would have to run for it, in case the husband is so infuriated
as to attempt to exact immediate retribution for the savage visitation of boiling water on his back.
When the scores are eventually evened, the parents, uncles and aunts on both sides will have to sit together, not to apportion blame but to reconcile the couple so that hot water is no longer used as therapy for a failing marriage, or slaps and butting as the way out.
The fact is whether it is right or wrong to reconcile such couples? I ask this question because the newspapers have several reports of husbands killing their wives all over the place. A jealous husband suddenly decides that if he cannot have his wife to himself, then nobody else should. He sharpens his matchet and goes butchering all the way.
Recently, a jealous husband burnt his wife, pouring petrol over her and setting her alight. There are many other instances that wives have suffered such abominable mistreatment from acid baths to setting ablaze, all in the name of marriage.
When a woman is born, she came alone into this world. If she must go back, must it not be through natural cause and not artificial dispatch. So the question is whether it is good for bad marriages to be kept going till they explode into tragedy?
Whenever JOY FM organises bridal fairs, I ruminate a bit on marriage. It is said that Africa's divorce rate is far lower than it is in the world of Anglo-Saxons and Caucasians, but at what cost? Is it better to stay divorced and alive but single and be a slave to a man or woman who gives you no joy in your short life?
In reality, every marriage has an expiry date. Some are terminated right in the hotel room in the course of the honeymoon. It could be that the bride saw something grotesque in front of the groom and decided that the honey pot could not allow such unrequited invasion. Thus the marriage could not be consummated and had to break up, still-born.
The latest I heard was when a bride practically slapped the groom in the hotel room when they disagreed on something very trivial. The bride packed out and the groom gaped in wonder at the history making separation. The two could not be reconciled afterwards.
Some marriages go quite the distance - 5, 10, 15, 20 years - and so the couple earn some long-service awards on the side. In fact, marriage is all ahout service and very little else. You can narrow it down to "scratch my back, I scratch your back."
A woman serves a man in various ways - cooking, home-keeping, love-making (most important) and companionship. The man sees to the manly aspects of protecting, providing and servicing the woman.
When a woman is serviced, it means she is put to bed and entertained.
As the years go by, the couple receive long-service awards in the form of children. It all depends on family planning. Some decide to award themselves every two years, some ever seven years. It all depends on the hard work or otherwise on the marital bed and the ability to score goals within regulation time.
The tragedy about marriage is that, it does not give room for disloyalty. The rules are legion - no adultery, fornication, no room for STDs, whatever.
If jealously will set it, it is because one person thinks the partner is mortgaging his (or her) sexual organ without express permission of his partner. Such unilateral lease of bonafides usually ends in quarrels, separations, divorces I or death.