By Ted Malanda
Nigerian preacher Chris Ojigbani
who will be in Nairobi in
September to pray for lonely
women who desperately need
husbands will be barking up the
wrong tree.
The problem is not that we have
a shortage of husbands.
If in doubt, lift your eyes from
this newspaper and look around.
See those creatures walking all
over the place with beards on
their chins?
Point is, men are all over the
place and it is the women who
have connived to create an
artificial shortage.
This state of affairs didn’t begin
yesterday.
My grandfather had to carry his
bride on his shoulders for well
over 15 kilometres as she wailed,
screamed and kicked.
And yet to get to that point, he
had spent countless nights fooling
around village dances, hoping to
"tune" her.
He was belittled by her clan
during marriage negotiations but
still paid eleven head of cattle in
bride price.
All that and the day he goes to
take her hand in marriage, she
refuses to walk, forcing him to
kidnap and physically transfer
her to his hut.
Yet years later, the same woman
had the audacity to order him to
get out of "her" house. Ha!
Our fathers didn’t have it any
easier.
According to available evidence,
the majority of us would never
have been born if an army of
distant aunts had not taken it
upon themselves to hook up our
desperate fathers with our
mothers.
Love letters
In my time, things became even
tougher.
Fathers had very many
daughters yet they protected
them the way KWS protects
endangered species.
When they went to collect water
from stream, they would spit on
the ground and say, "If you come
back after my saliva has dried,
you will know who is your father."
Our only recourse was to pen
long, flowery love letters.
But we were lucky if our missives
reached the girls because their
parents, acting in cohorts with
headmistresses, always
confiscated and burned our
expressions of interest.
I don’t quite know how our sons
are coping but I guess my
generation of fathers isn’t as
stingy as the men of yore.
We are not too keen on dowry
because we have nowhere to
graze livestock.
And frankly, if you asked us, we
are desperate to marry our
daughters off.
How else would you explain the
fact that we buy them mobile
phones to enable them chat with
boys before they are even ten
years old?
We buy them trendy clothes that
leave little to the imagination,
give them money and allow them
to be taken out.
We even go as far as picking
them up from nightspots at 2am.
Unfortunately, all our efforts
come to naught because when a
boy as much as looks at them in
a matatu, they look at the young
fellow like he is something the cat
dragged in from the rain.
Women, therefore, don’t need
prayers to get husbands.
They only need to smile and say
yes to young men who are
desperate to, as they say these
days, put them in the box..
Nigerian preacher Chris Ojigbani
who will be in Nairobi in
September to pray for lonely
women who desperately need
husbands will be barking up the
wrong tree.
The problem is not that we have
a shortage of husbands.
If in doubt, lift your eyes from
this newspaper and look around.
See those creatures walking all
over the place with beards on
their chins?
Point is, men are all over the
place and it is the women who
have connived to create an
artificial shortage.
This state of affairs didn’t begin
yesterday.
My grandfather had to carry his
bride on his shoulders for well
over 15 kilometres as she wailed,
screamed and kicked.
And yet to get to that point, he
had spent countless nights fooling
around village dances, hoping to
"tune" her.
He was belittled by her clan
during marriage negotiations but
still paid eleven head of cattle in
bride price.
All that and the day he goes to
take her hand in marriage, she
refuses to walk, forcing him to
kidnap and physically transfer
her to his hut.
Yet years later, the same woman
had the audacity to order him to
get out of "her" house. Ha!
Our fathers didn’t have it any
easier.
According to available evidence,
the majority of us would never
have been born if an army of
distant aunts had not taken it
upon themselves to hook up our
desperate fathers with our
mothers.
Love letters
In my time, things became even
tougher.
Fathers had very many
daughters yet they protected
them the way KWS protects
endangered species.
When they went to collect water
from stream, they would spit on
the ground and say, "If you come
back after my saliva has dried,
you will know who is your father."
Our only recourse was to pen
long, flowery love letters.
But we were lucky if our missives
reached the girls because their
parents, acting in cohorts with
headmistresses, always
confiscated and burned our
expressions of interest.
I don’t quite know how our sons
are coping but I guess my
generation of fathers isn’t as
stingy as the men of yore.
We are not too keen on dowry
because we have nowhere to
graze livestock.
And frankly, if you asked us, we
are desperate to marry our
daughters off.
How else would you explain the
fact that we buy them mobile
phones to enable them chat with
boys before they are even ten
years old?
We buy them trendy clothes that
leave little to the imagination,
give them money and allow them
to be taken out.
We even go as far as picking
them up from nightspots at 2am.
Unfortunately, all our efforts
come to naught because when a
boy as much as looks at them in
a matatu, they look at the young
fellow like he is something the cat
dragged in from the rain.
Women, therefore, don’t need
prayers to get husbands.
They only need to smile and say
yes to young men who are
desperate to, as they say these
days, put them in the box..
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