Just a man: Did you marry an Abigail or a Jezebel?

My father was a civil servant. Since the 60s to his retirement, he worked as a bookbinder at Kenya Literature Bureau (KBL).

That’s where I got my love for reading and writing. He often came home with storybooks and plain papers. I spent many days and nights scribbling compositions and poems on those plain papers, trying as best as I could to write in straight lines. Plus, I used the same materials to make paper planes and, as my planes soared through the air – and though I had acrophobia - I imagined soaring to dreamy destinations.

After retiring, my dad set up a bookbinding business. That was a good move. But the timing was wrong. See, he was a civil servant all his life. He was wired to security and a paycheck. It would be a herculean task for him to have that drastic mind shift, which is required when one is transitioning to an unfamiliar trading territory.

Taking care of business

Hindsight is 20-20. What my father would have done years before retiring – decades, even – was to set up a bookbinding side hustle. Thus, transitioning from employment to entrepreneurship would have been easy-peasy.

My father was an old school Luo. However, some traditions can condemn families - and entire communities - in perpetual slavery or poverty.

In the early 80s, my father sent my mother, Nya’Manoah to live upcountry in what Luos call, rito dala; which means taking care of the rural home. Instead, what mama would have been doing was taking care of business.

Several years prior, as my father’s salary was swallowed whole by mortgage, Nya’Manoah took up the role of sole provider, by selling chapati, nyoyo and porridge in Industrial Area.

Mama’s income was enough to take care of all her family’s needs. She was a proud woman and would never beg or let her family suffer want.

Iron will

My father missed the boat by a river. He should have started transitioning – and preparing for post-retirement life – through my mama’s business savviness. But many Luo men of my father’s time held the erroneous belief that wives with money of their own would grow horns.

Four decades later – when it was too late to turn back the hands of time – my father would eulogise Nya’Manoah as ratego; which is DhoLuo for a strong person. Ratego also means heavy iron bangles worn by women.

Check this out. So iron-willed was Nya’Manoah that, when she and dad were alone upcountry, and she was sick and could not get out bed; she would still insist on milking the cow, amidst dad’s protestations.

Mama would crawl out of bed to the cow shed because – as dad told us after mama died – she complained that dad would leave the cow’s tits with some milk, which would pain the cow ... and pain mama.

Two types of wives

To my hustlers, there are two types of wives; Abigail and Jezebel. The former can save a man’s business and his life. She’s a helpmate. The latter can make a king lose his crown, head and kingdom. She’s hell personified.

It’s incumbent on a man – and, yes, a woman - to discern who is who before tying the knot, because the choice of a spouse will affect your business.

Woe unto a man if he does not make use of his helpmate, as this is a precious resource brought by God. If a man has a helpmate, his hustle will prosper because this person comes configured with favour and fortune.

I feel for my father. His bookbinding business folded faster than a wafer-thin chapati being folded by a famished mtu wa mjengo at lunchtime.

A little voice tells me that if dad would have put mama in his hustle’s mix, she would’ve used every bit of her iron will to see it prosper.