Out of marriage comes families, and families marry one another, birthing a society and security.
Don’t go confirming this but did you know that people in arranged marriages live at least twice as long as people in disarranged marriages? I didn’t say they were happier but they live longer.
Extensive research done by me approximates that you love better when you have to learn to love because the heart is weak and it wants what it wants. I know I’ve been blinded by what I consider the most important character trait—Nyash. Nyash will bring us together, but will it keep us together? Those who are married tell me there are more important things to look out for in a partner, like their values, morals, that kind of koso koso.
Looking back, my escapades in love are a Tinder hitlist of near-misses and God-what-was-I-thinking? At one point, I thought they were the “one”, and for good reason: One had nyash that could pull the moon out of orbit. I loved that one. The girl, yes, but mostly the nyash.
This other one said she’s a “sapiosexual.” I had to look that up. This one captioned her life as “Small Girl, Big God. #NoMoneyNoHoney.” I assumed she kept bees. We lasted two months. Turns out, she never kept any bees. This one is “Creator, Cat Person, Mental Health Advocate, Married to the Game, and Champion of Sustainability.” I don’t know what any of that meant. Sigh.
I wasn’t any good either. I’ll confess that I am generally a clumsy person. I have a bird brain and I am easily distracted. I can never make tea without it boiling over, my efforts to cook onions until golden brown end up with some black brown substance that women from 22 to 32 have declared unconsumable if not outright poisonous.
Perhaps most damning of all is, on account of living alone for extended periods, I have two meals a day. I did this with someone’s daughter and she drastically lost weight. At first, it was romantic then the anorexia levels started kicking in and she had to leave the relationship. Now she is plump with love handles and a large bottom that trembles when she walks, like a proper African woman, or so they say.
If I explained this to all the women I have been with then it gets pretty complicated. I do believe that people say they want open communication but they don’t really want it. Hence my clamour for arranged marriages. By the time your wife figures out why you can cook ugali mayai in 17 different ways, she is already scrambled in too deep. Si it’s me who is telling you.
Here’s something else I have discovered: We are terrible at choice. But when you have to make it work, you make it work. My mother told me when it comes to men and women, there should not be too many stories. You just say what you want. You see a flower and you pluck it. Hadithi mingi, no. No wasting each other’s time with lengthy dates in the sugarcane plantations telling her sweet stories of what you would do to her ati if she gave you a chance kidogo tu hivi Ngai! She would see.
Especially for us men, city boys, the options are two: one, we accept we have failed the wife-choosing task and delegate the duty back to the elders in the village, or two, we phone the Chinese and ask how much it will take to make us our wives. I mean, God made the world, the Chinese made everything else.
The point is, your mother will surely choose someone she likes, and someone you like, so this question will never pop up. And if you are in the featherweight class like me, 57 kilograms, give or take, mostly take, then your mother will pick a wife who won’t look at cooking as a chore but craft, showcasing all the stereotypes of the traditional African society, the wife making food for the husband to highlight his maleness and satiate his sense of entitlement.
And here’s another reason: No one wants to take the blame for making the wrong choice. Your parents will probably pick someone if not agreeable then very compatible, not only because they want the best for you, but because their reputation is on the line. Doesn’t the Holy Book ask us, “Who, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?” It’s generic human nature.
Besides, the average Kenyan man is the banker, married with two children, a house-help who wants to usurp the madam of the house, a complicated and dependent extended family, a Toyota whose mileage confirms that it’s actually possible to drive to the moon and back, and a ka-mistress for the weekend.
He is a devout Sunday Christian, takes his wife out once a month, visits his mistress once a week, and fills the rest of his schedule with slender yellow yellow University of Nairobi BCom girls with stomachs flatter than my grandmother’s chopping board. Isn’t the running joke in the street don’t let your wife prevent you from finding the love of your life? Vumilia. Si you know men are like that.
I grew up under the impression that marriage is the basic building block of society, that marriages come together to give the nation-state its tensile strength. Out of marriage comes families, and families marry one another, birthing a society and security. Wouldn’t the moral thing then be to get as many people into marriages as possible?
But arranged marriages are often confused with forced marriages. I am not talking about that. No. Worldwide, families of many religions have arranged marriages throughout history as a way to strengthen the community or join families for economic, political, or social positioning. It was only until the late 1700s, that arranged marriages in Western European society were the norm, before “personal choice of partners had replaced arranged marriages as a social ideal, and individuals were encouraged to marry for love.”
Love one can learn, I believe. I think that in arranged marriages one starts with lower expectations and realises the need for compromise which is essential in a successful bond, its biggest USP. You do not know who you are getting into bed with—literally. But it won’t matter if she has nyash, because to be completely honest, nyash covers a multitude of sins. After all, the Baluhya, always practical in their wisdom, put it concretely: when a widow has a big nyash, the elders do not waste time to bury her husband.
