Why Did You Get Married?

The ridiculousness of the things I see and hear about marriage these days, particularly as it relates to women is increasingly disturbing.  

It all has me asking what Tyler Perry asks with his movie title: Why did you get married? Additionally, why are we getting married?

I'll start with the woman in the mirror. In my 37 years of living I've agreed to at least three marriage proposals. Reflecting on it today, I realise I agreed only because they had asked. 

Yes, I'm polite. I’ll blame my parents for this because discussions on manners and love featured more prominently than marriage – marriage was just never really a thing in our household. Hence ‘knowing’ serious follow-up questions to ask when a proposal to lead me to a place called 'Happy Ever After' is made wasn’t part of my reflex.

It probably serves me right then that “uNumber one” as Gogo Louisa would say, dumped me only a few months after I’d taken him to my parents and allowed him the privilege to have drinks with my beloved brothers - I wanted him to be the one to tell of his supposed divine intentions. 

Before I continue, I must say that if you don't know who Gogo Louisa is, you probably shouldn't be married - too young. Anyway, my 24 year old heart felt like it would never recover from uNumber one, not even my father's 'Ncesi tfunjana wam' was soothing enough to my first ever heartbreak. Inshallah, I recouped.

Meet the parents

Before that, when I was 19 years old, second year student at the University of Swaziland, for many months my father didn’t speak to me because I had fallen pregnant. 

He spoke to me for the first time after all those months when I brought the baby boy home; “I’ve asked your mother to roast you a whole chicken…all yours. You must be hungry.”

Thereafter he settled into his grandfather extraordinaire role, not once asking, “Manje utakutsatsa yini lomfana lokumitsisile? Utokutsatsa nini?”(Will the father of the baby marry you?). 

And yet, at age 33, I was to hear my friend of the same age being asked the very question of her first pregnancy by her parents. She’d just completed her Master’s degree by the way.

The role parents play in marriages was brought home recently when two weeks ago I was visited my favorite place in the world – kaLanga. 

The boys just let it rip unprovoked – 

“This thing of being married at such a young age is utter nonsense and I truly blame my parents. What sense does it make that I’ve been married for five years and I’m only 34 years old? Just because I had a baby with this girl?  Even having this baby was influenced by this community – I was being laughed at because I was in my late twenties, childless and wifeless.”

Boys and girls in my hood marry so early, as young as 15. And it’s true; the parents push for this to happen in some instances. 

I know. Even I can’t believe this is my Swaziland in 2016.  Even my brothers were somewhat mocked for being late bloomers because they only married or had children after completing their tertiary studies.

It was only earlier this year that my mother related to me how in their gossip sessions, her husband would say “You know; now I can retire in peace knowing I’ve found husbands for all my daughters. If they each want another husband outside of this one, then it’s up to them.” The first husband referenced is of course our academic education.

Tall, Dark, Handsome & Anointed?

As, for my other two marriage proposals that were stillborn; I don't blame the parents but society may side-eye them for being ‘failures’ because I changed my mind at the eleventh hour. 

That’s one thing the parents never suppressed - choice and independent thinking. See, again I'd initially agreed largely because I believe my well-mannered soul can triumph at anything it consents to.

The game changer though was that this time I was little older – thirties. I considered things like, do I really want to live my whole life with a tall, dark and handsome one who takes pride in his shallow siSwati vocabulary even though he's Swazi? 

Do I expect peaceful bliss when each night fall brings a snore fest as loud as Bushfire from this person? 

Am I ready to get into a social contract with a God-fearing and highly favoured someone who’s unrepentant about his bigoted views on homosexuality and religion?

Don’t get me wrong, I wish to be married. I quipped the other day when the lover turned a year older; “You need to marry now, you’re old”, I said to him. 

“I’m pretty sure I don’t want to go through life alone but I’m NOT sure about getting married right now”, he replied and that led us to a long and honest discussion about our very real fears about getting and staying married.

Everyone needs a helper to go through this life thing but I wonder about the questions we each ask ourselves (and each other) as we resort to unconventional ways of seeking marriage. 

Last Friday in Johannesburg, throngs of Christian women paid up to E5000.00 each through Computicket for was dubbed a ‘’VIP Husband Prayer”…no kidding…E5000.00 at an all-night prayer to purchase seven hours of hope? 

If it’s not this, it’s reports of women stripping naked and bending over for their bums to be kissed  at the instruction of a Pastor or being stepped on by the Pastor till they suffocate because that’s how the anointing for marriage comes…?

Why are we getting married?