Before mzungu came, all the Africans had a chance at love

A couple cuddling. (Courtesy/iStock)

Long before the whites arrived, Africa had working structures that catered for all her challenges. We were a stable society that catered for all levels of people. Ground rules were intelligently set to ensure there was orderliness at all levels. The eldest son had to marry first followed by the next son in a descending fashion to the last born.

Any challenge that would disturb that order was dealt with and removed to ensure that respect was maintained among siblings. If a younger sibling was quicker in making wealth, it naturally became his duty to ensure that he paid dowry price for an older brother to get married in order to clear his path to marry his own wife.

Such structures ensured that there was a solid foundation of support that pulled up everyone despite their varying abilities. With the sense of community getting relegated by the arrival westernization, many factions of the community have suffered from neglect with the gifted taking off at supersonic speeds while the lesser ones lag behind neglected. The individualistic attitude, just like capitalism has ensured that everyone is on their own and not minding about their surroundings. While the human rights organizations can try to stand in the physical gap by providing some support to the disabled, there is a nerve set too deep in the human relationship that no amount acting can stroke.

Kill loneliness

The concept of arranged marriages ensured that there was always someone for everyone. Of course daughters of wealthy men were married in to wealthy families, the educated sought their peers and the sorcerers married in to families known for similar black art so that experiences were easily transferred. There was a network of aunts that always ensured that there was a match befitting of those that were intellectually challenged or even mentally retarded.  Like Liverpool supporters would chant on a night of Champions League at Merseyside ‘You never walked alone’.

In the African culture, they always found someone for you to kill the loneliness and create the sense of company and family. There was always a single mother of seven desperate to find somewhere to settle her unclaimed sons or a widow abandoned by her husband’s family who was desperate to find a new home for herself and the children.

Aunts and uncles worked overtime to find matching profiles that qualified to stay with and learn to love someone who would otherwise be considered undeserving of love. In most cases such matches went ahead and produces a child that carried the name of the family of the man. In exchange, the man’s family offered land for the woman to farm and settle her children.

Moreover, her children were allowed to adopt the family’s name and were fully assimilated and granted full rights to walk around confidently, have a say on decisions in the home and inherit land.

Families who had daughters with mental or physical challenges also went out of the way to find a match for their cherished daughters to ensure that they found love and company. Society ensured that they had a chance to make their own children like all other adults and that they experienced the gift of motherhood. Maids or sisters would be assigned to help with the young ones if they were considered unable to take care of their children.

Men in their proper state of mind would, for example, marry such a woman as the fifth wife because she would be escorted to her new home with all manner of material support that would impress even her co –wives. They would respect her and schedule her moments of intimacy with their shared husband equally to ensure that she was kept happy. Such a man was respected in the society and no one dared ridicule him for extending such a gesture of kindness to another family and to mother nature.

Bottom line is that regardless of one’s state, society gave everyone a chance to be happy unless they were deemed physically harmful to others. Long before there were movements preaching about mental health awareness, Africans were already sensitive to the mental, emotional and physiological needs of every grown up and created provisions to accommodate all.

The fact that two retards would never be paired together, means that there were enough measures that guarded against the biological provisions of passing down defective genes.

Such measures also ensured that one partner watched over the another from a safety perspective and there was no chance of the couple harming one another. There was no Mathare Hospital for the Mentally Ill persons back then because such persons were carefully assimilated in the societal fabric to ensure normalcy was sought even if the balance was not perfectly attained.