No bed of roses for unmarried women

By TED MALANDA

KENYA: If senior bachelors thought life was hard, they should ask their sisters who never got hitched.

Girls were born to grow up and as soon as it was convenient, transit from the home forever — after ensuring their husbands paid their fathers for the bother of raising them.

Beneath those tough marriage negotiations are elders so relieved the daughter is off and much as a few crocodile tears are shed, the general word is, “Phew, good riddance!”

Sancour

The Agikuyu do this neatly by presenting the newly weds with a bed and mattress, saying in effect, “Be gone, girl, and never return, for your bedding is gone.”

That’s why where I come from, a man would unleash domestic violence on his missus and when she ran to her parents home for sancour, she would be sent right back with maize flour and a cockerel for her husband. 

The message was “We know your husband is a pig, but stay there for Christ’s sake because you are not needed here.

 It wasn’t stated, but at the heart of this policy was land. Brothers didn’t want their sister trooping back with seven scruffy sons who would one day lay claim on the ancestral land. 

And to ensure this message rung through the village loud and clear, when an unmarried women died, her folks buried here right on the fence, someplace near the cowshed.

 The whole ceremony was couched with a level of contempt almost to that reserved for those who commit suicide, as lesson for village beauties who refused to go and find husbands.

Fuss

It is, therefore, a measure of how far we have come that unmarried women these days buy land, establish homes, and raise children without anyone raising a fuss.

Psst: Back in the day, when a wife broke wind in the throes of passion, her hubby sent her back to her parents and she would only return if her father paid a goat.