MARRIED, BUT SINGLE!

This post has been motivated by the recent slashing of men by their wives with machetes in Central Kenya, specifically Nyeri county.

Just the other day I was talking to a lady who is a domestic help. She is married, and has three children aged between twelve and five years. He husband has been jobless for more than ten years, during time which she has provided for the family most of the time. Am talking about food, clothing for her children, school fees and every financial need.

Her husband on the other hand, though having no monthly salary has been doing casual jobs, for which he earns a daily wage. In spite of the fact that he does get some money, he has been of no support to his family. Drinking away the money or spending it to buy drinks for his friends, buying phones and credit for the phones. Whenever she’d ask for money, the husband would spank her in front of their children.

Then recently I realized that she looks happier, healthier and actually had acquired a glow. Sometimes am a meddler so I asked her what’s going on. She told me how the husband got a job far away, and how a burden has been lifted off her shoulder. So I go “hey, congrats, now you don’t have to do everything by yourself”. To my surprise she says that she isn’t expecting him to support them any more than he has in the past, so I go “huh?”

The burden, it turns out, is the husband! She goes on to explain how she’s had to feed five mouths, and now she’ll feed one “big mouth” less. How she can sleep peacefully after a day’s work, how her children won’t have to witness the nasty exchanges they’ve been having, how there’ll be no one constantly going through her phone trying to see who calls her and whom she calls, how she will have peace knowing her kids can live in peace. So I go “wow”!

Women talk, about everything. About how our kids are doing, about our jobs, husbands, church, our in-laws, parents, and about everything that the mouth can pronounce. In my interaction with women, I realize most have been left to the sole care of the children. Have they eaten, are their clothes clean, what’s with the cough, have they brushed their teeth, do they have enough books, pens... The men have reduced themselves to by standers. Reduced themselves because it’s a choice they have made..

How else would you explain why a man, upon getting some cash, would forget he has a wife and children looking up to him, and goes about spending this money on alcohol? She (the wife) wakes up, prepares breakfast, prepares the kids for school, sets his breakfast, cleans the house, gets what’s to be taken for lunch, dinner… and all this time the man is bumming around, doing nothing.. A lot of men have abandoned their divine role of being the head of the family to their wives. The women double up as mothers and heads of the family. They, however married have become single mothers, more like “double mothers” because they do double of the work; they are the mothers as well as the fathers.

I do not blame so much our sisters from Nyeri whom everyone is castigating on facebook. One male lawyer said recently on TV that when you see a woman feeling so aggrieved as to slash with a machete her own husband and the father of her children, then it’s the man who has a problem. He couldn’t have been more right. When men do not take their rightful place in the family and society; that of guidance, provision and love, then they are setting a bad example to their own children, and are tearing the family fabric right in the middle.

What father/husband are you? Are you proud of the things you do, to an extend you can tell your children to follow in your footsteps?

Let’s cut the Nyeri women some slack, I do not support violence of any nature, but what would you do?