Brothers be Warned
… just like the previous day and the day before and the day before that, he got himself drunk and rose up to stagger his way home. But this particular day was rather different because along the way he picked a woman (actually she was laying by the roadside) and asked her home. Drunkards have a fondness for one another; so thinking she was a comrade in the bottle he took her hand and offered to accommodate her for the night. But she wasn't drunk as such. What was happening there was that she had run away from home for harassment or I don't know what; she was carrying a pregnancy at an advanced stage. Now, there is no problem with that except that it was illegitimate. The man (mid 20s) under the influence of the ‘spirits' made advances to her convincing (or confusing) her that after all she can assume the wifely responsibilities. The dude was fresh from chasing away his wife with one kid for not being up to her tasks.
The gates opened and he announced the arrival of another wife, a meal for two was aptly prepared. Marriage has no formula they say; they retired to bed; first night. By now you should be thinking of this as being the easiest and cheapest way in recorded history a man got a wife, but wait. Deep into the night when some sense was kicking back, this man began to sense something strange. The woman was behaving strangely and was in great pain. She was writhing, crying and begging in excruciating pain. He became alarmed and demanded to know what was going on. Naturally even the nerves of steel will get nervous; more so when it is revealed that a woman you only picked along the way was on herbs trying to terminate a pregnancy. Abortion is very common in these sides of the world; it is hard to find who has not done it. What makes it even worse is the fact that they don’t go about it in the proper medical way. By visiting a herbalist or ‘mganga wa kienyeji’ they argue that the gossip is minimal. More often than not things don’t go right as in the case at hand. This poor girl bled to her death in a strange house miles away from medical facilities and a drunkard for a companion. There can not be a worse way to die.
In the morning the bride was posthumously introduced to her in-laws, word reached her people and there was outrage, the government came, the man fled and no one would explain. Now the deceased family demands dowry, money for funeral arrangements, that the she be buried in her ‘matrimonial home’. But why demand all these for woman who decided to snap out the life of her unborn baby but fate decided that she accompany it in the journey of no return.
Brothers be warned! Some of these innocent looking women hide a lot behind the veil of innocence. Here goes an old adage: “The heart of a woman is like the deep sea; the treasurers and turmoil of which one can never tell”. She that followed thee to thy house thou rejected but she that thou drageth to thy house thou makest wife.
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