The Children Are Fine

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“One time, a long time ago, we were drinking at this local in Buru when she started arguing with this other girl. I can’t recall what the argument was about but I was used to her sparkiness, especially when drinking, so I ignored it,” Matt says. (By the way, these names aren’t real and I’m running out of them). Suddenly there was the thud of something fleshy hitting a wooden table. “She had grabbed the other girl by the hair and slammed her against the bar’s wooden pillar. Boom!” There were screams and blood and a tussle; legs and arms intertwined like duelling octopuses, rolling on the floor as other patrons tried to untangle the two fighting women.

“She was very violent when she was drinking, very provocative,” Matt continues. “She would escalate a situation from zero to a million in a millisecond, and once she got to a million there was no talking her down, she would be fighting and throwing things at her opponent while scratching and cussing.” He says she was pretty petite, weighing no more than a half a sack of potatoes, but pretty strong. “But I weighed twice her weight so it was always easier for me to grab her and carry her out of a situation—kicking and screaming.”

She had no qualms starting fights anywhere and everywhere; parking lots, restaurants, in taxis, bars (her favourite), at concerts, in a hospital ward once, in an elevator, in a government office’s counter, by a canoe in Naivasha…anywhere. But he was always there to quell it, to grab her hand and pull her away. To carry her, if he had to. To hold her hands by her side and say, “Don’t fkn behave like a lunatic!” to which she would say, “Then go! I will finish what I started here.” Some women might tie their hair properly before they thump you, but her signature move, the first sign that it was all going to hell in a handbasket, was when she removed her shoes. She fought shoeless.

They met after his first marriage went pear shaped. “She was the exact opposite of my ex-wife who was very mild-mannered, polite and the least confrontational person you will ever meet. My ex-wife never raised her voice.” We’re speaking on the phone. He’s at work in a different town. He told me simply that he ‘works for himself’ and I didn’t push. So he could be doing anything from human trafficking to breeding fighter roosters.

“You liked the drama, didn’t you?” I ask. “It’s what attracted you to her. You like dodging ashtrays and high heels. You like being hit and yelled at and called a sonof*. You hate peace. Strife and violence turn you on. You are a freak.”

He laughs at that longer than I expected him to laugh. In fact, he laughed for so long I started thinking he wasn’t laughing at that joke and he had seen something on his end tickling him.

“No. I didn’t like the drama, but I loved her more than enough to marry her, or rather move in together.” His first marriage was short and childless, but his second marriage, with her, brought forth two children in quick succession, almost like he was trying to catch up and meet a quota. They continued going out to drink together and motherhood only tapered her feistiness a tad. She was still willing to take on anyone. You dropped the gauntlet at her feet and she wasn’t going to walk away. If you’d guessed that she was raised in one of those violent homes, you are sadly mistaken. Her father was not an alcoholic who came home drunk with songs on his lips and violence in his heart. Her father was in the military but you couldn’t tell, if he wore a civilian shirt, he might pass for a hardware owner. You couldn’t tell he was in the military; she told him that her father always spread their bed (his and her mom’s) because he didn’t trust her mom to do it ‘the proper way.’ [For this reason, she hated spreading their bed, he said] Her mother worked as a cateress in a government institution. She never once saw her parents fight, maybe a raised voice from her mom, but never saw or heard a fight. They were never beaten up, in fact her father was very liberal and – ironically – never chose violence. “So I don’t know where her violent streak came from,” he tells me. I can hear him open a gate or a metallic door. It’s 11am, so maybe he’s getting into his workplace or wherever the hell people who work for themselves go to at 11am. He’s distracted as I hear him touching things that cause cluttering noises.

“Maybe one of her mother’s sisters cooked for the Mau Mau at the edge of the forest,” I observe in jest, “and when the Mau Mau slipped back into the forest to fight the good war, they handed her a parcel for safekeeping, something wrapped in an old newspaper and they told her to be careful with it because there was violence in there and that they would be back for it and she asked them, ‘What do I do with it if you don’t come back for it?’ And one dreadlocked soldier spat tobacco on the floor, picked his rifle that was leaning against the hut and growled, ‘share it with the world.’ They never came back for their parcel. And that violence skipped a generation and found her.”

He laughed. “Wow, where did you come up with that story?”

“My head?”

“Wow. But no. She’s jango. I don’t think you guys fought in the bush.”

“It’s a shame we can’t stick with that story.”

The violence wound its way into their house in their sixth year of marriage. “You never quite know how physical fights start but what I know is that she just started coming at me,” he says while a door slams on his end, “And I would try to suppress it because we have children in the house and you don’t want them to hear you guys fighting. We came up with this rule where we would go to the car, lock ourselves out there in the parking, and fight away from the children.”

“Did the car steam up?”

“What?”

“I suppose you rolled up the windows,” I say, “So I wonder if the windows would get all steamed up from all the yelling?”

He is chuckling into the phone. “No, Biko. Things are not as dramatic in real life as they are in your head.” I try to picture him. He sounds like a guy of average height, dark and perhaps is the new breed of professional that has taken to golf and talks about it ad nauseum. He definitely has a good head of hair, he doesn’t sound like he’s balding. Anyway, the car thing stopped at some point and the fights raged back into the house, first as verbal shouting and then as her trying to punch him or hit him with a lampshade or stick the pointy end of a heel in his skull. “Mostly, I’d grab her and hold her hands together and hold her down on the bed with one hand while covering her mouth with the other until she promised to stop the madness, then I’d slowly let her go.”

“How romantic.”

“Ha-ha. It was a beautiful love, trust me, even though it sounds very unstable. When we were not fighting we were the poster child of great love. We held hands. We kissed in public. She was very big on PDA, she loved sitting on my lap. She was the life of the party.”

[I will come to why I’m referring to her in the past tense. But she isn’t dead.]

“The violence was increasing because her drinking was getting out of hand. It started with a bottle or two of wine in a sitting on a Saturday, then it grew to a bottle on Tuesday on top of the Saturday ones, then three times a week, then soon she was hiding from the children in the bedroom on a Sunday while drinking. I was concerned, of course, because when she drank she completely ignored the children and ignored me and ignored the household and all she wanted to do was raise hell and since she was drinking almost daily she just lost interest.”

“What would she say were your limitations as a husband?” I ask him.

There is a long beat in the line. I think he’s looking out a window, a thousand-yard stare, brows creased. “That’s an interesting one,” he says, almost to himself. I can hear him rummage through his thoughts, like one would go through an old drawer with old documents. He’s looking at himself, assessing himself, weighing himself on a calibration of introspection and he’s deciding whether to be honest and vulnerable and risk unclothing himself or to preserve himself, cover his nakedness. He eventually says, “I think she would say that I was not supportive of her, and, well, the things she wanted to do.”

“What did she want to do?”

“Many things, sometimes all of them at the same time and they didn’t work out. She would start something, be very excited about it for two months or three months then completely lose interest in it and start another one and the same thing would happen again. It would frustrate me because, come on, we are not rich people who just wake up and say they are now painters…”

“Or they want to make pots!” I chime in.

“..yeah, we had bills to pay! But when she went off to do these experimental things I was left as the sole breadwinner for the family and it wasn’t easy. I was working hard, struggling to make ends meet for everyone while she was trying out new things yet we had children who we needed to cloth and feed and it felt like I was the only one who was thinking of this fact. I needed help and she wasn’t helping anymore. She was acting like a millennial…”

“Steady…”

“No, I meant it. No sense of responsibility. Also on top of having to take care of her share of responsibility in the home, I also had to take care of the children when it became apparent that she was not very interested in that too. How could I be supportive of these things she wanted to do? Of course our fights always started off as money fights and then they became about other fights and then she would start getting violent and at some point in the heat of the moment I might have used excessive force to stop her, to subdue her.”

“What excessive force? Like beat her?”

“No, I never beat her or slap her, but I mean like to use more force than I should have to make her stop; this is when all else failed and she was going nuts and I could hear the children cry outside the door.”

Things came to a head when their eldest started wetting their bed. “A friend told me it was trauma from all the violence in the home, so I had to give her an ultimatum; to get help, like rehab or to leave us.” So she went to rehab but since she felt like she might meet someone who knows her there and word would get out, her parents found a rehab out in Uganda. It was a small, private house with a garden and white walls and people sitting on swings under trees reading books or just staring at grass. “Her mother checked her in. When I went to visit her two months later she was bitter and she looked old. She kept saying she was fine, and that she needed to get out of there and come back home. She never once asked about our children. Not once.”

“Why?”

“Who knows?”

But the children asked about her constantly. They loved her. They missed her. They asked him to Google where mom was and they looked at Google map images of the place mom had gone to for work. The eldest started seeing a child therapist. Even though he was glad she was seeking help for her alcoholism he felt lost alone with the children. He let them sleep in his bed even though they were too old to sleep in his bed. “It felt like all of us sharing a bed made them feel loved.”

After three months she walked into the house with her mother in tow like nothing had happened. She had on a brown leather jacket and white jeans. It was a Sunday evening, the children had just showered and worn their pyjamas and were about to start eating dinner. They smelled fresh and bright. She kissed them, held their faces and looked deeply into their eyes, as if to confirm they had not been polluted by her absence. She later held them on the seat as they watched TV past their bedtime, her feet peeping out from under the throw. In the bedroom, they talked. “She apologised because her therapist told her she had to apologise to the people she had offended during her time drinking. We started a new chapter and we were happy for a while.” Six months later he discovered that she was back to drinking and when he confronted her she said, “She didn’t want to be the person he thought she was.”

“Which was?”

“Faultless. She said she felt pressured to be a perfect mother and wife and that it was my fault that she was this way because I had undue expectations.”

“Did you?”

“I wanted her to be an adult with responsibilities,” he snapped. “This is not a reality show, this is life, but she was going through it like she could audition for other roles that fit her.”

I chuckle at that analogy. Anyway, the fights and violence ensued and they became worse. One day she came home drunk. “She couldn’t park the car well. I could hear her struggling to park. It was past curfew but she didn’t care about curfews, I don’t know how she beat them. When I went downstairs, she was very drunk so I asked her to get out of the car so that I could park it properly. Which I did. When I came out, she started fighting and I walked away and she ran after me and attacked me at the staircase. She started scratching and screaming and so I pushed her and as she fell she put all her weight on her wrist and sprained her wrist and she started screaming like I was trying to kill her. Long story short, someone called the cops who came and found me massaging her wrist with warm water and liniment. It was a mess. She was still drunk and was screaming at the cops to leave her house and the cops left but in the morning she started fighting me again and I just left for work. Little did I know that she went to the police and reported that I had beaten her. Beaten her! I asked the cops, where did I beat her, on her wrist? She said I had tried to break her hand. It’s then that I realised that she was unwell because what she was doing was unexplainable. Her behaviour had become bizarre. A friend of mine told me that she might be depressed and alcohol was her crutch or something.”

The reason we are referring to her in the past tense is because that’s not who she is now. That’s who he remembers her to be then because her parents shipped her out to another rehab then when she got better, she was sent off to a middle-eastern country to live with one of her relatives because, well, no booze? She was also seeing an alternative medicine therapist to “center her chi.”  Then the lockdown happened and she couldn’t travel back and when things re-opened she decided to stay longer and now she has been gone a while. “She is clean but she’s still taking care of her mental health,” he says. “She talks to the children on video calls whenever she can, she’s afraid of coming back because she thinks the environment might trigger her again. She isn’t in a hurry to come back but I’m afraid the children might soon forget her because they are asking for her less and less.”

He says he feels like a single parent. “I will tell you that you can’t do this if you don’t have a very good house manager. It’s impossible. Let nobody lie to you, we are just not capable of running a home as efficiently as women, we need another woman to help be it a sister or an aunt. Unfortunately my sister and I are not very connected but her mom is always dropping by to make sure that the children are great. But our Help is the star, man. She anticipates the needs of the children and my needs before they happen. It’s like a super power. So, the children are fine. It feels like I’m like married but without the drama…and the sex.”

He laughs at his joke.

 

***

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122 Comments
  1. Last week I’d hear Eddy Ashioya thumping his chest akisema, “Najua mnataka article ya Biko lakini sisi ndio tuko”. Eddy is actually a good writer as well.

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  2. Well, he sounds like a great dad – and ultimately, the babies are what is most important. No one should stay in an abusive relationship..

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  3. “I wanted her to be an adult with responsibilities,” he snapped. “This is not a reality show, this is life, but she was going through it like she could audition for other roles that fit her.”

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  4. Ngai. I have questions.
    So she just went and wants to stay longer?
    What about the kids?
    And the husband?
    I’m all about putting ourselves first and making sure our mental health is in the right place but I can’t help but feel bad for the kids and the man.
    Maskini.

    God bless your help. I honestly think that finding the right help is a blessing we sometimes take for granted.
    I keep telling God that if He blesses me with babies one day, he blesses me with a good help as well.
    Taking care of babies is hard AF. Even on women.

    This comment is getting pretty long. Bye!
    Before I go, Biko your sense of humour will kill me one day.
    Laughed so much reading this. Na vile sijui kucheka polepole.

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  5. wow, moving story once again. A strong man out there. keep up with the good work mate, they are your children and there’s never changing that. its sad however to imagine the kind of trauma rather mental tortures that children go through because of the mistakes of their parents. happy ending though she is changing.

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  6. I could feel the chaos as I read this. Just wondering if there’s still a marriage here and for how long…

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  7. And here I am always encouraging my wife to drink the whiskey with me. In fact I want my wife to drink whiskey with me so bad that I have convinced her to join a group of women who love whiskey on Facebook. She is still adamant. This is a scary story of what alcoholism can turn someone into but guess what? I still want her to drink the whiskey with me. Is that too much to ask for? I hope she doesn’t become alcoholic, turn violent and start beating me up because I love her so much .We will be careful drinkers, I promise. I am sorry I’m trying to change her but what is better than drinking an 18 year old whiskey with your wife on the balcony on a Saturday afternoon? for me? Nothing. Whiskey is my love language, I speak fluent Johnny Walker.

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    1. We will be careful drinkers, I promise…
      I think you are a thoughtful/selfless person and you just want to have moments and create memories as you enjoy your polite drink with her…hopefully she will soon start enjoying it or maybe she’ll choose to enjoy a cup or tea or juice as you drink. Just remember to be careful and not to force her..
      I like your thought process.. All the best

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  8. Maaaaan, i have no words.
    Big-up to Matt, he really is the epitome of fatherhood, and a good supportive husband.
    Prayers to his wife for freedom, healing and peace.

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  9. Its hard being an adult its even harder not being one once you are grown. All the best to you and the children

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  10. If you have kids you know how motherhood at times can be a tough call. You have to learn, unlearn, forgive yourself and ask for understanding and patience from your little one and the father. At times you want to run away from the madness. I wouldn’t judge her. But get kids when you’re ready, not only financially but emotionally and mentally. Because these little human beings aren’t perfect and they’re not salvation either.

    Not an expert in things marriage but I believe I could be wrong at times you could have sought therapy as a couple and with kids. To heal as a whole.
    Biko Zulu, you write amazingly. Cheers to more Tuesdays and stories.

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  11. Inasmuch as the world seems to be unkind to millennial most of the time, I do agree that millennials are sometimes a pain in the posterior orifice. This is true especially when it comes to their expectations and what they think life should be.

    In my younger years, before salvation of the mind found me, I was an ideologue. I believed that life should be lived the way I picture and paint it in my mind and not what it is. I got a girlfriend who was equally an ideologue and we had a tumultuous time in the outrigger canoe that was our relationship. When I recall those days, I shudder at the thought of how our life would have been now, but that is besides the point. I was jolted back to reality when I realised that I could not afford the Audi A3 that she wanted me to buy for her (read as: take out a loan for). I realised that I needed to get back to reality and that my income was not sufficient for such a quixotic venture. I also got back to reality when I realised that her belief that she could only get babies when she gets a car and a master’s degree to boot. This is because she believed that people shouldn’t get babies if they do not have a car with which to drive themselves to a clinic for ante-natal checkups etc. To cut the long story short, I realised that we, millennials, are an interesting lot and years later, I am more contented with life and in a better place.

    It is a pity when we conjure up images of a marital Shangri-La and then strive to make it a reality even when that means hurting or burdening others. It is selfish to want to seek a superhuman in your spouse if you are not one already. If you want to roll your wife or husband into your mentor, star, counsellor, professor, gym instructor, venture capitalist etc. into one, you are a problem. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. You have to decide whether you want a wife or husband; or decide that what you are seeking are the attributes you want to impose on your spouse. Marriage is for grown-ups and unless one is willing to grow up and know that adulting comes with bills, unmet expectations and compromises, then we will continue having conversations starting with “My husband never supported me; he was afraid of my light’ or where one says ‘My wife could not cook those layered chapatis on the Chipsy advert’.

    To millennials, marriage is based on kindness, unselfishness and understanding. You cannot seek your fantasy and expect everyone to go the whole hog to support it. One has to give way for the other. Life is not ‘Middle Earth or Narnia” because even in Middle Earth and Narnia, there are witches, talking lions and dragons. Life is lived on earth and you must live by the terms that reality imposes on us.

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    1. Couldn’t agree more. Also its such an extreme sport finding someone with such an outlook of life. I hate cats but at this point I am almost adopting one and give up on this marriage thing. Sincerely, Tired female millenial.

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    2. Very true, poor millennials. Marriage is not a competition between husband and wife, its a compromise, a love shared by both, this way we both grow and glow!

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  12. Always the best at written… While reading these stories,I usually envision you narrating it well with a commanding voice and great oratory skills❤️❤️❤️

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  13. There’s just something that woman was missing… Support all round, a deep talk of what she really wanted in life…You did not offer this, all you offered was a story. I bet she’s done with you already by rediscovering herself.

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    1. Hahaha. We can not shift responsibilities as we wish. Let everyone be responsible for their own actions. Let us step out of this alternate world we live in; where there is always someone to blame for our actions. What you purpot here is peddled elsewhere as victim blaming.

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    2. Hahaha. We can not shift responsibilities as we wish. Let everyone be responsible for their own actions. Let us step out of this alternate world we live in; where there is always someone to blame for our actions. What you purport here is peddled elsewhere as victim blaming..

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  14. Weeeeeh!! What??!! I needed a moment after reading this.

    My guy sounds vey level headed and like a really amazing father. I feel like he’s doing such an amazing job trying to keep it together. May God give him the grace to carry on, he needs it.

    Side note: hio paragraph ya MauMau and the parcel of violence imenimaliza. Ah! Jameni!!

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  15. “(By the way, these names aren’t real and I’m running out of them)” hahahahaha

    Perhaps just name every man John and every woman Mary

    Ama go down the alphabet for each subsequent story hehehehe

    Good one, as usual.

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    1. haha…indeed, the common names for anonymous people is John Doe (for guys) or Jane Doe (for the ladies).

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  16. Mental health is slowly evolving to a situation that can no longer be ignored. Unlike Malaria, it has no signs or hints. God have mercy on all of us.

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  17. I must admit, i love this articles especially for the word play. anyway that is a great piece. kudos.

  18. The Children are not fine. Well, one of them is better because they are seeing a therapist. The other one is silently screaming for help.
    Children absorb the surrounding energy. Then don’t necessarily have to show they are being affected by bed wetting or whatever. The effects will be seen when they grow up. When in avoiding violence they try to please everyone around them. You can just imagine how much of an uphill task that is. Or worse, in their defence, when they meet a bee, they sting first!

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  19. Earth is hard. Question: did he really figure out what was depressing the woman? Or triggered her behavior? Cos she’s not from a violent home

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  20. In the words of Steph Kapela (look him up), “Young girls want it out loud, bad girls get the good luving, good girls they get no love.”

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  21. Jango women from our side are quite hot-tempered and sharp-tongued. It’s in our genes, but doesn’t have to come directly from your parents, can be from one of the forefathers.
    In my case my paternal gramps.
    If not for Christ, I think I would’ve burnt a few houses or shot a couple of people. Sometimes the thought crosses my mind, then the thought of prison pushes those thoughts away.
    Plain meals and staying in cramped spaces I can’t be allowed to furnish is a deterrent.
    It also helps that the people who I might have shot or houses I’d have burnt to cinder, are in other continents. People here are molly-coddlers. They don’t push buttons.
    So I get when she talks about the environment she is in, and how good it is for her health.
    I think for the narrator of the story, he should just manage somehow with what he has. Or pack the family up and go live with her in the middle-east.
    As he is self-employed, maybe he can find a job that is location-independent? Those jobs you can work anywhere in the world, if you just have a good laptop.

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  22. Now that you’re running out of names to use, you could use mine, but utalipa ngapi? Nothing is free in Kenya.

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  23. We need 2 sides to this.
    I feel he’s putting up a front;like he’s the good one and she’s the lunatic.I could be wrong.

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  24. Matt sounds like a great and a supportive family man, he should continue taking care of his kids…
    House managers play an important role in helping out, should be respected and appreciated…
    There is absolutely no health without mental health…

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  25. You always keep us captivated. Marriage sounds like hell hmmm yet we all want to get there at some point in time. I guess we have to lower our expectations.

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  26. Biko, in all these stories about men and marriage, how come you never mention the solution for these men? Its staring at all of them all this time.
    And No, its not religion.
    I have never understood that. They lack insight, but there is a solution to all these.

  27. Matt is a great Dad, and a great husband. This Father’s Day should be dedicated to Dads like him.
    He is a hero. Tomorrow June 9 is Heroes Day in Uganda, I will dedicate it to people like him.
    May his wife and children recover from what ever they’re going through. Therapy is a great step.
    Sad but beautifully written story punctuated by great humour.
    Thank you, Biko, lots of stuff that everyone can learn from.

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  28. Who else let a sigh of relief when he said, ‘…..she is not dead.’ At least there is still hope for that ultimate beautiful ending.

    Also …. Petite? Jango? Is there something he is not telling us (wink) …….

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  29. Good read as always, whatever happens under the roof is surely a lot , and by graces we do live on, this piece hit close home..

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  30. I think she has bipolar disorder. Look it up to find out more details. I believe it’s both hard for the guy since she’s not sure what’s going on with her

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  31. Wow! What a story. The children aren’t fine but one day they will be. The mother a serious condition that should be prioritized. Or maybe she just doesn’t want her domestic life. That is also okay but it comes with consequences. The husband should also seek counselling before he takes out his hidden rage at the next woman or his kids once they become teenagers.

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  32. As much as i enjoy Eddie, honestly i missed Biko’s writing. Karibu na usipotee hivyo tena.
    I somehow identify with the fella. I married a young chille & 10yrs later with 3kids in tow, i feel we have started travelling in different lanes.
    She wants to party & spend whole weekends with her buddies while i am left with the kids.
    I feel like i am forcing her to be a mom & a wife while she just wants to discover new territories. I just don’t know what to do!

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  33. Weuh!There are issues out here.He sounds like a very grounded dad so the kids will be ok-just don’t marry the house help

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  34. Great read. Although I think she developed the depression because of her uncontrollable drinking, not the other way around. It’s interesting to see that Just because she developed depression later, he assumed it was always there.

  35. sent off to a middle-eastern country to live with one of her relatives because, well, no booze? 🙂

    1
  36. This sounds like a person with a mood disorder, probably bipolar disorder, which they then try to manage by using alcoholism. In this case the alcoholism is not a disease, but a symptom of something else entirely. Forgive my medical mind, I couldn’t resist diagnosing her, we tend to diagnose everyone even in matatus and on the road…

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  37. Mental health is a big thing today. The world is full of stupid stuff that will drag you off tangent, you need some centeredness
    Thank God for some of these men who are uptobthe game, pick the mantle and life goes on
    Pia watu waache kuchezea drink, it’s not a picnic

  38. The world out there is really crazy lol. Biko, I’m all for your sense of humor, precisely what I signed up for. Nice read.

  39. Heh!!!!
    I have questions…
    So what triggers that behaviour?
    What’s in her past that nobody knows?
    Did the guy ever ask her deeply vile alinotice kutoka day one?
    Is it possible for the family to join her where she is?

    Lakini pole sana to the guy and kids…
    I can only pray that the lady can get full recovery.
    Also, the guy should try and dig for the root cause.

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  40. Wow, I feel for this guy really. To love someone this much and not be able to be with them because well they are too broken to want to be mended must feel like hell. I’m sure she loves him too only that she’s too broken or was to do it with the warmth and sanity every human yearns for.
    May God indeed make a way for them and heal their marriage because they seem to want it both, as bad.

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  41. I thought it was Biko until y’all spoilt it. Luckily, this is a man equal to the task. He uses tough words well.

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  42. You are blessed with a loving hubby and two kids and all that you think is yourself. Maina lemme tell you, this gender is something else.

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  43. A moment of silence for this father. For the days he might have cried alone in his bed worried about his family. For the smiles he had to wear in front of his children to reassure them that all was well. For the trauma that he has experienced on his own. The whole family needs therapy. Much love and light to the wife for seeking therapy and trying to redefine herself. A great appreciation to the father for being the cornerstone of his family even when he was breaking inside. I hope the family can find peace, love, forgiveness and eventually heal from that phase of their lives.

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  44. Someone advised the ‘leather car seats’ guy to follow @Amerix on Twitter. I think the advice was placed on Biko Avenue, right after High School cross-roads. You follow?

    So I went to Twitter and searched this @Amerix prescription and the recommended dosage.

    one of the tablets was labelled “SHE IS NOT YOUR RELATIVE”.

    My take on this story, let your ‘wife’ stay where she is.

    Get others with balanced chi’s for the occasional emotional support and random swim.

    #BestWishes

    4
    1. The description of the ex wife is insinuative:

      “very mild-mannered, polite and the least confrontational person you will ever meet. My ex-wife never raised her voice.”

      Maybe, if you miss her, and things are reconcilable, pursue that path.

      Whatever you do, don’t marry the househelp….coz then, you will know her true colours that she is keeping under wraps….in the hope of becoming ‘esposa de la casa’ .

      If you can keep your frame without marrying, the better. Even Paul in the Bible only recommended marriage to those who couldn’t live without sex.

      #BestWishes

      4
  45. Everyday I’m reminded that there are two sides of marriage. The most intriguing one is not talked about often since its not rosy.

    1
  46. Mehhnn the things Biko will put in our heads. This just made my day after a very uncomfortable covid test. To think that all violence comes from a history with violence, eye opening!! Thank you❤️

    1
  47. Sounds like another Drunk story…… Btw Biko, when is your third book out? I miss me another long read from you.

    1
  48. This is sad. When you are dating someone be keen very keen on how they treat others. Because soon it will turn on you.

    Ion I feel like this nanny deserves more than a measly paragraph that sounded more than an afterthought! Adulting is not easy!

    1
  49. Wueh, quite some story. Let her stay there for the sake of sanity. Some day the children will get to her. Good thing the children are fine.

  50. This is Hard Small, God bless this Man’s heart weeeh that is endurance on another level! i hope she gets better really and if they don’t get back together may he find a soulmate , someone who will really appreciate him

    2
  51. She stopped taking care of her responsibilities and the children

    Men are not as capable of running households as efficiently as women.

    While respecting the story of the person telling it, these two statements make me think about gender roles, socialisation and culture and their impact on who we are today

  52. 1.Use Afrikan names sasa if you’re running out of names.
    2.She anticipates the needs of the children and MY NEEDS before they happen. It’s like a super power. Mboch apewe promotion to wife.

    2
  53. It actually sounds like she has bipolar disorder or ADHD. Hope all kids get counseling and also talk about the situation in the home, how they feel about it, what they would like etc

  54. From my experience, my mum went abroad and when she came she never took care of us upto date! Huyo asikae sana, I think they get used to not having responsibilities.
    Earth is hard!

  55. “The reason we are referring to her in the past tense is because that’s not who she is now. That’s who he remembers her to be then…”

    There is so much here. A simple needed kindness, forgiveness, and assurance.

    2
  56. Rarely do you get to hear of an irresponsible mother and the father is the one who works to keep the family going .

  57. May God continue to give him strength….Happy Father’s day to him. as for the lady, i hope she will fight her fears and come back home to her children

  58. I’ve seen this same script different characters play out during the lockdown. Sadly, the children end up traumatized! I’ve come to realize it’s pretty hard to help an alcoholic if they don’t deem it needful…you take friends who check out after 1 month and become worse, step in to help with their kids to which you’re insulted. Anywho, we pray they get better and good job with the kids and thank God for good house manager.

  59. Life is hard but Marriage is tougher. I think God saw you had had enough and blessed you with a good help. Waaah the children AKi I can’t believe she just left…