Wandia, their first born, was born with jaundice. He saw her hours later in the little incubator with her eyes covered. He wasn’t in the delivery room because he doesn’t believe that men should witness childbirth. “The men before us didn’t witness deliveries for a reason.” He said. However, he admits taking flowers to his wife in hospital – something the men before us would have approved. He remembers taking them home after a week or so, carrying his daughter up the stairs to their house on the fifth floor.
Kairu, their second born, was born when he was in Dar es Salaam for work. He saw him days after, attached to his wife’s breast as he fed hungrily. He was dark like his grandfather, his father. He remembers his wife crying a lot after his birth, and him deliberately spending a lot of time away from the house to let his own mom handle those bewildering tears.
Njambi, his third born, was born in the middle of a cold July night. He woke up to news of her birth the following morning. His mom called him at 6am and said, “Another girl. The fattest of the three.” He remembers her birth because it took three babies for him to learn that his wife hated roses and preferred Chrysanthemums, “a flower with a name as complicated as women.” He laughs. “All this time I was taking her roses, and she was receiving them with a hearty smile and saying, ‘Aww, thank you, they are lovely!” yet she hated them!”
She miscarried their fourth born in the car on a hot, sunny Sunday as she came back from church, of all the places. “And then she was sad for a very long time after that,” he remembers. “She just couldn’t shake off the sadness for a long while.”
He’s got a rugby build, a bullish neck and arms so thick he could chop down a tree with one swing if he wished.
Last February, two days after 12 Valentine’s together, she told him they needed to talk. She suggested they meet after work at her favourite restaurant, The Red Ginger, a stone throw from her workplace. He got there early and ordered a cold, wet Tusker. She showed up after his first sip and uncoiled her scarf from her neck, draping it over her chair as she said hello, while looking around at the same time. Her forehead was tight like a drum; she looked nervous. She ordered a wine and sat with her hands hidden under the table.
“What did you want to talk about?” He asked her.
“Are you in a hurry?” She asked.
He said no.
“Then we will get to that, at least let’s eat something first. I think you should try their samosas.” She scanned their menu.
“I’m not hungry.” he mumbled.
After a while, she put away the menu.
“Are you happy?” She asked.
“What?”
“Are you happy?” She repeated. “Because, I’m not unhappy but I’m not excited about this marriage.”
“Excited?” He asked.
A waiter set her wine before her. She looked up at him, “thanks,” and touched the stem of her glass. He waited. He shrugged. “Maybe it’s…I just feel a bit lost….” They sat there in silence. He stared at her. She stared at the stem of her wine glass.
“What excitement do you want?” He asked. “As in, do you want to do activities? Is this because I said I hate hiking.”
She said this wasn’t about hiking. “This is about us, me and you. You do your thing. I do my thing. We hardly talk unless it’s about the children or money. When you are home you are on your laptop. You hardly talk to the children. You don’t talk to me. I feel like you have nothing to say to me. Maybe I don’t have much to say to you either because you never look up when I’m talking. It feels like we have lost sight of what this was about…”
“This being the marriage?”
“Yes. Lately it hasn’t been feeling like marriage. It hasn’t felt like a marriage in a long time.” She paused and then in a low tone, as if telling him a secret. “Many years.”
He didn’t know what to say, partly because what she was saying was true. So he drained his beer and looked around for the waiter. He ordered a double Johnny Walker Black instead. They waited for his drink to come in stony silence and when it did she continued.
“I don’t want to disrupt our children’s lives. Neither do I want to disrupt our lives. But I also can’t continue living like a shell. So, we need to find something that works for both of us.”
“And what would that be?”
She had pretended to think about that for a moment. When she looked up at him she said, “would you consider being in an open marriage?”
*His first reaction was revulsion. Then he felt insulted. Then he was angry. Suspicion followed. He demanded to know if she was having an affair. She said she wasn’t but she said she had thought about it. Numerous times. More times in the past year. Their intimacy was down to once a month, if any at all. They didn’t do anything together. He was constantly out there, presumably working. He didn’t come for school events. She did everything on her own. She was lonely and she was bored of waiting for the magic to come back, un-inspired by the drudgery her life had become.
We are not opening this marriage, he had said. I’d rather see it end than open it. It’s absurd. UnAfrican.
“OK.” She said.
Over the next week or so, he realised that he was thinking about it the wrong way. He was thinking about her potential freedom, not his own. This was a chance for him to do his thing “in the open.” This could potentially be what he needed, because if he was honest, he loved her but he no longer burnt for her. He wasn’t protecting the marriage, he realised, he was protecting himself. A month later he asked her, “Does this open marriage mean you will have love affairs?” Because that thought still nauseated him – and the men before him. Eventually, to his surprise, he came around, albeit reluctantly. Don’t knock it until you try it, yes?
“Around April, we opened our marriage.” He says. “And on many levels it felt like we had let the devil in.”
*How does an open marriage work? I asked him. “How open is open?”
They had simple rules of engagement. No friends. No family friends. No exes. No bringing them to each other’s space. Or their children’s space. No details; don’t ask, don’t tell. Regular tests. No love. No jealousy. There was no ceremony when the marriage was thrown open. No ribbon was cut. Things felt ‘normal’, except she was suddenly putting more effort in her dressing. “She was changing her wardrobe; wearing more high heels than ever before. She cut her hair. Dyed it. She just became a different person.”
What did you change? I posed. You should have grown a moustache.
He did nothing. He watched her transform. She became chattier than usual. She laughed with the children more. She hosted more than she ever did. Every Thursday she would text him, “I will be out having a drink with Louise and some friends,” and he would wonder if she was meeting the other man. He wondered if he was rich. If he was younger. He tried not to imagine them having sex. He stopped asking her how her day was because he felt like he couldn’t trust her answer. Mostly, he pretended he didn’t care. But it’s all he thought about when she wasn’t home. To avoid that he started coming later and later, so he wouldn’t have to be home when she came back from these “drink ups.”
“You were jealous.”
“Maybe.” He said.
“She was having fun while you were sulking in a corner with your toys.”
“Oh don’t get me wrong.” He said indignantly. “I was having my own fun!”
“You had a thing?”
“I had things.” He said. “ I was having fun.”
“What’s the most embarrassing thing you did during this open marriage period?
One time she said preparing for a work trip- what type of work it was, was left to imagination. When she was in the shower, he went through her suitcase and found lingerie and lube. “Funny, this discovery didn’t make me jealous, it gave me peace that she needed lube to be with him.”
Tell me another embarrassing story that you don’t come out looking good. I insisted. He pretended to think about it for a bit.
One time she said she would be with her colleagues for a drink at The Social House, he said. He didn’t believe her. She was probably going to meet Mr Lube. As a disguise he bought a panama hat [he doesn’t wear hats] and decided to sneak into The Social House to spy on her. He was sure he would meet her with his lover, and put a face to him, instead as he got out of the lift he ran into one of her friends. He turned back and went to drink away his embarrassment. She never brought it up.
I had so many follow up questions but decided to ask the most important one; “Where the hell does one buy a panama hat at short notice?”
It felt like she became happier, as he became sadder. He drank more and more. He became resentful of her. One time he came home to find flowers on a vase. He threw them in the dustbin and told her, “I don’t want to see anything from another man in this house.” She said, “Are you serious? Those were from my boss!” One time her car wouldn’t start when she was leaving work. When she called him for help he snapped, “Call your boss. If he can buy you flowers, he should be able to start your car.”
“I was becoming this horrible person.” He said. “This open marriage was killing me. I resented her. I felt like this open marriage was just a ploy to have her cake and eat it.”
“You were sore because she wasn’t eating your cake.”
He laughed. “True. Anyhow. I endured it for months and in November, I couldn’t take it any longer. It was a lie, what we were doing. Unnatural. I told her that it was the end of the road for me. We either had a marriage or we didn’t. She said we didn’t.”
“Her exact words?”
“No, she said, she wouldn’t get back to how things were. So we started the divorce proceedings in February this year.”
They live in the same house for practical reasons. He sleeps in the SQ at the back. She has the main house. They share everything else. It’s almost normal except everybody does their own thing. The children know because why is dad sleeping in the guest room? So they told them, gave them the spiel they have watched on American TV. “We are splitting but we care about each other and about you guys.”
They are old enough to understand that love doesn’t always end in full blossom.
Wandia, the one with a bruised heart, was upset.
The boy’s life seemed to move on without a hitch. As long as there is food, nothing affects him. Touch his food and now we have a situation.
Njambi said “if it’s for the better.” That’s all she said on that matter. She was born on a cold night in July. That must do something to one’s heart.
**What’s the hardest thing that happened to you last year? Ping me: [email protected]
Also, if you are reading this from Zambia, or know a great storyteller from Zambia, hit me up. (yes, im serious)
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