“My best advice to you son, is, marry someone from your own culture.”
“Yessah.”
I was always the clever one, questioning everything behind the veil of my practiced humble expression. Of course I thought this time my papa had lost it. After all, he is only human and sometimes humans give bad advice. Even pastors.
I was already seeing someone you see; a beautiful flower across the borders of my culture and far across the oceans of my nationality and kind. This was Joburg. What was the likelihood that I would meet a Naija girl who is also God-fearing, beautiful and funny? Maybe I could have. We were many in Joburg, but I was not just Naija. You see, I am Calabar, from the very traditional and arrogant villages. We know ourselves very well. We are truthfully much cleaner, beautifuller than the others and our food is way more delicious. Ask them if you doubt me. They will agree.
At least South African girls can dress for my type and they don’t have time to pamper me which makes them more exciting to conquer.
Recently, my girlfriend and I started discussing marriage. She is neither traditional nor sentimental, unlike me. She said she had self-counselled and found out that it was because she was neglected by her mother when she was a child. Her mother neglected her by dying. Abeg, my girl is crazy, but I enjoyed listening to her voice in the background, telling me things I only half-heard because I would be thinking about how nice my life in SA was. Naija is fantastic, don’t get me wrong, but the nagging of my mother begging me to marry was too much. Then, those church sisters who tried to flirt with me in their respectable clothes. It was all too much.
My girlfriend said she was happy with going to sign in front of marriage officers and throwing a braai after, and that even her own father would be too busy to notice. I told her I couldn’t fail to that level. I told her that my grandmother would turn in her grave if I did such an abomination. It is not African to just go to an office and sign no matter what part of the world you find yourself. Well, thank God she didn’t give me trouble.
“You’ll be on your own when my family wants bags of lobola money from you,” she warned me.
“Well, at least that one can cover me with dignity. I’m a proud African man. Baby, ah ah!”
Then we got married. After the preparations and lobola and counselling, we got married. After we fought over what I should wear and how much of her shoulders she could expose, we got married. After I borrowed money from my friends—thank God it was not from the bank—and starved myself to make sure that our wedding was as grand as any Nigerian wedding in the eyes of a South African woman, we got married.
It was beautiful. My wife was one dynamite of a woman. Energetic, fine and entertaining. Feisty. All seemed to fall into place so easily and perhaps that should have been a warning, except, we were not warned. Neither one of us had any reason to be on high alert because before our marriage, our relationship was electric. We did everything together except at church where we tried to disconnect our energy so that it wouldn’t be too obvious that we were fornicating to the extent of spending weeks together sometimes.
As soon as we got married, we got tired. At first, we were tired from the wedding. After some weeks that could no longer be an excuse and so we decided that we were tired from adjusting to the new life. There was always a good reason why we were tired. I knew that my wife was not the traditional type so we still cooked together and did everything together, except when we were tired.
One day I asked her to make me an easy South African dish because I was too tired to prepare food for the week. She placed her feet on the table and said, “Nope!”.
Eh! She didn’t even give an excuse. She just said, “Nope!” Mind you, I was feeding this girl and making her look this good. My blood began to boil but then I held myself together and left the room. Strike one.
Days, weeks and seasons went by with us managing ourselves very well. Then one day I told her that my parents wanted to pay a visit. We had talked about how we would handle our parents in our home. So, I didn’t foresee any trouble. We were sitting together, watching America’s Got Talent and she was also on Instagram, posting selfies of us.
“Baby, Mama and Papa would love to come visit us at the end of this month.” I squeezed the utterance into the moment.
“Sure, Babe. When are they coming?”
“On the 28th. Their visas should be out by then.”
She paused, then continued on her phone. It was a brief moment of realising that I had been planning behind her back, and also a brief moment of deciding not to make an issue out of it.
“Okay Babe, I’ll make sure the spare room is ready by then. Don’t worry, I’ll be at my best behaviour. I can even tell them we are working hard to make them a grandson.” She laughed with a freedom that I envy. She thinks parents are just cute, little grown babies, but I think they are monsters. I kissed her thank you.
She was always so pure that I sometimes asked myself if maybe I was the only idiot messing things up with this culture bull. Did that pastor curse me by warning me against marrying outside of my culture? Sure, I could easily defy my parents. I had done it all my life. But a pastor?
Fast forward to the arrival of my grand, self-important Calabar parents. They flew in matching attire and heavy-looking jewellery. Their faces seemed to demand attention from the entire hall and their stride as majestic as the rulers of this world. I know my people – too beautiful to watch! I laughed with excitement as they approached, and my wife joined in because it was also quite comical.
In the nique of time, I remembered that I had not gone through the greeting procedure with my wife in advance. My parents couldn’t make it to our wedding so she was seeing them in person for the first time. I quickly whispered to her, “Baby, kneel down,” and then I prostrated before my parents. While I was down, my heart thumped with sudden panic from realising that my wife did not kneel. Did she not hear me? But she must have. We always whispered, making jest of others in public places.
“Hello, my dear. In our culture when you greet your parents, you kneel down.” I heard my mother’s most composed motherly tone suggest to my wife. It was a big deal. I was still lying uncomfortably on the ground and it seemed like they had forgotten me. Did I mention that my wife was so pure that she saw people as people, not as parents, pastors, superior or inferior? It was a good thing, but very scary.
My wife, with all enthusiasm even though she had already realised that things had taken a swing off course, leaned in to give my ice-cold mother an enthusiastic hug and quickly retreated. “I’m so sorry, Mummy, I don’t mean to offend you, but I am a Xhosa woman, and we have been explicitly instructed to never kneel before any living person. We were raised to stand tall and to respect…”
My father finally remembered me and said, “You may rise, son,” cutting off my wife.
We clung to each other in a tight embrace, and for the first time, I felt like my father was proud of me; even in spite of my ‘un-kneeling wife’. He finally let go, and I moved on to embrace my mother. “Mummy oo! Mummy! You dey fine even when flying long distance Mummy?”
“Aah, my son, still charming I see. It is so good to see you. Sorry, your wife was still explaining something about her culture. Sorry my dear, continue.” She remained closed off to my wife in body language, but ever so polite in speech.
“It’s not important, Mummy. I am really just so pleased to meet both of you.”
“Likewise, my child. I will share some stories with you that will enlighten you about culture after you make us some tea at your home. I hope my son informed you that we like earl grey tea after a long trip?”
Having felt the high wall radiate from my mother, my wife gave a slight shrug, and in that moment I knew that I was the heifer about to have two bulls in my kraal.
Read – Father Miracles – A Short Story by Ncube Samkeliso, Zimbabwe
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