Who will marry me?

There was an eerie silence. The wall clock ticked loudly, muffling the sound of the blurting heartbeats of Mum and Dad. This was odd. No daughter or son of the family had aggressively asked this question before. It was taboo in the village. Boys and girls had been whipped for such misplaced courage. But this was no village, or town, or Africa. The village was six thousand miles away. There were no elders to talk to, no aunties and uncles to consult.

Reality set in. The very daughter they thought would timidly stroll through life unquestioningly had suddenly gathered some hyena courage. Life had become so visible and stark that she demanded an answer before it was too late. She was on the verge of plunging into the unknown unless someone led her along the narrow and truthful path. It was now or never. She waited with bated breath. The last drop of saliva trickled down her dry throat, almost choking her. She swallowed her breath and suspended her heartbeat for as long as she could.

Suddenly the phone rang. Not once, not twice, but repeatedly. No one seemed to have the courage to answer it. It was a welcome intruder in a room where even silence had died. “Why are you sitting there as if you can’t hear the phone ringing?” Dad spoke rather gently in a husky voice trapped by the intermittent gasping for breath resulting from his daughter’s question.

She sprang up from the bean bag where she had slipped uncomfortably as she had waited for an answer. Melissa carefully held the phone to her ear and politely said. “I am sorry; Dad is busy. Can you try later?” then she hung up. She threw herself on the bean bag. Her face said it all. A sense of guilt perhaps. She had lied about her dad. She had to put pressure on her mum and dad to say something.

And as she sat upright, staring at her mother, she carried on from where she had left off. Looking at her mum she cautiously carried on from where she had left, “So, who will marry me, Mum and Dad, in a country where there are fewer boys of my tribe and more of the other? You have always taught us to pray and to go to church, but there are no men to marry in church either. I am serious, Mum.” Both Mum and Dad looked aghast at the courage of their last child.

Mum thought, Why is she insisting on an answer now? What is prompting her? This is weird. She knows that if she prays, she will get a good man to marry her. But Mum could not verbalize her thoughts. She had seen many young boys and girls living with their partners, under pressure to cohabit because similar questions had not been addressed. She knew families who were heartbroken and had lost control of their children because they were afraid to tackle these life-threatening issues. Many were incapable of doing so because they themselves had faltered on the road to lifelong marriage. They had messed up when they were in the village. They did not know what to do in these circumstances. Their experiences did not match what their children were demanding answers for.

Conversations in the village were not so abrupt. They were always taken to their logical conclusion. Not this time. Melissa’s dad Takura, or TK, was the typical village boy. He had been brought up to revere his culture. He knew the ins and outs of their tribe’s behaviour. What was expected of him as a boy included a mixture of male chauvinism and a tint of identity preservation. The night vigils were a breeding ground for real men and women, who lived by the book and dared not mess with what their parents taught them. Soon after their initiation, the girls in the village would be clad with red bands signifying their readiness for true love and marriage. Boys looked for such when they contemplated marriage. The girls were protected by their aunts, who literally escorted them wherever they went to protect them from the male vultures, who too were on the boil seeking whom they may devour! Such was the systemic cultural organization. You hardly found boys and girls eloping. It was a given that a conducive marriage environment was created that would enable would-be candidates to easily pick and choose the girls of their choice. That was the way TK’s parents had done it, and he also expected his children to follow suit.

But then war broke out. Families were scattered. Young men and women left in droves to join the guerrilla army. Girls became soldiers overnight. What was taboo yesterday became the new normal. Traditions remained intact but under pressure from the demands of combat. The war period upset what was deemed to be the identity of a people. Preservation became a challenge and, when the war ended, many left for other untested shores. With the economic downturn, scores of young families and older ones sought greener pastures in what became the diaspora. This was a place in limbo, where culture had no fixed abode. Many were determined to reap their harvest and quickly return home. It soon became a pipe dream years after the target date had expired. There was no other home. This was home. Period.

TK was not the only one in this predicament. Many of his age were also caught up in this. His girls were extremely intelligent. One a lawyer, another just graduated from medical school, and the last one a senior carer in a nursing home. All at a ripe old age. If they had been “home,” they would either been married by now, or their fate could have been decided by their anxious parents. But for now, they waited with bated breath for the ones fit for purpose. Were they to go for all and sundry, or rather stick to their tribe in a foreign land? Would the diaspora be able to deliver? If not, the same question continued to linger on: Who will marry us? This became a collective psyche among the many girls that the motherland had spewed out, not to mention the boys.

Meanwhile, Melissa’s mum was trying to figure out how to respond to her daughter’s question. This had to be done carefully and considerately. She began to speak looking at Melissa, “I have been thinking hard about your question. It is not that I was trying to ignore you, but this is not just about your life, Melissa, but the lives of many girls and boys in the diaspora. Such an answer requires wisdom, knowledge, understanding, and insight. This question has vexed so many over the years, and many lives have been ruined because of decisions that were not based on true wisdom. The pressure to be like others and get married has destroyed the young lives of men and women. To this day they live in regret and wish they had known better when they made these decisions.”

Beatrice continued. “Become the person you want to attract. Strive to become the person you expect to marry you. You can never attract a loving person if you are not a loving person. You cannot attract a genuine Christian if you are counterfeit fruit and not the real thing.” She stopped and pondered. She was not sure how to proceed. Should she give her daughter a full lecture on how to find Mr Right or wait for her husband who seemed to be dying to respond, judging by his facial expression?

This sudden outburst by Beatrice was not something that had come out of the blue. She had witnessed scores of cases and heard stories of young men and women in her locality who had been struggling because of decisions they had made without enough thought. Some had been lured into such decisions by veterans of the illicit trade who posed as wolves in sheep’s clothing.
Melissa, in a way felt for her mum. She knew how much pressure her mum was under, knowing that most of her friends and relatives had already celebrated the marriages of their spouses.