LOVE AND MARRIAGE - HORSE AND CARRIAGE

AN OPEN LETTER TO MY COUSIN-SISTER You emailed me today to tell me that you are getting married. I could almost taste the happiness in your voice, feel the twinkle in your eye as you wrote all about him and how happy you are; about your parents and his parents and all the preparations. Finally, as you asked if I would be a bridesmaid at your wedding. I felt overwhelmed. You are the last of my “girl-cousins” and it would be my honour to bear witness to your happy occasion. You are so beautiful, so young, so full of vitality. In you, I see such beauty, it is breathtaking. I love you in the way a sister loves another, a friend loves a friend. If I did not, I would restrain myself and not say that which I will – that which I wish someone had told me, before I got married. I want you to keep that in mind as you read on. My darling cousin-sister, I urge you not to get married. I beg you not to go ahead with it. Yet knowing how young, how in love you are, I suspect that this will not only fall on deaf ears but may in fact cause you some pain. This is not at all my intention. Believe it or not, your happiness is the reason why I implore you to reconsider your decision. A couple of weeks ago, the members of the Parliamentary Select Committee on the Review of the Draft Constitution voted against the enshrining in the Constitution of clause 42 (4). The clause read, “Parties to a marriage are entitled to equal rights at the time of the marriage, during the marriage, and at the dissolution of the marriage.” What has this to do with you? By rejecting it, my love, they took away your and my and every married woman, indeed every woman’s rights, every female’s rights as relates to marriage. Any child who is “married off” under “customary law” – that notorious smokescreen for legalised paedophilia has not the same rights as her brother. The right to say “No”, the right to annul or divorce, the protection of the law against rape or violence, the right to her own body – to refuse to bear children that she does not want or cannot cater for. She has no such right by virtue only of having been born with a vagina. And my dear, the moment you say “I do”, neither will you. Oh, I have no doubt that your fiancé is a stand-up guy; well bred, from a good home, not one likely to hit you or demand sex with you when you do not wish it. I am sure that if you were ever to divorce, and heaven pray it does not happen, he would willingly give up an equitable share of the matrimonial property to you and any children you may have. But baby, we both know that had we asked our mothers, they would have said the same of our fathers. And in both your and my case, we know how that story ended. Death is sometimes a soothing balm to the aching battered wife. I have no doubt that he will care for and provide for your children. However, such is the strangeness of the Kenyan legal system – you may have to care for any children he sirs out of wedlock or by another woman whether he claims it to be a “traditional” marriage or simply a “misc” that derogatory word used to describe the other women that married men will keep - “miscellaneous”. But what if, just what if he isn’t as stand-up as you and I would both like to think. What if he in effect “sits down”. Then you could legally be raped in marriage and would have no recourse in law or in custom. Even if he was HIV+, herpes laden and gonorrhoea stricken, it would be his right to demand sex from you. His right to divorce you for non-compliance. His reasonable defence to beat you black and blue for the unthinkable – refusing him sex. And you? You could do nothing except endure it in silence, run away or hope that other men, your brothers and mine would beat him up. You could have no choice under law save to bear all and any children that you are impregnated, whether or not you wish to bear them at the pain of imprisonment. Effectively, the removal of that clause raises an ambiguity about the property rights of that which you owned before the marriage, that which you both acquire during the marriage and what happens if the marriage ends. By law and custom, he can inherit from his parents. You have no such right upon marriage. At least if you are unwed, you retain the right under customary law to inheritance. Once married, that right is taken away from you. After all, you have now been “sold” and your bed has been given away. You have no right to return home. You have, in law as in custom, no home to return to, save his. Yes dear, even in the second decade of this new millennium, we remain chattels. Oh sure, it is glorified in such words as “dowry” but consider the terms surrounding marriage in our language. “Kwendia mwari” – to sell a daughter. “Kuheana kiriri” – to give away your bed. If we hold ourselves to be Christian in every other way, this is the one way in which we are not. It is not the man who leaves his mother and father to be united with his wife as is prescribed in Genesis 2:24. You and I know well that in our case, we are delivered physically to our husband, handed over to our mothers-in-law and informed in no uncertain terms that there is no longer a place for us in our birth homes. And all this in the midst of ululation and great rejoicing. A few months ago, at my local church in Kenya, we ran a series of sermons titles “You Pretty Young Thing”. It was about marriages in trouble. During one of the sessions, the pastor invited three men to articulate what they felt were the important points that women should focus on within the marriage. The men picked were of different age groups but generally what in Kenya is known as “AA” and “AB” income groups. The top tier. Here are the issues that were underscored; “look sexy”, “dress sexy”, “anticipate my every whim and attend to it”, “do not bother me with issues such as the children, or the tribulations of your day”, “give me my food/drink”, “don’t bother me when the football is on”, “keep in mind every day as I leave the house that there are very many other women out there who want me and are working very hard to get me so try and keep up – lest you lose out”. Finances, raising families, imparting values, planning together, health, romance, in-laws, old age and pensions, investments – those were not even mentioned. Just catering to the men’s sexual and gastronomical “needs”. Now, I would like to believe that the men that day were saying what they did half in jest, that our men are not that shallow – at least not the one you are marrying or the one I did. However, you know that the highest rise in new HIV cases in Kenya right now especially in the urban areas is in marriages. Men feeling entitled to sleep around, and then to sleep with their wives. Women so sexually frustrated that they now risk health and reputation to have sexual partners. And you know how important it still is in our culture to be “chaste”. I hate to be the one to tell you this but in marriage, you will become not only a chattel, but in the sex crazed, machismo society we are living; a sexual object, a breeding mare and a housekeeper – with no salary and no automatic right to share in the property you help to accumulate. At best, you will be a tenant for life. At worst, an unpaid, unrewarded punch bag. I know what you are now thinking. Surely, marriage is more than who-leaves-whom, or who-cleaves-whom! Surely, Couz, you cannot be advocating that I live in sin, sleeping with this man, bearing his children yet never being unified with him before God and man? I am. No human being should be required to lay down their life, to sacrifice themselves for no other reason save that they are female, in love and God fearing. No one, male or female should be statutorily stripped of a fundamental protection against violence on the basis that they are married. No human being should ever be designated the sexual object of another by virtue of gender. We outlaw sex without consent in Kenya where it is between unwedded persons and call it rape or indecent assault. We outlaw sex with consent in Kenya, where it is in exchange for money and call it prostitution. We outlaw consensual sex between two willing adults of the same sex and call it an abomination. However, where it is in the loving devoted pledge of marriage, we presume the woman to have perpetually consented to sex, no matter what the circumstances and we call it the fulfilment of God’s command. And what of the woman who unfulfilled in her marriage, seeks sexual satisfaction outside of it, why she is a whore of course – and deserving of all that happens to her. I am sure, my love, that you have chosen a good man. You who saw the horrors of marriage in childhood should be spared the enactment of them again in adulthood. I pray that he is all that you hope and dream of; all that you need and lots of what you want. If he is, then he may still want to marry you and you him. He may hold true to his pledge to forsake all others, in sickness and in health, poverty and wealth. Then you will have the amazing opportunity to have that which God did ordain, and that which most can only dream of or read about in novels – a normal marriage. I pray that this is so, for you, more than anyone else, deserve this. And if he is, if he is an equal and treats you like the child of God that you are; mine will be the distinct pleasure to say, “I was a bridesmaid at her wedding, you know.” P. S. Had I heard these words before I got married, would I have still married? Probably. And I know that you will too. And so, I add a postscript which is this – no matter what happens, you can always call on me and I promise to be there – and never to say to you “this is the lot for women – toughen up”. For it is not. Something else is possible. Something beautiful. Something whole. Something divine. Something humane. And it is possible within and outside the institution of marriage. And it is possible for women like you, like me, like all the ones who live. It is called love. (c) Renee Ngamau