She’s Not My Wife

At one time after my 4 year course in campus, I’ll return back home where I know I’ll have a bone to chew with my elders and sure bet I’ll be lliable for questioning. They have every right to do so after ensuring a continuous supply of maize flour, beans, vegetables to the City for their upkeep of their son. They’ll still address me as ‘Takitari’ not because I’m a professional doctor but just because I put on a lab coat.

I’m actually a lab technician but whoever wears a labcoat is fit to be doctor, a name I proudly accepted which was like an insult to the medical faternity.

After the last chunk of the slaughtered cow lands on the village’s glutton , they’ll sit me down in a stool, under the sacred tree, where the sun’s rays first light our village . They’ll circle me like vultures, of course mursik lubricating our throats as anytime soon they will go dry. They’ll keep up their intimidating looks and whispering click sounds to each other before dropping the bombshell.

“Son, we sent you to college with a mission. The degree is here, but where is your wife?”

Can someone tell this people it wasn’t a college for Christ’s sake, it was a University. Anyway, I’ll play jumble with words, fiddle with my fingers, scratch my almost bald head and answer,

“The city girl is not a wife”

I can already picture how schocked they will be, but bottom line is, I am correct.

They’ll be dissapointed for sure since they expected me to go for a ‘learned’ lady like me. A lady who can speak in English fluently, that’s the measure of how intelligent one is. A lady that will be talk of the village of how beautiful she is on her ornaments and the waft of her strong expensive cologne on her. I too would have wanted that but I had second thoughts.

Against all odds it’s better I opt for Chematian , yes I know mum will raise a third world war for this but it’s better her. The girl whose mother sells vegetables across the ridge. The girl whose drunk father, like a village dog, has traces of his urine on everything and anything beside the road. The girl we will all escort with our eyes as she goes to church on Sundays.

I want a wife in shape of our mothers. Campus girls are no where close to this. They can be anything but nothing close to a wife material. I’ll start by telling of their wicked love for selfies. If Campus girls once they get to the village instead of even exchanging greetings, the first thing they will do is to take a selfie. They will then go ahead and post them on their social media platforms and sit there idle, like a chicken hatching eggs, waiting for likes and comments. Such a girl cannot not be trusted with the process of pasteurization. All milk will spill into the fire. A great insult to our ancestors.

Campus girls are nothing but walking corpses. They don’t know how to behave themselves. Their legs are always aching to part and one can do nothing to keep them closed. They don’t even remember who took their virginity let alone when they lost it. They are used to the thing so much that to them it’s no big deal. It’s just another action like peeling potatoes with a short knife. I don’t want to have a wife that will be the watering pot to every thirsty male in the village.

Those campus girls you see shining bright wagging their corpulent behinds also don’t know how to cook. Talk of even boiling water which is a huge task to them. They are a bunch of lazy girls who would not go out with the village folk to fetch water or even collect firewood. What they perfectly know is sitting down and waiting, as if they grew up with manna Lord Almighty brings down from heaven.

They seldom do cleaning but you will always be tempted to think that they rest on the immediate hand of God. Si cleanliness is second to godliness ama? Talking of that, their chapatis are hard, it’s like eating crisps. The only thing they know how to cook is indomie. I can’t imagine living a house without the African delicacies, githeri, mukimo and the rest.

Clearly, they don’t have the capacity to hold a family. Most only know how to drink the night away and shaking their behinds as if shedding of all troubles of the earth, in posh restaurants and lounges. This girl downs endless shots of vodka without even flinching and walks without staggering. That explains how much she has become a tanker, she has evolved to a beast.

The same vodka you’ll close your eyes when gulping and when asked you’ll say, ‘Ni kali’. If you ever ask some of them, waking up in a room not so familiar is a spectacle they have lived to hold . It’s a happening like the sun that will rise from the East when morning comes, not asking for permission to anyone, especially those who think the night was short. With that kind of a woman, you will go on with your breadwinning activities and come back home only to be welcomed by angry stares of hungry children.

Still on that point, my son will not, and I repeat will not suck a tattooed breast. A breast whose nipples have been twisted left and right like the tuner on the analogue radio we have back at home. He’ll come from a womb, and I don’t mean the womb that acts as a site where all chemicals of deposited to avoid conception.

You tell me how exactly will you domesticate a girl who has no interest in books? She never attends classes but her name is ever present in the attendance list. Poor boy child, he always gives the updates on the venue of the classes and does the signing and on exams, she secures a seat next to him, all for a hug.

You’ll never find this girl anywhere near the school. On inquiry, you’ll find out she always visits her relatives on the weekend. You’ll hear of a cousin who stays in Kahawa, an uncle in Roysambu, a certain aunty in Juja. Damn! Are you the only one who doesn’t have a relative?

However, not all campus girls are that rotten. There is this group that seems to understand themselves well but still they don’t qualify to be a wife. This type believe in nonsense called women empowerment such that they see their lives paradise without men. As such you will find them chasing after degree after degree without bothering who is chasing after them. This type walk their ovaries over the hills and everywhere in their quest of getting more papers until it’s too late. If you marry such, it’s not a wife you’ve brought into your house but a study partner. I want a wife, not a study partner. Poor you if she earns more than you do, my brother you’ll do the dishes and mop the floor unwillingly.

Now I hope I have cleared the mist as to why I’ll rather burst a knee and ask for Chematian’s hand in marriage rather than the slay queens we have back at the City. I want a woman I’ll enjoy grilling corn with her, wake up to sour porridge in the morning, a woman that will uphold her end of the bargain, the promise we made before the altar, to hold and to cherish, for rich for poor, till death do us part. That woman is definitely not the campus girl. She’s definitely not and I repeat she’s not my wife!