Not ripe for Marriage

Photo credit: Gerry imagesmb

I always wanted to marry early for very strange reasons. First I wanted to have a right over all the meat in the pot of soup like mother did in our home.

The second reason was that I wanted to have children early and so when others passed their slum books around the last week of secondary school for friend's parting words and contact details, I asked for wedding gifts on my wedding in a few years. My target age was twenty-one years old.

My friends laughed hard but I was very serious. At eighteen I was ready for marriage, I never wanted to date any man. I prayed for movie kind of romance where a car would knock me down and the handsome young driver of the vehicle would rush me to the hospital stay by my side and we would fall in love upon my recovery, get married and live happily ever after. 

That did not happen, at eighteen I was flat chested and obviously not ripe for marriage. I wasn't knocked down by a car and there was no love upon recovery.

I'm seriously old school when it comes to early marriage and so when I hear people complain about girls getting married at a young age I don't quite see the big deal.

When I say early I mean from twenty years and not eighteen and below. 

Someone recently shared the story of her daughters. The first one got married as soon as she turned twenty which was a long battle between the woman and her husband who vehemently refused to let his daughter marry that early.

After much convincing, the man of the house accepted to give her daughter out in marriage to a man who was ten years older than her.

Ugolisa (not real name) was already in her third year in the university when she wedded her husband in a private ceremony. 

By the following year she graduated from school and it was such a joy and a big relief to her father who had feared that she would drop out of school to start making babies.

Her husband Barth knew exactly what he wanted for his wife. They both took great care not to fall pregnant while in school and as soon as she was done with her compulsory service year, the couple left the shores of the country to both further their education.

A year after they travelled, they sent a message to their parents that they were expecting a baby girl. Ugolisa's father insisted on going with his wife to help out with the baby. He needed to see the living condition of her daughter who was raised with a silver spoon.

He wasn't quite prepared for  what he saw when they arrived the US. Barth had a contract job as a drilling engineer which took him out of the US a lot. He pursued his PhD part time while Ugolisa also ran a part time masters programme.

They lived in a posh area in a very beautiful house. Ugolisa's father was surprised that the young couple could live so well. He had always asked his daughter very politely to save money each time she sent some to him.

It all made sense to him, Barth's contract job paid him well and  Ugolisa's who combined work and study worked as a software engineer and earned well too. 

The icing on the cake was when their neighbours visited to say hello to the parents from Nigeria; they spoke so highly of the couple and how peaceful they were. They had become role models even though they were very young.

Ugolisa's father was so proud of his son in law and he told him that much. On the day of the baby's christening Barth was all over the place making sure that guests were comfortable  which his father in law observed.

He also observed how he loved and respected his daughter. He never gave him the chance and so he was pleasantly shocked by the young man's wisdom. Before he travelled back home, he blessed the couple and thanked Barth for taking care of his daughter.

Three years later, Ugolisa's younger sister Mmanna (not real name) had a suitor. She was twenty-one years old.

Her father wasted no time in giving his blessing. The marriage was a disaster!

\TO BE CONTD\