To marry or not to marry?

God ordains marriage, so the Bible says. A man shall leave his father’s house and join his wife and the two shall become one in body, spirit, soul. And what God has put together, let no man put asunder. In other words, marriage is a padlock!

Growing up as a young man, my fantasies have been predominantly about finding me a wife and lavishing all my virgin love on her, what childish innocence! However, my fantasies have since begun to swim in the river of oblivion. It is all dark: where and who can find a prudent wife?

My environment has done a good work at sowing seeds of skepticism about marriage. Now the question is: “To marry or not to marry?”
On my way to visit a relative, I was sandwiched by a bunch of what seemed like idlers talking about marriage stuff.

“Nze nyina abaana bana,” boasted a lanky fellow with a goatee “ate bulyomu ayina mama we” ( I’ve four children and each with a different mother.)

“Nga toja kumalako,” quipped another, meaning his colleague will not manage. This seemed to be the long-awaited cue for the others that had been silent for they all participated, giving opinions and suggestions from personal experience.

One thing became clear, insecurity justifies their actions. The man with four children from four mothers acted on insecurity to scoop the four women. It is a mad cycle. This year, you co-habit with one woman, (no guarantee of trust, so marriage is postponed) when she proves untrustworthy, the next year you go shopping for a second one (mind you, the first left you with a suckling baby).

In four years, you have gone through a cycle of four women with four children. The four have probably run to those who are superior to you in money matters. You are left with four children that you decide to dump at their grandmother’s. Oh poor old grandma!

You are left as a love hunter to wreck vengeance on innocent daughters of Eve. The result is broken marriages because you intruded on a once stable marriage, sleeping with your neighbour’s wife that had never seen the walls of Nandos. The poor man has no option but to divorce his wife for betrayal. The next thing you know, he has also joined the club of “single parents' love hunters.”

What is left is a cycle of cheating, cohabiting, single parenting, fornicating, homicidal lunatics who are citizens of this world. For us who have not tested the marriage institution but are anticipating the nuptial night, are led into the darkest darkness, the back stagers are fated for. The plague has caught my own peers.

In today’s Uganda, especially among the educated folks, the password is “No money No love”. Therefore, before you drive a Starlet or a Mark11, you can keep the marriage fantasies to yourself or you will join “the love hunter’s club”. Bachelorhood will soon become a lifestyle but also a sign of poverty.

God who ordained marriage sees a human race that has defied his command, driving posh cars hidden behind the tinted window screens reminiscent of Adam’s leaves (in hiding from God when he covered his nakedness), God calls,” Why are you hiding from me?”

And I will answer that for the human race, “We are ashamed because we are naked. Sin has stripped us off God’s covering. That is why HIV/Aids is killing many in unprecedented numbers. Surely, you need a sign to behave because we are a wicked generation!

To marry or not to marry? I will still marry, though the waves roll, they will not prevail. God still ordains marriage (not money).

Published in Daily Monitor on September 17, 2006