Features
Getting a wife (Part 2)
The most important factor in any courtship that is likely to lead to marriage is the mother-in-law palaver. If the mother-in-law is not in agreement it complicates matter. If she doesn’t like the man, she’d advise her daughter at dawn not to go and take any vulture for a husband.
It becomes worse when she does a little bit of detective work and realises that the man her daughter is about to marry is not in any lucrative employment.
For example, if he is a bus conductor or a mason, the shrewd woman would simply tell her daughter: “Beware of church mouse.”
But if her daughter is truly in love, she’d ignore her mother and fall on her father to get it through. If her father gets on her side, he could convince her Mum to play ball. But before then daddy would naturally ask a few questions.
“You seem to be in love with this man, and I don’t have a quarrel with that. But your mother tells me the man is a mason.
Are you quite sure this man can look after you?”
The daughter immediately realises that her parents have already discussed the issue and have come to their own conclusion that masonry and a happy marriage can only be poles apart.
But the girl must put in a defence and tell her father that her man is only a mason pro tempore would soon be made a foreman with increased salary and peps, based on his track record as a distinguished worker who is also honest and has leadership qualities.
Naturally, daddy becomes impressed and would put in a word for her daughter.
To have a foreman is not too bad. But he must be careful how he presents the case before his wife so that it does not backfire. The fact is, his wife is allergic to nonsense.
“Akos has told me that her man would not be a mason for life. Soon he’d become a foreman and others would bow to him. I think he has the potential of becoming a big man.”
The woman would listen carefully while looking disdainfully at her husband and making sure he is not blaspheming.
HONEST
“How can you suggest to me that a dirty mason can become a foreman? Do you say he’d become a foreman here on earth or in hell? You must realise that Akos is a beautiful girl. Her callow mind is misleading her. Let us wait and see if her true prince is not lurking somewhere.
As for that mason day-dreaming of becoming a foreman the earlier you forgot about him, the better for me and you,” she’d say rather bluntly.
It turns out that the love-struck akupa realises that his prospective mother-in-law doesn’t like him. Whatever it is, though, he must try to woo her approval.
He does goes to her girlfriend’s house to see if he can strike an acquaintance with the terrible one. He is immediately confronted at the gate.
“I hear you are the one trying to so-call marry my daughter. In the first place I don’t dig your tribe. Secondly, I hear you are a mason day-dreaming that you are foreman or a quantity surveyor, I don’t want my daughter to marry a cockroach.” She’d sneer.’
The intention of the woman obviously is to wound the boy’s pride so that he is discouraged from pursuing the marriage proposal.
But she must be mistaken because mere words do not break love overnight.
The in-law hears nothing about the boy again until she notices her daughter vomiting uncontrollably.
“What is the matter?”
“I think I have malaria.”
“Akos that is a lie. Did you sleep with that idiot?”
“No, I didn’t. You warned me not to.”
“Tell the truth before I drive you out of this house. You slept with that cockroach isn’t it? What exactly did he do to you? Tell me I won’t say anything to father.”
She is compelled to say that “the cockroach” actually did many things