Poetherapy 2.0

Why I love my wife

Anyone who knows my wife understands why I'm always moody and gloomy. She's an absolute nag. But she wasn't always like this. Her total disrespect for me started five years into our marriage when at one time she barked that I was an idiot in front of our kid. I'm not sure whether I'll ever forgive her for that.

Ivanthia is a stunning 24 year old woman. But what bothers me about this wife of mine is that she has no tincture of any wifely attributes in her anymore. The fact that should I divorce her – not that I plan on doing so – another man perhaps better and wealthier than me will draw her into his arms in a flash does not elude me. But whether that man would ever see five years of marriage, as I've done with her, is all but a matter of guessing.

Now let me start the discourse from where my matrimonial conundrums begun.

Sometime in 2008, when everyone in Zimbabwe counted it a great fortune to be in possession of a 5kg of maize meal, a sachet of cooking oil, oil and a bundle of vegetables, I came home from work fatigued from the tasks that my authoritarian company boss had thrown my way. On that day I had left Ivanthia money to buy some relish, which she had to mix with homemade peanut butter in an effort to make a vegetable condiment. I then, after greeting her, ensconced myself on a kitchen table chair in our one-roomed house, expectantly waiting to be served the meal of the day. But this did not happen, a variance that made me enquire, "Ivanthia, why haven't you served me my sadza?"

"The sadza is there but there is no relish," she replied. From the tone of her voice I could sense she was seething with anger over something.

"What do you mean there is no relish?" I said calmly, "Didn't I give you money for it in the morning?"

"Kudzi, ita semunhu mukuru(act like a grown up)" she yelled. "Didn't I tell you that your son is sick? So, where did you expect me to get the money to have him checked at the clinic?"

"Why don't you lower your voice," I interjected her in a try to douse her fires. But her flames grew even bigger. "I used the useless dollars you gave me on him. So you better give me money to buy relish otherwise we'll all sleep on empty stomachs, unless of can stomach eating sadza with nothing to go with it because personally I can't!"

This spat certainly took me by surprise. I tried to figure out, in vain, what had come over my wife whom I knew to be virtuous.

"Perhaps the problem is with me," I soliloquised. Fortunately, on this dreary day I still had some money on me, which I begrudgingly have her. And she bought some matemba (dried fish) and an ounce of cooking oil, sold from a street corner in Glen View where I resided.

Self-judgement is always regarded as farfetched. But looking at myself in the mirror, I can tell you with no modicum of doubt that I'm a caring, loving husband. The economic hardships that had visited the entire country had taken a huge toll on all and sundry. Thus, my failure to adequately provide for my family was cracking the social pillar that supported my marriage.

I tried to assure Ivanthia that things would soon be okay but she would retort that she didn't eat 'okays.' In days when I would completely fail to give her money to buy food, she would throw temper tantrums at me. She would accuse me of not being a man enough to take care of such a small family as ours, yet Joyce's husband from next door took care of his six member family with no hassles. In this economy, I could not imagine how Joyce's husband, a city council worker, eked out a near ostentatious livelihood when some of us had to crane our necks just to get the inflation-eaten $100 000 note to buy small things such as a quarter bar of soap. All this pained me a great deal. But what made things even more painful was the way Ivanthia's boorish traits metamorphosed her into a whiner, always gnawing at the little peace I still managed to amass in this epoch of unprecedented national economic pestilence.