Of culture, love and marriage

Si kwa ubaya - is how we say it in Swahili – but I need to clarify something. I am a creative writer who is passionate about relationships. Being the foundation of society, the family requires to function; otherwise, we will have a genuinely dysfunctional community.

At the heart of the function is, of course, the couple made up of a man and woman in a union called marriage.

Here is the disclaimer then, I am not a marriage counsellor. I have probably told you to leave your abusive spouse if you write to me sharing about blatantly abusive behaviour. I have most definitely told you to man or woman up.

I told you to stop being immature, that marriage is not for little boys or girls, but for grown-up men and women when you complained to me that your wife does not like washing your innerwear or that your husband now walks with a broken back carrying all the family’s financial responsibilities.

“But he’s the provider!”

Anyone one of you, but mostly both of you, should earn your family and personal upkeep. For those who believe in a higher power, God is the ultimate provider and decides who can bring in what, but together you pool and make it work.

“But she should serve me, submit to me…”

Nope. You serve each other, after all; it takes two to dance the tango. Submit is a whole other discussion that has been so grossly misinterpreted that it will take a seminar to work through its actual meaning, at least in the Biblical context.

Accommodating of abuse

What am I about today?

So, a lady wrote to me, recommending a particular book, ostensibly for married women. A confessed reading addict – though of fiction – but still cannot resist even a non-fiction recommendation - I searched far and wide and found the book.

I know it sounds cliché’ but I read it, and it offended my senses in every sense.

As a feminist Christian, the chances are that I will question the norms, a lot and reading this book got me doing exactly that. In a nutshell, it is a book propagating the very acts of servitude, preached as submission, that have left many a wife depressed and accommodating of abuse.

Shockingly, the book has sold thousands of copies globally, and it concerns me when we preach the same message to our daughters. We abate the unhealthy behaviours in the marriage relationship when we question them.

Still, we stamp the same when we misquote the Holy Scriptures, usually out of context to justify what we preach.

I shared my thoughts with a former college mate who also loves to read and engage in –intellectual- debates.

Culture and religion

She explained that culture and religion play a big part in how we interpret what we read. Love means a different thing to, say, an African husband from the Lake region as it does to the one from the semi-arid lands of Maralal.

Considering that culture is dynamic and keeps evolving as we mingle with others from other cultures, could it be why there is a different understanding of something as basic as love in a marriage?

Indeed, she reminded me that women were convinced that a violent husband was loving in some cultures because he took his time to beat her!

“But, a couple must decide what should take preference. Their religious stand on the marriage relationship or culture. Often, there will be a clash in some aspects.” 

In Kenya, a melting pot of cultures, if ever there was one, this lesson hits home the most. I am sure we have all held biases or perceptions about spouses from other tribes. Those of us in mixed marriages, as it is, have to decide what will take precedence when there is a culture clash.

That book probably offended me because it relied on the author’s culture (and misquoted Biblical verses) and assumed that I, an African reader, would interpret the message from her cultural context.

What might seem as easy to her as submit and your husband will surprise you with flowers could mean to me or to another wife from a culture that mostly tolerates spousal abuse, takes in abuse demurely, and hopefully gets out alive.

Karimi is a wife who believes in marriage. [email protected]