Why do husbands withhold information from wives?

Ukeerwa i mwiri is a saying in my language whose literal English translation reads, ‘your body shall inform you.’ For example, a certain supermarket operates in most of our major shopping malls in our capital city. When you spend a certain amount on shopping from their store, you get a free parking ticket. Only the tellers will not let you know in on this.

I used to get the bigger payment receipt followed by a smaller one. For many months, I assumed that it was simply a tax calculation or some other retail process that I did not need to worry my already overburdened brain about. While shopping with a friend, she jumped to retrieve the smaller receipt I had folded and disposed of in the bin one day.

“You have one-hour free parking with that receipt!” she screamed at my surprised look.

“Why in heavens didn’t they ever tell me about this, all this time?” I was stunned.

“Ukeerwa i mwiri.”

 She spoke my language and quickly reminded me that the supermarket cashiers did not consider it important to let me know of such vital information. It was my prerogative to dig deeper if I wanted to know more, and even then, there was no guarantee that I would have the full depth of information. One would expect that such a brand would surely make it a priority to give the customers complete and clear information consistently; after all, that parking ticket is meant to be a value add.

Our medical practitioners are infamously notorious for sharing information with the same restraint as that of their prescriptions. They will rarely give you more information than you can pry out of them. I was on antibiotics a while ago and informed a friend over a coffee date that I could not take a glass of wine because of the medication. She laughed and asked.

Avoiding alcohol

“But you are taking tea with milk! Shouldn’t you avoid milk while on antibiotics?”

“I didn’t know that. I only know about avoiding alcohol only because I had to ask my doctor. Otherwise, he did not bother to inform me.” Thanks to online search tools, we can now get endless information about a drug, illness and even self-diagnose and prescribe.

Another lot guilty of dishing the ukeerwa i mwiri moments are spouses, specifically husbands. Trust me; I am not biased here. Even research has proven that women are better communicators than men. I will not quote which research, as this will derail my trail of thoughts. Ukeerwa i mwiri. A woman will tell you the nitty-gritty details of something, painting a picture for you and add background music until you can experience the moment as if you are watching a movie of it. She will describe major and minor characters, take you through the plot and subplots, and describe the setting so well that when she tells you about the rainy morning, you will feel the raindrops on your skin.

Tired of explaining

On the other hand, a man will mostly expect your body to tell you the details of anything. It is as if husbands get tired of explaining.

We mostly attend parent meetings in school together, but sometimes, one of us is not available. When I attend alone, I make notes to give Hubby as many details as possible about what the teachers shared about our children’s progress. By the end of my briefing, he was as thoroughly informed as he was at the meeting. And yes, I start from the begging, how the seating arrangement was made, and so forth to who gave the vote of thanks.

When I missed the last parent meeting, your guess is as good as mine about the kind of response I got when I asked for details of the progress updates.

“They are okay.”

“Yea, but give me details,” I probed.

“The school said we can access the reports from the parent portal.”

“But why then did they call us?”

“Well, it was about to subject choices.”

I ended up feeling like an officer from the criminal investigations department interrogating a reluctant suspect.

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