We shopped, wined and loved like royalty

They may look like the perfect couple, straight from a postcard, but when they met three years ago, it was a no-strings-attached relationship.

“It is really funny because we had heard about each other from our mutual best friend for seven years, but we had never met,” Yoni chuckles as he looks through a rack of shirts at a shop during the wardrobe makeover at The Junction.

But as fate would have it, on the day they met, Ashfa and Noelle were to have a girls’ day out, but Noelle was running late. Since Yoni was with her, she asked him to distract Ashfa while she got ready.

As soon as the two met, there was instant chemistry as they flirted harmlessly with each other. Two weeks later, they agreed to have a no-fuss relationship.

“We both had hang-ups from previous relationships and preferred a relaxed relationship. The kind where you don’t fuss about where the other person is, or who s/he is with,” Ashfa recalls.

Tacky from the start

Although they had chosen a carefree union, in practice they spent a lot of time together and before long Ashfa’s mother came to know about the relationship. Ashfa is an Indian of mixed blood — her great grandmother was married to a Pakistani, while her grandmother was married to a Sikh.

However, their family leans more on the India side and they would have preferred that she married an Indian. They tried all they could to get her to break off her relationship with Yoni.

To make matters worse, six months after they met, Ashfa got pregnant.

“I knew ours was a no-fuss relationship and I did not want to force Yoni into fatherhood if he was not interested. I told him: ‘I have what a woman could ever wish for, so if you want to leave that is OK’,” she throws back her head and laughs.

But Yoni would hear none of it. It was his baby, too, and he was going to stay. In fact, he proposed, but Ashfa declined, not once but a couple of times. However, two months later things changed.

Ashfa met a friend with whom she had a lengthy chat. She confessed that she was pregnant and that Yoni had proposed marriage, but she could not afford a wedding.

“It turned out he is authorised to conduct Nika (Muslim marriage ceremonies) and he told me we could even get married at his house right that moment. I told him we would go the next day,” she remembers.

When she mentioned this to Yoni, he was enthusiastic. But they both slept on it, thinking that by morning they would have come to their senses and chickened out. They did not. They went ahead to get married at a ceremony in the Kadhi’s house.

It was attended by six people: Ashfa and Yoni, the Kadhi, his two witnesses, and Yoni’s friend. It was a very simple wedding that cost only Sh10,000.

“We were all shocked because none of us really believed we had actually gotten married. It took two weeks for the realisation to sink in,” Yoni says.

Ashfa informed her sister and cousin, whom she asked to tell her mother that she was married and pregnant.

“When my cousin told her that I was pregnant, the first thing she asked was if I was married, but she did not make a big fuss when she found out I was. My sister had been reassuring her that my relationship with Yoni was fine; after all, my great grandmother was a Meru married to a Pakistani,” recounts Ashfa, the lastborn in a family of four girls.

Not so welcoming of the idea were members of her extended family, who went into prayer and tried everything to push Ashfa out of the marriage. Although their great grandparents were in an interracial marriage, the unwritten rule was that no one was to follow in their footsteps.

Everyone was expected to marry an Indian. The prevailing myths are that if you married a black man, he would mistreat you, you would suffer, and that he would end up marrying a second wife from his community. At family functions, Yoni was mostly ignored and this made his wife want to stomp off.

“They were waiting for us to split and for me to run to them crying, but that was not forthcoming. I was not going to leave the man I was comfortable with, to marry a person my family preferred.

“I tell them off but I have no control over them. I can’t fight them all but at least those who matter most — my immediate family members — do not mind Yoni,” Ashfa says.

That and her stubbornness have made some of her relatives accept him, and some even voted for them to win the Rediscover Romance contest. Yoni, too, had his share of flack to take for marrying Ashfa.

His mother, sister, and other relatives were unhappy that he had not followed the expected procedure of formal negotiations between two families before a wedding took place, but they could live with that. What they could not stand was that he had converted from being a Jehovah’s Witness to Islam in order to marry Ashfa.

“It is very rare for a Jehovah’s Witness adherent to convert to another denomination, let alone a different religion. My mum is not happy about it, but she does not pressure me. But there are aunties who beg me to reconvert at every opportunity.

“But I think it is best if we share one religion for the sake of our two-year-old daughter Marwa, as I would not want her to be confused,” he explains.

Winning formula

The pressure from their families and losing both their jobs made the couple grow closer, something that has helped their relationship withstand tumultuous times. Additionally, Ashfa, who does not usually enter contests or gamble, found it alluring to enter their photo in the contest to win a wardrobe makeover and a getaway at a luxurious resort at the foot of Mt Kenya.

“We never had a chance to have a honeymoon as everything happened so fast and we had to concentrate on the baby,” Ashfa explains.

“We also had been through so much, and although I was apprehensive at first, when we got it I embraced the idea and ran with it,” Yoni adds.

For their efforts, which included joining every group on Facebook to solicit votes, pestering everyone who would listen, and having their Facebook accounts suspended, they emerged the winners and were treated to all the trappings of the top prize: Cruising in a limousine around Nairobi on Thursday, shopping for a wardrobe makeover, and a weekend getaway at Mt Kenya Safari Club.

This was the first Valentine they were going to celebrate, and in a big way, since they got married three years ago.

Friday began with an early breakfast away from the bustle of the Nairobi CBD at the Norfolk Hotel after which the couple was ushered into a Landcruiser for a 190km journey to the Fairmont Mt Kenya Safari Club on the slopes of Mt Kenya.

This was going to be their first time at the resort, and when they got there they did not waste any time. After freshening up, they were treated to a sumptuous buffet lunch, then driven to the massage parlour for an hour of pampering.

After the massage, they headed to William Holden Cottage for a romantic dinner by a bonfire and serenaded by a guitarist who doubles as a waiter at the resort.

The next morning, they armed themselves against the early morning chill with jackets and trousers and were ready to ride horses through the adjacent Mt Kenya National Park, followed by a bush breakfast. Whenever Ashfa lamented that she wanted to take a break, Yoni would hear none of it. Instead he urged her on to other activities.

“You can’t come to a place like this and spend the time sleeping,” he teases her. I have always wanted to come here and now that I am here, I want to experience it all.”

And when it was all over, this is what they had to say:

“We usually have romantic dinners, but this was on another level: The food, the ambience, the time alone really gave us time to re-ignite our romance,” Yoni said.

Ashfa is still trying to adjust to the city’s pressures after a wonderful weekend away: “It was a stress-free holiday beyond our expectations.”

Watch Ashfa and Yoni’s experience on NTV on Saturday at 5pm and Sunday at 4.30pm, and on QTV on Sunday at 8pm.