OUR CORRESPONDENT shares a tragicomic tale of a man with three women  in which  his sister-in-law’s treacherous behaviour leads her elder sister into depression with  grotesque consequences. Read on…

IF the story I narrate, dear reader, sounds surreal or shocks you, you may be forgiven for think so. But then, the reality is, incredible things happen in life and it’s after they have happened to us or others close to us, that we come to believe they are no fiction.
Many years ago, I found myself in a relationship with a certain man.
This man was no ordinary man; he was a big wig as he was at the helm of one of the leading parastatal companies in Zambia.
He was so successful managing a large group of companies that he ended up being the longest serving chief executive officer of the conglomerate.
Some who had run the group served for two to three years only, but the man’s business acumen helped him out-do them all.
Our meeting was purely accidental. I had travelled to Kabwe for respite from the problems I had with my boyfriend in Lusaka.
In Kabwe, I briefly stayed at a lodge where, coincidentally, my new man friend also stayed.
One evening, I visited the bar and when this business guru also came to the bar, he spotted me and wasted no time coming over to greet me.
We exchanged a few pleasantries. I asked the man what he did for a living and he told me he was a business executive.
The man said flatteringly that in all his life, he had never seen a woman as beautiful as me and he told me he wanted to know a little more about me. Since I was single, I started imagining that perhaps this was the man who was going to answer my dream of getting married and I told him everything he needed to know.
Of course, I asked him about his marital status and he conveniently omitted the truth, stressing he was single and hence his desire to know a little more about me because, he said, he too was thinking like me-to marry.
As time went by, our relationship blossomed and I must say the man looked serious about his intentions, until the truth, which always has a way of emerging from suppression, came out abruptly.
My potential husband had fallen ill for some time and he was diagnosed with a serious disease- cancer of the colon.
He couldn’t hide this and he phoned me to go and see him at his house one day. I was a little skeptical about going to his house and it took much persuasion for me to be moved.
When I got into the house, a modern mansion, I found a number of people, relatives and friends gathered in the living room who had also come to see the patient.
Lunch time came and a woman, who turned out to be the man’s wife, came to invite us all to the table. Drama was beginning to unfold!
There was an array of dishes on the table and opening the lids of the chafing dishes revealed a shocker.
There was an impressive variety of foods, including t-bone steaks, chickens and potatoes. Ironically and to our collective dismay, all were uncooked!
The woman stood in one corner and ordered us to start eating this rare meal of marinated, but raw meat and vegetables!
Everyone was repulsed by the unsightly scene and they asked to be excused, but the patient prodded us to cut some bits and pretend to eat as the wife watched. In fact, the wife incredibly ordered us: “Eat your lunch, what are you waiting for?”
It was a gory, horrendous and shameful experience which only someone insane could indulge in. My man’s wife was insane.
I asked the man, ‘my man,’ why his wife had that problem and he explained that it was history repeating itself.
The mother of his wife kept a cousin who slept with the husband who impregnated the cousin.
Then, the same woman who was insane (let’s call her Mrs X) decided to go and pick up the mother from the village to come and stay with my ‘man’ and the insane wife in town.
So as they stayed together, Mrs X decided to put the child who was born from the cousin (her younger sister) in school.
But the mother said, “uyu umwana waleta pano uwapwishishe ichupo”.
She is the one who caused my marriage to fail and has caused me to stay here. I’d have loved to stay with my husband.
The woman from the village said she looked after the mother of this girl and “she started sleeping with my husband.” When this child grows up, she will start sleeping with your husband, the woman warned Mrs X prophetically.
And indeed it came to pass. The girl grew up, completed school and started sleeping with the husband, who was also my man and he impregnated her.
Now, how Mrs X discovered the relationship between ‘our man’ and her younger sister was when she asked her who had made her pregnant and the girl said it was some Tanzanian man who ran away after discovering that she was pregnant.
The elder sister, Mrs X, believed that story and things seemed okay. Now, the treacherous younger sister used to live at some block of flats where Mrs X had a friend. The friend tipped Mrs X that her husband, frequented the flats in the night and had an affair with “your younger sister.”
The friend used to see the husband around 24.00 hours going into the girl’s flat.
Mrs X dismissed the story but one day, her friend informed her that she had seen her husband and the girl kissing in the car park as he was leaving the flats presumably for his home.
“Do you know your sister is going out with your husband?” the friend asked Mrs X, but she retorted: “I don’t think my sister can be going out with my husband because I raised her like my own child.
I got her from the village when she was only seven years old. She can’t do that, you are lying.”
The friend suggested, “Why don’t you come to my house and stay a bit longer than usual and prove for yourself what I’m saying because your husband comes here every day.”
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. She agreed to the plan and stayed until 21.00 hours and the friend and Mrs X who had strategically positioned themselves on the balcony saw the Benz, the husband’s car, drive into the courtyard.
The friend then said, “There is your husband.
With your younger sister. Do you now see what I meant?” Mrs X couldn’t believe her eyes and that’s how she collapsed with shock.
When they returned home, Mrs X asked her husband about his relationship with her younger sister and after a long and acrimonious slinging match, he admitted the affair.
Immediately she was told the truth, her blood pressure shot up and she was taken to the hospital and was admitted.
From there, she went into severe depression and that’s how she became insane.
The husband took her to various hospitals abroad for mental treatment, but to no avail.
The girl was after her brother-in-law’s money. After what she did to her sister, she encouraged the man to divorce his wife because she was insane.
The girl wanted her elder sister’s husband to marry her, but the man refused saying he could not chase her from his house because “I’m the cause of the problem she has.”
The husband died a few years ago and the woman is now reported to be normal.
Meanwhile, I had my own problems with this girl who wanted to snatch a man from her elder sister. One day we even fought.
This happened when she decided to have an affair with a Congolese man.
She now started sleeping out and people told her brother-in-law, also my man, what she was doing and that’s how ‘our man’ decided to have someone else, me, instead of trying to marry the sister-in-law.
That’s how we started going out.
One day, I was coming from Kafue where we (me and ‘our man’) had gone to buy meat and we broke journey at Tall Trees, a popular joint then, on Kafue Road to buy a few drinks.
My rival was there with her Congolese boyfriend.
Immediately she saw the Benz, she came, leaving her man alone.
Our man was coming from the counter with drinks and asked me to close the doors but I wondered why he was asking me to lock the doors.
As I locked the door, however, I saw my rival and, presently, she was knocking on my window.
This was the first time for me to see her; I didn’t know her. She ordered me to open the door and said “this is my husband’s car.” And that’s how I opened.
I knew our man’s wife was not okay, having seen her when she served us raw food.
Our man quickly entered the car and decided to drive off to avoid causing an embarrassing scene as he was respected in society.
But before we could drive off, having opened the car, the other woman immediately started pulling my hair and I decided to jump out and started beating her.
She insisted her sister’s husband was also her husband, but I challenged her to explain what she was doing here at that hour instead of being home.
But she was told off, “You are not my wife” and he instead said I was his wife. I am still not married, but I learnt my lesson from this experience.
The lesson is; never rush into affairs with men before you know them thoroughly.
I guess it’s because of this that I’m extra careful not to repeat my past mistake.
One thing I’ve come to accept is that God’s time is the best in all we do and I leave everything in His hands.
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