I DON’T know how true it is, but I have often heard that men are usually good natured and helpful to the families they marry from than they are to the families they come from.
It is said that the good nature of men range from keeping the siblings of their wives whom they sponsor to schools up to college or university level.
While some men (not all men, of course) have been known to be very good to their wives’ relatives, they have also been known to have neglected their own relatives.
This being the case with some men, a lot of women have won accolades for being so caring for their relatives who include mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, aunties and uncles and nieces and nephews.
For this, there is even a saying which goes: If you educate a man, you educate an individual, but if you educate a woman, you educate a family or the nation.
Although the good wellbeing some men have shown to the members of their wives‘ relatives have paid dividends, they have not been so good to others who have even ended up regretting that they neglected their relatives whom they needed to run back to in case of problems such as divorces or deaths.
There have been times when some men have been faced with problems like losing employment while their wives remained in employment but the relatives of their wives blamed the women for looking after men they described as loafers and these men were chased away especially when the houses they were living in were rented ones and the wives were the ones paying rent.
Worse still, the men were chased away if they were staying with parents or any relatives of their wives.
But when the wives were fired, there were no such problems because men would continue taking good care.
Why was it so? I wondered.
I was prompted to think this way because some time last year, I went to one of the farming blocks in Ndola on the Copperbelt where I had gone to see a friend who had promised to secure me a farming piece of land.
It was while we were here when this friend of mine decided to take me around and show me some developments which had taken place in the area in recent times.
After taking some walk around, my friend decided that we go to one of the makeshift restaurants at the market place and have some refreshments.
When we got into the restaurant, my friend asked what drink I would take, but seeing that a good number of people were drinking brown and whiteopaque kankoyo beer, I thought having one packet of Chibuku shake shake would not be a bad idea.
This being a restaurant of some kind, foodstuffs like nshima with fish, beef and chicken were also sold here.
After my friend bought two packets of shake shake, we settled at a table and started drinking while my friend was telling me how to go about acquiring a plot for a small farm here.
As we were drinking and discussing, two men who were seated next to us and were eating nshima, started discussing someone they described as being a fool for having built a house at his in-laws’ plot.
“Balimutamfya pa famu. Kuti akula shani in’ganda pa famu yabapongoshi bakwe?(He has been chased away from the farm. How could he build a house at his in-laws’ plot?) one of the men was saying.
I thought this was something for me as an eavesdropper.
Why was the man chased away from the farm? Why was he called a fool for having built a house at his in-laws’ farm?
For all I know, it was not wrong for anyone to build a house for their in-laws, so why did these men think that the man was a fool for having done that?
I later came to know that the house the man had built at the farm was his and not for his in-laws and he was chased away because his wife had abandoned him.
“He was chased away? Where is he now?” the other man asked his friend.
The man who started the story made a bite on a chunk of meat before he swallowed a ball of nshima.
It was then that he started narrating to his friend what had happened to the man who was allegedly chased away from the farm.
What had happened was that the man had gone on retirement from the company he was working for in Ndola.
While he was in employment, the man, together with his wife, used to regularly visit his in-laws at one of the farming blocks in Ndola.
As he usually visited his in-laws, his wife persuaded him that they should build a house there because he would soon be on retirement and he would need a good place to settle on.
Agreeing with the idea, the man’s wife asked her father to give them a place within the farm area where they would build a house and do a bit of farming.
When the woman’s father agreed to give the couple a place, the man decided to sell the house they were living in, in one of the residential areas so that he could raise money for the construction of the house at the farm before he could get his retirement benefits from his place of work.
Later, the man got his retirement benefits. With this money, he bought some farm implements and a vehicle to use at his in-laws’ farm.
However, little did the man know that he would encounter some difficulties with his wife until much later when the woman deserted him after some misunderstandings!
The woman left the man at her father’s farm and relocated somewhere on the Copper belt.
It was after some time when relatives of the man’s wife approached the father to the woman and asked him why the man continued staying at this place when he was no longer with his wife.
“They asked his in-laws why the man was still at the farm when the wife had left him,” the man was explaining to his friend.
Eager just like me, his friend wanted to know what happened later.
The man who was taking his time narrating the story dunked his ball of nshima in the soup before putting it in the mouth and shaking his head sadly said:” The man was told to ‘take’ his house away from the farm.
“Abakashi benu baliya tata. Sendeni in’ganda yenu naimwe muleya mukwai” (Your wife has left this place, Mr Take your house and also go, please) the man explained that this was what the man’s in-law told him.
Taking the house away from the farm! How possible was it? Was it a portable house the man had constructed at his in-laws’ farm?
No. The man had put up a strong three bed roomed house with concrete blocks and nice corrugated asbestos roofing sheets.
To take the house away from the farm would have meant carefully pulling it down without breaking the bricks for him to take them to another place if he was to reconstruct the house.
The other man who was listening intently wondered why the man did not find a plot for himself elsewhere other than building at his in-laws’ plot.
The man who was narrating the ordeal said this was exactly what the man had realised later, but it was easy to be wise after the event.
The narrator said the man who was not a violent person, pleaded with his in-laws to let him stay but they refused.
He then asked the in-laws to buy the house he had built on their farm, but they still refused saying they already had a house there and they insisted that he should just take his house with him and the man had no choice but to just leave the in-laws’ premises.
He said the man’s retirement benefits had dwindled so low that he could not afford to build another good house somewhere and the only alternative was to get to one of the sprawling townships in Ndola where he is said to be renting a one bed roomed house while he does a bit of odd jobs here and there to keep himself going.
The good thing was that he had some grown up children with his wife who have since inherited the farm house which was built on their grand parents’ land.
“That was very bad. Why did the man not sue his in-law?” the other man asked his friend.
“Sue him for what? Unless it was his land,” the man said.
The two men finished eating their nshima and rested a bit before one of them got up and went to the counter to buy a tin of brown kankoyo.
My friend asked me whether I would like to have some nshima here.
As I had taken that Chibuku shake shake, I felt my tummy was full.
But I suggested we take more shake shake and as my friend walked to the counter to buy the beer, I was filled with pity as I thought of the treatment the man I did not even know had gone through. Potipher2014@gmail.com. 0955929796.