Biggie,
I don’t know how you can help me come out of the quandary we are in? I left for South Africa seven years ago following my husband who was working in Durban. A year after joining him, we separated because he eloped with some lady from Mangochi, something that also prompted me to find a man from Kasungu, who was also working in Durban. The problem is that after our repatriation, I can’t go back to Mzimba because our matrimonial home is a ‘no go zone’. The bad thing is that the Kasungu man has told me he left a village housewife who is ready to welcome him home. I am currently stuck at my aunt’s house in Kawale heavily pregnant with lots of excuses of when I will be going back home.
What should I do?
Brenda, Kawale
Dear Brenda,
You left Malawi to follow a man, only to end up chasing a completely different one across Durban and now you have landed back in the warm heart of Africa—flat broke, heavily pregnant and squatting in Kawale. If this is not a classic case of a ‘Goli’ romance meeting a brutal Malawian reality, I don’t know what is.
Let us dissect your portfolio of romantic decisions, because right now, your structural adjustments are desperately overdue.
First, you are crying that you cannot go back to Mzimba because your matrimonial home is a “no-go zone.” My sister, the moment your Mzimba husband eloped with a lady from the lake district of Mangochi, that home ceased to be yours. You cannot compete with the specialised coastal engineering of a Mangochi rival; by now, she has probably redecorated the entire house and changed the locks. Accept that the Mzimba chapter is closed and archived.
Then, in your grief in Durban, you quickly found a ‘consolation prize’ from Kasungu. You thought you had found a co-navigator for your exile. What you forgot is that Malawian men working in South Africa operate under two distinct constitutions. There is the Durban Constitution, where you are the queen of the flat and the Home Constitution, which is heavily guarded by a patient, long-suffering village housewife who has been watering the tobacco nurseries and keeping the family estate intact for seven years.
Your Kasungu man did not find a wife ‘suddenly’—she was always there. You were simply his Durban heater, keeping him warm during the cold South African winters. Now that he has been repatriated, his default factory settings have automatically reloaded. If you pack your bags and head to Kasungu with your pregnancy, that village housewife will show you why she has been waiting seven years for her husband’s return; she will not negotiate with a pregnant interloper from Durban. Do not dare go there.
Currently, you are hiding at your aunt’s house in Kawale, giving endless excuses. Let me tell you about aunties in Kawale: their hospitality has a very short shelf life. In Kawale, houses are small, gossip travels faster than fiber-optic internet and a guest who is heavily pregnant and perpetually unemployed quickly becomes a budget deficit. Very soon, those “excuses” will no longer buy you a plate of nsima.
So, what should you do?
First, swallow your Durban pride. Stop pretending you are still in South Africa. You are in Kawale.
Second, do not fight the Kasungu housewife, but do not let the Kasungu man off the hook either. He is responsible for the child you are carrying. Summon your elders to officially contact his family in Kasungu. Let them know there is a grandchild on the way. In Malawi, a pregnancy cannot be repatriated or denied; he must pay for the child’s upkeep, even if he is doing it from his village farm.
Lastly, pack your bags and head to your own maternal home, not your ex-husband’s home in Mzimba, but your own parents’ or guardians’ village. It is better to face the temporary embarrassment of returning to your people than to wait for your aunt in Kawale to pack your things onto the veranda.
Next time you go to South Africa, follow a job, not a man’s shadow.
Yours in eternal wisdom,
Big Man Wamkulu
