Kisii women are looking for men to marry

 Some willingly want to settle as second wives

Sometime in January, a popular Facebook Group called Amachuma na Amasase went viral and in three short weeks garnered over 100,000 members and still growing. It is the most popular group among the Abagusii on Facebook currently.

For some reason when people joined the group, they introduced themselves, and declared their marital status, quickly turning the group to look like a dating site, to the chagrin of its founders who had different intentions.

The hilarious thing about the group is the use Ekegusii phrase “Tindi pipo” (“I don’t have people”). In Kisii, when someone wants to know if you are married they ask you, “Do you have people?”

Thousands and thousands of women took to the page, putting their best pictures, and in best postures, most of them turned out to be single and searching. Many men did the same, but there were also a bunch of jokers to be dismissed on spot. However, most women were serious about their present single-status and their want for a man to walk them down the aisle.

Most women I noticed were in the stronger side of their 20s and others in their 30s. All beautiful, graceful and ‘wifable.” I have no doubt that a Kisii women usually make the best wives if treated well.

They can nag, can be overly possessive, and insecure, but to me, these are good traits. Traits of someone who actually cares about a relationship. And it is for a reason: Kisii men have a problem zipping up, the better for their women to keep them on toes.

So, with their famously good wife credentials, why the desperate cry for men on Facebook? If anything, Facebook only exposes them to jokers and players who use vulnerable women for their short-term libido problems.

Indeed, Facebook as a platform has enabled mutually consenting adults who are sexually starving to meet and wet each other’s dry spell (no pun intended), and some of the women beyond marriage, equally want a quick fix, the better from a good plumber, and Kisii men are good plumbers.

And increasingly, women have become realistic about their expectations. With the absence of serious men, lately some are willing to share the few good men available. Some even willingly want to settle as second wives, or can settle for mpango-wa-kando without much drama as long as the man sorts the bill.

But still some want marriage. Kisii and Nyamira County is having a problem that many societies with higher literacy levels face. It is made worse by the fact that it is a deeply patriarchal society that hardly knows how to react and respond to a fast-changing society.

The domination of the Adventist creed has not helped much, given it entrenches the conservative attitude of the society. Conservativeness only favours heterosexual men.

So, we have many women who have gone to school, up to university level, overly liberalised, but the men still vote on the conservative side. To date, if I show up with a woman in trousers or one armed with a pierced nose, my elders will not be impressed at all.

But when women are exposed, they never want to go back to a society that is prudish. They like it in towns and cities where the anonymity of the city accords them some dignity to pursue their lives freely without being judged as ‘spoilt’, whores, and other curses.

The Kisii men in towns are willing to use and dump them as soon as they want someone to marry.

As many Kisii men as possible always look for a woman they can lord it over for a lover and wife. That means many smart and independent women are given a wide-berth and for idealistic and liberal women in the 20s, it takes them a while before they can know what the problem is. By then, it is too late.

They choose to marry out of the community, but a few are left without mates and they have to come back home when looking for a mate. Either they compromise their standards or live as single women.

But what the group has taught me, women still want marriage, contrary to what a few women in NGOs and the corporate spheres have telling us. There is nothing wrong with women wanting a man to marry absolutely.

@nyanchwani

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