Phew! When a girl is all yours

You arrive at Carol’s home an hour late, and her relatives cause a kerfuffle. You have to pay some fine, Sh10,000 at the gate to be allowed in. The man manning the gate says it playfully, but you can tell he means business.

“It is wrong to keep your in-laws waiting,” he says with a glee that you so much dislike. Once inside, you are confronted with greening women, presumably her aunts. You hate them instantly. Of course you have heard that dowry negotiations are not for the faint-hearted. But nothing prepares you to the melodrama that surrounds these negotiations.

You can give your kidney to be somewhere else than at a table, with men, pretending to be friendly, but all the while extorting money from you like you are a walking version of De La Rue.

Whereas Carol’s mother is a cool woman, relieved that her daughter is finally getting married, Carol’s extended family is full of it.

As you settle with your entourage, you can see one of the men from her delegation, eye-studying the cars you arrived in and you can read his mind that he is mentally calculating how much dowry you will pay. It hits you that you made a mistake arriving in pricey SUVs, the rugged road to Carol’s bundus notwithstanding.

When you settle, and having dispensed with prayers, the man, who looks like their spokesperson switches straight from the prayer mode to business mode.

For starters, he is annoyed that you have kept him waiting for more than an hour and he has to be calmed down with something.

 “Sh5,000, that is,” the man who was studying your cars says, adding, “that is also the amount of money for convening this meeting.”

They all laugh mirthfully, but you are by now full of contempt. Carol looks too decent to have come from a bunch of these losers.

As the women set up the tables for food, you all engage in small talk, mostly on political stuff, but it soon emerges that you belong to the opposite sides of the political divide. Carol’s family support the government and you are from opposition. You both realize that will be a dangerous ground to tread, and happily digress to something more neutral, like the cultural differences of your respective communities.

You can see the uncles silently cursing why Carol is marrying outside her community, even worse the least friendly. The discussions at the table are pained, by the historical problems that your two communities have been having since independence.

For every argument, Charlie offers an equally powerful corresponding argument in your favour. Whether school or employment, you and Carol complement each other so well.

So, there is no single favour Carol will bring to your marriage, uncle Charlie reminds them, when they cap their asking price at Sh2 million.

“My nephew here can get a younger girl, equally schooled, childless, and a lower price,” Charlie tells them bluntly, and you can see the agony on their faces.

Dowry negotiations can be ugly. Charlie’s bluntness serves them right, for they have no right to ask for that amount of money. Charlie, argues with them that Sh500,000 is more than enough, but Carol’s kin, stand their ground.

In the end, you settle for Sh1.2 million and you pay Sh800,000 in cash and the rest will be arrears that people pay, probably until they die.

With that you leave, setting stage for a wedding, which you hope no Carol’s relative will attend.