How wives were vetted back in the day

Among my people, when a boy faces the knife and becomes a man, protocol demands that he ceases to sleep under the same roof as his mother and father. In days gone by, he would wander into the bush and return with construction materials. And his father, no doubt swelling with pride, would strut out of his hut, jab a finger at a spot and say, “Build here.”

The standard procedure was that a boy’s hut — the simba — was positioned nearest to the gate. This served two purposes. One, when enemies came, they would have to first contend with the young warrior before reaching the old man. But there was a second reason.

When a boy faced the knife, it was expected that young girls would begin to pay him clandestine courtesy calls, hence the simba was positioned to allow them to sneak in through the hedge. Not that the matter was that clandestine. The young man’s sisters knew it because it is they who smuggled food for her into their brother’s simba.

Being girls, they whispered the little secret to their mother who doubtlessly whispered to her husband under the cover of darkness. Naturally, the old man would grunt like he didn’t care, although he smiled in the darkness, recalling his own youthful days, now sadly gone. “He takes after me...” he would muse, never mind that it took an army of aunts to find him a wife.

The shy girl never knew it, but a thorough vetting process would be underway. The old man activated his contacts across several villages, his wife did the same, and each time their daughters smuggled food into the simba, they would be investigating this or that. It was like a massive police operation, only without teargas and gunshots. Over time, the girl would overcome her initial shyness, to the extent of going to the river and helping out in the kitchen as an intern.

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At that point, her life would literally be on the line because the moment she placed lousy ugali on the table, she would be toast. But don’t for one moment imagine that her parents had no idea of what was going on. Just like in her boyfriend’s case, she would need her sisters to sneak out now and then. They too, would whisper to her mother, who would whisper to her husband.

Oh yes, right across the ridge, another clan was investigating their potential son-in-law — vetting him! Today, young men and women, without vetting their spouses, forge into holy matrimony only to regret later. What happens today is that an elder could be watching his cows when his long lost son would saunter into the compound with a witchdoctor or night runner’s daughter and say, “Dad, meet my wife”. The cheek of it!