Burning Bushes

She wasn't filled with as much happiness as she thought she would be. It was probably the excitement all around her rubbing off on her. She wasn’t sure if she was happy or if she was relieved or maybe satisfied with the idea that her family was happy with her choice of man.

This wasn’t how she envisioned things would turn out. She thought after being supported through university by her parents she would finally be independent and try to discover herself: be on her own for the first time, have her own place and be her own woman etc.

As she stood in her father’s compound that harmattan evening watching the burning bushes which was a very common phenomenon that time of year, probably the coldest time of year in those parts, she wondered if that was how her marriage was going to be like: burning all bright and shiny with as much force as the whirlwinds which gave these wildfires momentum. Was this union going to be as short-lived as this bushfire? Would it consume her whole being, robbing her of her true essence? Was she ready to be consumed like this?

 She lost her thoughts in the burning bushes again. She didn’t understand why people saw the need to burn the dried bushes, weeds and twigs since they didn’t harbor any snakes or such harmful creatures which they always blamed for their actions of setting flame to twig.

The burning bushes sent off little sparks into the air and heaved out more flames than smoke. The fire brightened up the whole area casting huge shadows of passersby onto the walls of her polygynous neighbour’s thatched house. For an onlooker, it was a sight to behold. It looked breathtaking but she knew that in the morning it would leave nothing but ashes and blackened twigs and sticks mixed with an even blackened soil.

She wondered if that’s how her amiliya would be like; a lovely ceremony for the invitees but a door of no return for her. She had no idea where these mixed feelings were coming from because it wasn’t an arranged marriage she was getting into. She and her soon to be husband had met and courted over a long distance relationship for about a year. The whole marriage business seemed to have come out of the blue. He was nice and lovely, at least, as far as she knew. He was never around for more than a fortnight the whole year they had been courting. She wondered if she was making the biggest mistake or the best decision of her two and half decades of existence. She still wasn’t sure if she was tying the proverbial knot for all the right reasons. She felt like he fit perfectly into her family’s ideals more than he fit in her own ideals. He was capable of providing her with security-financial especially.

For the education deprived members of her family, he was a huge catch. He was a borga and that meant he was automatically “loaded.” She still couldn’t believe that people preferred to bask in this naïveté. Whenever they had the chance to spread the news about their beloved daughter’s amiliya they were sure to add that he was coming down to settle down with her; as if that guaranteed a blissful marriage. Mtcheew!

-WFM