When monogamy is the better option
May 07, 2010
Zzimwe, 63, is dead! The celebrated entrepreneur and sports administrator has left 19 children and four official wives. May God rest his soul in peace.
Zzimwe, 63, is dead! The celebrated entrepreneur and sports administrator has left 19 children and four official wives. May God rest his soul in peace.
Obua, 63, is dead! The celebrated football player and administrator has left 18 children and two official wives. May God rest his soul in peace. I have come to bury the dead not to sing their praises. I know this is a time of mourning, a time of forgetting the potholes and soccer corruption of no ordinary kind. It is a time to remember the good our elders left for this country. But within the praises for road construction equipment and the glorious left foot, I cannot wrest my heart from those 37 children and six mothers, whose lives are now going to be thrown into turmoil, courtesy of these two fallen agemates who died this week.
They may have had wills, but that does not make matters better. Wills are about dividing and distributing. And the tearing up of any unit (even when it is Southern Sudan) does not augur well for the constituents and their future. That is why Bushenyi district (former) people are in court.
As we returned from paying our last respects, the lives of the bereaved families kept on pressing my heart, sharing the hurting space Arsenal has dominated for a long time and demanding to get a hearing in this column. In a typical Ugandan system, this is the time for rivalries of polygamy to get flesh and rise ugly heads. Children and their mothers scramble for property, renew their jealousy and tear at each other like political rivals. That is neither good for siblings and their mothers nor is it for the business empires.
I know all fathers think about the future when they are gone and how the offspring copes. But we always look only at the financial chapter and forget the harmony and peace section. That wife you love so much and that child who sleeps comfortably in your hands really deserve peace long after you have gone. They live their lives contributing to your tranquillity, why don’t you pay back?
Is it not selfish to draw fame from your family size and die without an assurance of a harmonious transfer of roles without squabbles? It is much easier for a monogamous family to pull itself together after the demise of the head than it is for a polygamous one. Why don’t we think along those lines when we are having fun? Why don’t we give our children the gift of monogamy as insurance?
Of course these fears may end up as dilute as the acid Robert Sunday poured on Nakimera last weekend – and that is my prayer, but I will be proud if we all resolve to immunise our people against such crises when we are no longer alive to help them solve them.
I also pray that I do not return to read another funeral speech for Arsenal and her children.
Obua, 63, is dead! The celebrated football player and administrator has left 18 children and two official wives. May God rest his soul in peace. I have come to bury the dead not to sing their praises. I know this is a time of mourning, a time of forgetting the potholes and soccer corruption of no ordinary kind. It is a time to remember the good our elders left for this country. But within the praises for road construction equipment and the glorious left foot, I cannot wrest my heart from those 37 children and six mothers, whose lives are now going to be thrown into turmoil, courtesy of these two fallen agemates who died this week.
They may have had wills, but that does not make matters better. Wills are about dividing and distributing. And the tearing up of any unit (even when it is Southern Sudan) does not augur well for the constituents and their future. That is why Bushenyi district (former) people are in court.
As we returned from paying our last respects, the lives of the bereaved families kept on pressing my heart, sharing the hurting space Arsenal has dominated for a long time and demanding to get a hearing in this column. In a typical Ugandan system, this is the time for rivalries of polygamy to get flesh and rise ugly heads. Children and their mothers scramble for property, renew their jealousy and tear at each other like political rivals. That is neither good for siblings and their mothers nor is it for the business empires.
I know all fathers think about the future when they are gone and how the offspring copes. But we always look only at the financial chapter and forget the harmony and peace section. That wife you love so much and that child who sleeps comfortably in your hands really deserve peace long after you have gone. They live their lives contributing to your tranquillity, why don’t you pay back?
Is it not selfish to draw fame from your family size and die without an assurance of a harmonious transfer of roles without squabbles? It is much easier for a monogamous family to pull itself together after the demise of the head than it is for a polygamous one. Why don’t we think along those lines when we are having fun? Why don’t we give our children the gift of monogamy as insurance?
Of course these fears may end up as dilute as the acid Robert Sunday poured on Nakimera last weekend – and that is my prayer, but I will be proud if we all resolve to immunise our people against such crises when we are no longer alive to help them solve them.
I also pray that I do not return to read another funeral speech for Arsenal and her children.