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When An Ex-husband Comes Calling…18 Years After |
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Written by Sylvester Ojenagbon
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Sunday, 09 March 2008 |
“Darling, you have to find time to talk to Mama Blessing,” my wife said to me yesterday.
By the way, Mama Blessing is the woman who has been coming around every week for the past two months to help out with the laundry and tidy up the house generally. Getting a trusted ‘househelp’ has proved to be a Herculean task, so we have had to settle for someone who would come in regularly to assist with the chores and get paid every time she comes. And this woman in her late thirties or early forties has been a blessing indeed.
Usually, my wife does not get me involved directly in counselling cases involving women. If any case is proving to be a hard nut to crack, she simply asks my advice and continues with the counselling. It must therefore be a very serious case for her to want me to talk to Mama Blessing directly.
“What is the problem?” I asked.
“She is in serious trouble and it is tearing her and her home apart.”
Then I remembered: she was in our house to do her usual work the previous day.
Before now, I knew next to nothing about this woman. After all, I am never at home when she comes to do her work on Fridays. As I only just discovered, she had been married before but was forced out of her matrimonial home by her best friend. That was about eighteen years ago. She had trusted her friend to the extent of allowing her to visit her home and even entrusting her children – a boy and a girl – to her care whenever she was not around. Things went on well, or so she thought, until she was summoned to a family meeting where she was told that her husband had impregnated another woman. She did not think it was a big deal…well, until she discovered it was her best friend who was pregnant for her husband.
The friend thereafter moved into the home as a second wife. But it was obvious her husband did not want his first wife anymore. In no time, he asked her to leave. And she left with her children. All that happened somewhere in Delta State.
Mama Blessing then relocated to Lagos with her children and, three years later, she met a Yoruba man who took her and her children as his own. The man showed them love and care, then proposed marriage to her after some time. She accepted the marriage proposal but her people back in Delta State refused to collect any pride price from the man since they considered her still married to the first husband. But that did not stop them from getting married and having a child.
Now her first daughter, who has been trained all these years by her second husband, has gone to look for her biological father and the man has started making weekly calls to her house. And he is not stopping there: he says he is tired of his second wife and now wants his original wife back.
Mama Blessing is sure she does not want to go back to the man. In fact, she considers it the height of ingratitude to the man who has loved her all these years and taken care of her children. The problem is: the man seems to have his daughter and her parents behind him. And her present husband is not finding it funny. He feels, and for good reason, that he has wasted his life taking care of another man’s stuff.
Okay, I have to talk to Mama Blessing. But here is my predicament: my mother-in-law who has been around since my wife gave birth is interested in the matter. And she belongs to a sect which believes that the only recognised husband by heaven is a woman’s first husband. From every indication, she has made or is gradually making a disciple of Mama Blessing.
If you ask me, I do not think Mama Blessing’s first husband has any moral justification to insist or even suggest to her to come back to him. It would have been a different thing if she had not remarried. And, from every indication, she is happy in her second marriage. It is enough she is losing her daughter to a man who did not care if they were alive or dead until last December. Now she is not only losing her daughter, she is also losing her home and her mind.
Okay, I will have to talk to Mama Blessing – it is very important I do. But my mother-in-law is involved now. And I do not need any soothsayer to tell me that whatever solution she is proffering will plunge this woman and her family into untold pains and misery. I have seen a lot of that already: a man or woman who is happily married throws it all away in the name of religion and moving back to his or her rightful wife or husband, then leaves behind a whole lot of mess and heartaches. He or she does not find peace wherever he or she has moved to, yet he or she cannot go back to his or her lost joy. Maybe I need counselling before talking to Mama Blessing. Yes, I think I need counselling.
Please, this is not an imaginary tale; it is a real-life situation.
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Last Updated (
Thursday, 24 April 2008 ) |
Posted by Robot| 09.03.2008 11:08