He gave me a lift in his BMW one faithful afternoon after our very first induction programme at the Putteridge Bury Campus.
Thank God that I had deferred my Uni admission due to logistic, and ‘visa-mic’ reasons for 4 times, if not, I would have missed out on this good friend and big brother. The fact that my course fee rose from £1.5k to 5k and to £7.5k during that period gave me no other option but to resume and I met him.
This lovable man I will call JD naturally warmed up to me. He stuttered slightly but yet he never stopped warming up to people. From my ‘sizing up’ of him the moment I saw him, I knew he had been in the country longer than I did, and he would be a pot of knowledge to glean from.
As he drove me back to the town centre, his phone persistently rang but he refused to pick it up. It must have rang like 20 times before he took it and spoke in Igbo language to it.
Having spent close to 18 months in Asaba during Youth Corps, and using the knowledge of the Igbo praise and worship songs, I sensed he was rebuking somebody who sounded much like a lady. I now felt uncomfortable. I thought he was a Yoruba guy and now he was speaking fluent Igbo language. I was confused as to how to identify or refer to him.
When he was done, he turned off his phone, looked at me and asked these questions:
JD: “Are you married?”
ME: “NO”
JD: “Are you seeing someone?”
ME: “NO, not at the moment.”
JD: “Okay my brother, don’t ever make the same mistake I made in marriage. Don’t marry a lady based on recommendation, and please don’t marry a Naija woman if you have a red ‘paali’ (British passport), marry a foreigner who doesn’t need anything else from you except your heart of love”. He shifted back to his driving as I sensed regret and bitterness in his tone.
I knew I was in trouble and about to be let into the life history of a man who has seen the most terrible things marriage could offer. Get on the ride into the life of JD.
(NOTE: I could not get permission of JD before posting this article, he is also a friend on the FB, and there is a 90% chance of him reading this story. So, I will not tell it in a captivating prose format but rather in bullet points.
JD had been in the UK with his parents since he was a teenager I guess. His dad was a Yoruba and mum an Igbo woman. He had become a British citizen, completed first degree, owned his own house and was alright by all means. In obedience to his mum’s heart longing for a future bride, he was encouraged to marry from among his mother’s stock.
The lady was shipped over to the UK and the first thing my friend noticed was her dedicated attention to Jeremy Kyle shows and other programmes of that nature. Trouble started the moment she claimed she was pregnant with their first child for my friend.
JD could wake up in the middle of the night to find or make whatever food the ‘pregnant’ wife craved for. Life was no longer at ease as demands were always laced with aggression. Harsh words were spoken to my friend who continued to bear until he stood his ground. A little scuffle and a get-out-of-my-way kind of pushing aside gave my friend his first police record.
He had gone out of the house in anger to calm down only to receive an emergency call to come home. Ambulance and police officers welcomed him home. He was taken to the station for physically abusing his wife. He stated his own case that was totally parallel to the one the wife gave. Wife claimed she had lost her pregnancy.
After caution and police record, normalcy returned home until the wife claimed she was pregnant again. This time, it was fire and super aggression. She started bringing friends in to their matrimonial home. Both male and female friends he had never heard of or known with his wife. The wife became more adamant, insisting she has the right to invite her friends to her ‘home’ and no ‘useless’ husband could stop her.
JD was enraged at the words ‘HOME’ and ‘USELESS’. He had owned the house for almost 10 years, paying off a good chunk of the mortgage in the process before marring his wife, and there she was, saying she could bring anybody – male or female, to her home and which no useless husband could stop. She said that as if she was stuttering just to mock her stammering husband!
The natural reaction of a man denied of sex for weeks and food for days by wife, and aggressively abused every day verbally, every single time communication ensued, was to cut down that thing to size. And JD did. Of course he didn’t have the anointing to hold back in this case.
No wonder Solomon the wisest man that lived said it is a better thing to live on the tree top than to be with a woman soaks you up in the rain of her depressing mouth. A resounding slap in the name of ‘enough-is-enough’ brought a temporary silence that lasted for a few seconds but which could be equivalent to eternity to a person deprived of such silent peace!
The wagging tongue mocking the stuttering husband became a screaming tongue calling the world for help not quite long after her brain was reset to default through the slap.
JD eyes cleared too. He had allowed herself to be played by his wife and he had just given the biggest weapon any shark woman would always hope to have and use against their partner or spouse they want to get rid of.
Police came again and one of them who came earlier told him to get his stuffs, leave his copy of keys behind and go and spend the night with a friend. They gave him appointment for the next day at the police station.
Next day, JD found out the wife would be pressing charges for a slap that drew no blood. All lies were concocted on him and he found out he was about to lose what was precious to him. A court injunction followed that restricted him from ever going within 50 to 70 yards of his house.
Night after night and afar off, he saw his house become a party venue for his wife’s friends who would briefly shoot up M1 from London to that small city to enjoy themselves. He cried at the injustice.
When he needed to change the few clothes he has been wearing for weeks, he went to his house to beg the wife to let him in. Wife’s friends were in as usual dancing to loud music. It was raining outside and yet, the woman won’t allow JD into the house. She told him to stay outside while she went inside to pick up a bag that contained all the cloths her husband had in the wardrobe. She had packed all his stuffs ready to be moved out.
Sad, dejected and unable to do anything, he went away with his bag of cloths but with a determined heart to get his house back. His wife was then heavy and his grand plans would soon come to fruition. As soon as the child was born, he had the opportunity to ask for a favour to be allowed into the house. And in the process, he took vital documents relating to the house mortgage.
Once he confirmed the names of his daughter, he transferred the title deeds of the house to her for £1 and made himself the sole executor. That means, whoever lives in the house would have to be responsible for the mortgage or rent.
That was when the wife started chasing him around with phone calls. The next thing was that the initial 2 years visiting visa spouse they gave her was running out. She wanted to renew it and she needed her husband’s support. That was when my part came in.
The wife would call a ‘million’ times using the ‘head and destiny’ of their child to beg JD to help her and that she would become the woman and wife he wanted. But all he could say was that she should follow the law of the land. She had to go back home…to Naija where she came from.
The wife had thought she could leverage her child being British through her father as a tool that would make her eligible to stay without legal repercussion. She was wrong. JD gave her the British passport he had got for his daughter and told the wife that he would be visiting his child and would be responsible for his upkeep. And when the child is old enough to join him in the UK, he would be happy to welcome her.
So all the times the lady was calling, she did from Naija. And the only formal ‘marriage’ they did was more or less an introduction before the woman joined him to be his wife. Therefore in the eyes of the law, she was just a cohabiting final but the lady never knew she really didn’t have a legal footing or something strong to fall on before starting a battle she could never have won.
All she succeeded at doing was to get JD form a strong opinion rom the bitter lessons forced down his throat. JD eventually married a Spanish woman whose jollof rice with the Mediterranean spices she used to cook it would make you ask if you were already in paradise. She was that good.
Honestly, three episodes of AMOSTIASIS will not be sufficient to narrate this story in depth, but in order not to bring too much of painful memory of the past into the mind of JD who could probably come across this, I have tried to make it snappy.
Number one lesson is that you should not marry out of sentiments or pity.
If any of your parents is asking you to marry or not marry someone from a particular place, ask such for a good reason. Probably they had past covenant with that place or not.
Many a times, parents would want to send or chose a bride for their son, ask if their choice was more for their own benefit or yours. Of course they would say yours, but the truth is, it is their inner fear that they are trying to cover up or take care.
I don’t believe in pre-nuptial agreement as what it tells me from the word go is that the couple do not trust each other. But I don’t blame those who insist on it too so they could protect their life investment and wealth.
That lady could have possessed all that belonged to JD had she been more patient and wiser, but thank God that JD got all he owned through his sweat and honesty. Many men have been made homeless and penniless through marriage such as this. One partner goes into it with one mind while the other has an evil agenda to follow through with.
Open your eyes and ask questions. There are evil men and also evil women…shark ladies and hyena men. Pray and observe well.
One thing that will surely save you from huge trap such as this is if you don’t start having sex as soon as you met. Trust me, you will see better and think better. And you will know if you should pull back from taking a relationship to the next level or not.
But once skirt is raised up and trouser is pulled down, all faculty senses of reasoning are fully suspended and one can hardly make a good judgment call thereafter.
Protect yourself and be careful…there are many sharks outside, as well as many hyenas. God bless.