I Will Marry When I Want; Goes the Song.

Ngaahika Ndeenda seems to be a very sweet Gikuyu phrase to sing along when one is drunk. It is their world and nobody should be on their necks wondering if drinking is work or not. In the play, I Will Marry When I Want by Ngugi wa Thiong’o coauthored with Ngugi wa Mirii, a drunk man sings with ease that he will marry when he wants, after all, single women will always be there.

This singer, Kamande wa Munyui gave me the topic of writing this week. He seems to be the only man that is not tied to his wife’s petticoat. A free liberal man.

Whereas Wangeci keeps Kiguunda (the main character in the play) on his toes, Kamande is a man of free consciousness. He is never tied to any suppression by other people save for those by himself. He was once employed as a night security guard.

The thing with security guards is that their fate is often at the liberty of their masters. Part of their duty is to make sure they are awake when their masters are sleeping. It doesn’t seem to be the case with Kamande who was fired when his rich ‘neocolonialist’ by the name of Kioi found him fast asleep in the middle of the night. He must have been a free man indeed.

Before this incident, we are told that he was an administrative policeman. Why he lost the job, unless he retired, could give us an insight into his character. To him, liberation is a self-thing as opposed to a group thing.

And it is true that if we have to be free as a people it has to start from within the individual as opposed to from the masses. Unless every one of us is liberated before synergy can come into play, it means that our unity means nothing. Unity means a lot if it is everyone else’s objective to be united.

This is true because Gathoni who accepts to marry a rich man as a way of changing their fate as a family lands herself in trouble. The man rejects her after she becomes pregnant even before the fate she embarked to effect hasn’t come to pass.

Her father, Kiguunda had gone to seek advice from his friends – kinsmen – who had advised him to take a loan for the celebration of her daughter’s marriage ceremony but one which he couldn’t service now that all hell had broken loose. Tying his many fates exposes Kiguunda to an eventual loss of his properties; a shanty home and land. Likely, even the family crumbled shortly after.

Could this unfortunate happenings be because she, Gathoni, had decided to marry when people wanted her to? In other words, did she lose it when she decided to bank in all totality the advice given to her father who in turn was advised by his peers? Did Kiguunda surrender his free conscious to the table of the suppressed men who themselves desired the numbers to justify their suppression?

I am left to have this feeling that that is exactly what we are doing at this very moment. Many years after our “independence,” of course, we are void of independence now that how fate seems to lie in the hands of our black colonists, we keep marrying when other people want them to.

We surrendered our free wills to our fellow masters who are ‘more animals’ than the rest of us; mere animals. And we seem so happy and contented with the situation as if when we marry at their own will, it is theirs to keep and nurture. Let us not forget that it is we who know where we are destined to be as a family.

In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, Bwana Jones is overthrown by a coup organized by the boar known as old Major. The animal kingdom had decided to marry when they wanted. Marrying at Mr. Jones’ discretion couldn’t go on any longer.

He was driven off the farm and even the name of the farm was changed. But later when the pigs took over the administration of the farm, things don’t get better. It seems the leadership they got changes their animal demeanor. They even started walking on two legs like humans. It befits to connote that all that goes round comes round with the commandment, “Four legs good, two legs better.”

The best commandment however is the one that stated, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” This is how things change when, at the hands of the suppressor, we surrender our minds and wills.

However, the big questions remains, who are the suppressors? Who are suppresses? Where are they? So that at the time of our marriage celebration, we don’t discover we ended up marrying when ‘they’ wanted.

Perhaps for us to play the beats and sing along with the lines, I will marry when I want, we need to first intoxicate our emotions and feelings. Because at the hands of the intoxicator who is never a person, we can then realize that with the freedom of conscience comes a higher degree of confidence to stand and admonish those who are satisfactorily suppressed or suppressing others.

For Kamande, he takes his drink before dragging himself to Kiguunda’s house to try and liberalize him. Sounds funny, doesn’t it? With this resolve, Kamande even dares to urinate around Kiguunda’s house. Kamande’s or the intoxication? To all of us, this is an insult. But it is the cost of paying for surrendering free will and freedom.

To me and you in this age and era, those we have surrendered our free will to others, they are the ones watering us with their urine. It reminds me of what our parents used to tell us in the old days before the advent of pampers. That their business was to feed us so that we could soil clothes and beddings to make sure they were busybodies. We perfected that soiling I tell you of course not without consequences. Now fast forward we are being soiled in our old age by other animals who are more animal than us.

Well, we still got a choice on when to marry based on our intuition or that of others. But there is nothing sweeter and lovely as marrying when you want!

End.

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