FREQUENT FIGHTS
Joshua became my strongest ally and as soon as the residential house was completed, I got married to Joseph. My parents refused to collect money from Joseph since they knew that he made so much expenses.
“My daughter is not for sale,” they said to him.
Not just that, they paid most of the money that was to be given to my relatives. Joseph, being a man that refused favours from people, said to me, “I promise, when I get stabilised in life, I will pay back your family for everything they spent in multiplied folds.”
My first year in marriage was quite difficult for me. My husband was hardly around as his contracts took him far and wide. One of such days, which was about a week after our honeymoon, a group of young married ladies came to my house.
“We noticed that you do not follow us to fetch water from the stream. So, we came here to show you where the stream is,” one of them said.
“Oh, I know where the stream is but I do not need to fetch water there. I have taps in my house. Come and see,” I said.
That must have been a mistake as the ladies began to seriously grumble.
“Your husband’s family really suffered to put him through school and they do not have water flowing in their house. They go to the stream like us. And you gold-digger, you just came into his life and you cannot fetch simple water. You are wasting your husband’s money on taps.”
They attempted to beat me up but I ran into a room and locked the door. When they were tired, they left to fetch their water. After some hours, Joseph came back. I decided not to tell him about my encounter with the village women.
“Sweetheart, how much do you have? I mean, is it enough to put a bore-hole for your family?” I asked.
“I don’t have much money. Even if I did, I would start by putting taps and erecting a tank and just keep supplying them the water. Still, if I do that now, they will definitely waste the water and make me to spend so much. And if not that, they will not use the water at all, because they keep complaining that you are too lazy to live without the ‘machines’.”
“What about your prospects for this village? You told me that one of the reasons you sited your company here is to develop this place.”
“The villagers here do not want development. Can you imagine that we are already working on projects in three surrounding villages and one of them has begun to reap their returns? We called the elders and leaders of this village for a meeting and explained our business. We told them we can improve their agric. productivity by ten times or more and their profits can reach not less than twenty times what it is now. They were happy and interested. When we showed them how much it will cost them and how they can raise the money without stress, they got angry. They called me a bad man that wants to defraud his own people. Someone even said that instead of using my money to help my people that put me through school, I am spending everything on you. Nobody gave a dime to my parents for my education. Nobody agreed to cancel my parents’ debts. The man that said that thing once humiliated my dad because of ₦200. Now, it looks like I am helping other communities and businesses and I don’t want to help my own people,” Joseph said.
“When you bring an innovation that demands that people change their ways, showing them the potential benefits hardly works because of the natural inertia in people to act. Try to scare them instead. Tell them the detriment of not following your suggestions. Take some people to the surrounding villages and their markets. Let them know that if they do not act fast, no one would buy their products anymore because it will not be of high quality and the competition for high quality products is high.”
“I wish that you can also easily come up with an idea like this to help our females,” Joseph said.
“It is not that easy. You see, the men in this village want change and development but they want it free. The women have been imprisoned for years by their traditions. They will surely fight against anyone that tries to show them the light. And the men around them are scared that if their women get knowledge, they will stop being submissive.”
Joseph implemented my idea not only for his village but for every village that his company extended its outreach to. And the results were amazing! Yet, we entered into a season of seeing so much money but not actually partaking of it. Some of those times, my husband would give me a lot of money. People felt that I was being spoilt by my husband but that was not the case. In fact, the family had great financial fluctuations such that I could never use his money for any personal benefits. Instead, I used my skills to earn extra cash for the family. It was my money that I used to cook, clean and purchase essential items that we used.
When the financial stress became too much, I used the money that he gave to me to expand my business. From the comfort of my home, I made clothes which I sold to rich people. I also got contracts to plan birthday parties, decorate reception venues, bake cakes and pastries and so on. None of the villagers were potential clients. Now, since I hardly left my house to run errands but to buy costly materials and ingredients from markets, the villagers saw me as a lazy woman who only cared about using her husband’s hard-earned money to go shopping.
One of such days, I needed to supply a wedding dress by 8:30 am, to a location more than thirty minutes’ drive from the village. Before going, I decided to quickly wash my clothes because I had calculated that I would be so busy during the week that I might not find time to do that.
I had already begun washing when my husband came to me and said, “I need you to go through the financial information of Agrofrutas Business before you go and make sure that there are no errors. I will meet with their executives by 11 am.”
What?! That duty was very time-consuming as I needed to check every detail one after the other and ensure that the calculations were correct. Agrofrutas was a top agricultural company. If my husband’s company, Dynamic Agricultural Specialists, were to make the slightest error in the contract, the implications could plunge it into serious debts that it would not recover from in years. But if the contract were carried out perfectly, the profits would stabilise the business such that the financial fluctuations would reduce drastically. Still, I was torn between saving my husband’s business and saving mine. If I failed in my duty, I could lose face among my clients which will crumble my business and that meant that the source of the daily meal that kept the family going would be gone.
However, there was a way that I would help my husband and still meet up with my own appointment. And that was if he took over my duties.
“On one condition, you will wash my clothes for me,” I said to Joseph.
“Darling, that is not a problem,” he said and took over my washing.
I went inside our room and began to carefully go through the financial information. The work had only one error. Unfortunately, that error was a major one that would have had serious negative implications. When I was done, I quickly got prepared to leave the house. I had no idea that all through that time, a serious drama took place at our house.
Normally, my husband left the house early in the morning to go to work and he came back late at night. That day was an exception but one of his uncles, who had learnt his schedule, did not know that and decided to visit him very early. The uncle wanted to meet him before he left for work in order to ask for a favour. This man met my husband washing.
“Is there no woman in this house that can wash your clothes?” he asked as he approached my husband. “They are not even yours. These are female clothes! Abomination! Joseph’s wife has turned him into a slave.”
“Uncle, there is nothing bad in helping my wife,” Joseph answered.
Not wanting to argue, the man left and my husband was able to finish washing and spreading the clothes. Just then, many people, male and female, young and old, came to the house. They were carrying sticks with which to beat me up. My husband was doing all he could to hold them back when I came to the scene.
“Sweetheart, I am done with … Please, why are all these people here?”
“They are here to beat you up for giving me the honour of washing your clothes,” Joseph said calmly.
I was not calm at all. I needed to be on time to supply the dress. I could not go for a wedding with injuries all over my body and I could not let the dress to be ruined.
Joseph said with composure, “Try and get close to me.”
I literarily ran to him in fear. He surrounded me with his arm to protect me from the angry mob.
“I can see that you people do not have jobs to go to. So, I will leave you to be busybodies in another person’s marriage,” he said.
Joseph, still shielding me, led me into our room. Nobody dared to follow us there but they waited for us outside. They felt that Joseph would go to work and leave me at home and they would do as they pleased. Joseph quickly dressed up, took all the documents he needed for his appointment and led me to the car, still shielding me. He opened the car door, I entered and he shut the door. I locked the door. Joseph was close to the driver’s seat when a man rushed to force me out of the car. Joseph gave him the ‘you dare not spoil my car’ look. Then, he started the car and we left.
For a long time, we remained quiet. I knew what Joseph was thinking. He thought that I would tell him, “I told you so.” However, since this issue was one that made us to disagree during courtship, the matter was over flogged. He had done his part by providing a personal house for me. It was my duty not to nag him about forcing me to live in the village.
“Thank you for saving me out there,” I said instead.
“Why are you thanking me? That is my duty.” he said in amazement.
