Why Marriage Should Never Become a Refuge from a Life That Has Not Yet Found Its Purpose

An Uncle Rwamiti Story from Kirabo Forest Park

People imagine that I spend my afternoons at Kirabo Forest Park because I am getting old.

They are only partly correct.

An old man does not go to the forest because he has become tired of people. He goes because people eventually find him there anyway.

Kirabo has become my courtroom.

Cases arrive without appointment.

One day it is a businessman who has lost his appetite after making too much money.

Another day it is a retired civil servant wondering why the grandchildren are always “too busy.”

Sometimes it is a university professor trying to explain artificial intelligence to a goat that is far more interested in his shirt.

Life has a wonderful sense of humour.

That morning I was seated beneath the old mango tree overlooking the lake. I absent-mindedly adjusted the old khaki cap that has accompanied me for years. Whenever I begin asking difficult questions, my hands somehow find that cap before my mind finds the answer.

A pair of crowned cranes walked about with the confidence of Cabinet ministers while monkeys conducted what looked suspiciously like a committee meeting in the fig tree nearby.

Across from me sat Maria Mulungi.

Now, if you have never met Maria, let me introduce her properly.

She is one of those women who make village gossips unemployed.

She has no husband.

No children.

Lives alone.

Travels when she wishes.

Runs a successful consultancy.

Reads more books than most politicians have opened.

Pays her taxes without drama.

Sleeps peacefully.

To many people, this combination is deeply disturbing.

Some cannot understand how a woman can laugh that much without first asking permission from a husband.

Others keep waiting for her life to collapse so they can proudly announce,

“Didn’t we tell you?”

Poor things.

Disappointment has become their full-time occupation.

Maria simply lives.

She neither campaigns against marriage nor campaigns for it.

She has merely refused to postpone her own life while waiting for somebody else to arrive.

As my grandmother used to say,

“The hen that spends all day waiting for another hen to scratch the ground usually sleeps hungry.”

Maria laughed.

“Uncle, your grandmother had a proverb for everything.”

“No,” I replied, adjusting my cap once more.

“She merely paid attention.”

Just then a silver Toyota eased slowly through the gate.

I smiled.

“My afternoon case has arrived.”

Out stepped Josephine.

Jose.

The daughter of my younger brother John.

I have known her since she believed the moon followed our car all the way from Kampala.

Today she is thirty-one.

She carries herself with quiet dignity.

She has a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology.

When jobs refused to cooperate with those qualifications, her parents made another sacrifice and sent her to a prestigious university in the United Kingdom for a postgraduate diploma in Child Care.

The family celebrated.

“This,” they thought, “will surely unlock the door.”

It didn’t.

Applications.

Interviews.

Polite rejection emails.

Two jobs.

Neither survived beyond a few months.

Then came entrepreneurship.

Her parents financed her first business.

It showed promise.

Within a year it had folded.

Undeterred, they financed a second.

That one also quietly packed its bags and left.

Now let me tell you something about African families.

We are experts at diagnosis.

Unfortunately, we sometimes diagnose with our mouths before consulting our brains.

Soon enough the whispers began.

“Maybe Jose simply needs to get married.”

“A husband will settle her.”

“Once she has children everything will fall into place.”

Whenever I hear such advice, my ears begin itching.

Not because marriage is a bad thing.

Far from it.

Marriage is one of humanity’s greatest institutions.

But my grandfather used to say,

“Only a fool carries a leaking basket to the river expecting the fish to repair it.”

Jose greeted us warmly.

She hugged Maria.

Then she hugged me.

“You’ve become lighter, Uncle.”

“I have become wiser,” I replied.

“Wisdom weighs less than worry.”

She laughed before taking her seat.

For a while we spoke about ordinary things.

The journey.

The coffee harvest.

The monkey that had stolen someone’s chapati the previous week.

Maria reached for her stainless-steel water bottle, shook it gently and frowned.

“Empty.”

She looked at me.

“Uncle, may I ask someone to refill it?”

I smiled.

“Maria, if you’ve learnt to carry your own bottle, the next lesson is carrying your own water.”

She rolled her eyes.

“That is terribly unfair.”

“So is adulthood.”

We all laughed as one of the attendants quietly took the bottle away.

Then Jose looked towards the lake.

“Uncle…”

“Yes, my daughter.”

“I think everyone has given up.”

“On what?”

“On me.”

Maria remained silent.

She understood that silence often does more work than interruption.

Jose continued.

“Nowadays every conversation somehow ends in the same place.”

“And where is that?”

She looked down.

“They say maybe it is simply time for me to get married.”

Just then a stubborn bee began circling her face.

She waved it away.

It returned.

She jumped from her chair.

“Uncle!”

I didn’t move.

“My daughter,” I said calmly, “it has not come to propose marriage.”

Maria burst into laughter.

The bee finally lost interest and drifted towards the hibiscus.

Jose sat down, still suspicious.

“You see,” I smiled, adjusting my cap again.

“Not everything that comes looking for you deserves your attention.”

Only then did I place my tea carefully on the table.

Not because I was shocked.

Because I had expected that sentence for several years.

“My daughter,” I asked quietly,

“Suppose tomorrow morning the finest gentleman in Uganda appeared at this gate.”

She smiled.

“He is kind.”

“Yes.”

“He loves children.”

“Yes.”

“He has a stable career.”

“Yes.”

“He owns a home.”

She laughed.

“Continue, Uncle.”

“He even remembers birthdays.”

Now Maria laughed.

I leaned forward.

“What exactly would he solve?”

Jose opened her mouth.

Closed it.

Opened it again.

“I… don’t know.”

“There.”

I tapped the table gently.

“That is the conversation your relatives are avoiding.”

The breeze carried the smell of fresh grass across the lake.

A fish leapt briefly from the water before disappearing again.

Nobody looked.

Some questions are louder than splashing fish.

“My daughter, marriage is a beautiful house.

But a beautiful house built on weak foundations still develops cracks.”

Maria finally spoke after taking a sip from her refilled bottle.

“When I was younger people assumed marriage was my unfinished assignment.”

“What happened?” Jose asked.

“I stopped believing them.”

“What do you mean?”

“I realised people kept asking me who I was going to marry.

No one ever asked me who I was becoming.”

Silence.

Even the monkeys appeared to suspend their committee meeting.

Maria continued.

“I decided that before inviting another human being into my life…

…I wanted to have a life worth inviting them into.”