Reminiscing on a polygamous family

Hello everyone.. Hope you all are still basking in the new year euphoria. Well, The public holiday in my country came to an end yesterday ( Monday), so right now, its about time we all get to work. You are I can't keep remaining at home and relaxing you know. The holidays are over now and normal life ha e returned. Time to go out to there and make some quick bucks as usual!

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Earlier in the morning, I was going through my Instagram when I saw some beautiful pictures of a famous artist in my country. He obviously was celebrating the new year with his family in another country. This engage had three children with three different women and have never been married. From the pics,it was quite evident that they were all happy and having a good time.

Well, I have seen alot of polygamous family around through out my life. Afterall, polygamy is quite a prominent part of the African culture. "men are polygamous in nature", some people would say.

Above all, I have noticed one thing, polygamy looks quite beautiful when the family is still young. But over the years, when the youngsters become adults and start to have divergent thinking and opinions about their step mothers, father, step siblings and the world in general, things might become quite ugly. A mother might whip up sentiments in the heart of her son or daughter by telling them stuffs that she think they should know about their father or the other woman and their step siblings. Needless to say, the realities about the other parties might be distorted or in worse cases, a mother might absolutely brainwash the child which will ultimately make him to see the others in bad light. In the long run, cold war and animosity would sometimes develop between step siblings.

I had an uncle who married three women and they gave him more than a dozen children . when I was much more younger, I always loved to spend my holidays at their place since most of the children were in thesame age bracket as me. The bond between my cousins from different mothers was so admirable. They would all play together, eat together from same plate, laugh together.

They helped each other in their school assignments and whenever any of the children was sick, the others would act as clowns just to make their step brother or sister happy. There was always division of labor and nobody ever complained of maltreatment or opression. Every child respected his step mother as if she was his own mother. No doubt , My uncle was very proud of his large family. During the yuletide season, his Household could be likened to fantasyland beaming with the happy faces of women and children. There's alot of music, food and drinks for everyone and every visitor.

I was so impressed by this display of love strength. As a matter of fact I considered myself lucky to have such amazing cousins, uncle and aunties. Whenever school finally resumes and it was time to go back to my father's house, I always feel reluctant and I would plead with mum to enroll me in the school that my cousins attend just so that I could be with them always. But that wouldn't be possible because their school was very far away from my father's house. I would always cry when it was time for me to go back home as I knew I would miss them so much. I might even become gloomy for days.

All these are the good side of a polygamous family, but are they really permanent?

Seven years ago, my uncle died from a protracted illness and his once holy, happy big family crumbled into awful fragments. In fact , when he was still on his sick bed, his wives had already started fighting, accusing one another of trying to kill their husband through diabolical means. They told each other awful things in the presence of their children. It was as if they had been bottling these emotions all this while and the opportunity of spilling them out had just presented itself.

A month after the funeral of the deceased, the fights and slandering became nastier as their children who were now fully fledged were recruited by their mothers into the war. Things deteriorated more after the father's will was read and the properties shared among the women and their children. Jealousy and hatred conquered a once ideal and beautiful family.

DISCLAIMER

I am in no way advocating against polygamy. I'm only talking from what I have seen in a polygamous family. I have also seen some polygamy where the children from various mothers remain good friends and peaceful long after their father's death. Once or twice , i have asked some of these children of "peaceful" polygamous family weather they would also love the idea of venturing into polygamy just like dad, but strangely enough, the answer is always a "NO"

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Yours lovely,

Bilqees.