Cameroon Echoes {Echos Camerounais}

Two men, one wife, and a burial saga

Mr Terrus Mwondi Onamu, 60, displays an old photograph he took with his wife Jane Mideva Amusavi at his home in Virombe village, Vihiga District. Photo/JACOB OWITI 

By OUMA WANZALA  

IN SUMMARY

• Farmer stayed with woman for 29 years only for court to rule he couldn’t bury her

Mr Terrus Onamu has been married for 29 years, or so he thought. He was hit by a shocker when his wife died and he was told he could not bury her because their union was not legal.

The 60-year-old man from Virombe village, Vihiga District, is yet to come to terms with the ruling that has brought pain and anguish.

Mr Gerishom Magana, who claims to be the legal husband of the woman, was allowed by the court to bury her.

And two weeks ago the body of Ms Jane Mideva Amusavi, 56, was ferried from Vihiga district hospital mortuary where it had stayed for more than three months to Bware in South Nyanza, hundreds of kilometres away, for burial.

Les amoureux à la fête ce dimanche

La Saint-Valentin devrait, cette année encore, être un concours d’originalités pour redire sa flamme. 

 A la rédaction de CT, la chose est entendue. Ce dimanche, c’est jour de bouclage. En plus, « l’âge du mois est déjà avancé », laissent entendre certains de ces messieurs, en référence à l’état de leurs finances. Du coup, l’agenda de beaucoup n’a consigné ce dimanche 14 février que comme le lendemain du samedi 13. Cette Saint Valentin « invention des Blancs » pour reprendre les termes d’un de nos collègues du service politique, on la laissera fêter à d’autres. 

Are African Men Better Lovers?

It’s that time of the year when many women wish for brightly coloured greeting cards, bouquets of flowers, delicious chocolate, nicely wrapped gifts, candle-lit dinners and everything else – affordable and unaffordable. However, my preoccupation is not with outward ritual and empty consumerism but with the heart of the matter. In other words,  “Are African men fantastic lovers? Are they truly sensitive to the deep cravings of a woman’s heart?”

I ask because a vast body of evidence suggests that this is not the case.  Growing up, many of the African novels I devoured depicted the African man as a tyrant, a wife beater. In the absence of violence, an uncouth caricature was painted at best. The African man was often the one who ate messily (loud chewing sounds interspersed by deep pig-like grunts). He drank water and thumped the glass abruptly on the table. Not much mind was payed to dress and physical comportment – hence the bushy hair, lager soaked moustache, nondescript loin cloth and shoddy shoes. His courtship exercise lacked imagination: moonlight frolicking, the occasional flower-plucking off a nearby shrub and the masochistic wrestling at the village square that makes the term ‘trophy wife’ sound quite apt.

Of course, we now know that this was a case of negative stereotyping and racism.

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