Alagi Yorro Jallow: ‘Character Is An African Woman’s Front Teeth’

by Alagi Yorro Jallow
WOMEN, without character, classy and elegant, feminine rectitude are closing the gender gap in hate speech, insulting, social banter, so when does banter become bullying as well as physical and verbal violence. Character is a woman’s front teeth. The one who loses them has lost the mainstay of her beauty, character, and personality. A woman without a definite character and respect, as well as a resurgence of religiosity, cannot make a desirable mother and a wife. Ugly mothers and wives are the ones who have lost character and ethical, moral values. When a woman settles scores with daggers and swords, she is no longer a woman. She has crossed the line to the wild red zone of violent men. Some women merely nag; that is the extreme of their epidemic of physical and verbal violence. Russian writer, W.R.S. Ralston wrote about a wife who “lived on the worst of terms with her husband and never paid any attention to what he said. If her husband told her to get up early, she would lie in bed three days at a stretch; if he wanted her to go to sleep, she could not think of sleeping. When her husband asked her to make pancakes, she would say: ‘You thief, you do not deserve a pancake!…'” But sometimes the verbal violence goes beyond mere nagging. Some pretty nasty wives butcher their husbands to feed their passion. There was a Mary Elizabeth Wilson in the United Kingdom. Between 1955 and 1957, she “loved and lost four husbands…inheriting money after each death.”
Moreover, she was audacious enough to leave traces. According to the BBC, “not only were the gaps between the weddings short, but the marriages themselves were also short.” At one of her many wedding receptions, her friend asked her: “What shall we do with these (excess) sandwiches and cake?” Wilson replied with laughter: “We will keep them for the funeral.” That husband soon died. Mary Elizabeth Wilson was exposed and jailed. She died in prison in 1960.
The killer wife can be at once as sly as the tortoise and foolish as the insane. She can also combine those attributes with the lustfulness of the dog. Our elders say it is not wise to buy cloths bound in bundles. It is wise to seek and see the nakedness of what you are paying for. You married a playboy deliberately because he played well. So, why lose your mind because he does what you know he does well? Do you kill a dog because it barks? Do you kill a ram for its effective use of its horns? What manner of woman would kill her man because he is seeing another woman? I ask because husbands appear to have, lately, become endangered species. Some times ago, a housewife in a neighboring country stabbed her husband in the chest and back with a broken bottle. His offense: he was planning a second wife. In the Gambia earlier, a woman killed her husband, because he was dating another lady. It happened, a highly educated and female professional stabbed her husband to death because another woman was suspected to be in the man’s life. Now, playboy husbands are nervous. They are almost begging their wives to also cheat on them if they are caught pants down.
If he is not content with what you have, why not take a walk? Should you destroy your life because a man cannot stay faithful to his marital vows? Women who cook their playboy husbands for dinner lose all. They lose the meal and even the kitchen and its aroma. It is a total loss. Killing the man is suicide for the woman. If the union has kids, then it is worse. The dead are released while the living battles life and its judgment. It is a complete defeat for the woman. The man becomes the hero, winning the sympathy of an accommodating world. The wise know murder is no solution to infidelity. It did not stop it a million years ago, and it will not now. A very wise female once told me her husband was free to roam the bushes. The only ‘but’ was that he must not come home with thorns.
However, some kills without drawing blood. Their swords are forever sheathed, yet they kill with the swiftness of the dagger. They murder their husband with an excessive love for what would destroy him. They push their men, back and forth, like a swinging door. They are – the enemy within. The Grace woman in Zimbabwe is one loud example of such nemesis. From the office secretary to the lady of power, she would not stop until destiny stopped her. The history of the Gambia is replete with so many of such Graces lacking the grace of goodness. It is worse if the man is a Robert Mugabe who has surrendered the levers of his manhood to the one without scrotum. The woman demands the difficult, he does it for her, yet she pushes him to attempt the impossible. “Even if he dies, his corpse will contest and win next year’s elections,” Grace Mugabe boasted years ago.
Furthermore, her late husband breathlessly tried to catch up with her massive appetite for godlessness. Do you remember the wailing king seeking communal help to pluck the moon for his queen? Fruits of thorny trees are not enough, and she must eat the moon. Moreover, the man jumps, falls, jumps again, panting. If his overused heart packs up while struggling to satisfy his Jezebel, she moves on. Other victims are in the queue, waiting to be killed by what they love. The man who is blessed with a million stars twinkling in his sky is doomed with a killer wife. She is that woman who forgets the toils of the small beginnings and starts competing with inscrutable fate. She fights the angels around her man and brings down the stars of her glory. She kills him with his destiny.
Back to women who are quick with swords and daggers and beer bottles as well as social media. Should a woman bully other people because she is obsessed with cheap popularity and image? The wages of sin are character assassination, yes. If social media punditry and participating in politics or supporting a political party in a democracy is a capital offense, who does the slander, the hate speech, the law, or the victim? Is it not said that an eye for an eye would create a city of blind men and women? In some cases, women who fell their husbands are strangers to their growth like the in the Gambian woman who married someone else’s husband. The unfortunate man left his first wife to marry her. She is like that person who picked a gem by the roadside and jealously vowed to die over it. What should the real owner who lost it do? She met a dead buffalo by the river bank and drew cleavers. What was she thinking when she was climbing his bed? The massive meat by the riverside did not drink to death! The one who leaves someone to sleep with you will leave you to sleep with someone. This husband was somebody else’s game and would not stop playing games – and she should know. But no! She became a phone tracker, reading text messages, and running mad.
The times have changed. Men, too, should feel what their women feel. There was an age. Just answering a man’s name is no longer a woman’s end in marriage. The frontiers of behavior in marriage have moved with the times. Jealousy used to be the spice, the taste in the polygamous soup. However, the woman sleeping beside you today sees you as her exclusive possession. Sharing and caring are ancient virtues long dead with a permissive past. Fishing in any open pond imperils everyone.
Nevertheless, drawing daggers and killing spouses, slandering verbal abuses cannot be a way to discipline errant men and women. Our elders say a husband’s death makes a woman more miserable. If to be widowed is the worst of misfortunes, how do we describe the woman who murders her husband and slander a whole society? She loses all. Furthermore, if a woman without ethical-moral values has products, the loss becomes generational. So, woman, if your democratic rights and engagement in politics are no longer your motivation to join social media, do not kill yourself by driving a dagger into people’s hearts. The sensible thing to do is just to quit politics.