“It’s finally happening,” the small voice in the pit of my belly whispered, eerily, into my ear.

I first heard it speak to me the week one of my good Zimbabwean friends told me that she had met a man who said he wanted to marry her. I instantly burst into uncontrollable laughter because – with all due respect to my friend – she is hardly marriage material. Like myself, she is not quite the most domesticated sort of young woman and prefers to roll out of bed in the late hours of weekend mornings and then distract herself from all household chores by watching re-runs of soaps or heading off to town to get away from it all. These actions have gotten her into trouble with her parents on several occasions, but still she declares that she’s far too lazy to give a care.

And so for me to imagine her being someone’s wife, waking up early to prepare her husband’s breakfast, doing double the amount of laundry she does now ( with a great deal of reluctance, at that) or picking out ties to match her husband’s suits ( he sounds like the type who would like that), is nigh on impossible. Yet somehow, this man sees the potential in my friend to love and nurture him for the rest of his life. And somehow my fun-loving, carefree friend can see herself fitting into this role.

“But I can actually see myself as his wife,” she stated with a tone that sounded genuine and willing to give it a try. That was when I stopped laughing and teasing her, realising that she had found someone she loved deeply enough to consider spending the rest of her life with. And that was also precisely the first time I heard that voice rise through me, adding its tone to the chorus of noises making their cacophonous music through me.

It is finally happening.

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This entry was posted on March 17th, 2009 at 1:04 pm by Fungai Machirori and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.