Gossip kills
By Dr Canisius Banda
He killed himself. Imagine that. Yeah, he just couldn’t take it anymore.
He was an engineer, a university honours graduate. She was illiterate.
He had had many women before her. He was her first love.
Uyu mwamuna banamudyesa. Munthu ophunzira so ukakwatila mkazi osaphunzira. Uyu mkazi ni wamankhwala.
Everyone was stunned. How could such a marriage ever happen? This is what happens when a man is too educated, they said. He easily gets conned by cheap women.
The gossip never stopped. The disbelief was everywhere. But the wedding happened anyway. Amidst much pomp and splendour, they wedded. An eminent and much-loved Cabinet minister was even in attendance as guest of honour. Those that didn’t really give a damn, happily ate and drank, they made merry.
It wasn’t literacy he was looking for. It was love. It wasn’t a degree holder that he was looking for. It was a woman, any woman that his heart resonated with.
He was looking for a wife. And in her, warts and all, he had found exactly what his heart wanted.
So love being love, despite the vicious disapproval of most of his family members, especially his sisters, he married her anyway. You see, what they didn’t know was that the thing with love is that when it develops eyes, when it begins to see, it ceases to be love.
She was utterly disconsolate. The tears never stopped flowing from her eyes.
These are the words that kept playing on my mind. ‘..Yangu ubulanda kulinene ushele panse. Nashala neka cibusa wandi lelo waya. Panshi pa kosa, kumulu nako kwalepa…mayo nanaka mukulila…nashala neka, mayo nanaka mukulila..’
She was a sorry sight I tell you. Thank heavens for her faith and Catholicism. That’s what kept her sane.
The gossip was brutal, and it was relentless.
Tinali tinakamba. Ni hule uyu. Anacosa mamimba yambili. That’s why sabala. Chibalilo cake cinaonongeka. Ici cikwati nicamankhwala.
They went on and on saying such vile things behind their backs. That was their explanation for the couple’s childlessness.
And it badly hurt them both every time such malicious opinions reached their ears.
My beloved, my darling, I have given you a house. I have given you a car. I have given you a farm and other forms of wealth. I have given you my name and dignity. But my darling, I have failed to give you the one most important thing in our marriage. I have failed to give you a child. I do not know why. What I could I have given you. I do not know why God has denied me a child. Come what may, I want you to know that I love you, and will always do
Those were his very last words to her. She hears them in her mind to this day.
Every time they echo in her mind, tears laden with grief flow from her eyes like a burst dam. Then the dirge starts again.
‘Cibusa wandi lelo waya. We Lesa, pokeleleni umupashi wakwa uyu tata. Mwilolesha pa filubo fyonse acitile. Mumubike mucata cenu mwe tata. Nashala ninjikumbata mwe tata. Mayo nanaka mukulila…nashala neka, mayo nanaka mukulila.’
All women of childbearing age should turn up at their nearest health facility. This is for their own good. It is only a booster. Any woman that does not get the medicine will be risking her life and might die.
That’s what the government health authorities had said. The health education campaign was well-funded and well-executed. It was a resounding success. When it was over and the records were announced, nearly every woman of childbearing age had been covered. As targeted, nearly all women in the reproductive age range received the booster.
They had tried everything. Money wasn’t a problem. They consulted with top class gynaecologists, the very best. And they did everything which they were told to do. But nothing happened. And the years began to pile up.
Out of desperation, they even went out of the way and did the unorthodox, the unthinkable. They consulted with wacky traditional healers.
Make love right here whilst I smoke the two of you with herbs. That was what one magic man had told them.
So obliging, they made love in his hut whilst, barely clad, feathers all over him, he chanted this and that incantation over them, dry bones clanging in his hands, fog-like smoke billowing everywhere. It was beyond weird, I tell you.
Still nothing happened. The gossip just got worse.
Many well-wishers suggested sexual timing, positions and locations to them. Try doing it at dawn in a cemetery. It was as desperate and crazy as that.
That is how they did it at midnight, they did it under a full moon. They did it from the front, they did it from the back, they even did it from the sides. They did it in the car, in the kitchen, on the roof of their house. They even did it in a maize field, a symbol of fertility, they were told.
They did everything, everywhere and in every way. In the end, it was so exhausting and frustrating. His spine of masculinity began to break.
Years and years went by. Still his wife never began to spit, there was no morning sickness. Pregnancy just refused to come. It began to seem as if it was a curse.
And they wondered just why all the available science just couldn’t help them. Why us? They wondered. Why had nature chosen them to be the bane of that cruel joke? Surely someone somewhere doesn’t want our marriage to succeed, groping in the dark, they conjectured. It must be witchcraft.
Whenever alone, he blamed himself for it all. He carried the shame of childlessness like Jesus carried the Cross, painfully and laboriously. Severely afflicted with self-doubt, he began to question his life’s choices. He strongly felt that he had failed his family.
Eventually he lost all confidence in his manliness. The accusing fingers pointed at him were like stinging darts to his heart and conscience.
Hundreds of thousands women had been given that booster. His wife was one of them. What he didn’t know was that all those hundreds of thousands of women that had been injected with the booster, each one of them, suffering individually and in silence, was battling a personal calamity. Each one of them was also failing to conceive. Because of the injection, an injection which the government said was for their own wellbeing, they all had now become infertile. And each one of them just didn’t know why.
There are just too many people in the world today, some demons say. This is not sustainable, they argue. Their solution, we must depopulate.
You will find some of these demons in leading world organisations. We must find reliable and effective ways to reduce the world’s population, they insist. And through healthcare, we are on course to doing that. In a few years’ time, we could reduce it by half, they boastfully report.
Pay attention, dear reader, just as an example, one scientist at the World Economic Forum [WEF] once said: ‘A strong global dictatorship should depopulate the world by 86 percent.’
Way after her husband had died, taken his own life, that is when she discovered that it was the injection which her own government had given her which was the reason she could not become pregnant.
Her infertility was because the injection that she received with all those other hundreds of thousands of women, a Tetanus vaccine, a booster as the government had called it, was contaminated with a hormone called the human chorionic gonadotropin [HCG].
You see, dear reader, when this hormone, the HCG, is circulating in the body of any woman, there is no way she can become pregnant.
This is how hundreds of thousands of women, all at once, under the guise of public healthcare, were rendered infertile. Told that their reproductive rights were being safeguarded by that very act, the opposite happened.
Was the contamination deliberate? You must ask, dear reader. Was the vaccine deliberately spiked, weaponized to achieve exactly what it did?
Even if it was, no one will admit that it was, dear reader. It was an error in the vaccine production line, quickly they will say, allaying fears and soothing you.
Yes, there is no dispute that vaccines save lives. There is also no dispute that vaccines can be and have been used as vehicles for harm.
Way after the deed had been done, when the contamination was discovered, the vaccine campaign was stopped and the remaining batches of the vaccine were withdrawn. Way too late. To this day, she cannot have children. And all the wealth that he had left her was grabbed from her by his relatives.
Umukashi te lupwa, they argued. Uwesu naya, uyu akopwa kumbi, they jibed.
To this day, she still bears his name. She carries it as if a shield from the hostility of society. All she has remained with is her faith in God and her undying love for him.
She remains in a state of perpetual mourning, the dirge by St Joseph’s Catholic Church Choir, a strong balm but still a repeating lament in her mind.
‘..Yangu ubulanda kulinene ushele panse. Nashala neka cibusa wandi lelo waya. Panshi pa kosa, kumulu nako kwalepa…mayo nanaka mukulila…nashala neka, mayo nanaka mukulila..’
Gossip, dear reader, is idle talk. It bears no virtue. Gossip is an occupation of weak minds, of lesser beings. It has its roots in malice, in schadenfreude. Often, visibly gloating, people say things about others that just aren’t true.
Dear reader, what people say about you is none of your business. Commonly, what people say about you says everything about the people speaking themselves. It only reveals their true character. Commonly, it says nothing about you.
In life, do not gag anyone. Let people say whatever it is they want to say. As the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius advises to this day, dear reader, your responsibility is to ‘be deaf to malicious gossip.’ Almost always, gossip is devoid of both value and truth.
You cannot control the opinions of others. And, perhaps, you should not. People should think in whatever manner is permissible by their person. But what you must do, is to control yourself, dear reader, how you respond to what other people say.
Further, never seek the approval of or validation from anyone. Be like the sun, whether praised or criticised, it continues to play its role. It is never swayed from its purpose. It always rises and shines anyway
Gossip kills. I pray that you won’t be its next victim.
He was her first love. The gossips weren’t to know. And she loved him to bits. Though still young, now too traumatised, chances are, he will also remain her last love.
Daily, she prays:
‘…Mayo Maria nyinefwe we nyina wa bonse…we nyina wa kwa Lesa uleba nefwe…we mutakatifu, mayo, nakucelela…mayo we nyinefwe, uletulombela kuli mwana…’
She belongs to the Legion of Mary, and always wears a rosary.
Godspeed!
Send your comments to: bandacanisius@gmail.com
________________
