Saturday, July 4, 2009

How does an angry woman get to other side of the river?

As I have articulated over and over again in my posts, fidelity is very hard to come by in Zambia. The part that I struggle most with is how women accept it as a fact of life. But not all women…

The village that I visited on Thursday can only be reached by a pontoon boat, crossing a river full of crocodiles. I was told a village man kept a wife on one side of the river and a girlfriend on the other side, where he went to fish. The wife caught wind of the girlfriend and set off with her sisters early in the morning to take the pontoon across the river and confront her husband. However, that same day, the husband and his girlfriend were on the other side of the river, hoping to catch the pontoon and sell the fish in the village. In a panicked state, the man jumped in a canoe and tried to quickly paddle around the pontoon to escape his angry wife. But his paddling was no match for the wife, who plunged into the water and swam (or some version of swimming that was apparently more effective than it looks) to the canoe. After throwing all of the fish back into the water, I was told she began to beat him, while everyone watched in shock from the pontoon. I would have asked for her autograph.



1 comment: