TITLE: His Only Wife

AUTHOR: Peace Adzo Medie

PUBLISHER: One World Publications

REVIEWER: Tracy M. Ochieng

AVAILABILITY: Text Book Centre and other local bookstores

PRICE: Ksh1,550 (Print)

What would cause someone to miss their own wedding? A day full of pomp, love, laughter, dancing, revelling and the promise of forever. Surely, it can’t be a business trip! After all, we have witnessed people getting married even on their deathbeds, so what could have caused Elikem Ganyo to miss his wedding? Afi couldn’t wrap her head around it. Something was amiss, and although Aunty and her family explained Elikem’s absence away, she just couldn’t shake that feeling of foul play. His Only Wife by Peace Adzo Medie begins with Elikem absent on his wedding day, represented instead by his brother Richard. Afi is thrust into a marriage orchestrated by the powerful Ganyo family, who believe she can lure Elikem away from his long-term partner, Muna, a woman they deem unworthy.

Marriage is a beautiful thing, well, it used to be until some rogue feminists and radical patriarchal men decided it was or should be oppressive, and most—if not everyone—aspires to it. In fact, many women fantasise about their wedding day from a young age and have a vivid picture of what the day should look like. They, hand-in-hand with their gorgeous men, who have chiselled jawlines, tall, masculine, dark, and handsome, as they enter their white limousines with the signs “just married”. Pretty dresses, diamond tiaras and perfect make-up, champagne and all one can eat. It is a perfect day to put a stamp on the love shared and to ward off any jealous onlookers and femme fatales (I hear they are called “Jezebels” these days). Marriage was for partnership, for social transformation and public recognition. But what do you do when you are “married” but cannot live with your husband? Not because he is overseas or is bedridden or has been deployed to fight a war, but because he is involved with another woman that his family doesn’t approve of, and so you are sent to release him from the claws of this woman. 

It is usually pretty obvious when a man with a wandering eye targets a new love interest. This love interest would be inundated with claims of “I don’t even live with her, she is just my baby mama”, or, “she is not even beautiful like you”, or, “she cannot hold conversations that stimulate me enough to want to sleep with her, and she is full of drama, do you know she attacked my female colleague?” Interestingly, though, these men never seem to divorce these plain vanilla women who no longer respond to their touches. And these love interests fall hard for the lies of these men over and over again, with the hope that they’d eventually leave their wives and subscribe to the fountains of youth, firm skin and hot lovemaking with them. Usually, the man has to be set up economically or at least offer something a woman lacks in her life. For example, he could be a simple man with a motorbike (soft babes shouldn’t be caught walking in the dust), or a shop where they can get constant supplies, or a simple government employee, at least with a car, or a rich man who passes the screening test for Sugar Daddy (fear women, they no longer screen). In short, these men must be economically or network-muscled to provide or add value in some way or shape.

That is the story(lies) Afi is fed with Aunty, Richard, Fred and Yaya on behalf of Elikem, showing how deeply marriages are influenced by families.

The lies

“To tell you the truth, I don’t know what my brother sees in that woman. His girlfriend at the university looked just like you with a beautiful face, flesh at the right places and fair skin,” Richard said. In contrast to Afi, Muna, the evil Liberian woman who had trapped the golden child Elikem of the Ganyo family, was and this is according to Aunty and Richard, a tall and hard woman with visible bicep muscles and calf muscles that sat round and high like a sprinter's. There was a gulf between her compact, lemon-sized breasts, and her buttocks were as flat as a sheet of plywood. Plus, she had no hips to speak of. Her skin was as dark as roasted coffee beans, and her face, the only soft part of her, was plain. She kept her hair in long braids and liked wearing skirts and dresses that showed off her manly features. 

So when Elikem fails to show up at his wedding to Afi and in his stead is his brother Richard, it doesn’t take a genius to know that someone is being played in the name of “you are a beautiful light-skinned woman and you are going to make him leave his wife.” Colourism has been an unfortunate tool in modern African societies where many women who are naturally dark-skinned are told they are not worthy, not lovable and are shamed constantly online and in real life for wearing their skin without altering it with those terrible bleaching solutions. It is so severe that if you were to walk along River Road, downtown Nairobi, as a dark skin woman, trust that you’ll hear women calling after you, crying and tugging, “Madam, mafuta?”

‍So you have him to yourself?

Life with Elikem is complicated from the outset. Although Afi is showered with luxuries — an apartment, a stocked fridge, air conditioning, a chauffeur — her husband continues to live nearby with Muna. When she grows tired of being hidden away, Afi issues an ultimatum: move her into his house or lose her. Elikem agrees, but married life proves hollow as he continues to see Muna, claiming it’s only because of their daughter, Ivy.

The last straw (no spoilers) is when Afi discovers, and much to the chagrin of many side chics with the hope of being wives (shout out to Queen Camilla, the super side chic who not only became a wife but the Queen of England), that not only has Eli been lying to her about being committed to only her, but the woman was absolutely stunning and nothing like how she was described. To add salt to injury, Ivy knew Serlorm, who innocently reached for Muna when Afi coincidentally found herself at her door. 

Verdict

His Only Wife is sharp, entertaining, and deeply layered. It peels back the curtain on marriage, family pressure, and the politics of beauty in African society. While it sometimes leans on stereotypes, it sparks important conversations about women’s choices, independence, and self-worth. You only have to read it to find whether Afi stays and “shares” her husband or leaves and proclaims like many independent women, “I can’t share! The boy is mine!”

Tracy Ochieng is a staff writer with Books in Africa. Email: tracy.ochieng@ekitabu.com