To continue where I left off last week… I’m writing this , the day after my 20th wedding anniversary. To kickstart the yearlong celebration of this milestone, the missus and I went to a spa for some pampering that involved our weary bodies being kneaded by a pair of giggly Thai ladies whose English suggests they got off the boat last week. I call that winning.
Afterwards we went out for some sirloin and rump steak. This is when I had a “Red from The Shawshank Redemption” moment, and found myself thinking: “Twenty years! Gosh, when you put it like that!”
Allow me this indulgence. I often delve into my personal life to make wider observations but this one is exclusively about me, though it might find some resonance with readers.
We got married at St Rachael’s Catholic parish in Mamelodi West in an intimate ceremony. There were only 13 souls present in that church building, counting the two nuns who wandered in to take a break from their responsibilities as Christ’s brides. Just our immediate families. In the larger celebration, eight months later, my long-term close friend, Maswazi, made a speech I’ll never forget. It was short and to the point. He ended it with the line: “Tebogo, we’re grateful that you found a ball of dung discarded by a beetle and had the wherewithal to crumble it until you found a speck of diamond, which you polished until we got to this point.”
I’m not a believer in the value of humility among plebs like myself. It’s a virtue for wealthy, successful people. So, it’s not out of diffidence that I agree with Maswazi’s summary of how I managed to win so big at this matrimony thing. Not only did I marry upwards, some 20 IQ points, I won the ultimate prize.
I believed my job was to show up at the wedding reasonably presentable and sober and not muck anything up on her big day — and then go back outside to continue playing with my friends while she sat at home knitting and waiting for me to return.
She often reminds me that, for the first five years, that’s precisely what I did. Out with my buddies at watering holes like Ben Loch, Ntyilo-Ntyilo and Rat & Barrel in greater Benoni or watching Champion’s League football at Jack Rabbits in Glenwood, Durban. When she finally got tired of my cameo appearances for my family, she calmly let me know that I was a quarter to being returned to the pile of dung from whence I’d been originally plucked.
You see, I was birthed in a family where every member has some form of… anomaly. The new woke world order and cancel culture prohibits me from using the “m” word. But it’s that condition that my friend, the comedian Skhumba, refers to as "intambo ayifiki kahle eparafinini’" (the lamp wick doesn’t quite reach the paraffin).
My wife was blessed with the most beautiful, big eyes, the envy of owls. So, when we were done with the Zulu wedding tradition of umabo and she was bundled into a room where my elated father squeezed bile from a goat’s gall bladder on her forehead, shoulders, arms and feet, her eyes widened even more. It’s a look I call, “what have I got myself into?”
My mother called her aside to explain it is a long-running tradition among our people, AmaQadi. and other Zulu clans and not just a short lamp wick.
If I had to do it over a million times, I'd still stand there in front of Fr Reggie in toe-pinching shoes affirming a million more times: “I do. I do. I do."
I definitely hit the jackpot where in-laws are concerned. Harry and Matshidiso Masenya are the sanest, most level-headed in-laws you could hope for. That goes for the rest of the family too. I remember the first Christmas we spent at her maternal grandmother’s house in Atteridgeville 22 years ago.
Armed with a little pidgin Setswana, I was confident I'd be able to get by... until her uncles, Billy and Shimi opened their mouths and I discovered they didn't speak Setswana. They spoke a foreign language from Pretoria called Sepitori- a mengsel of Setswana, Sepedi, isiZulu, Afrikaans, English and tsotsi taal. My Zulu ears were assaulted with this language and were it not for Thabang, my brother in-law, I was lost at sea, bombarded with strange words like “Botša daai man gore a tšee gedlela yeo a ye go reka lejeje”. Thabang would stifle a giggle at my “rabbit caught in the headlights” expression and explain this had nothing to do with kettles; we were off to buy some meat.
Yesterday, my wife sent me a text that prompted this cry baby to shed tears. She couldn’t help herself and threw in this line: “When we met 23 years ago, you told me: ‘Stick with me, baby, and I’ll show you places’. What a ride!” While we have globetrotter together, I suspect that she was taking the mickey out of our more dramatic, memorable travels
Our first road trip to Durban was on a whim. With six hours notice, we got into her Opel Kadett and hit the road. When we got to Durban, it dawned on us it was the Durban July weekend, with the added bonus of the Gunston 500 surfing competition. There were no available hotel rooms. We found ourselves at the seedy Riviera Hotel on the Esplanade, frequented by docked sailors and “friendly”, scantily dressed ladies. The unmistakable tangy whiff of old urine rose from the carpet.
She didn’t find my comment about “there are the places I’d take you” humourous. Off we went to Woolies to get new bed linen. She wasn’t going to spend the night being nibbled by fleas, bed bugs and other gogas. Hell no!
Another time, we spent the day wandering the streets of Edinburgh without accommodation. I was too busy converting everything to ZAR and the telephone booth we’d booked for the night was only available at 6pm. That evening there was the unmistakable whiff of divorce wafting through the air.
Or the night we spent in the dodgy part of Maputo because we missed our ferry to Catembe. Too much is made out of numbered milestones. To paraphrase my departed father, EB Ngcobo, it is not about the number of years spent together but what you fill those years with. In his words: “You can fill 50 years with mayhem and misery — that won’t be a success story.”
Tebogo and I connected one evening (that went on until 5am) at her Boksburg apartment. We were colleagues at Unilever. We talked and talked until, mortified, I left having overstayed my welcome. But, she points out, that’s when she knew I was “the one”. If I am “The One”, she’s my Trinity, to borrow from The Matrix. If I had to do it over a million times, I'd still stand there in front of Fr Reggie in toe-pinching shoes affirming a million more times: “I do. I do. I do."
Thank you for your indulgence.
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