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The Yorubas, my people, are probably the most dramatic when they arrive with the ‘breaking news’ of the arrival of another woman in a marriage. Their proverbs are colourful.
‘You should not be angry when God doubles your joy.’
‘It is always more glorious to walk in a group than to walk alone.
‘The knife has already cut the child’s finger, it can’t be reversed’
‘Two vegetables can co-exist in a plate.’
Once a Yoruba wife hears two or three of those proverbs, she knows her marriage is entering a new phase, that her life as she knows it is about to be altered forever. Yes, forever. Sometimes the new woman on the scene is not yet pregnant but husband dear has paid her dowry; meaning the die is cast. Sometimes she is pregnant, which makes it more painful when the wife at home is yet to have a child. That’s when they start their sermon with this popular one;
‘It is the head of one child that will attract more children.’
Translation: the new woman is pregnant and her baby cannot be delivered outside wedlock because it is this new baby’s cry that will call forth the babies the wife at home had been waiting for.
