Double-Barrelled Hitmaker
By Gregory Gondo, Special Correspondent
Posted to the web December 22, 2005
Copyright © 2006 Financial Gazette. All rights reserved.
RD011906

This week I could not help but wonder what kind of world we are living in because there are just too many strange things going down as the Americans would say.

I am talking of what I read on The Saturday Herald's front page (anchor story) about something that I never imagined I would witness in Zimbabwe -- in my lifetime.

A woman in Sanyati is having the best of both worlds so to speak (or is it?): living with two men as her co-husbands under one roof.

From a Zimbabwean point of view this is when one can say reality is indeed stranger than fiction. I know that I may be inviting a chorus of angry voices from feminist groups who believe that what men do women have a right to do too. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, they will argue. But what the adventurous woman in Sanyati has done is sacrilegious. It is an abomination. This is what they call mashura padunhu in our very rich Shona.

Indeed the devil is on the loose again, I tell you. For this can only be the devil's work. There is no other explanation. Since Mrs Eunice Marutenga Gondo brought me into this wonderful world through caesarean section in the one-horse town of Marondera some few decades ago, I have never heard anything like this. And I am not alone in this. Even Baba Shawn, a South African-based dab hand with the written word, who inspired me so much during his days as a DJ on the All Hit Radio Three said as much when he phoned me over the weekend. So did Patrick Chidhakwa who now practices factory farming in Marondera.

At my favourite drinking holes in Harare that was the topical issue. Zimbabweans, not used to this kind of thing, are simply shocked.

Our sages would swear by the graves of their long departed loved ones that these are the kind of things causing the successive droughts that have afflicted the country. The only other time I heard about a similar case was in 2003 when it was reported that a woman called Quinn Norton from Silicon Valley, California, USA, lived and had a sexual relationship with two men, Danny O'Brien and Jonathan Gilbert in an arrangement they described as polyamory. Infact people who practice this are referred to as the poly community in the USA.

But then again, that is a permissive society with values very different from ours. In that society same sex marriages are now in vogue after incessant pressure from queer rights groups. In that society mothers sleep with their sons and sons-in-law. And what's more? They are happy and proud to speak about their sexual exploits on television talk shows.

Not only that but, in that society, people get married today, hop into bed and after spending eight hours of steamy sex seek to nullify the matrimonial union on the pretext that they are incompatible or were under the influence! But this is Zimbabwe for goodness' sake!

The social implications or acceptability of the Sanyati arrangement notwithstanding, let's look purely at the health risks of this arrangement. I don't care what connubial delights and a rosier-than-real picture this nymphomaniac may claim and paint, I maintain that this is a very dangerous arrangement.

I feel that this, to all intents and purposes, goes beyond tempting fate--it amounts to sticking the middle finger at fate, if you know what I mean. What with HIV-AIDS-related ailments? Considering the high risk of diseases and the emotional stress that this might cause the question is: is the juice really worth the squeeze?

Yes, to the outside world the woman and the two men, who I think are several cards short of a full deck, may make it appear all sweetness and light. They might pretend that, like any other marriage, it is not all beer and skittles in the affair. But the truth of the matter is that there should be furious internal disagreements -- tension one can literally cut with a knife.

Not only that but this is also the kind of arrangement which causes that anxiety that has seen many men becoming dead from the waist down, if you know what I mean. How many men do you know that have always had faces as long as a wet week simply because they suspect their wives to know someone in the biblical sense? If suspicion can cause life-threatening depression, what about knowing your significant other's organ grinder?

And come to think of it, what happens when darkness falls and the lights are out? When it is that time which Glenroy Washington describes as when only the sound of breathing is all you can hear, as the chest cavity opens up to the heart pumping with the temperature rising like a volcano wanna erupt, what do they do? Assuming they use the same bed?

If so, when they jump into bed, are they as snug as bugs in a rug? Who samples the delights first? Who has more conjugal rights? Do they engage in threesome encounters? Just imagine the thought of seeing someone making the earth move for your wife! Does she sometimes play both ends against the middle by giving one of these sexual stooges preferential treatment? There are so many questions you know. The whole situation is a little harder, a little uncomfortable. Men can share everything but women!

If this was meant to be fun, this unfeeling sister, who should be the only woman to be spoilt for choice under her own matrimonial roof must surely have an off-the-wall sense of humour. She must hate men so much. I will stick my head above the parapet and say she is a candidate for a personality transplant, if ever there was one.

Now, I will not underestimate the power of love. I know that true love changes everything and a lot of strange things have been done in the name of love. But can this be true love? You got to be kidding me!

The remainder of this article, which does not pertain to polyamory, is available as Double-Barrelled Hitmaker continues...