Rivalry in Polygamous Marriage: Part I

Imagine after spending 16 years in a marriage with a man you love so dearly and have made so many sacrifices for, waking you up one morning and informing you that in a matter of days he would be taking on a second wife? “Sorry to say, my dear, but I have impregnated a girl whom I think I want to take in as my next wife. So please be co-operative and become a part of the festivity.”  What would you do?

Would you immediately become filled with hatred and jealousy because you might begin to wonder whether you have been inadequate in some way? Would you now have to stand strong or find yourself kicked out if you fail to first reinforce yourself and later do everything to try and reestablish your worth in your husband’s eyes?

Most women will first begin to gather their thoughts on to how to handle the situation; by so doing; an endless competition for the attention, love and affection of the man will be set in motion.

With the quest for an upper hand, most women will be left with no option but to find themselves wondering what could be so special about this “other woman:” what does she think of herself; what makes her tick; what is her mindset; how does she interact with the man we both crave?

In polygamous marriages, such as the one above, a number of unexpected situations sometimes develop. Sometimes the husband lays down rules or engages in new behavior that only help to worsen relations in the home; it might start with preventing the two wives from interacting with each other, and degenerate to keep only one woman in the house at a time.

With the sole aim of being the more seductive---therefore, the more desirable---wife in the home, rivals are prone to finding all sorts of behind-the-scene remedies --- including going to a juju man or performing witchcraft activities --- in their effort to try and get rid of the problem.

Obviously, it is impossible for a man to marry two, three or four wives and be capable of loving each of them equally. It usually becomes glaring that he loves one more than the other(s). This is where the head-wife---who feels left out---will try to do everything to make such a three-way relationship a misery for the man and his new wife. If it means finding a way to prevent the other woman from bearing children for the husband, she (head-wife) will do just that. Some women will even try to find a way to push the new wife into insanity by some supernatural means.

The story is told of a fury rivalry that occurred in Danane, La Cote d’Ivoire, where a rival wife is said to have gone insane due to a failed witchcraft attempt at killing the husband’s younger wife. In this case, the first wife failed to produce a child after many years of marriage. The husband became desperate and married a second wife to bear him his much-desired children.

And for sure, the younger wife brought forth three kids for him. Evidently, his love and affection for her became boundless. As a result, violent clashes erupted between the two women on a daily basis.

The head wife, who felt she could take it no longer and desired to regain her rightful place in their husband’s heart, decided to seek an immediate solution by confiding in a juju man and asking him to kill the other wife by supernatural means. The job was done and all she needed to do was to go home, bury the juju under a huge rock in the yard and call her rival’s name three times.

But there was a condition to this: if the younger wife did not respond by the end of the third call, the stuff buried under the rock would disappear and she (the head wife) would rather go insane.

Meanwhile, the younger wife, too, had been consulting her own juju man who had alerted her about the unfolding situation and had told her what to do.

When the head wife came home, she did as instructed; but there was no answer. She immediately rushed back to where she had buried her juju; it was not there. She immediately started to uproot every stone in the yard and that exercise extended to neighboring compounds and eventually the entire city –in search of her missing juju.

If the rock is extremely huge, she would spend days, digging around it until she finally got it uprooted.

This is just an example of how far extreme cases of rivalry could go.