When efulefu meets efulefu – a tale of uselessness

I want to tell you a story…

Traditionally, men are the providers. They pay their bride price, which seemingly earns them the right to say shit like “look, I married you. I brought you into my house. You either shape up or I’d send you back to your mother to teach you what a wife’s role is,” when you tell them that both of you are adults, & it’s not kosher for them to order you around like a child.

Nonetheless, in every family, there is one man who isn’t interested in any of that traditional shit. They say “I’m not even ready to provide for myself, much less provide for any gaddem woman!”

The family beg, cajole, threaten, shun, unshun, shame – all to get him into becoming “a man”. Nothing works. So they gather together and start looking for a responsible girl that can help him sit up. Usually they find a girl who’s already standing on her own or on her way there. Perhaps she has a little money, but she’s usually got her shit together. They can entrust their efulefu (waste man) brother to her. She can work the miracle they are unable to.

I don’t get why she’d want to go along with this project, though. But maybe she sees a twinkle, despite the muck. He has qualities she finds promising, that she can nurture & refine into something glorious.

Sometimes, this man is willing to go with the flow. True true, he realises the girl is above him. On his own, he doesn’t stand a chance of winning & keeping such a girl. He behaves himself, marries her. How they live is no longer anyone’s problem. From the surface, the gamble paid off. He’s been deliveredT! He don like efulefu-ing no mo’!

At times, the efulefu, the mumu man doesn’t know how good he’s got it. He looks down at his prized gift, sees a desperate woman nobody else wants, hence why she’d stoop so low to accept a nothing like him. Sure he knows he ain’t shit! He knows she knows he ain’t shit! And if she knows that, what’s she doing still agreeing to this messiness???

He’s nasty to her. Sometimes she leaves (especially if her people are wise & called her aside to say, “Gurl, what are you doing with this foolishness?? Dem do you jazz???”)

Sometimes she’s in love, and believes she’d redeem him with love and care. Sometimes, he appears to be won over and goes ahead to marry her, then in a couple of years, she’d start to make the rounds on ‘Aunty Abby‘ columns asking for help on how to cope. Other times (Gawd, I wish this happens more frequently), he really really knows she’s better off without him and doesn’t bow to the pressure. Finally she leaves & goes to find someone better.

Then there are the times this man decides he cannot come and be fucking with anyone better than him. His self-esteem may be low, but by gawd he’d find a girl whose self-esteem is even lower.

A girl worse off than him. She hasn’t the head for education, so she had no qualifications. She hasn’t the heart for crafts, so she has no talent. Whatever skill she may have is negligible, undistinguished. She really hasn’t got much to speak for her. Like her male companion, she’s looking for someone she’d become a burden to.

Before her, though, he’s Arthur of Camelot. He can tell her to jump, and she would. Perhaps she’s even pulling an Angela Kardashian: if the man has little going for him, but his siblings & family are popping, well that’s good enough for her – some of what they have has got to rub off on her, mos def. She feels she can’t do any better anyway. And if she’s going to end up with a bum, might as well end up with a bum with family connections.

And so the two efulefus marry – cos by gawd, they will marry oh! The man may have never fed himself in all his godforsaken 100 years on earth, never held down a job. Never paid house rent. He lives off his family by guilt tripping them to keep propping him up, no matter how many chances he squanders.

Regardless, he’s still going to tell his saviour family that he is his own man gawddamnit! And if this is who he wants to marry, that’s who he wants to marry, and there isn’t a geddem thing they can do about it. Because he is a man, an adult, and nobody can force him to marry how he doesn’t want. And so the two efulefus marry, and quickly move into producing litters of children – because there’s nothing as easy to do as having children someone else will raise.