Davetula Konsult

Sofola AUGUSTA is in her 60s, middle class and seemingly contented except for the torn in her flesh – the destruction of her daughter’s self-worth by the monster she was married to. Here, she tells her story: “December 19, 2004, was a Friday. I know this because it is a date etched deeply and painfully in my memory. My husband and I came home from a party to find the answer-phone message that would change my life for ever. ‘Mum, please call. I’ve been attacked.’ It was my eldest daughter, then 29, speaking in a trembling whisper. “I frantically dialled her number and could scarcely take in what she told me: her husband had thrown her down the stairs in a drunken rage. She had phoned me after barricading herself in the bedroom with her two children. But where was I? Five hundred miles away, living at the other end of the country. And I hadn’t even been at home to take her desperate call. Many is the time I have chastised myself for going out and for not living closer. Inste...

Everything happened so suddenly, so unexpected. As I lay on the small hospital bed, in the little white painted room, waiting for the summon to surrender my body to the surgeon’s knives, everything began reeling out before me. Both sounds and pictures, just as in the movies. I had this strange feeling that my life had come to an end. An abrupt one at that, for this was not the way I had always envisioned myself exiting this world. Somehow, I had over the years been convinced that my exit would be all planned out and carefully executed. I will  then  peacefully slip or sleep out. But circumstances at that moment, that fateful rainy Tuesday afternoon, on the 7th day of June, meant  that I had been wrong all this while. The dream that I would  have all the time and wherewithal to set my house in order before I die now seemed exactly what it was, a dream. The opportunity to make restitutions, reconciliations, renunciations and re-dedications appeared to have d...

In times gone by, in the real traditional African setting, it was the responsibility of parents to find suitors for their children. Marriage was considered a very important institution, a lifelong contract all things being equal. Families on both sides conducted investigations on the intending partners and even their family members and history before consenting to proposal. It was not often that one heard of cases where young men and women were allowed to bring home partners of their choices in the name of falling in love. But times have since changed and all that is considered old fashioned now. As young people, we believe we are now more educated, enlightened, exposed and knowledgeable than our parents in almost all spheres of life, including sourcing potential life partners. We go through a period we call dating or courtship depending on which fancy word we want to use, insisting that we have good knowledge of each other and we go ahead to seal what we consider the best deals ...