I love small things because all my life has been about small things; from a small family, lived in a small town, attended a small school over the hill in our hometown and was brought up in a small church in the corner of our hometown. This doesn’t stop me from dreaming big though but where something small will work, I don’t kill myself looking for the bigger alternatives.

So when we started planning our wedding, I told my wife-to-be, Helen about the need to have a wedding that befits our pocket. That was a nice way of telling her, “Let’s have a small wedding.”

She’s a teacher and I’m working in one of the government agencies in the town we live in. Our salaries are already burdened since both of us have to send money home to help our parents and siblings. We sat down and drew a plan—a plan that ensured we put our money where it was needed. Important things first.

We bought our rings before thinking about anything else. We were looking for something that wouldn’t fade with the fading times. That meant we had to invest a little more in that. From there, we spread the rest of our money on other areas of the wedding depending on how important we think they were.

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Nothing fancy. We had our hearts on being pronounced husband and wife rather than looking to set records with our wedding. It was successfully small but the outcome made us very happy and even people who attended the wedding congratulated us and told us the things they’ve learned from our wedding. All is well that ends well. We had a peaceful honeymoon and came back to our normal lives a few days later.

Weeks after the wedding, I realized something was off about my wife. She was constantly on the lookout for things that were not after her and was avoiding certain calls. I asked why she wasn’t picking up a particular call and she said something like, “Don’t mind her. She’s only calling to disturb my evening.”

The calls didn’t stop. It got to a time when some calls were even coming at dawn.

I was in the office one day when I had a call. The caller was a woman. She was speaking on top of her voice, so loud it felt like she was on a loudspeaker. I looked for a quiet place and asked who she was and why she was calling me. She was a seller of fabrics. From the story she narrated, my wife bought fabrics from her on credit and promised to pay after the wedding but wasn’t picking up her calls. She took my number from someone who knows someone who knows me.

Eventually, I met up with this woman and agreed on payment terms with her. She was kind enough to accept the terms and patient enough to spread the payments over months. I didn’t want to engage my wife over the issue. I saw the fabrics and I knew it was part of the clothes she wore during the wedding. Anything at all could have pushed her to buy on credit so I saw no need to ask her questions.

But the calls never stopped coming and she never stopped avoiding them. One evening her phone rang while she was in the kitchen. I picked up the call and there was a woman on the other side of the phone. She said, “Oh, now that you’ve picked up my call, I hope my money is ready.” I answered slowly and carefully so I don’t get her more upset; “This is her husband. Let me hand over the phone to her. She’s in the kitchen.”

She screamed, “Oh good that I have you here. She wouldn’t have picked up the call if it were her. Let me tell you what the issue is about.”

Weeks before our wedding, my wife took a loan from her and promised to pay in a week. Looking at the date she was given, my wife should have paid her even ahead of the wedding. And then she used the wedding as an excuse to postpone payment.

I had a conversation with my wife. I wanted to know how many people she was owing. She was owing the food vendor, owing the place we rented the chairs and tables from. She had borrowed money from friends thinking we could raise enough money at the wedding and pay them. She owed everybody including the IMF.

Looking at the expenses we made during the wedding, all the vendors were paid in full. I personally handed her the money to effect those payments. She didn’t pay them in full. They all came after her.

I’ve always learned to cut my coat according to my material and if I knew she was like that, we would have addressed it before the marriage. I had no idea of that side of her. So today, a call will come through asking for payments I’d paid long ago.

I’ve tried to settle some of the bills. I’ve reached an agreement with some of them to pay in installments but currently, I’m overwhelmed. I made an arrangement with her to use her salary to pay off some of these loans. Because of that, I don’t expect her to help financially in the house. That too she had failed.

It’s not a big town we live in. The embarrassment is getting too much. We don’t sleep in peace these days because someone is knocking on our door. If not a knock then it’s a call. I didn’t take any money from anyone yet the calls I receive and the insults I get every day from these people make me want to send my wife away to her parents. She should go and live there until she’s done settling her debts. And when she returns, she will sign a bond never to borrow anything in the name of our marriage without telling me.

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I’m tired. We are only five months old in this marriage but we’ve settled fights with people we owe more than we’ve made love. This is slowly killing the vibe in our marriage.

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—Mark

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