The Sunday Mail
Dr Rebecca Chisamba
AMAI, thank you so much for your Sunday Mail column. My beautiful wife and I are both aged 32. We have a one-year-old son and we are both degreed, and gainfully employed. We love and respect each other so much. I have three siblings, a brother and two sisters.
I am the last-born and I always have problems with my brother because he has no kind words for my wife. He is always against my wife’s opinions or any contributions she makes in family meetings. My brother wanted me to marry a girl he had introduced me to years back.
He knows perfectly well that we were two different people and we just could not make it work. But he continues to compare my official wife with my ex-flame.
He still tries to convince other members of the family that I went for beauty and not for character.
My wife knows this and has distanced herself from whatever concerns my brother. This has put me in a very tight corner.
These two people are my world and they cannot continue to be at each other’s throat. I love my wife very much. Please Amai, how can we bring peace to the family?
Response
Hello writer and thanks for supporting the platform. In all honesty, it seems to me like your brother is living in the past. You made your choice and he must live with it.
He is actually tearing the family apart. I would advise you to call for a sibling only meeting, where you can iron this issue out. I am happy that you are standing by your spouse and made the right decision for yourself.
Lines have to be drawn and until your brother accepts that you control your own destiny, he will be subject to the alienation and treatment he is already getting from your wife.
I do not get what the big deal is. He chose maiguru of his own volition and no one had an issue with that. I think he should allow his own siblings to flourish and live with the personal decisions they make.
I would also recommend bringing your parents and elder relatives into the matter so it is resolved once and for all. Life is precious. Do not waste it on petty squabbles. Focus on being a united family. I wish you all the best.
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Family feud got out of hand
I am a married man and a father of five. I have five siblings, two brothers and three sisters. We are all married and have families of our own. Our parents are retired and their pensions do not stretch far.
For this reason, we agreed to pull our resources together every month to buy groceries for our parents and give them upkeep money. The last born in our family is a domestic worker so we agreed that he contributes whatever he can.
His two kids and wife stay at home with our parents.
Of late, some siblings have been complaining that we are looking after our brother’s family and that his wife is wasteful.
My view is that she looks after our parents and does not ask for much. Some of my siblings threatened to stop the contributions and many bad words were spoken.
This did not go down well with our brother whose family resides at home. He spilled the beans to our parents. Our parents drove all the way in their old truck to bring back the groceries and vowed not to accept anything from bad children like us. They are so angry and we do not know how to make things right.
Response
You and your siblings were doing good. I think your youngest sibling was also contributing as best as he could. The fact that his family is back home assisting and asking for no compensation is remarkable. You cannot equate that to groceries. Unfortunately, some of you only see things in black and white and in this case, monetary value.
I think things could have gone better had you informed your sister-in-law the challenges you were facing as a group in terms of providing groceries and urged her to use the supplies sparingly. It is not what you said but how you said it. It obviously reached the ears of your parents who became enraged.
I think all of you need to head home and formally apologise.
Try to express yourselves better, especially by clarifying what you meant to say and not how it came out. You also need to apologise to your little brother for how his family was treated in all of this.
Needless to say, the bulk of this falls upon you as the peacemaker.
There is always friction when family and money mix. Work hard to bring everyone on the same page and constantly remind them why you are doing it as a family in the first place. You cannot force everyone to cooperate.
You may need to be open to the possibility that some may break off from this noble arrangement in the future. Work with those who are willing and control what you can. Once tempers have cooled off, I am sure your parents and brother will forgive you.
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No good deed goes unpunished
I am a married woman. My biggest mistake to date was convincing my husband to let our neighbours get borehole water from our home. It seemed like a noble thing to do at the time. It started out well.
To my surprise, some of our neighbours are now inviting their friends and family to come and get “free water.”
Because of this our electricity bill has rapidly shot up and the borehole is breaking down every now and then because of over use. The cost is draining us and we cannot carry on like this. Some of these people, we go to the same church with and we are finding it very hard now to tell them to stop coming.
My husband is suggesting that we let our gardener tell whoever comes for water that we no longer give that service. Is this not cowardice? Please Amai, how best can we handle this?
Response
Your heart was in the right place, unfortunately things did not go out as intended. Your neighbours took certain liberties that they should not have. However, we cannot cry over spilt milk. Your husband is somewhat on the right track when it comes to saving your skin. Just let the gardener inform whoever comes to solicit the water service to know that the borehole is no longer functional. It will be a quick fix to what has otherwise gotten out of hand. In future, always be clear with the conditions of arrangements you get into with people such as your neighbours. If you had told them beforehand, this arrangement was solely for their benefit; they may have acted differently. I wish you all the best.
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