End of the road for a marriage 'made in heaven'

If you are a bachelor and a member of a church whose leader gets ‘orders from above’ on whom you should marry, you have reason to be afraid.

A man in Murang’a South District is regretting the day he heeded his pastor’s ‘divine’ intervention and married a woman he chose for him.

The pastor announced in church that God had at long last revealed that Joseph Njoroge, 36, was supposed to marry Esther Wamaitha, 35.

Njoroge says he was late in marrying because he was poorly educated and could not get a good job. His earnings as a casual labourer could not sustain himself and a wife.

A neighbour introduced him to a church where, it was claimed, poor people were prayed for and became rich. The neighbour promised him that in a year, he would be driving his own vehicle if he joined the church.

So he became a member of Kisima cha Daudi (David’s well) church in Makuyu Division. Members of the church do not believe in conventional medicine. Besides, a member cannot even remove a jigger from his toe since it is God’s creation and He has sent it to establish a home in his body and feed on his blood, which is God given.

"I had not asked the pastor to intervene on my behalf and was surprised when he announced that God had already chosen a wife for me," Njoroge says.

A week later, the pastor wedded the two in a low-key ceremony at the church.

The ‘wedding cake’ was half loaf of bread and the meals served were donated by church members.

It is not a month since the wedding but Njoroge has already told the pastor that he wants the marriage dissolved since the wife cannot cook, is a mother of two children she had not declared before the wedding and is lazy.

Njoroge caused a stir in the church recently when he brought a bowl of food that he presented as evidence of his wife’s poor cooking.

He also said he had learnt that the woman was related to the pastor who must have schemed to find her a husband after she was chased away from a previous marriage.

He passed the bowl around the church pleading with members to taste the mixture of rice and arrowroots.

Sudden father

"This food is uncooked, smells of paraffin and is exceedingly salty. This is how men die of food poisoning," he said.

He said he had realised that he was hoodwinked to shoulder the poverty of the pastor’s relatives.The pastor however advised him that what he was experiencing was one of the many challenges of married life. He should be patient while his wife learnt about his preferences.

But when Njoroge asked whether becoming the sudden father of two school going children was also part of the learning process, the pastor cautioned him about the dangers of challenging what God and His angels had chosen for him.

With his back to the wall, Njoroge relocated to Kirinyaga District where a relative has managed to get him a casual job in a rice plantation.

"I will only return home after this woman has left our compound. The pastor can then go back on his knees and seek another husband for her," he says.