Before that love kills you!

Last year, in the month of May, I wrote the piece titled “Before marriage kills you”. May is here again and either by coincidence or divine orchestration, circumstances have forced me to once again visit this dingy maze I seldom like to go. Perhaps, providence has ordained me an emissary to my fellows carrying a uterus to sound this gong one more time. Is a man’s love really worth any woman’s life? Does love have to hurt for it to be real? While you may want to ruminate over those, allow me to lay a background for this discourse. I will pick up this trail before it gets cold but you must follow me closely.

I recently started following the Nigerian recording artist, singer and songwriter, Eniola Akinbo, who’s popularly known as Niyola, on Instagram. I had no profound connection with her music until I listened to her 2015 single, ‘Go On’. That song triggered a kindred feeling as I could deeply relate to its lyrics and we clicked. I suspected that perhaps, Niyola was more than just another superficial beauty with a sonorous voice in the saturated industry and that aroused my curiosity. Satisfactorily, her posts over time have confirmed my suspicions  to be true. She is opinionated and inspiring. In the not so remote past, she posted about a missing friend. I couldn’t help but notice her impeccable beauty…the way her skin glowed in perfection and the whiteness of her enthralling smile. I said a prayer in passing for her, hoping she would turn up, unscathed.

Alas, that prayer was my epic sand castle! On Friday, May 12, 2017, I read a horrifying post about the delectable lady I had mouthed a prayer for. Immediately, I got on the waves of the internet and my surfing plunged me into melancholy. News of the damsel’s death was on almost every site I checked, her pictures flooded the internet.  A great bout of perturbation hit me and my frayed nerves refuse to be still. Goose bumps became a part of the normal flora of my epidermis as I tried with shredded courage to conjure up the grotesque imagery in my head.

How on earth does a man who professes love towards a woman hurt her in such a gruesome manner? The South African beauty, Karabo Mokoena, was set on her path to eternity via her lover’s hands. Who didn’t only snuff the life out of her but cremated her body!  Last year, I had written ‘Before that Marriage Kills You’ because I felt that the vows, the rings and may be offspring, made it harder for women to walk away from abusive marriages but what do I say when a woman in a relationship is brutally slain?

Karabo was not married. Her boyfriend had ended her life in the most tragic way and this tragedy has revamped my position. This year, I am yanking out the word ‘marriage’ because I have come to bitter realisation that it is not only married women that could be subject to the barbarity that breeds death but single women as well.

The four letter word, LOVE, had been for eons the destruction of kingdoms, the damnation of thrones, Achilles heel of warriors and the death of fairies.  While love could be beautiful, there are many things that love is not. Dear sister with a womb, enduring his battering and constant degradation is one of the many things that love is not. It is not drowning your pillows with tears every night. Love is not wearing concealers and foundations to hide the black and blue spots. It is not putting on dark shades to family events to avoid questioning. It is not telling your friends you fell from the stairs or an okada to explain the bruises and broken bones. It is not being emotionally drained… You don’t have to live with that! Love is not tolerating beatings and praying that he change. Love is not suffering in silence and shielding the monster from justice.

Love is unraveling the fact that your life is being threatened and RUNNING! You owe yourself that much, sister. You owe your family, your friends that much! Your parents, your siblings are the ones who will mourn over your body and do the burying if they get lucky enough to have a corpse!

Niyola posted a conversation with Karabo before she was killed… chilling Karabo had said her relationship was her only problem. She was hoping that, someday, she would be an inspiration to younger women. She had lofty dreams but abruptly, she was harvested. Niyola, in another post, confirmed what had been trending on social media that Karabo was in a violent, troubled relationship. She wrote: “My friend was murdered by her ex and burned beyond recognition. Before then, he had battered her black and blue on one occasion and would constantly drain her emotionally. These signs were there, he tried to kill her many times until he succeeded.”

Love is not gambling with one’s life in precarious relationships. There is no overemphasizing the fact that in troubled relationships, the actual love is RUNNING. Run as far as you can, move to another city, get a restraining order but do not stay, listening to the lies of a batterer, his pleas and his regrets because they mean nothing to him!

How many more beautiful, talented women are we going to lose to this menace? How many destinies will go unfulfilled? Sister, it is not a taboo to be alone! Isn’t it a better tragedy to be ‘loveless’ than to be wasted for or by love? Words will fail me to aptly describe how I feel about situations like this because we never should have allowed them degenerate thus.

Harrowingly, our society does not make it easy. Its dysfunctional expectation pressures single women into holding on to mirages in desperation to settle down. The tradition pushes women to exchange vows with monsters and when they run to parents for reprieve, they are sent back to their death. For how long would we keep delivering our sisters and daughters to their assailants? Wouldn’t it be a better to save that friend, sister, daughter from a violent marriage or relationship than cry haplessly over a corpse wishing you had intervened?

My advice, remains the samE: Never keep mute about violence, battery…it could be the first step to extermination. As for the perpetrators, I hope that swift justice is executed…aye; it must be an eye for eye!

May God grant the Mokoenas the fortitude to bear this huge loss. Niyola, accept my condolences, #RIPKARABO