To pay or not to pay bride price?

To pay or not to pay bride price? The question comes against the backdrop of the Deputy Speaker of Parliament paying 50 million shillings bride price for his new bride Winnie Awoo. Now, to many eligible bachelors like me, that's a whopping price. We're in trouble if bachelorettes or their parents look our way and remember Jacob Oulanyah's figure or thereabouts. 

  

There was a time when this was enough for bride price. Now it's loads of cash.

I tell you, there's no pain like the pain of finally finding your true love after a long search only to be scorned by her people on account of your inability to pay exorbitant bride price. It presents the conundrum in not only the rich marrying the rich but also the poor insisting on marrying into rich families even when love is out of the equation.

  

Consequently, those who are rejected have rather than get dejected learnt to act convincingly. They put up a show long enough to dupe the greedy girl from the poor family that they are men of material means! At least this is what George Wilson in the novel The Great Gatsby does. Even the suit he weds in is borrowed. And when he's away, the owner comes for it, and his wife Myrtle never forgives him. She starts cheating with the wealthy Tom Buchanan and of course it ends tragically for the Wilsons. 

  

For the girls who have been pushed to marry filthy-rich men they don't love, the game of vulgarity is taken to alarming proportions when the rings are already on the respective fingers. Lodges are raking in millions per noonday while those who have no streak of shame left in them smuggle their lovers into their marital chambers to quench their lusts and take away the dreariness of being in a loveless marriage. 

  

There is however hope now that some wise elders have come out to prevent an already grotesque situation from further transmogrification. The traditional leaders of Acholi sub-region recently met to denounce expensive marriages and pitch for simplicity and mutuality in matters of love and marriage as was in the good old days. 

  

"We want to come with uniform bride price to allow every man to have a wife," elder Andrea Ocitti was quoted in the press saying. Bless his soul!  

To pay or not to pay bride price? Of course it's the pride of any Ugandan man to pay as long as there's no greed or conspiracy of one family to enrich itself at the expense of the other.