The Polygamous Man

Once upon a time, there lived a man who had seven wives. This man was originally a hunter. He married his wives one by one at different times until a total of seven. Initially, he had too much love for his first wife, which later reduced as he married more young wives. Indeed, he loved the seventh wife more than everyone else, and surely hated the first but never divorced. In some month, he came to realize that all his wives were pregnant and they were to give birth at any time. While he had gone far away from his family to hunt and gather food for a full month, he received news that the first five wives had given birth to babies in only three consecutive days. He was told that his first wife had given birth to a very handsome baby boy. He immediately sought to know if his seventh wife had also given birth. Unfortunately she hadn’t, and he was disappointed. He never sent any congratulatory message to the first wife but only to the rest, since he didn’t love her anymore.

After some minutes of silence, he aggressively asked some of his co-hunters to go and kill the baby boy. On arrival, his men saw the baby boy and that he was very handsome; they all became empathetic and told the mum to forgive them. They did not kill the baby boy. When their master heard that they had not killed the boy, he sent a second team to kill the boy. On arrival, this second team was so astonished by the fact that the boy was too handsome to be killed. The master received the report that the team had also not killed boy as he had commanded. He sent a third team that behaved the same way as the previous ones. When he received the same report, he became so angry and picked a spear to go and kill the boy himself. When the mum to the boy heard the news that her husband was coming to kill the boy himself, she excessively cried and hid the boy in some clay pot and covered it with a cloth that allowed oxygen to penetrate it.

He arrived early in the morning but found his seventh wife in serious labor pains. He was forced to first attend to his lovely wife to ensure that she gave birth safely. The seventh wife also delivered a baby boy but without 2 fingers on the left hand. Nonetheless, he was very excited. He then remembered that he had unfinished business of killing the boy to the first wife. He immediately picked up his spear and started looking for the baby in the mum’s hut. The mum was intensely crying but the husband didn’t care at all. After some 30 minutes of searching the hut, he heard the baby crying in the clay pot; the mum immediately jumped and grabbed the baby out of the pot to her chest. When the man saw that the baby was too handsome, he fainted for over 30 minutes. When he regained his consciousness, he knelt down before his wife and pleaded with her for forgiveness. The wife hugged and forgave him without any hesitation. He then organized a party to celebrate all the children, all the wives had delivered by the time of the party. While giving a speech during the party, he apologized to all his workmen. To the ones who refused to kill the baby boy as per his command, he gave them gifts and greatly thanked them for doing the right thing. The story ended with him crowning the baby boy to his first wife as his heir.

This story affirms the fact that you can break some wrong orders to do the right thing. (Judas Tadeo, Uganda)