The other week we awoke to a missing person post. The post said the missing person had not been seen since the previous day in the morning. (I suspect he had not been seen by Mrs Missing Person only, I am pretty sure other people had seen and were seeing him.)
Anyway, we swung into action. Sharing on Facebook and Twitter. On our WhatsApp groups we discussed what could have happened to Missing Person. He was such a good young man, God forbid that something horrible had happened. There was a lot of ‘I know him from, I was with him during, I met him in’, you know the way we like to be at the centre of things, even when it is a catastrophe. Then there were the prophets who declared and decreed and commanded God to bring Missing Person home safely. A real circus.
Barely one hour later, Missing Person updated his social media handles! ‘Don’t worry guys, I’m fine!’ Again we updated everywhere: ‘Praise God!’, ‘Won’t he do it?!’ But you know we are not just happy that Missing Person is OK, we want to know how he escaped from the jaws of the lion, how did he survive in the belly of the whale from yesterday?
And so we start asking pertinent questions. A little late, but we asked. Who decided Missing Person was missing? Had anyone tried to call him or his close friends? Where was he? Because nothing is a secret, someone shared a screenshot. Missing Person was apparently (I do not know for sure, he did not tell me and I was not with him) with, in, at another woman. I kid you not. People became overnight prophets and his best friends for that. A night of sin.
I do not know about anyone else but I was a bit annoyed, disappointed even. You want to tell me Mrs Missing Person can panic because someone was ‘missing’ for one night? In my day you worried after two or three nights and you only involved two of your closest friends, your sister, his close friend or best man and his entire clan (it is because of them you are in this mess). You tried not to involve people on your side besides your sister. This was not the time to hear your father say, “I told you not to get involved with that hyena!”Those days the search was analogue. You started by checking all his jacket pockets. He might have written a number somewhere. Then you moved from bar to bar. Not knowing exactly what you would do if you found him and that Jezebel. (You did not worry though, your good friends had left the comfort of their beds to help you bar hop.)
Now social media has changed everything. In our time, your shame was contained. (I am so amused as I write this.) If you found him in sin, you would insult everyone even his grandmother. If you found him dead, his people would say what a good wife you were, your instincts prompted you to go look for their son and not leave him to be buried in a mass grave. It worked out. Now everyone is judging Mrs Missing Person. There are those of us who say, ‘Doesn’t that woman have important things to worry about instead if making us worry about a grown man?’ Then there are the others saying, ‘hmmmm kumbe it’s not happy families over there!’ For Missing Person, a slap on the wrist. Harmless jokes, good laughs and we move on. Men will be men!
Let a woman decide to be Missing Person, let me take a deep breath because I can assure you on my granny’s mandazis that the moral police would not have let us breathe. You will hear shouts of today’s women are not like their mothers. I do not know about you, but as much as my mother tried to make the most of her life, she did not have much fun, let alone the luxury of going missing. I doubt she even let herself think about it. My father would be missing for months at a time!
I’m not saying women should go missing because men go missing, I am saying if a woman goes missing and is found on, under or beside a sinner, let he without sin cast the first stone. Let us make harmless jokes and move on.