Apparently, educating a daughter is a terrible investment.
At least, that was the financial advice some of my uncles gave my father.
Why waste all that money educating girls?
They will get married.
They will leave.
Another man will enjoy the fruits of your labour.
I wish I had been old enough to sit in those conversations.
I would have brought a calculator.
Maybe a flip chart.
Possibly a PowerPoint presentation, since apparently my family has a long history of meetings I should have attended.
Because I have questions.
So many questions.
First:
Was I the fruit or the labour?
Second:
Why was my education an investment in a man?
My father was paying school fees for me.
I was the one waking up for school.
I was the one sitting examinations.
I was the one carrying books.
I was the one eventually sitting in university lecture halls wondering why lecturers seemed personally offended by students experiencing happiness.
But somewhere in the mathematics of girlhood, the equation apparently went:
Father educates daughter.
Daughter marries man.
Man receives educated woman.
Father: LOSS.
And somewhere in all this accounting, nobody remembered to include...
the daughter.
Again.
My father didn't listen.
Thank God.
He educated his daughters.
I went to school.
Then university.
And I wasn't in a hurry to exchange my graduation gown for a wedding gown.
I wanted to finish school first.
I wanted a career.
I wanted to know what it felt like to earn my own salary, solve my own problems and become responsible for myself before joining my life to somebody else's.
And yes, I eventually met somebody.
We dated for four years before getting married.
Four.
Years.
I can already hear somebody's auntie asking what exactly we were investigating.
Everything, Auntie.
Everything.
Marriage is a lifetime subscription. I was reading the terms and conditions.
I loved him.
But loving him did not suddenly make my own plans disappear.
I didn't want to arrive in marriage waiting for a man to begin my life for me.
I wanted to arrive already living.
By the time I married, I had been working for seven years.
Seven years of waking up.
Working.
Learning.
Earning.
Saving.
Helping.
Failing.
Trying again.
Building.
I had established myself.
Not because I wanted to compete with the man I would marry.
Not because independence meant I had no need for partnership.
But because I wanted my husband to meet me at my best.
I wanted to enter marriage with something more than a suitcase and expectations.
I had taken care of my mother.
I had supported my siblings.
I had contributed to the family that raised me.
And when I married, I intended to take care of my husband and, God willing, our children too.
To me, these things were never opposites.
Being a good daughter did not prevent me from becoming a good wife.
Having a career did not make me less capable of building a home.
Being able to provide for myself did not mean my husband had no place in my life.
I wasn't leaving one life to begin another.
I was bringing the woman I had spent years becoming into the life we were going to build together.
Simple.
Or so I thought.
Then came the marriage negotiations.
And suddenly my CV entered the cattle market.
My education mattered.
University educated.
My employment mattered.
Working woman.
My accomplishments mattered.
They became part of the conversations surrounding my value.
And I remember thinking:
Interesting.
Very interesting.
Because wasn't this the same education that had once been described as a questionable investment?
The investment had apparently matured.
The fruit was ripe.
And suddenly everyone wanted to discuss the harvest.
But then came another surprise.
There were suggestions that the assets I had acquired before marriage should remain with my birth family.
Cars.
Land.
Things bought with years of work.
My things.
Apparently, because I was leaving my father's home, the possessions I had accumulated while belonging to that household should stay behind.
I would go to my husband.
And my husband would buy me things again.
From scratch.
How romantic.
Nothing says welcome to marriage quite like a factory reset.
One uncle even complained:
“We are remaining with nothing. She has gone with her education and her salary.”
I beg your pardon?
I was getting married.
Not being uploaded onto a spacecraft.
I hadn't died.
I wasn't disappearing into another dimension.
I was moving from one home into another stage of my life.
My education had not packed itself into my suitcase and abandoned the clan.
My salary wasn't a runaway bride.
And if my departure meant the family was “remaining with nothing,” then perhaps we needed to revisit the original investment strategy.
Because wasn't I told my education was useless to my father because eventually it would benefit my husband?
Now I had become educated and employed, and suddenly my leaving meant the family was losing something?
Pick an accounting system.
Either educating girls is a waste because we leave...
or educated daughters are valuable enough that you feel the loss when we leave.
You cannot have both.
There is a part of Dinka marriage tradition that I actually find quite beautiful.
When I married, my matrimonial family bought me new clothes.
Head to toe.
A new wardrobe for a new chapter.
In return, I gave some of my old clothes and shoes to my younger in laws.
There is symbolism in that.
A transition.
A woman stepping from one stage of life into another.
That, I can understand.
What I struggle with is when symbolism begins swallowing ownership.
Because a new dress should symbolize a new chapter.
Not the deletion of the previous chapters.
Why should entering marriage require a woman to erase the evidence of the life she built before it?
Why can't I keep the things I worked for and appreciate what my husband gives me?
Why can't we then build new things together?
My past.
His past.
Our future.
Surely marriage should be addition.
Not subtraction.
And then there is the darker arithmetic.
God forbid a marriage ends.
A woman can find herself walking away from a home she spent years helping to build with frighteningly little to show for it.
And then what?
Return to her family?
The same family she supposedly left behind?
The same place where, according to some interpretations, the things she built before marriage should have remained because she was leaving?
So, let me understand.
Before marriage:
Leave your things. Your husband will provide.
During marriage:
Build your home.
After marriage, if it fails:
Go home.
With what?
Character development?
At some point, even the mathematics gets tired.
And this is where my anger lives.
Not in being Dinka.
Not in marriage.
Not even in tradition itself.
My anger lives in the places where a girl can do everything she was told to do and somehow still be treated as though the life she built belongs to somebody else.
She studies, and somebody asks which man will benefit.
She works, and somebody asks what her family will receive.
She marries, and somebody asks what she should leave behind.
She builds a home, and if that home breaks, somebody may ask what she expects to take with her.
Everybody seems terribly interested in the fruits.
Very few people ask about the tree.
So, to the girl who might be reading this:
Go to school.
If school isn't your path, learn your craft.
Learn something.
Build something.
Become excellent at something.
Work.
Save.
Buy the land if you can.
Buy the car if you need it.
Start the business.
Take care of the people you love when you are able.
Fall in love if love finds you.
Marry if and when you are ready.
And if you do marry, don't arrive apologizing for the woman you became before somebody called you wife.
You are not disrespecting your husband by having a life.
You are not competing with him by being capable.
You are not less feminine because you can stand on your own feet.
And you do not need to make yourself smaller so that somebody else can feel taller.
Build.
Not because marriage will fail.
Not because men are the enemy.
Not because tradition has nothing to teach us.
Build because you are alive.
Build because your parents' investment in you was never supposed to produce a return payable to another man.
Build because education isn't merely preparation for marriage.
Build because a salary isn't a bride price.
Build because your mind, your labour and your ambitions are not family property waiting to be transferred.
And when love comes, let it find you building.
When marriage comes, let it add to you.
Let partnership multiply what both of you bring.
Because you are not supposed to arrive at marriage empty so that somebody can have the honour of filling you.
You are allowed to arrive whole.