I grew up in a family of four. My father, my mother, my sister and I. We were a close knit family but my sister and I were really close. It was like I had a sister and a best friend wrapped up in one.

I grew up in the village. It was a small place where everyone knew everyone else and their business. We had one church, one market place and one school. Because of this it was uncommon to interact with outsiders but rather people we would see everyday.

When I was around 17, which is a really young age for people nowadays, it was customary to start looking for a husband or for a man to start looking for a wife. That was the time I met my current husband with whom I have children. He lived in another village not so far from ours. We started seeing each other often, as people who like each other normally do. This went on for a while, till we somehow knew that we were meant to be together.

One day when my sister and I were talking, about general things, like how the day was, what she did during the day and such things, I told her that I had met a potential husband. She was a little bit too excited to hear that. I asked her why she was that happy and she smiled first, then she told me she had also met a potential husband. I was so happy for her.

I started asking her questions to get to know what to expect when I would finally meet him: You know, how he looks physically, which village, what home etc. She told me the exact same village where my husband came from. And the way she described him, it was the same man. In my mind I was thinking that maybe the guy I thought was mine, was also courting my sister. That he wanted to marry both of us, with either me or my sister as a second wife.

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When I told her about the similarities, she was as shocked as I was. Being a second wife wasn’t uncommon back in our day, but anybody would draw the line when it came to their sibling or relative.

We decided to arrange a meeting to lay down the rules and to make it clear to him, that we wouldn’t allow this to happen; because in our minds we already knew we wouldn’t want to be co-wives.

On the said day, my sister and I planned that we would go to their village rather than him coming to ours. When we arrived I saw my ‘husband’ waiting at the entrance to their home and I turned to my sister and told her, “That is the man I was telling you about.”

Then my sister saw some other man emerge from a house ahead and she turned to me and said “There’s the guy I was telling you about.” It was like looking in a mirror, they looked like twins when standing together. My would-be husband then saw us looking confused and introduced the man as his younger brother and I introduced my sister as my younger sister.

My sister and I decided to keep quiet and not say a word about our previous suspicions. It was funny that we thought we would potentially marry the same man. We got married, myself to my man and my sister to his (my husband’s) younger brother. Today, I love the fact that all our grandchildren have the same grandparents.