What would you do if your wife got a daughter as your firstborn? This is how to get a son.

Wathuta had a wife. Let us call her Ruth. This wife of Wathuta, whom we have called Ruth and Ruth actually was her name, had a daughter. Wathuta was disappointed. You see, it was in the 40s, and the drums of the insurgency were beating. What would happen to his bequeathal? Once the war started, and he died in the forest fighting for uhuru, who would inherit his legacy? Who would carry his lineage? No! He had to do something about the situation. He put in some effort where it mattered, and the wife became expectant. This time, when the baby came, it was not as dark a girl as the first one. Two more tries with the same result, and Wathuta, not knowing what to do, did nothing. Okay, not exactly nothing, seeing that in the fifth month of the fifth year, a fifth daughter arrived. Wathuta had had enough.

 A second wife for a son.

He figured it was time to try his luck elsewhere. There was a small problem. What if even the new one also started bearing girls only? No, it cannot happen. Lighting does not strike the same tree twice, he reasoned. But the possibility delayed his decision somewhat.

One January, sheltering from the afternoon sun under the heaves of his gaarũ, a husband’s hut, he suddenly stopped dosing. He called for his bible. When he had the holy lit in his hands, he furiously leafed through it until he came to the passage he sought. It read, “By their fruits, you will know them”. Of course! he beamed. Even Ndega and his wife Nthara, the patriarch and matriarch of the Eastern Bantus, had a similar saying. “Mũgũnda mũnoru ũmenyagwa na maketha (a fertile land is known by the abundance of its harvest).” This is what he did:

He brought home a second wife. And to be sure that the woman could have boys, he brought home one who already had a son. He was right. She went on to bear four more sons for her husband.

And they lived happily ever after.