Diary of the Miaha- Review

It’s one of the rawest and perhaps the realest memoir that I have read in the recent. Verah Omwocha Dinda through her story ushers a reader into the ‘house’ called marriage, which seems to have so many rooms with many intricate hallways and doors. With her little but rich experience in marriage life- as a newly married woman-miaha, Verah does well to exhaustively talk about her experience in the new life into which she has to fit. The book is her exposition about marriage; giving the youths a sneak-peek into life after the wedding day.

To many, the book may merely be about two people who are enamored to each other, but to me, the book is about change. Verah challenges people through her book about what wedding is all about and at least through their experience explains why it does little harm to settle for a modest wedding that will not leave the couple in debts, loans or have people cursing because you forced them to contribute for your wedding.

The book is about change because Verah experiences a lot of changes in her life since she transitioned into being a miaha. She questions if she is really married, she asks the husband how it feels to be married. She discovers that there some changes going on through her husband’s life, they are experiencing it, it’s called change. This puts into context a conversation I had with some wise old man in our village over the holiday. I remember he told me repeatedly, “Leo, marriage changes one’s life, it’s like a turbulent that comes to almost overly overturn how you have linearly led your own life for a long time.”

She challenges cultural theories and negative stories that have made various tribes cast aspersions against each other. And now that theirs is intermarriage (Luo and Kisii), she lives to deflate the myths and ugly stories she heard about the Luo people-men. And she challenges society to triumph over the tribal barriers and balkanizations that have been perpetrated by such negative stories.

And for FGM and its negative effects, the writer goes full force with blows. She is a victim of a practice that doesn’t only humiliate but also predisposes many young girls to other health hazards. The writer is essentially crazing for change; for the annihilation of cultural practices that are barbaric and virtually serves little importance, where FGM among Kisii and other tribes is an example.

Yet, at the end of the day, I must concede that the book is also supremely about love. It’s about a fresh marriage that like a tree planted along a riverbank, sups its sustaining water from the mainstream of LOVE. The book is about Verah as much as it’s about Dinda. The book is about the couple as much as it’s about God. The book is about three people; God, Dinda, and Verah- a trio.

A friend of mine doesn’t like reading books that are about women and are for women. I told him, just read them, bro, it’s one way of seeing the world through a woman’s eye. I think I used to be like him until I realized reading books for and by women is as good to a man as it’s to women. Hence, while I may strongly recommend the book for ladies, I equally recommend it for men.