‘SHE OPTED TO PAY ME WITH EVIL’

IHAVE gone through a painful divorce after giving my wife everything a loving husband can give out of love, including selling my studio equipment to raise money to send her to college, a Seventh-Day Adventist Church elder has revealed. Narrating his predicament yesterday, Crodwell Sikaala of Kalomo, said what started as a loving affair in 2011 and culminated into marriage two years later had left scars in his heart which he says he will remember for the rest of his life. Read the full interview here: Reporter: Tell us how this whole affair started. Mr. Sikaala: It was in 2011 when I met this beautiful young lady by the name of Doreen Muntanga. We became best friends before our affair started. Doreen did not hide anything from me. She told me that she had a problem which she suspected to be fibroid or ovarian cyst. As a young man brought up in the church, I never cared because I knew ve ry well how God is capable of changing seemingly impossible situations. I told her that I would share in her problems and that God would see us through. On December 29, 2013, we got married with a beautiful wedding which took place in Kalomo. A few weeks after our marriage, I discovered that my wife had a spiritual husband but when I asked her about it, she denied. One Friday evening, I was preparing a sermon and I went to bed very late. Before sleeping, I heard my wife talking to herself but I could not hear anything she was saying. After a few minutes she started acting like she was making love. I woke her up and when I inquired what was happening, she said she was dreaming that we were making love. Reporter: So, how did you resolve this problem? Mr. Sikaala: I did not keep quiet. I informed her parents about the strange things happening to us, and they promised to help us. I also engaged men of God to pray for us and they did their best. We were in and out of hospitals frequently but the problem worsened. In April 2017, her parents demanded that I take their daughter to college. I accepted though at that time, my business was not doing well because I was spending so much on my wife’s medication. So, for me to send my wife to school, I sold a pair of studio equipment for K10, 000 and got her enrolled in the school of education where she pursued primary school diploma. In 2018, I sold the remaining pair of studio equipment at K15, 000 and all the money went to her education but I did not give up because I loved my wife so much. For your own information, we got married soon after completing my diploma in Travel and Tourism under the London Centre of Marketing in South Africa. I also did Purchasing and Supplying at Evelyn Hone, as well as International Tourism at the Livingstone Institute of Business and Engineering Studies (LIBES) in Livingstone. In 2019, my mother in-law came to our house. It was on a Wednesday. A day after, around 13:00 my wife’s uncle called me, asking where I was as they were at my house. I went home, only to find that my father in-law was also there. They inquired where my parents were but I told them that they were not around and it was not possible to call them because they were not aware that there was going to be any meeting on that day as no one had told us. After a four-hour discussion, it was agreed that my wife must go and stay at her uncle’s place because my mother in-law insisted that the problem that was causing her daughter to be sick was in my house. However, the problem worsened after my wife was taken out of my house. After a week, I received a call saying my wife’s condition had worsened. When I got there, my wife was almost lifeless. I took her to Choma from Kalomo for medication and her condition improved a bit. In august 2019 I paid her exam fees and that was the last time I talked to my wife. She just disappeared. She was neither at her uncle’s house where we had resolved she must stay nor at her mother’s place in Mapanza. I tried to communicate with her but to no avail. I involved the church but it never worked out. In September 2019 I was just told your wife is admitted at Zimba Mission Hospital. I went there and found that she had just had an operation and I had to incur all the costs with the hope that she will come back to her senses and get back but even as I was doing all these things Doreen never changed her mind. In November 2019 I paid for her teaching practical and in December, she went back to school. After that she disappeared again. This forced me to go to court where I sued my mother in-law to reveal where my wife was. While at court, my mother in-law requested that we talk about the matter outside court, to which I obliged. She apologised for the disappearance of my wife and promised she would tell her daughter to start picking my calls but never told me where she was. Reporter: how did you divorce since you did not know where she was and she avoided all your calls during this period? Mr. Sikaala: From the time I took my in-law to court, nothing changed. I still did not know where she was and she never picked my calls. So, in April 2020, I went to Mapanza where her mother lives and when I got there, she told me she did not know where my wife was. While I was still there, I called her and fortunately, this time, she picked my call and when I asked where she was, she lied that she was at her mother’s place in Mapanza. When I told her that I was with her mother at her place and that she had told me she did not know where she was, she cut my call and never picked again. Realising that I was fighting a losing battle after spending so much on her medication and school, I decided to sue her for legal divorce. She used to come to Kalomo to attend to court sessions until when the divorce was granted on Friday last week. She claimed that she was coming from her mother’s place in Mapanza but I don’t know how true that was because there are rumours that she is actually already married in Choma but I could not ascertain whether that was true or not. Reporter: So, how do you feel now that you have divorced? Mr. Sikaala: It is very painful because I wasted a lot of time, money for medication and her education. I did this out of love but after losing everything, she has her education while my business grounded to a halt. I am starting afresh from the scratch because of the sacrifice I made for her. The most painful part is that she even went to the extent of telling the court that she did not object to divorce because I was the one responsible for her health problems yet she had told me about it before we even got married. I still loved her even when we did not have any child but she opted to pay me with evil.