Still on the recent and most talked about scandal involving the world best player in the game of “ta-ta-ta,” Legend Baltasar Egonga, an Equatorial Guinea High ranking finance official who was accused of filming his explicit encounter with over 400 women including wives of his friends, colleagues and family member.
Beyond the shock of public scandals, I view this issue from the lens of a more unsettling truth: the lives of women caught in the act of infidelity.
What about those who managed to escape for life? A Yoruba adage says “one whose mother is not dead, could be still be a bastard.”
How do some women live with the reality of an affair, when the consequences of that secret are buried within the walls of their own homes? A question that is seldom asked, but one that nags at the conscience–of those who still have it.
Many of the videos in the Egonga’s scandal featured married women, some of them are even pregnant. One cannot help but wonder how some of them reconcile the reality of their actions with the roles they play in their families.
How do they live with the possibility that the child they raise in their matrimonial homes could be the product of infidelity. A fact they may never share I guess.
In a society where women are often blamed for infidelity, how do they bear the psychological and emotional burden of carrying such a secret? Do they ever regret their actions and confess, or do these truth remain buried, never to be spoken aloud?
Infidelity, particularly when it involves power play and secrecy is a complex issue and the emotional burden seems to weigh most heavily on women. However, the patriarchal structure that governs most societies often place blame squarely on women.
It is in these moments that one begins to wonder: can women who are so often condemned for their actions, open up about their infidelities? And when they do, what happens to their sense of self?
Either done shamelessly or conditionally, the truth is, many women may live their lives carrying that secret along to the grave.
This troubling phenomenon stem from the imbalance of patriachal society where men can be promiscuous without losing absolute power, while women face the full force of shame and condemnation.
So, away from the scandal, the question remains; how do women in such situation manage to deal with the reality of their action?
