NAIROBI, Kenya – Ugandan comedian Anne Kansiime has revealed that she paid her own dowry due to pressure to meet her parents’ expectations.
Speaking on a podcast with Wonder Jr, she said her family set a high bride price, which she ended up covering herself.
Kansiime added that she has never officially been anyone’s wife, as her partner did not fulfill the dowry requirements.
The comedian was previously in a relationship with Gerald Ojok, which lasted four years before ending in divorce around 2017.
She then fell in love again with a fellow artist, Skylanta, in 2018, with whom she had a child.
In the interview, she reveals that in the marriage, she had to pay her own dowry because the husband didn’t pay it when the parents asked for it, and she lived a lie until she failed to give birth while with the same man.
According to her, this situation was God’s way of communicating to her.
“I have never become a wife. I accused myself so much, paid my own dowry, and convinced the whole world and the man himself that we were married. If you come to my home and they tell you what dowry to pay and you don’t pay it, am I your wife?” Kansiime quipped.
She further noted; “I introduced him to my parents, who accepted him and asked him to bring dowry, which he didn’t bring. They overasked for it, and I paid it myself. When I paid, he forgot about it, I forgot about it, and we moved on with life.”
It was later, when I was 30, that I was trying to have a child, that I wondered why God wasn’t letting me get pregnant. That makes you think deeper.
The God who has given me all these wonderful things without asking is the same God that refused to give me a child?
The 39-year-old revealed once she met her current lover, she not only wanted to have a child but also make the relationship work.
