In a sunlit room that still carries the tremor of a faraway ceremony, voices rise with the fevered rhythm of a story about money, obligation, and a future hanging in the balance. The scene opens not with romance, but with numbers—an almost clinical accounting of love’s prerequisites. The groom-to-be staggers under the weight of tradition: gifts, rest of the ceremony, and, most piercing of all, the bride price. The tally is stark: 4,700 CDs. And yet his confession lands like a fall from grace—he can muster only 1,300 CDs. The room tightens. A confession becomes a plea: can someone step in with funds to bridge the chasm between desire and duty? The weight of responsibility presses down. A whisper of concern travels through the circle; a guardian’s voice, perhaps, murmurs that this moment is more than a personal test—it is a test of a man’s commitment to the sacred scaffolding of a family.

From this quiet ledger of debt and desire, another thread slips into view—the family’s insistence on a serious declaration. The fatherly voice, patient yet stern, asserts a creed: a wedding cannot proceed until every requirement is satisfied. If a man truly intends to marry, he must shoulder the burden of giving—money to honor the parents, money to honor the world that shaped the bride, money to show gratitude for the life that has brought two souls to this threshold. The principle is clear even when the sums feel impossible: responsibility is non-negotiable, and the act of giving is the language by which love is spoken in this culture.

Benjamin, a name that carries weight in the room, is pressed to demonstrate his resolve. The power of a promise is measured in action, not in words. The family looks to him, to his willingness to invest, to prove that his commitment is not a mere sentiment but a living debt repaid to the people who raised the woman he loves. The moment becomes a crucible: will he step forward and claim his future, or retreat and leave the bride behind in a sea of unfulfilled obligations?

The exchange shifts, and money becomes a metaphor as well as a measure. The scene grows intimate, and the awkward discomfort of the numbers dissolves into the personal. A gift is prepared—an offering to the mother, a token to the father, a symbolic bridge between two worlds. Yet even as offerings are handed over—mama, here is something for you—the conversation swerves toward a bigger truth: the life and status of the woman, AI, who stands at the heart of this negotiation, is more valuable than any sum of money could convey. The man speaks in metaphors and calculations, trying to translate affection into something tangible, something that would prove his worth in a language the family understands. A bowl of metaphor, a ledger of affection: if a bowl is worth a thousand, then here, in this room, with 60 bulls mentioned or perhaps a miscount, the math of love becomes a ritual chant.

But the arithmetic does not settle easily. Benjamin reveals a bigger figure—80,000 Kenyan shillings—an amount he claims to have brought, an attempt to anchor the dream with a real number. And yet the dialogue, with its raw honesty, insists on a higher standard. The figure—68,000 shillings, roughly $600—feels paltry in the presence of a woman described as AI: educated, cultivated, and born into a family whose status makes the price of entry feel almost mythic. The air thickens with the weight of expectations: the bride’s value is not merely monetary; it is the reflection of a lineage, a future, a life that demands honor and pride.

The bride’s family weighs in with quiet, almost ceremonial gravity: yes, life is expensive, yes, a wedding is a crucible of finances, yet the obligations cannot be met with mere token coins. The bride’s dignity is not for sale, they imply, and the man must rise to meet a higher bar if he wants to stand beside AI as an equal partner in a lifetime of shared weather and weathered storms. The conversation returns to the harsh truth: the man must do something more, something better, something that makes AI feel valued, cherished, and worthy of a union that will inevitably test its resilience.

A moment of fragile hope punctuates the scene: perhaps the arrangement can be accepted, albeit with a painful caveat. The union, it seems, might still be forged if the fiancé agrees to carry the burden—today a token, tomorrow a promise to pay more, in the days to come. The sisters and their mothers,