Passport, Polygamy & Public Health

A three-part reflection on love, culture, and autonomy from the field

Written by Joni Roberts

Traveler, storyteller, and public health advocate

Part 3 — Self-Care and Suspicion

It’s Sunday morning, and I’m getting ready for a self-care day. I’ve booked my nail and wax appointments and am excited for some much-needed “me time.”

As I pass through the kitchen, Grandma is kneading flour to make chapati. I tell her I’ll be away for a few hours so she doesn’t think I’m avoiding her guests.

She chuckles. “I’m convinced you have a boyfriend,” she says.

I laugh. “Why?”

“I’m just convinced,” she replies with a smile.

I grin. “No, Grandma, I don’t. But you’re welcome to follow me if you’d like to see for yourself.”

She waves me off. “No, I’ll wait to see you when you are dressed.”

I laugh even harder. “I am dressed!”

To be fair, I’m wearing a T-shirt and capri pants — what she calls “house clothes.” She loves commentating on my outfits, telling me whether they’re fit to “see God at church” or “catch a man.”

As I drive off, I can’t help but wonder why every outing has to be tied to a man. I’m not being picked up. I’m not sneaking off. Yet somehow, my independence is suspicious.

That suspicion came full circle a few days later when I caught Grandma spying on me at work — peering through the glass door as I chatted with a male colleague (who’s taken, by the way).

“Grandma!” I said. “Were you spying on me?”

She laughed. “No, no, I was just passing by.”

Sure you were.

But her curiosity made sense. If women are viewed as dependent on men for their social worth, then being out alone must mean being with one.

That realization deepened later when I watched a regional dating show with one of the younger Muslim women in the house. A woman on TV was begging the hosts to convince her partner — of over ten years and three kids — to finally marry her.

“She should leave,” I said.

The young woman beside me shook her head. “These things are common here,” she said. “Men promise to marry you and string you along forever.”

“Why don’t they leave?” I asked.

“Because many girls are still dependent on men for survival.”

Logically, I knew this. But emotionally, it hit me. It’s 2025 — and women are still being held back by dependence that isn’t their fault, but the system’s.

It reminded me of a young mother at our clinic — both she and the child’s father had no education. They were raising a sick child in poverty, fighting odds stacked generations deep.

I felt the weight of it — the privilege of choice, the burden of inequity.

So yes, maybe it makes sense that Grandma questions my movements. She lives in a world where women depend, and men decide. And though I live in that same world, I’ve been allowed to rewrite my role in it.

For her, independence is unfamiliar. For me, it’s sacred.

Because beneath her teasing and her “spying,” I see love — but also the reflection of what still needs to change.