Tshiani v. Tshiani

A character portrayed by the actress Julia Roberts observed, “Happiness isn’t happiness without a violin-playing goat.”1 If that be so, the live goat included as part of the dowry at a traditional marriage ceremony on 23 December 1993 in Kinshasa, Zaire,2 marking Marie-Louise Ntumba’s union with Noel Tshiani, was no Vivaldi.3 Some fifteen years later, capped by an altercation in which Noel leveled allegedly a threat at Marie-Louise involving an AK-47 automatic rifle, the couple’s relationship ended in a bitter divorce in Maryland, as this case reveals.

The parties chose to make the…