THE narrow river road at Kufi upon which the high foliage sprinkled drops of sunlight had been the widows’ road, long before Yaremi ever became a widow. This lonely road sloped right in front of the old St. Andrew’s Church building, through a region of forests hammed with tall palm trees and the giant araba, straight onto the village stream.
Lianas twined round the trees along the road and raised their heads as they approached the top, like snakes about to strike.
The road, thenceforth, meandered through stony pavements and crooked laterite hedges and was slippery and lacerated with gulleys, during rainy season, as it got nearer its destination. Several water pots on shaky neck had been smashed into pieces along this slippery widows’ road, otherwise called ‘the road of life’ by the people of Kufi.
Things to Note About The Road
It is quite easy to trip here with one’s wobbling legs falling wide apart. One could fall flat easily here with one’s chest hitting the wet ground, never to be able to get up again until the helping hand of a farmer, returning home would come, probably from behind the tall tree by the roadside, to lift one up with a caution:
“Take time. Take your time. This road is muddy. You know it is a special road. The Widows’ Road. If you flatten your feet on this road, you are in trouble.
If you tip-toe on this road then you are doomed. You just must learn to take one step at a time; gently, gently, millimeter by millimeter, like the cautious millipede, on this road of life.
“Your eyes should be firmly fixed on the slippery ground.
This is not the road for the short-tempered people. Or the self-conceited ones who think highly of themselves.
They will falter; they will trip and tumble especially at dawn, whenever the morning begins with a wind, and the ground is wet with dew. This road is slimy and greasy – short in length and crooked in shape, like the walking stick of an old man.”
Here on this road, widows were free to raise their voices, like birds just released from captivity and returning to the village. It was their habit to sing improvised songs of sorrow – their voices quivering with emotion, drifting through the bush, before anybody ever met them and their bare forehead gleaming in the fading light of the receding sun.
Widows of the land were united by the same notion of life and were joined by a common sense of loss, which included the loss of dignity and of status. They shed tears for the same purpose and laughed the same hollow laughter with the tip of their tongues.
All widows were silent for similar reasons and looked very much alike in their garments of black colour, which they wore down to the ankle like a harem of religious devotees. They had one voice to speak with, on topics of common interest, each time they found themselves on this lonely road – their road.
Three widows, long before Yaremi, had trudged this road, and had several issues of interest to discuss.
“Our hairs are matted and unkempt,” they began.
“No necklace and no earrings. The world looks at our elongated necks and chuckles.”
“We are the subjugated people of the world with no hope and no security!”
“We tread the path of life carefully, warily.”
“And are followed, all the time, with suspicious gaze.”
“Wicked gossips trail our movements.”
The beat of the talking drum had filtered into the widows’ ears from a neighboring village, riding on the back of the talkative spirit of the air, and breaking lose among the waving palm-fronds with a jarring sound.
“When last did we dance?” the widows had asked themselves, as they listened to the faint, far-away sound of the distant music, filling their ears with joy.
“For several months’ now, there has been no music to tickle our nerves, no melody to make our buttocks tremble… But this one coming to us on this road now really is something.”
The sound of the drum floated in more compellingly. The widows had listened. It seemed as if the talking drum would not stop talking! This talkative goat-skinned spirit with a rotund white countenance, all dressed up in one hundred leather straps.
There was the rapid clash of expert fingers on calabashes too, and what sounded like a bold, quivering twang on the narrow neck of rattle gourds, all drifting in somberly towards the three widows, through the cool air.
“Long time since we last danced,” they had lamented. And quickly they began to console themselves with
words of self-pity and self-assurance.
“When everything is over and we cast off these black garments, we will dance again.”
“We will dance all sorts of dance.”
“You won’t get to know the excitement and joy in wriggling your body rhythmically until you’ve been deprived of the opportunity to dance.”
“But, we surely will dance again – gracefully, elegantly…
“We will shake our bodies to the sweet song of elopement of secret lovers, and dance the full-chested dance of the duck wading in the pond.”
“We will dance the happy rock-and-roll dance of the earthwarm twisting on the wet soil, in the rain.”
“Our nimble toes, we would shuffle, to the fast rib-cracking chorus of the yam-pounding village damsels.”
“We will twist our body to the current-flowing melody on the lips of the hard-working washer men at the bank of the rolling brook.”
“We’ll dance the seductive, epileptic dance of the red cock, wooing mother hen, in front of the roosting shed
“We will hold our buttocks with our two hands and dance heavily like pregnant women, to the slow tempo of the labor-room song.”
“Yes, we will dance, like market-bound reapers, to the sweaty throb of farmland music, in the season of a bumper harvest.”
“One can’t really dance well wearing this kind of garment,” one of the widows had observed. “This garment which sticks stubbornly to the body, like the ragged robes of a disgraced masquerade.”
“Several times, I had been trailed to the farm in this ghostly garment by the village dogs. The dogs must have wondered who I was, and where on earth I came from. They had always escorted me back home from the farm howling vociferously.”
The Three Widows Returns
One by one, the three widows had returned to their various houses in the village with their water jars, cautiously picking their way through the slippery terrain of the widows’ road. But the burdens they carried in the minds were by far heavier than the water-filled jars on their head.
Dedewe, for instance, used to cry all night brooding over the humiliation she had suffered at the hands of her husband’s relatives… When her husband passed, they had sat her down alone by the side of his corpse which lay on a wooden slab in the inner apartment of a dark room, and had asked her to confess her sins.
“Confess, confess, confess,” they had told her.
“Ask your husband to have mercy.”
“Kneel down and beg him for forgiveness.”
“What offence have I committed?” Dedewe had protested.
“A thousand offences!” The people had snapped back, their eyes flashing with deep-seated hatred.
The mantle of the fantastic had fallen on the entire village the day Dedewe’s husband passed on. The elders had ordered the village men to begin to beat the purification tune on the face of the sacred drum.
The heat that came over Dedewe made her blood to gush. Hot air slashed through her flesh and shot straight to her marrow as she beheld the rigid body of her husband.
She shrank when she saw the inordinate expansion of his temple, and the ghastly pallor of his skin… Her dear husband… Those fingers that used to caress her during tender moments had completely gone stiff and lifeless. Those eyes that used to flash warning signals out to her in times of impending danger had closed forever.
“Confess Dedewe, to avoid the punishment of heaven!”
“The punishment of heaven comes down furiously and mercilessly like burning inferno.”
“The guilty ones cannot escape it!”
“Confess Dedewe.”
“To the sin of jealousy and to the sin of adultery.”
“The sin of defamation and disparagement.”
“Haven’t you slandered this man several times in the presence of your friends?”
“Did you not at one time plan to deliver him unto his enemies?”
“Those big big lies you used to tell against him to spoil his good name!”
“Did you ever give your man a drop of water to quench his thirst in the middle of his Sahara?”
“When he was hungry, did you feed him?” They had locked Dedewe up with the corpse of her husband inside the dimly-lit room. Her wailing was monotonous, long-drawn and heart-rending, But she had remained undaunted, because she knew she was innocent.
The Second Widow…
Fayoyin, the second widow, was given libation to lick when her own husband passed. They held it firmly to her lips, to purge her of all the sins they insisted she too had committed. The dirge for Fayoyin’s husband rose in the air, spreading sorrow all through the neighborhood. The villagers buried their faces in their hands and cried in anguish.
Fayoyin was brought before the mourners who sat with dark brooding faces, looking lost and unhappy.
The people, out of hatred for her, went beyond the dictates of their culture: they sprinkled cold water on her head, to soften the texture of her hair.
A barber was summoned who quickly set to business. The barber propped Fayoyin’s head between his thighs, clenched his teeth, and began scraping away with a sharp blade.
“Cut the hair down to the roots,” they had told the barber.
“Even if the skin on the head has to be touched in the process!”
“Touch it, for goodness sake!”
“We hope your razor is sharp enough to do the job the way we want it done?”
“Cut this woman’s hair totally down to her scalp!”
“Sprinkle her head with wood ash and oil it with paraffin ointment.”
Fayoyin’s appearance had altered terribly by time the barber finished cutting her hair. Now she was completely lost to the world, with the far-away and long-ago look of a mad woman. In the course of prolonged weeping, Fayoyin had lost her voice.
When Radeke’s own husband passed, she knelt before the passed body, and strings of dirges ran out of her dry throat. Radeke sang the widow’s traditional song of innocence and lamentation:
If heaven was like going to the market in the morning
And returing home in the evening I would have followed my husband And run errands for him…
Urged him on and on –
To let him know that it would never be
Out of sight, out of mind…
Lie! The people were infuriated. Bloody liar, going to hell! They cursed the woman they thought was the killer of Radeke’s husband, all through eyeing Radeke Kerself suspiciously:
“Darkness never ends for the rodent entrapped inside a calabash container.” perpetually in debt.”
“Forever the killer will be hungry and be
“She will owe the butcher at the abattoir!”
“And owe the salt seller in the market.””She will be ridiculed in public places like a lunatic.”
Ahmad Nwabuzor is a Nigerian author and storyteller with a strong passion for writing and sharing meaningful stories. He is a graduate of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), where he studied English and Literary Studies.
He writes across different forms of storytelling, including cultural narratives, emotional fiction, and moral stories that teach life lessons. His storytelling style is rooted in African life and shaped by a deep interest in how traditions influence people’s choices and emotions.