Trapped by Tradition – A Widow’s Awakening (Part 2)

YAREMI had had no inkling that she was going to join the league of village widows, sooner than expected.
She had always seen the widows from a distance and had always pitied them, wondering how it felt to lose one’s joy. Nothing beyond that. Nothing really intimate had ever transpired between her and the widows.

Part 2 – Trapped by Tradition

It had never occurred to Yaremi, even for a minute, to ask Dedewe, Fayoyin and Radeke what pains they suffered, what anguish and what pressure they had gone through. What grief? What distress?

But there sat Yaremi alone now, all by herself, right at the back of her house, a widow through and through, pressing a threaded needle on an old quilt.

Yaremi’s Unexpected Widowhood

She finished the last stitch on the quilt with an intricate knot and smiled as she remembered the old adage of
‘one stitch in time’. Whatever must be done should be done so well and so quickly; at the right time and with the maximum speed. Life is like a bell ringing, a whistle sounding, or a clock ticking away – waiting for nobody.

There really should be time for everything. Time to be idle. Time to get down to serious work. Time to be tensed up and time to relax. Time of bitter grief and time of sure. relief. Time to ascend the hill and time to descend the slope. A time to arrive and a time to depart. All things at their appropriate time, just like stitching one stitch on an old quilt quickly enough to save nine future stitches.

Yaremi scooped a hole in the ground to bury the discarded husks of palm kernels which she had cracked the previous day, then blew the chaff off the melon seeds from the sloping wood-board on her lap. The joy of work showed on her face. She could do five different works together – all at once, and without stress.

A little bit of this and a little bit of that; a small portion of this and small portion of that. And all jobs would be done in no time at all. Work, to Yaremi, had become medicine against loneliness and frustration; a dose to fight fatigue and boredom with; a cushion for all pressures of daily life.

But during leisure time, Yaremi had always found time to stand and stare; to exchange pleasantries with neighbours, and to ask them harmless questions. At leisure, she had always had time to engage Woye in happy reminiscences, regaling him with stories of her own childhood days, and the period of her interrupted youth.

The intention was to excite and amuse the little boy and, of course, to give loneliness a good fight. Just any little country story, sprinkled with hilarious anecdotes, and embellished with home-spun wisdom and humour, would tickle Woye and send him reeling with laughter – throwing up his two little hands into
the air, in ecstasy.

Stories from Adeyipo – Memories of Childhood

“Look Woye, during our own childhood days at Adeyipo,” Yaremi would begin, “we were restless and nervous. More restless and more nervous than you children of today – our crafty, mischievous eyes rotating in all directions, all the time, trying to get something to complain about to our Mama and Papa! But, we were much pampered, all the same, and ever so inquisitive. Very quarrelsome, recklessly bold and daring.

We trod the rough roads of risks, and walked the crooked footpaths of hazards. Those were the days, Woye, when we enjoyed adventure for the fun of it – a period of living dangerously for we young boys and girls of the village. We would leap off the branches of tall trees, and spin in circles; dribble weightlessly in the wind, and thereafter crash down to the ground with a thud.

“We kept the company of wild dogs. The dogs would rush at us in playful attack, and mock-charge the hens feeding on grains at the nearby wooden platform.

We were ourselves like birds, forgetful of disaster, unmindful of the hunter’s bullet, frolicking and singing merrily among the trees. Boys of the village would play with the hyena, wounded by the hunters’ poisoned arrows on farm tracks, in the tangled mesh of twisted scrubs.

They would set acres of farmland ablaze to catch rodents, and snuff hot embers into rocky ditches to eject poisonous snakes which they tried to grab with bare hands! They played with the horns of baby goats and pressed sticks to the jaws of captured red lizards.

“They threw stones from the bush which hit the water pots of the village women returning home from the brook, and laughed at the maidens tripping on the slippery road to the river. We visited the parrot whose abode was the nest of sticks lined with green leaves built in the upper branches of the arere tree.

Yes. We had that ceaseless drive, Woye, to achieve the unusual and the impossible. Boys like you would scramble up the roof-top of village houses like monkeys, unafraid, nodding and yelling to acknowledge cheers from we young girls trembling in trepidation and fear below.

“The village elders always called up mothers to warn their male children; the elders themselves would bring their brows together, expecting that the boys would read their intense disapproval and stop the ‘nonsense’.

But no! What was ‘nonsense’ to the elders was ‘sense’, hilarious fun, and amusement to the carefree children of Adeyipo village.”

Woye was always excited to hear stories like this; stories of the brave children of his grandmother’s village during the good, good old days.

“Happy children of Adeyipo,” as Granny used to say. Children who would trot round and round in the hot afternoon sun, laughing everlastingly; who would run to the garden on windy days to pick a few falling mango fruits which they always sank their teeth into with relish; children who would gather round the low village hill to ponder over the mystery of thunder-claps, and the flashes of lightning threatening to tear the heavens into pieces.

“Very very playful children we were in those days, Woye, always flexing muscles to challenge one another to wrestling contests and throwing opponents badly down bamu-bamu, like over-ripe mangoes. It was: our habit to climb the nine hills which separate Adeyipo and the neighbouring Kange, Aderogba, Orita, Kufi, Apon, Ladunni, Akokura, Ope, Idiogun and Kelebe, galloping like racecourse horses.”

Yaremi told Woye how little children used to spend long periods of time gazing in wonder at the enigmatic rainbow arc in the sky, and singing loud songs to the white cranes perching in the reeds; how, they poised on rocks to look down at stretches of water that gleamed through bending trees.

“All our entire problems always vanished with just a moment’s encounter with nature. The deep blue colour of the sky and the precision of fresh leaves on trees were symbols of happiness for we little ones. Girls would cover their faces shyly with their mothers’ wrappers and boys like you, Woye, would wear their fathers’ oversize farm caps grinning like fools as the caps slid down their foreheads.

All of us, boys and girls, would stand naked, yelling under drops of heavy rain glowering down darkly, shuttering down the lines of the roofing sheets of the village mud buildings, and we would shout hilariously.

“We used to play the hide-and-seek game too, tumbling over the falling walls of the old village buildings, flying like birds in the air over the empty square of faceless family compounds. We played the booko-booko and the one called dele-n-dele, which often took us rambling from house to house, searching for nothing in particular, and leading us finally to grope our way back home like blind beggars.

We imitated the walking steps of dwarfs and tip-toed raising our heads up to find who the giant of the village was – Ta lo ga ju laba!

“At other times, we rolled like melon fruits on sloppy furrows to ridicule the barrel-bodied, the round and plump owurubut among us. We laughed loud at the weak, feeble ones of the village – those children growing up pale and stunted, with bent backs and crooked limbs.

The helpless ones among us slept in the warmth and comfort of our mothers’ breasts, enjoying the thrills of maternal care. Adeyipo village was our entire world Woye. The patches of its surrounding forests contained spirits, which frightened us in the dark. We saw pictures in trees standing black and still, gazing at us with strange white countenance.

“In the hot afternoon, we kids would stand and focus attention at the silent forest path which the trick of sunlight often filled with water at varios points, then run back to the v. age, scared to death, whenever the mysterious whistling of the wind came to our ears from the thickets of the woodland.

We used to mould palaces from the wet clay, and design labankada caps and the conical hats of the wandering cattle rearers, from jungle leaves. At night, we were always ready to lie on ragged mats, talking and laughing innocently in our sleep:

‘See us Papa, we would rant, ‘Riding the brand new bicycle you bought for us… across the stream of Ojutu… to the fruit village of Aku… hidden by one million guava and mango trees… on the edge of Aaje hills… Here is a place of abundance, Mama, the ranting would continue, ‘where food is plentiful… a place to play all games in this world…

We are going to leap off a rock-face now, Mama… and drop from the top of a tall tree… straight into a large body of water down, down below… hours of sheer excitement and fun! Papa, we are now on our way to Wonderland where the rising sun casts golden shadows on buildings and the big banana farm shimmers in the soft yellow light of the setting sun… Don’t stop us Papa!:

There was really nothing like hatred among the little ones at Adeyipo, Yaremi had recalled. Quarrels were very rare. Love was constant. Unoppressed by adult worries, the children used to fill the village with buoyant happiness. Playfully, they would splash the river water on one another’s faces and turnble, rolling in the mud.

Girls would tarry at the river bank to compare their naked bodies; to see who among them was growing fast into puberty, so that they could rejoice with her; and who among them, in spite of heavy food, seemed not to be growing at all, so that they could make fun of her.

Woye was told how, with a child’s innocence, kids would lick their dripping noses with their tongues, and eat with both hands unwashed, their naked bellies gleaming in the morning sun, and saliva marks running down their cheeks; how girls would forage the assorted junks inside the village refuse dump, looking for broker bottles and old tin cans, the red clay smearing their bodies;

How little children would cry to make requests, suck the tips of their forefingers to check the rugged anger of hunger; and how mothers would shave their boys’ heads clean with razor blades to prevent skin lice.

During cold nights, children of the village would wrap themselves up in thick kijipa by the fireside and allow the warmth of the fire to penetrate their bones; and together, they would begin to bite the hot corn from Papas’ farms.

“Immediately after cockcrow at dawn, Woye, we would be up watching the miracle of the changing weather, marvelling at nature’s mysteries which even our parents themselves could not decipher.”

Woye used to be enthralled. Mama’s anecdotes were a tonic, putting him in the proper frame of mind to face those various little assignments of a young village lad… And he would add wings onto his legs to run errands; to fetch ant-ridden firewood from the forest, and embers from the furnace of a nearby house.

He would spring his bicycle wheel, his most prized possession, and, with it, skilfully negotiate the narrow crooked paths leading onto the neighbouring villages, to urge debtors to pay up Mama’s money, as the market day was ‘tomorrow.

Woye would rush back home to spread out cassava flour on the taraga, out of the reach of troublesome nanny goats and retire to the back of the house to sun-dry taffeta cloths on the taut rope propped between standing sticks at the dyeing yard.