The Sin of the Mother

The Sin of the Mother

Evelyn Ogbebor Iguisi


USD 16,99

Format: 13.5 x 21.5 cm
Number of Pages: 320
ISBN: 978-3-99048-398-5
Release Date: 03.07.2017
Get ready for a journey that you won’t want to end. The ‘Sin of the Mother’ will make you laugh, cry and so much more. This is a story of faith, hope and the belief that you can get through anything if you just have faith.
CHAPTER 1

‘I name her Iyobosa,’ said Ogidi, at the traditional Izomo naming Bini tribe ceremony of mid-western Nigeria. The new-born baby struggled aimlessly and unconsciously for freedom from the two massive hands of the adult male that held her high.
‘She will be Iyobo for short, a name meaning “help”. She will live out her name. Through her, the entire Ogidi family will shine. She will not die prematurely. She will be great. She will be the best among many. She will be a present help to her parents, brothers and sisters in times of trouble and with her help, our family standing will rise.’
The man held the baby up, showing her off to family and assembled guests. Everyone answered “ise” to mean “Amen” at each breath of the prayer made by Ogidi, the child’s father.
‘I have made my ancestors proud again by producing this twelfth child. I am really happy because the newly arrived is the only daughter amid three sons of my third and last wife,’ Ogidi breathed out, taking a shy look at the woman sitting close to him at his left hand side. All the guests laughed and brief ly teased Itota, the baby’s mother, whom many knew was Ogidi’s favourite wife.
The naming ceremony lasted the whole evening. Pieces of kola nuts and carefully chopped coconuts all muddled up in a deep clay bowl was served first. There was plenty of palm wine and “native gin”. These fruits and drinks were used to offer special prayers to the god of fertility who had at that point been faithful twelve times in Ogidi’s household. Holding up the bowl of fruits with eyes wide open and staring into the heavens, the elder of the group offered prayers to the gods appealing for more fruitfulness both in their homes and their farms.
‘May we never know barrenness in our homes and in our farms,’ he concluded his prayers to which they all answered “ise”.
Men took broken kola nuts while women went for finely chopped coconut, which they all gently and skilfully scraped, using their right thumbnail and gathering tiny pieces in the palm of the same hand. They then scraped the crumbs on the front part of their heads and said a prayer for the baby and then for themselves. This ritual was their part of the blessing. The men drank the alcohol while the women drank Coke and Fanta. Afterwards, pounded yam and egusi soup was served to the men and a few of the elderly women. The others ate rice with tomato stew. For this occasion, Ogidi had ordered the slaughter of a goat which was a very rare treat as before he had slaughtered only chicken for naming ceremonies. While eating, they told jokes, laughed and sang, before eventually drifting happily to their own homes. Ogidi hoped that this occasion would not stir up more of the jealousy that already existed among his wives. What was important was that the naming ceremony was complete and baby could now legally bear the name her father called her, Iyobosa.
***

After the ceremony, Itota was filled with mixed feelings. Baby Iyobo was her fourth child and her only girl. Her other three were six, four and two years old. The three boys were named according to their parents’ situations at that time. Moses, the oldest, was named after the great biblical leader. The Jehovah’s Witnesses who came every week for Bible study spoke most highly of him. Sunday was named so because he was born on a Sunday. For Imaduoyi, it was a response to people’s malicious comments when they saw that the first two sons of Itota couldn’t walk and were lame on both legs. To these unkind words, Itota responded with “Imaduoyi” meaning, “I have not faulted.” She begged Ogidi to please let her third son bear this name and he agreed.
The entire village perceived Itota to be an evil woman. This was because it was believed that her first three children, all boys, were struck by the god called “Esuu” the spirit that devoured limbs, leaving the children unable to walk after being attacked. Moses was struck down when he was two years old, while Sunday suffered at the age of four. Imaduoyi was only a year old when the spirit struck again without warning.
‘Why would such evil befall only one individual?’ they all asked in the village. Ogidi had been summoned many times to the “Oguedion” the local palace of the traditional ruling council. He was invited to explain to the elders what they thought was a result of a sin committed by his wife, Itota. Ogidi loved his wife too much to even think she had any spiritual problem. The case had been lingering for years.
Before Itota conceived Iyobo, she had visited at least seven native doctors. She had made all the sacrifices required. The only one she found hard to comply with was when the seventh sorcerer asked to have sex with her as a way to effect a permanent cure of the disease. On that day, the mother of three had been seen leaping out of the native doctor’s hut like a gazelle being chased by a cheetah. Some girls talked about it while fetching water from the village river, they said that Itota was furious and full of rage. They wondered what must have set her on such an emotional blaze.
Itota knew well that adultery was a crime against Erimwionwa, the family god that ensured fidelity to whom she had sworn to at the time of her marriage to Ogidi. She had knelt before this fearsome looking god and vowed fidelity to her husband. If she was unfaithful, she would be provoking the wrath of the god against herself and her children. She refused to tell anyone exactly what the native doctor had demanded of her. Her decision to be quiet was born out of a desire not to be misconstrued rather than fear. Any sloppy move could bring a curse on me and my children even up to a couple of generations to come, she thought.
When she got married, she was eighteen years old. That was the average age for girls to get married in her time. She was slim, tall, beautiful and very light skinned. Her mother, Alice, once told some people she was often referred to as “iyebo”, to mean “mother of the white girl”. But it was Itota’s character which gained her the deepest part of Ogidi’s heart. She kept quiet all the time except when she was directly asked a question.
Itota’s parents didn’t bother to send her to school because they believed that sending a female child to school was a complete waste of time and resources. She was from a polygamous home of about eighteen children borne by five wives to a gentleman who was the most skilful bicycle repairer in the village. Itota’s mother was the second wife. She was very hardworking. The piece of farmland allocated to her by her husband was often the best and most cultivated. Bad weeds were hardly seen among the good plants. She planted cassava, maize and yams. She also had a small garden for a continuous supply of vegetables. Her barn of yams was only compared to that of men. None of the women folk could boast of a larger barn than hers. All her children, male and female, were called to the task when it was time to harvest any crop. They barned some for home consumption, saved some seedlings for next planting season and sold the rest. The money they got was used to buy items they couldn’t produce, such as palm oil and clothes. Rumour even had it that Alice set traps for animals, an activity traditionally reserved only for the men folk. When confronted about this sacrilege, she justified her action by saying that she had the right to set traps in her farm to prevent invaders. She further added that if there was any animal caught in the process, she would happily take it home. Her husband had warned her several times to stop hunting, although he never refused to eat the food she cooked with the meat.
Alice, Itota’s mother and Iyobo’s grandmother, raised her five children, three girls and two boys to be very industrious and purposeful. The first wife who was often referred to as her “senior mate” didn’t have a male child. This meant her son was the rightful owner of her father’s business and other possessions. People often told her she sat on a coal of fire bearing a son when the first wife only had daughters, that is to say that she was in a very difficult position. She must therefore know a couple of strong witch doctors in case anyone was planning to harm her son through diabolical means. She also had to do everything within her power to safeguard her position as the mother of the first son as that was an enviable position to be in.
This made her very powerful, not only in her household, but in the entire village. She wanted her boys to attend school in the city. She was strong enough to do the farming in order to raise the money. Unfortunately, each of the boys impregnated the girls next door and settled in the village to raise families through subsistence farming.
‘He! He! Iyobo will be as tall as her grandmother and be as plump as her mother’ a couple of experienced mothers said during the ceremony.
‘She will be as purposeful and strong willed as her grandmother Alice,’ some of them said with a mouthful of laughter.


CHAPTER 2

‘How will this girl turn out to be?’ Itota often woke up in tears to ask herself.
Sometimes, very early in the morning before anyone woke up, Itota went to the back of the house to face the sky. She took off her blouse except for the wrapper tied around her waist. She knelt down with her two hands smeared with powdered native chalk, lifted to the high heavens. She cried recounting all her sad experiences and all she had been through with her three crippled boys.
‘Some people say there is God,’ she would say, ‘and He lives up there in the sky. Other people say God manifests through the smaller gods. Others say God simply lives in our hearts. I am not even sure. But wherever you are, here are my leaking breasts as evidence that I am a woman who has just gone through the agony of childbirth. Every mother wants to be the mother of a healthy child, whether the child is beautiful or not. This early morning, I see the evidence of your existence through the breeze that freely blows, the river that finely f lows and the tree that sweetly sways, all announcing your greatness. I can hear the whistling birds. I can see the evidence of dew by little water droplets formed on the grasses. I can hear the innocent cry of other new-born babies. Though I cannot physically see you, I know you are somewhere. Please let this child walk like a normal child. Give her a good heart to take care of her brothers when I am old or gone to the ancestors. I don’t know if these boys will be able to find good-hearted wives to care for them the way I do now, but make this girl the one who will fill my shoes. Bless my husband Ogidi. Bless his other two wives. Prosper all of us. Let my husband continue to love me more and more no matter the jealousy of the others.’ She completed her prayer by saying “ise”.
This wasn’t just prayer time, it was one of the few moments when Itota had time for soul deep peace, no interruptions, no accusation. Perhaps the gods weren’t listening, but she didn’t mind, when the ritual was finished, her burden no longer weighed on her shoulders, she had the strength to carry on for that day.
When she got back inside the house, she poured some alcoholic drink into the different white-painted pots stacked up amidst other pots representing different gods. She then topped up the water in the clay pots which now stank, because of constant topping up instead of totally renewing the water. She then promised the gods that if the children walked, she would come back to sacrifice a goat to them, as if to bribe them. Everywhere went dead silent after her daily prayer, as if the gods themselves decided to be quiet for a while before responding. Yet none of the gods spoke. None of the three boys walked.
For most people in the village, it was difficult to understand the root of Itota’s strength and drive to move on in life. ‘Living with one crippled child was already a handful but having three of them was a nightmare,’ they often gossiped.
***

After her prayer routine, Itota took the long broom, made of bamboo twigs and branches of bamboo trees, bound together with very strong rope, which was often reserved to sweep the outside part of the house. She swept the entire compound, then went to the kitchen which was situated at the back of the main house. Returning to the building behind the main house, she swept off the ashes and charcoal of the day before and polished the entire kitchen building with the thick milky mud which she applied skillfully, via a piece of cloth set aside for that purpose. As Ogidi’s third and last wife, this task was hers. There would be complaints at Ogidi’s door if it wasn’t done. Itota had been doing this in her own home before she got married, so she considered it no great imposition. She loved to see everywhere looking nice and clean.
After the morning cleaning, she put water in the huge cooking pot meant for only boiling water before proceeding to prepare porridge for her baby.
The hardest part of Itota’s chores was cleaning up her sons. With no help of any type from anybody, Itota looked for ways to simplify the daily emotional and physical task.
The water in the big family pot was now boiling. Itota poured this into a big bucket, which she mixed with cool water in the big basin outside. Itota found no problem about using this water for other purposes in the house, other than drinking. It was rain water gathered for the purpose of washing dishes and taking one’s bath and of course the washing of clothes.
She then boiled some of the water in a clean large cooking pot.
She allowed the water to cool, putting a piece of allum in the water to help settle the residues. She then filtered the water with a clean piece of white cloth which she kept for that purpose. This treated water was finally stored in a large round bottom clay pot which sat behind the front door and this water was used for drinking. The lid was a f lat aluminium plate on which sat a clean plastic mug which served everybody but was cleaned and replaced every morning.
Itota hated to see her children get up abruptly when they were woken up. To avoid this, while the children still slept, she sang gently without thinking of the meaning of the song:

‘Omomo n’ ukeghede, do omo n’ ukeghede, gie era rene u ke ghavie, gie iyue rene uke gha vie, n’ u ghe kha ghi me mwon gbue omwinmwen oo omomo ne ukeghede,’

She then sang using each of their names depending on the one whose turn it was to take a bath. If it was Moses’ turn, she sang:

‘Moses nu keghede, Moses nu keghede. Gie erha rene’

As she sang softly, she took off the clothes of her first born child as if he would break if she didn’t use that much gentility. She looked into his sleepy eyes with utmost tenderness. She ran her fingers through his hair, a smile tugged her lips. She had allowed his hair to grow a bit. He declared he would like to keep his hair afro style.
‘It seems this is now becoming a bit too hard to comb, my son’ Itota said to her son, when she was sure he had opened his eyes.
‘Those people who have big afro endure pain when combing their hair but you hate the pain,’ she teased him laughing.
‘No Mum, I am alright,’ said the six year old.
‘Moses, my son, you often say you want to be a musician when you grow up. When you start to play your music, I will dance and dance until I get really tired. No, never will I be tired of dancing. I will just keep dancing for as long as you play,’ she said to Moses who was now wide awake.
‘Yes, Mum. I will play like Victor Uwaifo and I K Dairo and Ebenezer Obey and Osadebe and,’ he struggled to continue to name the popular Nigerian artists of the time.
The morning chores for the mother of four continued as she gently pulled her first son out of bed. It was easier when he was much younger. Now, pulling him into the big basin was becoming more and more difficult. Moses had often told his mother to leave him and that he would crawl into the basin by himself. She refused. That was a sight Itota couldn’t cope with. Well, not yet. She repeated this task for all three children. However, when Moses got older, she gave in, as she could no longer lift him up. She prayed and wished that one day, she would get an ikeke uke, a wooden, specially designed tricycle for the handicapped, which was sold only in the city. She had been told the best ones were brought in from the northern part of the country where there were many cases of the attacks from the wicked god, who shrank the limbs of little children. She would have to stress to Ogidi about the need to buy these tricycles, she concluded within herself.
Itota could not go to farm like the other women because of her children, although she managed a small vegetable garden right at the back of the house. She took delight in clearing the grasses and keeping it clean when the children were playing on their own. She would have loved to go on to full time farming and make some money in order to send her children to school in the city.
The children’s clothes were often washed, arranged and finely laid in a big basket made for that purpose. She put all the trousers in one basket and the shirts in another. Some of these hand-medown clothes were very old and tattered from being passed from one child to the other, as they had been used by many children before reaching Iyobo’s.
After washing her children with native intertwined sponge and the local soap known as Evbakhu’Edo, she hydrated their skin with Ediangbon, a special oil extracted from palm kernels. She combed their hair with the Oyiyeran wooden comb. The most painful part was when she had to take them from the courtyard to the main house. As they grew bigger, the clean clothes were all soiled so easily as they struggled, mother and children.
The handicap situation of the boys never prevented them from enjoying a good playtime or games among themselves. Their favourite was the “military game”. Moses gave the command to which Sunday and Imaduoyi responded. They all held their limp feet, heads up, chests out, lifting each limb and pushing forward on their bums at the same time. They all chanted in unison, ‘left, right, left, right, left, right,’ until they got to the destination Moses commanded. It depended on his mood. If he was very happy, he could do it up to half of the harem and on some days, they would do the length and breadth of the whole harem. They all ate and drank together there, with the juice of fruits and oil of food soiling their clothes. When they were tired, their mother picked them up one by one and gave them a good wash before tucking them up into their beds.
5 Stars
5 stars - 21.10.2019
Beatrice

This is a very intriguing and amazing book.

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