by Aluta Nite
She had the habit of confiding on one particular friend of hers called Beni who used to comfort her and breathe fresh life into her after she realized that her husband would not help her in any way. This faithful friend was always there for her but not on this particular Sunday. Her children’s nanny used to go off duty every Sunday from morning to evening. She was therefore alone with the children.
Her sister in-law called her names, roughed her up and even threatened her. It looked like her in-laws did what they did to her continually because they knew how weak their older brother was as he had done nothing to them in the past and did not look like he would do anything to them in future after all the years that had gone by.
Meanwhile, her children were having their afternoon nap upstairs. All the children were under eight years old. Soon after showing her dust, her in-law left her crying and confused because she never understood what mistake she had made to deserve all this. As soon as her in-law left, she called her friend Beni while still crying and told her all that had transpired and even asked her to go and visit her.
Beni on the other hand, listened to her, but took the issue lightly as usual and simply told her, “Elsa, just take it easy and remain strong. These are not new things to make you so miserable. Come on, cheer up and go about your business as usual. After all, it is not the end of the world. Unfortunately, I cannot come to your place today because I have other pressing commitments, but I’ll come and see you tomorrow after work.”
Elsa could not come to terms with the fact that her best friend also forsook her at the time of need. The telephone was downstairs in the sitting room. She replaced the receiver down and went upstairs. She headed to the medicine cupboard, took some tablets and swallowed them all in the bathroom and left the packet there and headed to the bedroom.
She lied on the bed and as the medicine started taking effect, she started groaning ready to die. The groaning became so loudly that it woke up her two eldest children who went to her bedroom and found her limp and foaming in the mouth. The two tried talking to her, touching her and she was incoherent and unresponsive.
They run outside screaming to the nearest neighbor for help. They found their male neighbor who rushed to the house to witness what her children were talking about. He found the situation dire and rushed for his car to take her to hospital. He called his wife who helped him take her to the car.
At the casualty department, she was pronounced dead by the first nurse and doctor who tried to resuscitate her but in vain.
Meanwhile, the nanny returned and the children told her what had just transpired and her husband returned home later and was told by the nanny what the children had told her. Her husband took off to the hospital immediately and found their neighbor ready to return home after placing Elsa’s body in the mortuary.
Cell phones were not there then for their neighbor to get in touch with her husband while at the football game. That is the day that her husband got the weight of her misery after all the years.
Her children did not know what had happened that afternoon. If it were not for her friend Beni, nobody would have known what had happened. Beni felt horrible for ignoring Elsa at the eleventh hour because had she gone to see her as Elsa requested, nothing like that could have happened. As before, Beni could have calmed her down totally.
Her death left Beni and her husband with a lot of guilt conscience. Her in-laws were showing remorse, but whether they were genuine or not, nobody knows. The saddest part of it all was leaving her two sick children without a caring mother.
On the other hand, Hasi a young male married with two children, both girls had it very rough from his wife who refused to act like part of the family. Both Hasi and his wife were well educated with college degrees and held reasonably good jobs, but living in the big city with everything tending to be expensive, complete compliance with family demands was necessary.
His wife refused to participate in contributing financially for the upkeep of the home, rent, children and whatever else saying that her money was hers and whatever balance she had after dressing herself, makeup and taking care of her transport, she sent to her parents outside the city.
This burden was rather too much for Hasi alone, but because of his love for his children, he did whatever he could to provide for them and keep a roof over their heads. Meanwhile, he looked unkempt because of worries about tomorrow and whether he would manage as costs went up with inflation and what have you.
He could therefore not dress as well as his wife because all his money was committed. To make matters worse, he did not even know the floor number, office door number or telephone number or extension of his wife’s office. He only knew the name of the company and the position of the building in the city where the company was located.
She was unwilling to share the other information with him like she was ashamed of him going there or she was doing something there that he was not supposed to know about. This situation about the two went on for several years till it reached a serious boiling point.
One mid-morning, an older female in-law of Hasi met him at the top of a bridge connecting two sides of a busy road in the city center. They exchanged pleasantries, but the in-law noticed that he was not himself. He was dull, depressed and very unhappy. His lips were dry and cracked and his eyes drooped. It was like he had not slept nor eaten for ages.
She walked with him slowly to the bottom of the bridge, stood and took time with him to find out what was wrong. Although, the in-law was in a hurry and tired because she had just arrived from a long trip, it was important for her to get to the bottom of his problem otherwise she would be bugged as the two always had very good rapport. She spent over two hours with him.
He related to her how sad and difficult his life was to the extent that his aim of going there was to jump over the bridge and end it regardless of the fact that he was going to leave his beloved children behind to suffer. The children were five and three years old. It was a weekday and he was on vacation. He had seen the children off to school before going there and his wife was at work.
He had imagined that if he jumped from that sport, the numerous cars passing below would finish the job should the impact not work as he planned. The alternative was to climb to one of the tall buildings nearby and do it there.
The in-law told him off seriously and narrated to him worse case scenarios that she knew of yet the afflicted had not done what he intended to do. She consoled him till he came to the realization that life is very precious and that his children needed him more than ever as they grew older.
He cheered up and promised her that he would go home straight away and stay there while waiting for their return from school with their nanny. He also promised to call her the next day so that they could meet for further talks. And he indeed called her and they continued to meet for consultations henceforth.
Incompatibility in Action
Iyama and Banali were second cousins in an area by the ocean. Iyama came from the hilly side of the region while Banali came from the lowland side. Iyama’s father was a first cousin to Banali’s father. Coming from a close-knit ancestry, the two families met often despite the distances and ate together many times a year.
Some of the meetings were due to socializing; some were due to funerals; some were due to weddings, some were due to discussions and consultations; some were due to problem solving; some were due to religious functions and others were just short or long visits.
Traditionally and culturally first cousins, second cousins, third cousins and whoever else down the line were allowed to marry each other. It was a union of convenience and was highly applauded and celebrated. Many parents and young people yearned for it and where possible it was arranged conveniently to fit regardless of the age of the girl in some cases.
Banali had an older brother Mardi who was supposed to get married to Iyama’s older sister Sonja, but due to other complications, it was not possible. Mardi met some other lady in town where he worked and made her
pregnant and he chose to marry her instead. Sonja therefore got married to someone else.
But this miss was not forgotten nor taken lightly by both sides of the families. The two sides swore that one day one of their younger children would fulfill that dream. And those younger children became Iyama and Banali.
Iyama had finished high school and Banali had graduated from college and was working therefore the time was ripe and perfect. The two got married with a lot of pomp and ululation.
The two lived together in the seaside city in a rented apartment as he worked and she chose to be a housewife. Both of them were last born and they had several older siblings of both sexes and numerous cousins, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles and so on and so forth.
One year went by, two, three years and there was no pregnancy or a child for Iyama and Banali. People started talking and questioning why and what with them. The two had no answers. Pressure was mounting from both sides and they did not know what to do or where to go. Their idea of escape was to leave the city for another town or city.
Eventually, things became too much for Iyama as she was not even free with her own sisters’ questions and what have you. She therefore chose to ignore them to the extent of not even visiting them as before yet they all lived in the same city. Even when Banali traveled outside the city to work for days to a week, she remained alone and aloof.
Through advice from some concerned quarters, they went to see a gynecologist to find out what the problem was and take care of it if possible. True to their concern, after so many tests, the doctor told them that they were incompatible and therefore would never have a child together. The news was devastating to both of them.
Their question to themselves was, “Who was to blame?” They both consented to the marriage, not as in other cases where couples were forced into each other. They hanged together for one to two more years and then called it quits and each went their separate ways.
After a few years, each got married to different partners and they each got children with the new partners.
Scary Results
Faith and Harris met in a big city of a population of more than two million people where one could not know many people due to its size and fell in love with each other. They were both in their early twenties and independent as they were both adults now living far away from their parents and siblings who were in other far away areas of the country.
None of them was born in their great grandparents’ original homes where their ancestries were because their great grandparents left those homes many years back to settle elsewhere due to overpopulation and shortage of adequate farm land.
Over and above that, their great grandparents never bothered to make visits to the original homes they left behind as they looked at it that they had nothing to go there for as they had no assets in those areas apart from some relatives that they left behind some of whom also moved away with time due to population congestion and some died with time.
There was also very little contact between the relatives except during funerals especially among older people and not involving the youth and children. Everybody minded their business in their new locations to survive in their farming endeavors and small businesses and employment.
Faith and Harris grandparents were both born away from the ancestral homes and they too left the young couple’s great grandparents to settle elsewhere away from their ancestry. What this meant is that the youth originating from the same ancestries hardly met therefore did not know each other well enough or at all.
With time even their parents left their grandparents homes and moved elsewhere. Their grandparents and parents made no effort to bridge this gap and the youth were also least concerned as there was no demand on it. And life went on with each person pursuing their earthly endeavors to the best of their ability. The saying that “east-west, home is best” did not have strike a chord to any of them.
When Faith and Harris met, it is because they were done with high school and after high school training and they went looking for jobs in this big city. They each came from different areas of the big country to fulfill this dream.
The only thing that happened to unite them was the vernacular language, mother tongue, Bantu language that they both knew, but not very well because English and Kiswahili dominated their daily communication as it had been at school and in the areas they were born and brought up that were not their original ancestral homes.
Otherwise, they spoke English or Kiswahili that they both knew well, having studied both to high school level as was required by the schools’ syllabuses. Faith had trained as a front office personnel in the hospitality industry while Harris had trained as a chef. They met at the hotel that employed both of them.
The hotel was situated in the big coastal city frequented by tourists and that is where their careers would be realized. Before long, they became very close and moved in together to save money on rent instead of paying for two accommodations.
Before long, Faith was pregnant and they had their first child, a healthy baby boy. They were happy and proud parents too. They did not have any wedding or any type of ceremony at all. All they did was inform their parents via snail mail. They were happy living together and raising their little boy while working to earn a living.
When their little boy was two years old, she got pregnant again and got their first daughter who appeared normal at first then things turned upside down right under their eyes as time went by.
The little girl developed weakness in the limbs and therefore could not walk. Her feet and legs became spindly and twisted in a way. The legs could not support her little weight, but it was not polio. She therefore failed to learn basic things like going to the bathroom. She did it wherever she was sitting.
She could not feed herself either and had to be fed because her hands and arms followed the same formation as that of her feet and legs. Even communicating became a monumental task as the tongue appeared sort of heavy and bigger than usual. Faith had to decide whether to go on with employment or stay home and take care of her dwarfed and deformed daughter and healthy son. But their daughter was not sick as such. She was just not normal and her development was almost stunted or terribly slow.
She decided to stay home and mind the two children, as it would be very difficult for an ayah to do the job. She therefore decided to leave paid employment. Money would be scarce, but it was the best option. Harris had to work even harder to sustain the family he loved.
With time, Faith got pregnant again and gave birth to the third child, a daughter again. She too turned out like the first daughter. Faith and Harris could not understand what was wrong or going on and left it at that. But they had hope of one day having another healthy child like their son.
Their fourth child, a boy turned out the same way as the first two girls. Faith and Harris got bewildered. There wasn’t much communication between them and their parents and siblings because they were ashamed of this curse that had befallen them. They kept to themselves and trudged on.
Their fifth, sixth and seventh children turned out the same way. They were one more boy and two more girls. This is when they decided to stop having more babies because this curse was real and devastating. With six children in this condition, life proved to be very difficult, dreary and expensive indeed.
As the children grew older their situation became worse in that they crawled and moved on their bottoms and could easily land in a basin of water and drown or fall on fire and burn. Faith had to resort to tying their little legs or hands to heavy furniture like the bed, sofa, cupboard or wardrobe to stop them from being in harm’s way.
And understanding their needs was not easy as their speech was incoherent or impaired. They all had to be fed and changed and cleaned like babies otherwise flies would have a field day in the house. Taking them to school was out of question. They needed a special school which was out of reach expense-wise and distance-wise.
As time went by, their firstborn went to school and was do
ing fine in school but the others were nowhere school-wise. A good friend and neighbor of theirs did some research and found out where a special school could be found where the children could be taken. And that school; happened to be around their ancestry home area.
Through much talk and deliberation, they decided to move to that area so that their children could have a chance to go to school. Harris applied for a job that side of the country and found one therefore the whole family moved there.
They moved to the small town nearby where the job was which was not far from their ancestral area. They settled in a rented house and Harris started his new job.
Their children were enrolled to the special school nearby to the relief of Faith who had been really overburdened. Through school, work and talk, Harris met and got introduced to some of the villagers who were actually his far extended family members.
As time went on, he paid some of them visits and it is through such visits that he found out where his roots were and when the relatives inquired about his wife’s origins and he explained what he knew, he discovered that she too had her ancestry from the same village except that he was from the high elevation while she was from the valley.