Fiction for Adults and the Youth

by Aluta Nite

  She did not get a child in this fourth marriage maybe due to age. After one year with him, she divorced again and was ready to move on. She got married to someone else just behind her father's house, a location away. Again, it was a man of her choice. She again got no child with this man maybe also due to age.

  It was like she was following into the footsteps of her father who had married several times too with more than fifteen children on tow and scores of grandchildren and great grandchildren.

  The pattern here is that she was ever ready to get married to whoever came along but she was never willing to bring up any child.

  Her five children were blest with fifteen children in total and just as she did not bring up her own children, she never lived with or brought up any of her grandchildren. The longest she stayed with any of them was hours while their mothers or fathers were also around.

  Child Wives

  In communities, where girls were treated as chattels, they were married off to old men fit to be their fathers or grandfathers or even older. One such girl called Sady, was married off to an old man six times her age. She was just ten years old when she got married.

  She also never had the chance to go for formal education because she was not a boy who deserved education as far as her father and the communities were concerned. She was therefore betrothed soon after her circumcision wound healed.

  Her husband had sons and daughters who were older than her own mother. He was already a great-grandfather. He was employed as a driver for a corporation that handled imports and exports. He therefore traveled by road a lot locally and within the region with his boss. Sometimes, he could be away for as long as one week whenever and wherever his boss was attending meetings and seminars.

  Sady's young stepchildren were still at home while going to school, but their mothers were not home because they had been divorced. Her husband had been married several times before just like her father.

  At the time of her marriage, she was not the only young girl getting married to him. There was another young girl of her age, called Muri who also got married off to this old man, but she was from a different area from Sady's.

  The whole idea was to have women in the house that would take care of his still young children. But the man forgot that what he called women in his house were actually children too who had not even seen their first menses.

  His young children ranged between ages six and nine. The two young wives bonded together seriously like they were not sharing a husband, but like they were children of one man. Maybe, even the idea of being married or having a husband did not make sense to both of them. Simply put, they became best friends. They were wives cum house helps.

  Neighbors and other people around them could not understand this queer relation between the two women, but there it was flourishing like it was the best thing that ever happened to each of them. They gossiped together a lot and did a lot of stuff together. They cried together and dressed more or less alike. They taught each other how to use make up and went places together like to the market.

  They prepared and cooked food for the big family. They washed and cleaned for the whole family. And there was no fight or quarrel between the two women. Even best friends argue or disagree with each other over issues sometimes, but not these two. It was like a movie out to this world. Even when their stepchildren quarreled, they kept their distance.

  As their bodies developed in marriage, they also realized that their husband was a womanizer. He had concubines all over the country wherever his job took him for days. He also had some just within their town and region. To them, their fate was decided by their fathers and culture and they stayed put and lived by the day.

  Occasionally he took them shopping and they looked like his youngest daughters or granddaughters. Of course he felt very proud when people looked at them and murmured whatever but the looks and talks could not change the equation. He was the king of his castle and it remained so.

  All said and done, the two did not conceive for seven good years. It was like the bodies were so immature that they needed time to become real women. They eventually conceived more or less the same time and gave birth to baby boys the same month of the same year.

  And the little boys started life together as brothers. Their mothers remained close as ever. Whether there was some conspiracy between the two women nobody knows, but there were rumors doing the round that their husband could not sire more children and that the two women had their little secret of having the little boys with an outsider or outsiders.

  As time moved forward, their husband acquired HIV/aids through his many escapades. He even infected Muri with it while Sady remained free from it. After prolonged treatment, he died and left them with their lone sons. After his burial, each woman left for her birth family with her son as their customs dictated and that is how they got separated, but they were in touch with each other through visits as their fate sealed them together and they kept it so.

  Unfortunately, he never made efforts to take the women for any training of some sort however small or menial to help them pick up their threads of life in his absence or lack of income. Sady got involved in cooking food and selling it to school children while Muri was buying and selling small items to anybody who needed them and that is how they managed to take their children to school.

  It did not take long before Muri was down with the disease since she could not afford the cost of treatment. She eventually died and Sady and her son attended her funeral. Both did not get married after their husband's death. Sady continued to stay single after Muri's death.

  But when Muri died then that became the end of her son's education as Sady could not afford to assist him even if she wanted to. He had to drop out of school and look for menial jobs to survive on, but he kept in touch with Sady and her son.

  What is in a Name?

  Sometimes, it is very difficult to understand what goes through someone's mind to make them do what they do. In this category of thought is the issue of names and people's involvement with them. In question are three characters whose choices of names and women they got involved with defeats all odds.

  Jash's first love and wife was called Feb. He was a clinical assistant in a local hospital while she was a homemaker and a home based designer. They lived together for over fifteen years and were blest with six children of both sexes. He loved children and always talked of having a big family. Unfortunately, he could not have more children with Feb because her health condition would not allow it.

  She was suffering from serious hypertension and her pregnancies from the fourth child were not easy ones. And the problem progressed with subsequent pregnancies. During the fifth pregnancy, the doctor recommended that they should not have any more children as her life was at risk.

  This did not go down well with him and she became pregnant again. This particular pregnancy was so difficult to the extent of her staying bed ridden the entire period. Her body was puffed up and movement was impossible. Even turning in bed was out of question. She had to be assisted. And she had to use bed pans. She was huffing for breath most of the time.

  At nine months. There was no sign of labor pains. She was induced during the tenth month and underwent caesarean cut to remove the baby. Before stitching her up after the operation, the doctor went ahead and removed her uterus without Jash's consent. This was to avoid another pregnancy. He was informed later and he was not amused.

  When this last child was one year old, he started saying that he was missing the sound of a baby crying in the house. There was no point for him to say such because there was no way by which Feb could conceive, but it looked like he had other ideas and he was simply passing a message.

  It did not take long before he started staying out late after work and before long he was spending nights out. Eventually, he shifted to somewhere else and only came visiting. It turned out that he found another woman also called Feb that he was living with and she was already heavy with his child. And she had se
veral children with him after this first pregnancy

  Why wasn't the next woman in his life called Florence, Felgon, Felicia, Filipa, Filista or another name? Why did it have to be another Feb?

  Louis met Jana and after courting for some time, they got married and were blest with two children of both sexes. He was a sportsman and a salesman in the private sector while she was an administrative assistant in the private sector.

  Their life started off well and they looked pretty close and wholesome for some time then Louis started showing Jana his real self after the birth of their first child, a daughter. He disappeared in thin air often when he was not on duty without informing Jana or taking her and the baby along with him.

  After the birth of their second child, a son, the situation became worse in that he now did not care about the family as far as finances were concerned. What he did with his money was his own affair and nobody was to know or question.

  The going became very difficult for Jana economically and she decided to move back to her mother's big house in the same city while continuing with work and bringing up her children. When she did this, he got a cue that he was now completely free to run wild. He did not even bother to go and check on the children's wellbeing or just to say hello.

  Jana did not pursue him for anything and just concentrated on her work and her children. This emboldened him further and before too long, he was married to a new lady called Jana like his pervious wife. He had two children, both boys with this second Jana.

  Why wasn't the next woman in his life called Jennifer, Jackie, Jael, Jeda, Joyce or another name? Why did it have to be another Jana?

  Brands had a wife called Ruder and a little son who was about one year old. His wife had just graduated from a college abroad when they got married. Whether the two met abroad or locally is not known.

  She was according to her papers, qualified in marketing, but there were doubts on this because some people appeared to know her better and said that she bought certificates wherever she came from without doing the proclaimed courses. The issues came to the fore because she was unable to perform at her place of work in that career.

  Brands' qualification or career was not known because he was not a straight forward person. He was involved in some international business that was not totally real or wholesome. After rubbing shoulders with the law so many times and disappearing every now and then to evade arrest, he one time settled down for a short stint and within that time, he did the impossible.

  He eloped with a young lady also called Ruder.

  Why wasn't the next woman in his life called Rachael, Rose, Rebecca, Ruth, Rana or another name? Why did it have to be Ruder?

  A Mother’s Embarrassment

  Some time ago, mothers listened less to their children because they were to be seen and not heard, yet children are number one in mothers’ daily planning and chores. Some happenings took place that embarrassed one mother and changed her attitude towards her children forever. And here is what happened.

  A mother and her three children, two boys and a girl were on a four-hour journey one afternoon, in a disorderly public transport, to visit maternal grandparents faraway. The journey was not only long, it was dusty and tiring. The mass transit was a bus that was old and rickety and did not have bathroom facilities. The driver too was rude and unkind.

  The children were not enjoying the ride. It was hot and stuffy inside with flies all over and the bus was full. The road was rough and bumpy because it was not an all-weather one. And they had already spent about one hour in the sun waiting for the bus to arrive after walking for another hour to the bus stage. The radio inside the bus was also loud and ear piercing and they had headaches.

  In fact, the children did not want to go on this journey preferring that the grandparents pay them a visit instead because their experiences during the previous journeys were not fun, but their mother insisted that they go again. They would have liked to stay at home with their father and just play around the home compound as it was holiday time. The kids were two and four years old and the girl was the youngest while the boys were twins.

  Halfway through the journey, the boys told their mother that they wanted to go to the bathroom and their mother told them to hold on until later. They insisted due to pressure from within themselves therefore their mother went to tell the driver to make a stop so that the boys could go to the bush and relieve themselves, but the driver refused to make a brief stop.

  He rudely told her to go and sit down and leave him alone. He was racing to reach his destination quickly so that his competitors who were behind would not catch up with him and pick up the passengers waiting ahead and at the final destination for the reverse journey. Despite the bus being full, there was always room for one more passenger.

  The driver even warned her that should he stop for someone to alight or to pick up a passenger, he would not wait for her and the boys should they decide to run to the bush. Yet, she had already paid full fare for all of them that would not be refunded. There was even no guarantee that they would get another bus that could take all of them. Many people were heading home from town therefore transport was getting more and more full.

  Her children resigned to sadness, spoke less and tried to doze off, but it was not possible due to the unease around them and the discomfort in them. By the time they were one hour to their destination, one boy had made his pair of shorts wet and urine was dripping to the floor of the bus and soon after flies started concentrating their circulation around the other boy signaling the fact that he had had the big accident and some passengers nearby were starting to hold their noses.

  By the time they alighted from the bus, none of them was talking to each other and the girl even refused to walk the remaining distance to the grandparents’ home. She had to be carried while the boys had difficulty walking in the conditions they were in. They reached the grandparents’ home, but there was no happiness on their faces. They did not enjoy the warm welcome or the goodies that awaited them because of the shame, frustration and tiredness.

  The next day they told their mother to take them back home on the third day and early in the morning before it got hot. And they did not want to board the same bus. From henceforth, their mother stopped dictating issues to them and learned to negotiate with them instead.

  Old Jacob and Children

  Old Jacob lived in a big village with many people. The community in this village had their norms that they were supposed to follow, but man being who he is, was never forthright in the communal endeavors. Old Jacob lived with his wife Andira and their four children that consisted of Asher, Fanny, Shack and Peg in that order. That was three sons and one daughter.

  The girl was nicknamed “Only” because she was the only girl child in the family. The eldest boy loved singing and he was nicknamed “Weaver Bird” because he was constantly making noise through his songs. The second boy was always spotlessly clean and he was nicknamed “Smarty”. The last boy was an early riser every day and he was nicknamed “Dawn”. Their father in short was known as “Jei”. Their mother liked talking too much and she was nicknamed “Parrot”.

  Jei was such a humble man that he became the epitome of mentor-ship for children and young people in the village. He was a hardworking man every day except when he was bed ridden due to his asthmatic condition or an ulcer on one of his legs.

  His children loved him and adored him. He too loved them and was there for them most of the time. He was never heard raising his voice even to his noisy wife. He was a good father, husband, mentor, farmer, a skillful hunter and an artistic blacksmith.

  Villagers brought to him their broken hoes, machetes, scythes, knives, arrows, trowels, axes and spears to repair when the implements got broken. He also made new ones that he sold to his clients. He used sap or wax from certain cacti trees to hold the metal parts onto the wooden parts of the implements.

  His clients were happy with his work and therefore they rarely complained and if they did, he rep
eated the work free of charge despite the fact that some of the clients would have used the implements for some time before returning them to him. This endeared them to this soft spoken man and his business boomed.

  During the dry seasons, he traveled far and wide with his hunting colleagues, relatives, friends and dogs to look for wild pigs, hares, rabbits, porcupines, guinea fowls and quails. They stayed away from their homes for several days to a fortnight hunting until their baskets were full then they went back home with dried meat of all sorts. They did the drying in the open fires when they were resting.

  Besides their bicycles, their only implements were bows and arrows, spears, knives and ropes or wire for making traps. The length of time they stayed away depended on the success of their hunting. They were so good at the hunting job that they never let themselves down or their families who were eagerly waiting for change in diet whenever they returned from home.

  On his farm, he grew corn, quinoa, amaranth, millet and sorghum; tubers like yams, cassava and sweet potatoes; legumes like beans, cow peas and lentils; groundnuts; fruits and vegetables. He kept some cattle and poultry for milk, meat and eggs. He also had some bees on his big mango trees that gave him honey every so often. He neither drunk nor smoked therefore he was sober all the time. And even if something was wrong, he acted calmly and in a controlled manner.