I was just 15 years old and a member of a naughty gang of boys ages 14 to 17. Although no boy in my age group had actually been inside her house, or inside her, I was nominated by my peers to make the journey and report a detailed description of her in her birthday suit (and I mean the suit she was wearing the very day she was born). But the meaning of her name, Akwaoma, was a pleasant surprise waiting for me...

Her skin was dark, polished to such a glowing glaze that it shone like dark sunshades on a sunny afternoon. Her hair, also dark, and in all its natural splendor, was simply held back in a pony tail, restrained by a green-white-green piece of cloth that gave me a clue. She was tall, at least six-foot tall, and her eyes, even from the far end of the hall, emitted the type of twinkles that reminded a village boy like me of the heavenly stars looking down to earth on a moonless night.

At 6:20 a.m., the phone rang again. This time it was uncle Faster’s wife. Alarmed, my blood pressure went up. Why would my uncle, the richest man in our village, indeed the wealthiest man in all the surrounding towns, ask me for money? What type of trouble is he in? His wife would not tell me. All she would say was that he needed about Five Hundred Thousand Naira to bail himself out of jail or…? Or what? Or he would have to marry the pregnant girl.

I close my eyes and imagine the incomparable finger-licking soup of Mother, the stew, the goat meat, the chicken meat, the rice, the beans and the other delicacies that taste uniquely delicious only because they are cooked with a tinge of family love, a dash of holiday spirit, and an abundance of village simplicity. Please, let me go home.