22 Feb 2007 |
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Amina, the Hausa Girl, and My Brother Ochinti
Her name was Amina, a Hausa girl of no more than eighteen years of age. She used to sit and count money with a man we presumed was her father at Ama Hausa off Douglas Road in Owerri,
Amina was tall in a willowy but graceful way; her skin was brown like a fresh West African anthill, and she had the features of a typical Fulani girl; her hair was always in cornrows, but in burnished jet black that gave the impression of a girl who knew orderliness and personal grooming. She was perpetually wearing a shy smile, allowing you just a glimpse of her teeth as she said hello in Igbo. Everybody on that street knew her and always watched her walk to the stall with the older man where they exchanged the local currency for foreign money. Without a doubt she was the star of Ama Hausa.
All the time that we watched her go back and forth to the stall, we did not once wonder why this girl was not in school until something seriously bad happened, well, bad in the eyes of my parents.
The bad thing that happened was that my younger brother, Ochinti, a graduate of the
Convinced that okenye anaghi ano n'ulo umuaka ejide udene si na obu egbe (an elder, our people say, does not sit passively and watch children mistake a vulture for a hawk) my father was determined to stop this union.
He began by chasing the girl out of the house because it has been said in proverb that a wise man first chases the fox away from his stray chickens before chastising the chickens for wandering out. He took my brother into the house and chastised him. That did not work. He brought out my brother in the presence of my siblings and rebuked him. That too failed. He told my brother that he would sit and wait for him to come to his senses. Days passed.
While he waited for the young man to come to his senses, the young man spent all his waking hours with the girl. My father decided that he could not just sit and wait any longer because it has been said that esiwe ofe na-eche ka anya nshiko ghee, mmiri tachaa, ite atapuo. (if you should wait for the crab's eyes in the boiling soup to be tender, the soup will dry and the fire will burn a hole in the pot). My father got up and sought the assistance of my uncles, aunts, siblings, to talk some sense into Ochinti’s head. All these people talked but the head they were talking to had no ears attached to it.
Next my father sought some advice from a diviner, a native doctor. This was an unusually drastic step for my father who wore his Christianity on his sleeve but nonetheless understandable because it has been said that anu ohia gbaa ajo oso, dinta agbaa ya ajo egbe (if the hunted animal runs away in a bad manner, the hunter should shoot it in an equally bad manner). When my brother Ochinti got wind of my father’s visit to the native doctor, he went berserk, and refused to eat any food from the house claiming that the food may be poisoned. Father was devastated.
Three months to the day that my brother first announced his plan to marry Amina, my family received, for the first time, a visit from Garba, the man we had all along presumed to be Amina’s father. Amina, he told us, was pregnant! My parents were about to have heart attacks as they regarded Garba as if they had just seen a snake slithering towards them.
Then Garba surprised us with a big bundle of money which he handed over to my brother. Smiling, he told us that Amina was not his daughter but his wife! This bombshell, for some reason, did not go well with my father. He regarded Garba suspiciously. He apologized to my brother. He explained that he was grateful to my brother because Amina had been his wife for a whole year without conceiving. He had been looking for some young man to help get her pregnant until …
As Garba walked out with his wife Amina, we were stunned to hear my father say to my brother “Ekwe kwana ka ha kporo nwa gi” (don’t let them keep your child).
“Do you know how they catch monkeys in the jungles of
My father began to sweat. The prospect of losing his grandchild was too much to bear. “Ochinti, don’t let them keep my grandchild. It is not our tradition to give our children away, don’t let them …”
With a smile on his face, and clutching the bundle of money from Garba, my brother told my father to relax. He had to tell my father to relax several times before he calmed down. “I knew that Amina and Garba were married from the beginning”, he said.
“What about your child, son, what about..” my father quipped.
“Relax Papa, that girl is not pregnant. Hear me out first”
My father sat up, his interest suddenly renewed.
“That girl told me to help her get this money from Garba. She had been planning to leave him for more than one year to go back to school but the man would not let her. When he started looking for someone to pay to get her pregnant, she saw her opportunity to get the money to help her run away. When I saw her one day and greeted her in Hausa, she confided in me and I agreed to help her. You know the rest of the story … I never planned to marry her. It is true that Amina tana da kyau (Amina is beautiful) but Garba na da kudi (Garba has money). And I know that she is not pregnant because I did not do anything with her. Tomorrow, she will be here to collect her share of this money and she will run away …. Can somebody please clap for me?” Papa and Mama shook their heads in disbelief. Sure enough, Amina picked up the money the following day and we never saw her again... WayoGuy@aol.com
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