PRACTICE - TWELVE

Laide got up and cleared the dishes… slowly… still wearing that worrying look. There was something wrong. Grandpa’s speech was either going to make or mar this. From her countenance, I feared the latter might have resulted. I stayed with Grandpa while she went to the room. He talked to me more about ethnicity and religion… but agreed they were surmountable hurdles. He pointed out that, for him, the ideal thing is, if you marry a girl, she becomes a citizen of your village. In the long run, the matter of her maiden village never comes up again. He realized, though, that modernity had made a lot of room for convenience. Especially economic convenience. It is the reason why many Igbo young men migrate to Europe and America, marry women from there, and derive benefits exclusive to citizens. Or, a young man marries the daughter of a wealthy man, and he becomes wealthy too. In the face of these developments, he acknowledged that once we can easily decide where we face in December – Edo or Enugu State – we’re cool. But trips to Edo State must be properly termed: visits; and, trips to Enugu, homecoming. Whatever the case, modern times or no, my village becomes our home. Anything other than this, I was on my own.

                Grandpa and I shared an eerie silence before I helped him get up. I helped him walk to the room, helped him sit on the local mat atop his mud bed, and stirred the glowing embers of firewood under the bed.

He was old! For some reason, I started to relish in retrospect these close moments I shared with him. Much as anyone might hate to admit, it was obvious his end was near. Very so.

Later on I went to meet Laide in the room to know if all was well. Negative! She had taken seriously ill.

The next few hours had me worrying like crazy. In her usual stubbornness, she had refused to go to the local Chemist’s, saying she’d be alright. But her temperature was scary. So I went to the chemist myself and got drugs for malaria. Before I left I begged her not to tell her parents she was ill if they called. Sometimes, streaks of signal came in that room. When I came back I administered the drugs… with much difficulty, due to lack of cooperation. Then I placed her head on my thighs, and continued to dab her face and chest all round with a damp towel. Nothing was going to get me out of the room soon.

                Before bedtime, Grandpa came to check on her, felt her temperature, and promised her she’d be alright. It was funny. As if he was the giver of health… Grandma herself had been in and out of the room, being a mother.

                I spent the night with her in the room. I wasn’t going to stay stuck to a promise not to share her bed while her health withered. Beyond the fact that I loved her so much, this is what her Dad would wish I did. I hardly knew any sleep, anyway: All those eyes to and from the farm; all the half hugs; all the visits and suspicious pleasantries… this notorious, witchcraft-ridden village… I had to make sure – every half hour – that my sweetheart was breathing.

From Grandpa’s marriage lessons, the range of my thoughts had expanded, and now I could add one grim picture that he did not. There are many threats to marriage: divorce, war, poverty, time, waning love… There’s also death. What if your partner dies… early on? What if it’s from mysterious or questionable causes? What if your business blooms afterwards? What if her family does not buy your story about the cause of her death?

What if your girlfriend dies on you?

By dawn her health improved tremendously, and the day was looking up. No hard chores today, just peace and quiet… We toured the village, taking romantic pictures here and there. Grandpa talked some more too… but I knew by now that there was no discouraging Laide. She was having a go at this… the whole nine yards! I managed her as much as I could… so she’d recuperate fully in time for the trip that lay ahead. Tomorrow, we were due out.

Back in Abuja, the sixth day was such bliss I had to eat into the seventh. We went to Wonderland… all manners of swings and roller coasters… all pitches of fright and amusement… adventure. Families and people in love all over the place, but they were all blurry; Laide was the only clear human being in my view. I kept looking at the time. Arik Air – Abuja to Benin – was at 5pm. Laide was all mine till then.

PRACTICE - ELEVEN

After we freshened up we found Grandpa already feasting on roasted yams. Mom had been preparing them all evening. He invited us to table.

                “The girl is pleasant,” he said, struggling to chew.

I smiled.

On the graph of life, we were still rising to the curve… Grandpa had made the bend. He was way downhill already… back to pap and ‘swallows’ these days. He was being stubborn by asking for roasted yam instead of something easier for his old mouth to handle. What age does to us…

                “What if you have to live together like this?”

                “Like how?” I asked.

                “You young people in big cities don’t have the full picture of marriage. Your father wanted you to see this as well… Marriage could be this way too: Two people, living alone…in a village somewhere, old and without help, but still together. Add it to the picture you have.”

Hmm.

“We haven’t always been here. I lived in the city too… long ago. When circumstances forced us to come home, my wife followed me. Marriage is for all times, all seasons – the good, the bad, and the ugly. Add that to the picture you have.”

I took note of that too by nodding pensively.

“Many young men from this village are living and working in different cities in this country. Some marry the women then meet there, some come home to marry… there are others who do not marry at all...

“A calamity befell the Igbos some years ago, and today we’re wiser and more cautious. I’m sure you had reached the age of discernment when the Kaduna Riot happened… it’s not up to… say… fifteen years now…” he cast his gaze in the distance and took on the story.

“Young men from here – and other parts of Igbo land – who were plying their trade in Kaduna were succeeding in business. They saw no problems whatsoever in marrying pretty wives from any Igbo State... Anambra, Imo, and Abia. And erm… Abakaliki – or even from other parts of the country. Any girl comfortable with their trade was made a wife, and life went on. The couples lived happily and were producing bright children. All was well. But then the riot broke out... Kaduna burned! Lives and property were lost. So, people that survived fled to their villages. Our sons came back here with their families. Most of the women they brought back found the new circumstances unbearable. On our part, we tried to be reasonable… knowing that all cultures aren’t the same. We cut them a lot of slack. But at every turn, these women were getting in their mothers-in-law’s hairs, and arguments were erupting from every home stead. Their husbands’ presence seemed to douse the tensions, though. But the time came when, after the mayhem, the men had to venture out, back to the desolate streets of Kaduna, to see if they could pick the pieces of their lives back together. It is said that only a fool tests the depth of water with both feet… for, if the water be deep and dangerous, then the fool is doomed; whereas only one foot would suffice to learn of a shallow river. The men went back to Kaduna alone. Stepping cautiously into territories that had been fraught with terror... but leaving behind them, in the village, a fresh colony of flames. Some found glowing embers of war, and concluded that their sojourn in Kaduna was over… they retired and came home, picked up their hoes, and followed us to the farm. To adapt to the new reality, their families went through turbulence, to say the least. Others found stumps that were still alive in Kaduna, and knew that their lives could grow back – with the requisite patience that was. So those ones came home to strategize and head back. But one thing was, each time the men came back, they rarely found things the ways they’d left them. Some found not their wives whom they left in their mothers’ cares. Mothers told them things like ‘she said she wanted to go to Nnewi; that she’d only be two days...’ That was a month ago! In some cases they’d taken the children dearest to them and vanished... flouting the duty given them by pastors... to love and to hold their men forever, in good times and in bad.

“This is just one scenario. Most young men based in Kaduna were devastated all round by the war. The worst case scenario was... that some men died in the violence, and their parents back home couldn’t tell if there were survivors from their sons’ families or not. The women disappeared with everything, children and all. Perhaps an Alhaji took a liking to the woman and orchestrated the chain of events that left her gasping for breath like a choking fish on a dry lake. He scoops the nymph and adds to his invincible harem a cikin daki – as they say! Such was the cataclysmic reach of the Kaduna riot. This story, amongst other experiences, taught us a bitter lesson: to marry from home, so that if anything happens, man and wife are both coming back here. So add this to the picture you have as well.

“During the mayhem in Kaduna, some of our sons ran home alone. Some of our daughters too. Their marriages had borne no fruits, and were only hanging by threads. The violence provided the snap, and they fell apart. So, one question you must ask yourselves: are you friends enough to live for many years without children? Or will you just be hanging on, waiting for the arrival of children to legitimize your distraction from each other?

“One good picture you have in the city is that… there are many successful men, and more beautiful women… more than yourselves… so it’s very fascinating when you forsake all others and pick each other. Not like here in the village where options are few. I am far from rich… even after more than ninety one years on this planet. Yet, at the time, I was all the heroes in the world put together to my wife. There were hardly any contests… hardly any rivals. Now I know the few things that belong to me: my name, my children, my patches of land, my house, and, most importantly, my wife – the woman who has made this journey with me. She’s mine; always has been… for more than sixty years. While my children have all gone on their own, she remains… And I’m quite sure that only death can take her away from me. Mind you… it’s not a… a… miserable… assurance; I’m as sure now as I was sixty five years ago.

“So add these to your pictures and determine if you like the resultant mosaic.

“Nor is divorce easy… People who marry, and then part, open up wounds that never heal. If there was love, and you marry on account of it, and years down the line you can’t find it anymore, while there are lots of possibilities, that the love you seek has gone into a total stranger outside your marriage is not one of them. Second marriages are, therefore, often more catastrophic than first marriages. Moreso because, those who have divorced their wives in pursuit of better options outside, are convicted by guilt, and so cannot scream or divorce again when things with their new wives do not work out. Therefore, they stomach their discomforts, thereby treating the second ailment with therapy that would have worked for the first. The second ailment becomes incurable. No, divorce doesn’t help. Lost love can be rediscovered… only except if it wasn’t genuine love in the beginning. That is why there is music in this life; that is why there is smell, pictures, places… all to remind you… give you clues… on where to find what you lost.

“Of course some young men came back here from Kaduna with women we hadn’t been party to them marrying. When we asked them about the women we watched carry wines to them, they never quite came up with any cogent explanations. It made us realize that the lot of you have no real understanding of the marriage covenant. So, your father sent you here for a reason. After this, of course you can go on and do as you please, but you’ll be more likely to know where whatever decision you take will lead you to.”

                Our attention was rapt; we sat enthralled by his delivery – especially his gesticulations and facial expressions. Occasionally, I took a bite of the roasted yam we were having – just it and red oil; but Laide had been done a long time. Her face was sober, and I thought maybe Grandpa was scaring her.

He continued…

                “Your Grandma and I… we’re old, but we still remember some moments in our lives that make us smile.

“Build a collection of these pictures and more, and make your decision. Life is not a bed of roses; happiness is supreme, but there are a lot of things waiting to destroy it for you: race, tribe, religion, social condition, distance… you name it. And you must take them seriously, or they will destroy your happiness. Your decision is yours. You have a right to it. After all, you’re the one to live with it. But it’s important that we guide you. Our people say, ‘you must learn from the mistakes of others, because you won’t live long enough to make them all yourself’.”

He beamed a rickety smile at us and said, “Going to the farm, cleaning, and doing things in unison… you get a pass mark there.” What was left of his teeth were a mess – brown initially, but now had red oil on them.

I felt fulfilled.

PRACTICE - TEN

I was up early. After washing my face I prepared things for Laide to have her bath. She was already up and about, cleaning.

I heard Grandpa call from his Obi. I went. He said his barn was empty… he hadn’t been feeling well enough to go to the farm. The young men who used to help the old out in their farms had all migrated to the cities in search of better fortunes. It had never been harder being an old man. What Grandpa was trying to say… I had to go to the farm and get his yams, at least – if I couldn’t accomplish anything else there. There was hardly any food in the house.

Damn!

I informed him that I could buy all the food the house needed… in case he didn’t know. It was an odd idea. He wouldn’t have it. Go buying food when he had surplus in his farm?! There was no contesting it, I had to go. And I knew this man; I dared not ask him for directions to the farm – at my age.

I told him I had to go get ready. I went to ask Grandma and she said, she, a woman, dared not point out directions for me to my father’s farm while he was still alive… It was a taboo or something like that.

My Blackberry’s battery had died, but my Nokia was still alive, so I switched sim cards. I went in search of signal to call my eldest brother. A man that saw me struggling outside the house told me I had to head towards the junction. So I went back in to prepare for the farm… call my brother on the way.

I took a cutlass, hung a hoe on my shoulder, and took a basket and a piece of cloth with which to carry the basket home. I started making my way. Grandpa had come out of his Obi, chewing-stick in his mouth. He asked if I was leaving already, and laughed a wry laugh when I said yes. He said even the sturdiest boy in the village couldn’t trek to Ukpata – that was the farm. The farm was the reason he had a motorcycle… I said, well, I couldn’t ride. There was a bicycle too, and that I could ride. When I wheeled the bicycle out to the front yard, he asked if I was leaving Laide behind. She, meanwhile, had been watching…and she now had that ‘I told you so’ look on her face. Grandpa’s countenance would have it no other way – Laide had to go with me. It appeared we had to undertake and succeed in this together. Modern girl: she came tagging along at once. Grandma yelled in our language. I explained to Laide that she had to go get a wrapper… No need to take off the trouser she was wearing… just tie it over.

                I kept trying to call my brother. It kept cutting. I put clues together, plus the little I could still remember from 1995…and kept going. April 1995 was my second time ever in this village… for a few days. A number of months astride ’91 and ’92 were my first. Then, we had run from a raging inferno in Kano State.

People we passed on the road stared at us until we were out of sight. The ones that knew me came to say hello and pry. Knew our family, actually. I would stare too… if I was in their shoes. What sort of young love… in a place like this… Laide held onto me from behind, and kept cautioning me about my speed on a not-so-good road. I argued that to keep our balance, we had to speed. That’s the trick in riding bicycles. The better riders can go slow; amateurs speed. It was thrilling to ride a bicycle again after so long. When we got to the vast area around where our farm was, we alighted and I wheeled. We were saying hello to people… sheer luck that people were in the farm this early. If we saw people from our clan, meant our farm was close… because the plots were shared amongst clansmen. One woman spoke like a true neighbor, and I knew at once ours was next to hers. It was unkempt. She said she’d intended to help Grandpa weed the following day. With all the rains, weeds were blossoming. And at the spots where yam tubers from last season were gathered under dry debris, the rains had soaked them, creating moisture underneath and causing the yam tubers to start germinating. All these anomalies assured me further that this was our farm.

While I was surveying the heaps of debris, the woman called out to me…

                “They’re starting to germinate, yeah?”

I said yes.

                “Well, they’re yet still okay to eat; a little later and you’ll have to put them in the ground and wait for next year.”

                “They seem far gone already,” I said, “can’t I just replant them now?”

                “Well, you can… But it might be a waste. They’re not all seed yams, and the yield may not be as big as the investment.”

Laide and I started to gather into the basket. Doing it with her, it didn’t feel like work. And it didn’t matter that she didn’t look a useful farm hand. It’s the ideal of grandparents to have their grandsons marry extremely industrious girls… for all of life’s challenges. But times had indeed changed. There was hardly a three percent chance that we would end up as a couple who would have to depend on our subsistence agriculture for a living. Didn’t mean I had our future all sorted out, though.

                Laide took the hoe and started weeding at random. I got her to concentrate on the task at hand. We had filled the basket, now how to carry it was a problem. It occurred to me that, since this woman was our neighbor here, she had to be our neighbor at home too… so I decided to ask her to lend us a sack which she could pick up from the house later on. Laide flashed me a knowing look.

We put the yam tubers in the sack, and it could even take more than the basket. Laide was laughing. I couldn’t help joining her. I was tying the sack unto the back of the bicycle… I asked her to quit laughing and give me a hand. She came to help me, but said she wasn’t getting on that. It was funny, sweet, memorable… That was how we met – watching a picture of an okada man and a woman who carried a sack of cassava in similar fashion… only theirs was a motorcycle. She posted the picture on Facebook, and my curious comments inspired the chat that had brought us here. Our sack now, placed horizontally on the bicycle, didn’t alter the balance; as a matter of fact, it enhanced it. And then Laide could sit high on top of it… I could handle it, really. I could navigate us home this way.

                “It’s the only way we’re going to get home today.”

                “No!” She kept giggling.

                “Don’ worry… I’ll be extremely careful…”

                “I’ll walk.”

                “We can’t walk all the way… Remember they’re counting on us for lunch.”

                “I’m going to fall,” she nagged.

                “No, you won’t. I’ll be extreeeemely careful… Promise.”

She was chewing on the idea.

“Please. Let’s just go home… If you can’t do it for transport, at least do it for love.”

She thought awhile, and then began to smile.

                “I’ll do it for love, Duke. And keep your promise, okay?!”

                “I will, sweetie.”

Phew!

Fear was still in her eyes when she clambered. This girl had to learn to trust me.

We didn’t go too slowly, or balance would have been hard to achieve and maintain. It was my defense again when she protested that I wasn’t keeping my promise. Wherever the road was bad, or too hilly, we got down and wheeled, then got on again… attracting attention the entire length of the journey.

                When we got home, Grandpa was sad that his worst fears had materialized – his yams were starting to rot. He praised our work, but wished we could make more trips to rescue the most we could, and plant the ones we couldn’t. Laide jumped at the errand.

We made two more return trips… the last time we went, we stayed back making hips and planting. We had instructions – as if I didn’t already know – slant the tubers when you put them in the soil; make sure you don’t upturn them; the bigger the hip, the better… on and on.

We went home really dirty, and Mom told me sarcastically that hard work in the farm wasn’t determined by how dirty one came home. I ignored her and went to bathe.