ONE CRYING BREAST

By MIDE BENEDICT

Rusted roof sheets could be seen all over the place. Anyone entering the village for the first time, would at first glance notice this emblem.  If a new iron sheet, grey and sparkling was spotted on the roof of any house, though nothing of such could be seen, that house would look like the old and odd one out amongst all the brown rusted roofed buildings; it would be seen as a bastard roof. Well, for Aiyekooto village, that was nothing surprising, as so many houses looked as if they were about to collapse, with their walls cracked from head to foundation, like terrible markings on an over-aged old man, yes, over-aged old men, because this same village was where one would find old men that were supposed to be residents of the soil, still going to farm and working greatly.

Two men, one old and the other young, walked pass the frontage of Olola’s house. The younger man carried a big keg, which could be no other than a keg of undiluted palm-wine. Nothing more or less could be in such a big keg, other than palm-wine, as long as it was Akaani, the young man holding the keg and Ogbonlagba, the one older in age and in face. Both of them recently became friends, good ones to be precise. Though this was just three days earlier, after they had lost their wives along with some other villagers to a terrible situation. They were attacked by a border village and this was about four days ago. Aiyekooto village and this border village were having some hot issues concerning land ownership. Hence any one crossing the borders of his or her village to the other was directly offering him or herself to the soil. And certainly, these victims did offer themselves to death.

 They had gone to the other village to buy some beautiful clothing materials, usually brought from far away into the region. This was after some news breathed into their ears that these clothing materials had arrived the border village and instead of ignoring clothing materials for their lives, they refused. They decided to venture into death and they found it at the very end of the village, a tip of the tongue into the border village, as their bodies were found lying on the same spot they were battered, in cold blood. Maybe the news of the clothing material was real or not, no one knew, but what was real was that their souls were fed to the soil. This was the terrible thing that got these men drinking and within three days, they had become popular in the village as the tireless heavy drunks. They walked passed Olola’s compound with songs and talks that made no sense.  Anyway, what would make sense to a drunk other than his palm-wine drops? 

As I said, the killings did not only visit the houses of these two drunk men, bearing the painful news of death, but some other villagers too were visited and Olola, a great hunter, a rich, brave and courageous man, who the two drunk men had  just rubbed their legs against the dust within his compound, was also a victim. People described him before his death as: Ogboojuode Olola, meaning the brave hunter that owns tomorrow. In Aiyekooto and also in other villages around her, people were christened at different times and periods. First was the normal name given to people at birth and was subjected to different forms. A child could be named due to his condition at birth or position he took when being delivered. A child like Ajayi, Balogun’s first son could be said to have brought his name from heaven.  A child could be named after a family’s heritage or prestige, therefore the child bears the name and also due to the occurrence of an event surrounding the child’s birth, such as Bidemi (was born when his father was not at home). The second naming could either be for a boy or a man, a woman or a girl, depending on who the person was or what the person had done, either good or bad. This was known as the renaming or a man.

 Ogboojiode Olola looked like a surname joined together with a first name, but it wasn’t, it was a praise name given to him by his people and that was his second naming. The name was so popular that no one actually knew, or if some had known, at least his family members or friends, they would have forgotten the name he was christened by his parents, because of its fame. But Olola, as it was mostly shortened by his family and friends, did something that went against his praise name. What he did could have earned him another christening, but since it was a taboo for the people of Aiyekooto to speak against the dead, they decided to keep quiet, though some insisted that he had done a great thing by sacrificing himself for others to be saved, though no one came home alive after the incident.  Ogboojuode Olola defied his own name and his head-swelling chants by not advising the women who had begged him to follow them to the border village not to go, but like the opposite of his name, he followed them and something very painful, though was also a normal result of such happening in Aiyekooto. Olola didn’t pay for this costly mistake as he was now being married to the soil, but someone else did.

Some persons gathered few steps from where the two drunks had passed to go their own. The gathering was right in front of Olola’s house and these persons were both men and women; three women and the remaining were men. The first woman was standing right beside a man, her husband to hit the nail on the head. He name was Ailokomoworoko, that is: the one who has no hoe, yet uses his hand to farm. Ailokomoworoko was a very fitting name for him, as he was a very good farmer, and he was also rich, though not as his brother, Olola. He folded his arms and was monitoring what was going on at the centre of the gathering, making sure all went according to tradition. Amaasadele, the bringer of hawk, and Olola’s three other brothers were busy with something else. They were holding one of the women down, while a liquid substance was being gushed down her throat by another woman. This substance was inside a small bowl. The liquid could have been called its usual name, water, but it was not an ordinary water, it has become something else, it has become the water of the dead. It was the remaining water, used in washing Olola’s corpse and as his wife and widow, was being forced to drink it. 

That was the culture no woman whose husband has been called to the other land could escape in Aiyekooto. In fact that was the second process on the list of activities to be administered to a widow. It was known as the death rite; the last of the three rites of passages: birth, marriage and death or otherwise known, in some other villages that had similar culture but in a different way as: the morning, the afternoon and the night. On the second day, after the death of a family man, the wife’s hair must first be scraped off, including those in her private parts and after which she would be given a black attire to put on. She would be kept in a room, only to come out when she was being told to by her in-laws and that would be when a rite was about to be administered, like the one Ojuola was been given. 

Ojuola was her name. She was Olola’s widow, although she gave him no woman’s prime, still Olola loved her and never crowned another woman with the duty of cooking his soup and pounding his yam, which was very unusual. It was either you gave birth, being told to leave the house and return to your father’s house, and your in-laws would help in carrying out that assignment perfectly, with abuses dancing after you as you were been thrown out or you can painfully and enduringly watch how numerous women share the bed, on regular bases with your olowoori (husband). If one of the women, became the answer by bringing forth a child, though not just any child, no one cared about females who would later leave the house, or worst of all take all the properties to his husband’s home, therefore it must be an Aremo (first male child). 
Even if all the women initially married gave birth to female children and the last woman produced a male, such a woman automatically would become the Iya Ile (head wife) and the other women would become the house dressers until another male child was brought forth once more by another woman and jealousy would begin to build its hut in the home from there, as the fight for whose child would inherit the clothes, farmland and other properties deemed to be an Aremo’s would shoot it’s arrows amongst the women. 
Ojuola was the daughter of a rich and powerful man in Aiyekooto, but that couldn’t break an egg, every mouth was silent on the matter. Her father had no right to say anything, in fact, he was meant to encourage the continuation of the rite, whether or not it came from his heart. Because he knew she had to go through it and as a man who would die some day and would want his rites to be completely administered to him, he must allow it to take its course. Even if her father died that hour, her mother would be made to go through the same rite; ignoring her age, she would drink up that same kind of water and be restrained in a room for the rest of the forty days of the event, with each day having its own rite of passage.

The last drop of water ended in her mouth and as soon as she swallowed it, a loud cry sprang out from her voice box, but it was curbed at the gate of her mouth by one of Olola’s brother. Her eyes were heavy and soon, the upper part of her cloth, the one resting directly on her breast, because she wore nothing within, was soaked in another kind of water; tears. They left her to shed tears, because it was also a rite that must occur. Any woman that refused to cry after such, would be terribly beaten and would be made to forcefully cry. At least, as they had been admitting long before Ojuola’s situation, if a woman does not gush out river because she has taken in drops from her husband’s corpse, she would shed oceans because she had taken in beatings. 

Her two hands began to fly around in the air, from left to back, from back to middle then forward and the left, without a stop, with her head embedded between the woman’s legs. As soon as Ailokomoworoko noticed this, he ordered for her two hands to be brought down and his two brothers gave her, at the same time, disdainful slaps that instantly brought her hands to order; both her hands were now on the ground and her head still remained at its position, emitting rivers of pain without stopping.  Ailokomoworoko’s wife whispered something into his ears. She was tired of standing, and Ailokomoworoko who loved his wife dearly, though he wouldn’t be there to cut the chicken of widowhood that would one day be slaughtered for his wife to eat when he was gone, a thing that was not escapable, ordered for Ojuola to be taken inside, stressing intensely that her room must be properly locked till they came back the following day to give her another rite. 
The woman who fed her with the water, grabbed something from the ground, a calabash containing pieces of simmered yam which were intensely drunk in palm-oil. This was the only kind of food Ojuola or any woman observing the same rite must eat, as for her, for the remaining thirty-six days, as it was the fourth day of her husband’s night journey and that would be her first meal since the sun rose from its bed that day, as it was now the dying of the sun and everywhere was gradually becoming dark. She was taken inside and the rest of them waited outside for the two men to return for them to then take their leave.

It was the nineteenth day of rites. Some belongings were left to rest on the dust outside Olola’s house. These belongings were clothes, not new ones, they were old ones.  All of Olola’s brothers were outside of the house too and were few feet away from the cloths. They all faced the same direction, waiting for something to be brought out of their brother’s house. Something wrapped round in a black cloth from top to bottom was being brought out of Olola’s house and it was borne on the shoulders of some men. They passed in between Olola’s brothers, who gave way for them. One of the men carrying the object signalled to the others and they stopped. The men brought down what they were carrying and as soon as it was about to touch the ground, one of Olola’s brothers shouted from behind them.

‘Don’t drop it!  Do you want to commit an abomination?’

‘I want to pick up the cloth and I know you won’t…?’

‘We wouldn’t what ehn…?’ Ailokomoworoko broke into his speech like a cutlass cutting through a snake, but this time it was a dead snake, for he was a young man and since Ailokomoworoko had interrupted him, he had no right to say anything. Ailokomoworoko was an elderly man and in Aiyekooto, one must not grab words from an elder’s mouth because it was believed that elders say no wrong and it would be a great act of disrespect for him to give Ailokomoworoko’s words a knock on the head.

‘Or don’t you know her body must not touch the soil of our brother’s house?’

‘She failed to complete the rites for our brother and her body and her cloths…. 
He pointed to the cloths which were lying on the ground

‘…must be taken out of the house and thrown into a river without allowing her body to touch the ground?’ Amasadele said.
He went close to where the clothes were dropped and he began to park them into a big wrapper which was also with the rest of the clothes one after the other.

‘Have it, and make sure any does not fall to the ground; once the clothes are lifted from the ground, they must not have any relationship with the ground, because it’s the same soil that our brother is going to be buried. We don’t want things to fall more than it had already fallen.’

Amasadele handed over the clothes to them and they began to move away from the house, as they proceeded, facing the opposite direction; a bush path leading to a thick bush. As the men carrying the object stamped their feet on ground while they moved, gradually the black cloth wrapped around what they were carrying began to fall off and as they moved on, a face was revealed. It was Ojuola’s face. She couldn’t complete the rites before she died and was now being carried to be thrown into a river. Amasadele noticing that the cloth has unwrapped itself and her face was now been revealed, he ran towards the men, and beating one of the men on the left shoulder, he directed them to rewrap her face, as she was a shameful corpse and any part of her corpse must not be seen by any villager, until they got to the river where her body and all her belongings would be thrown into and then carried away.

Hope you enjoyed the story. Nevertheless,  don't forget we are the society and the society becomes whatever we make it. We read to learn and to act.

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