Sahada breathes, blinks and thinks for a moment about the act her eyes witnessed here in Kasimui seconds ago, did she just see a child banged to the wall, beheaded and brought back to life by the man? And look, another man is cutting himself with a knife but there is no sign of a cut or blood. She must ask;
Excuse me Sir, please which festival is this?
The man looks her from head to toe and asks in his local language Kasimna if she is from these parts. She replies in the affirmative in her broken Kasimna. Then she follows the man’s eye from her chest downwards. She is wearing a sleeveless top, a chain, a push up brazier that is helping her breast stand erect, tight jeans which leaves no room for air, and a long weave on tied in a chignon to accentuate her beauty. She turns her eyes from herself to the other women and ladies around and realizes what is causing the man this horror. All the women are wearing ‘agbada’ that cover every part of the bodies except their faces and their fingers. They are also wearing headgears which hide whatever hair there are on their heads. The young girls are also dressed in like manner but some have a little bit of legs showing. She instinctively cleans her mouth with her handkerchief and her red lipstick stains the white handkerchief. Suddenly feeling like a chick in the midst of hawks as more eyes turn upon her in judgment, she manages to announce;
‘Mma Amina Muniru is my grandmother and my father is Baba Wataru, I am looking for …’
Before she could utter another word, a queer short and wrinkly looking old woman comes forward and looks her in the eyes, turns her around and exclaims;
‘Wↄi! It is really his daughter’
she goes on to wail mentioning the name of her father in every wailing sentence. Three women come forward with their cover cloths to cover what she now sees as her nakedness, but one gets to her first. The stench from the cloth and the stern looks from the men force a short apologetic smile onto her face. She regrets having forced her father to allow her make the trip alone. She is led into a huge compound of mud houses where she is given a calabash with muddy water which she declines to the horror of the elders.
She is forced to change into one of her grandmother’s clothes which smelt like the earth at its best. Mma Amina asks her what she is doing in the village. She tells her about her deal with her father to stay in the village for a year after which she will be sent abroad for further studies. She divulges this with difficulty as her grip on her mother tongue had been taken over by the English language. Mma Amina welcomes her with a number of rules after going through her luggage. The rice, oil and canned fishes are for special celebrations like Salah, her taste in clothes is a sin, because their customs do not promote women who provoke men to sin and the Quran forbids jumpy breasts in revealing clothes. She nods her head but immediately regrets, because of the shocking looks on the faces of the women gathered. One of them tells her it is gross disrespect to nod when an elder speaks to you, you must respond with words.
She mutters her sorry and immediately misses her home in Accra. She remembers her mother’s hometown in Akyem Akrokere. Although the telecommunications network there is poor, there is freedom of speech and expression, there is freedom in choosing clothes to wear, there is freedom in almost everything. The only problem there is that many of the villagers loved to gossip and never ceased to tell people to their faces that they are children of white people because they speak adulterated Akan and act like westerners. Never had Sahada thought anyone could live this antiquated life in these modern times. She wonders how she is going to be able to live here for a whole year. She is brought out of her day nightmare with a question as to whether she will go with them to the festival grounds or rest in the room. She chooses the former when she remembers the beheading and resuscitation of the little boy and the many scary wonders. Hey meat, better to be among the cats than be in hiding she whispers to herself.
During the merry making, she is able to pick up a bit of information about the “challenge me festival” which happens to be a festival where the best spiritualists and the best herbalists are crowned with respect. Those who lost their hands and part of their bodies when they tried to exhibit their prowess are still being tended to by the powerful ones. Those who died in the challenge are given a not so good burial. The reality that there is no electricity in this village hit her like a punch from a demon. She shrivels with fear anytime she hears a sound from any the trees or the bushes that sit around them like gigantic lions who are guarding edible animals, there is always the possibility of the guards turning into the danger.
Sahada lies on the mat in between two young women who may be her age mates but look older. She finds it difficult to breathe as the stench from their armpits hold hands with the hot air in the room and together fight her nose, tears well up in her eyes as she thinks of her empty air conditioned room and very soft bed in Accra. Everything is going against her, the mosquitoes, the sounds of the night, the rats that sniff them for God knows what etc.
Just when sleep is most sweet, Sahada hears her name being called, she gets up to realize the other girls are holding buckets; obviously ready to go to the stream to fetch water. She has never carried a bucket of water before, not even in her mother’s hometown. She is handed a bucket, without being told, she follows them like an obedient dog, saying nothing throughout the long walk. Immediately the bucket of water touches her head pad, she feels a sharp pain in her neck and down goes the bucket and its content. They fetch another and place it on her head, mid-way to the house, she trips and falls and the water and dirty metal bucket roll down into the bush.
She goes for her bucket but refuses to get back to the stream alone to fetch another bucket, knowing she cannot even carry the bucket by herself. When they get home, one of her aunts upon hearing the stream drama yells out:
‘Wataru really has given that Christian wife of his the chance to spoil his children, just look at a grown woman not being able to carry a bucket of water? Who do you suppose must fetch water for you to bath?’
This reprimand brings tears to her eyes and her mood falls to 100% sadness. She knows now; she hates her father’s village, she hates their house, their rooms, even most of the people in the village. As the day passes, she withdraws into herself. She is tired of the food, which is always tuo zaafi in the evening and Hausa porridge in the morning. She has no friend; she hates the very scorch weather, the muddy drinking water, and hard work on the farms. Each day she counts the days left for her to go to Accra in preparation for her studies abroad. She is now eighteen years and she is living like a very primitive old woman, thanks to her father. She now realizes why her mother was not in support when her father suggested this. Her curiosity has made her bite more than she can chew, now her mouth hurts.
The lack of technology she reckons is not without advantages. The people meet in the evenings according to their gender to tell stories, sing and dance together. The trees have become her very tight companions on days without farm activities. She decides to refrain from engaging in any conversations with anyone unless she needs to. This resolution materialized when she was made to understand that females can never express themselves when males are talking, even if those males happen to be young boys.
There is one thing Sahada tries so much to understand with no success, the fact that old men get to choose the beautiful young girls whose parents force them to agree to their proposals. They are in the worst case scenario. Throughout her stay in this village, she had known everyone in the house, or so she thought, until a girl named Rahamatu is forced out flanked by three watch women after a night of heavy preparations of food and drinks (pito). It is obvious that the women fear the weeping girl would run away. Sahada is told Rahamatu’s groom happens to be a sixty seven year old man with three wives who promised the head of their family a vast piece of land and some cattle if he gave the hand of Rahamatu to him in marriage. The family head, Alhaji Mutala Wataru agreed with a speed of lightening. And so Rahamatu who defied him by running to her mother’s village in Piisim was brought back and locked in a separate room for months until her marriage party today. Sahada puts herself into the shoes of Rahamatu and weeps with her. Almost all the women in the house shouts on both of them, saying Rahamatu is being melodramatic and pretentious when she should be celebrating for haven found herself a rich man. They shouted on Sahada to mind her own business and advised that she prays for a man as wealthy as Alhaji Tanko. Sahada forbids it in her head and enters the room she shares with the women with the excuse that she is nursing a headache. She thinks about this throughout the evening and can make no excuses for the elders, for what she sees as grave greed.
She finds friendship with a high school dropout Zuma who claimed bad spirits ended his education. According to him, one of his father’s sisters charmed his brain and made him daft. Sahada tries to understand the possibility of that happening but she gives up, knowing that Kasimui is not a place to try understanding anything.
Sahada sits under one of the trees writing poetry when she sees a child playing football. This child suddenly jumps, holds his leg and falls. She gets up and goes to see what the problem is and sees an animal that looks like a rat run into the bush, obviously after biting him. She calls out for help, within minutes almost all the people in the village surround the boy. The first man who touches him shouts that the boy is dead. They ask Sahada what happened to him and she narrates what she saw. The boy’s father and mother wail openly. Everyone sympathizes with them but the man refuses to be consoled because as it turns out, the boy was his only male child. He calls for the head spiritualist in the village, whose service is expensive, to come and tell him what exactly happened to his boy. Baba Munkaila, Sahada deduces from the conversation circulating around is a very sad man. Almost all his male children die before the age of two. The only one that has survived until now happens to be Abu, the one who just passed on. He is known as one who never shows his emotions but can be very persistent.
Baba Bubububu; the fearful spiritualist, upon jumping around, shouting in undecipherable words says Munkaila’s eldest wife happens to be the witch who turned into that animal that bit Abu. The woman who was standing there crying her eyes out suddenly develops two other heads and horns and lion like canines in the eyes of all the people gathered, Sahada reckons. Every eye feasts on her with disdain. The mother of Abu; Asana throws herself at Mma Feruza and asks her to kill her too. Munkaila stands mouth agape not knowing what to say and the men around holds Mma feruza, ties her like a bunch of firewood, carries her and follows Baba Bubububu.
Baba Bubububu said no one is to shift the corpse until he talks to Mma Feruza’s witch queen. So they cover Abu and leave the scene, Sahada’s legs refuse to carry her from the supposed corpse of the boy. She goes closer after sometime and thinks she saw the boy move. She remembers her father saying palm oil, and some leaves he showed her, mixed together brings out poison from people. She runs to the house and gets the palm oil potion ready. She pours it into the mouth of Abu and holds his nose together with his lips in hopes her eyes did not deceive her. After what seems like years in four minutes, the boy wakes and vomits some greenish slimy substance, then sits up asking for his father. Sahada realizes the boy is so weak so sends him to her house. After a while, it dawns on her that Mma Feruza may be suffering on account of Abu’s perceived demise.
She gives the boy some food and drags him to Baba Bubububu’s shrine. Sahada carries Abu on her back because he is still weak. What greets Sahada’s mind sends her sprouting onto the ground with Abu. Mma Feruza has been tied to a pole, obviously beaten to a pulp and looks like she is panting for breathe. Sahada screams that the child is alive; everybody turns to look at the boy who runs towards Mma Feruza. The boy cries out loud for them to free Mma Feruza. Baba Bubububu looks on obviously looking caught but recovers enough to say his intensified whippings forced the woman to wake the dead boy. Sahada shouts that the boy had only collapsed because of the poison and narrated what she did to revive him. But Baba Bubububu shuts her up with the a loud shrilled voice. He goes on to say Sahada has committed a taboo and so needs to be his wife so as to be able to pacify the gods for her disrespect.
Sahada takes to her heels straight into her house. She picks the electrifier her mother gave her and electrocutes anyone who comes close to her. With that, she runs into the bush never stopping until she meets a portable road. She kneels by the roadside but cars will not stop to help her. She collapses by the side of the road.
Sahada wakes up receiving greetings from a white ceiling. For a moment, she cries thinking she is still in her dream. But in the end, she is tapped and asked if she is alright. She responds in the affirmative and asks how she came to be here. A woman tells her, she saw her by the roadside almost lifeless, so she brought her here. She asks if there is a way to contact her family. Sahada gives her her mother’s mobile phone number.
Mrs. Wataru couldn’t believe her eyes and her ears. She scolded her husband for allowing their daughter to go through such an ordeal. Mr. Wataru apologises saying he merely wanted her to get the feel of the village life so she will know about her root. They thank the woman who introduces herself as Abigail Tetteh, and thanks her. They take their daughter home. When they reach home, they are greeted by no other than Alhassan their security man who informs them that Mma Amina and two elders are waiting for them in the hall. Mrs. Wataru sends her daughter through the back door to her room. Asked about their mission to the house, they narrate that Baba Bubububu says if Sahada does not come to the village to be his wife, all the family members will die. She stresses that all other options has been rejected by the chief priest.
Mr. Wataru asks them to look for his daughter for him as he has no intention of believing in a spiritualist who does not know his left from right. He asks his mother and the elders to get back to the village and look for his daughter before he ascends on them with policemen. The three people leave for the village.
Three months later, Mr. Wataru sends his daughter abroad for further studies and travels to the village to see his folks. He tells them that he needs to take his daughter back to Accra with him so they must produce the girl no matter what. The elders lead him with attired policemen to the shrine of Baba Bubububu who, upon interrogation of his household, took to his heel immediately he was told Mr. Wataru had come to the village. He assembles his elders and tells them to try as much as possible to think carefully about certain things before taking action or consulting the said oracles. He tells them it is time to revise some of their beliefs as some are too antiquated for modern usage. She asks after Mma Feruza and is told she passed away after that ordeal. She stresses that traditions and beliefs that take innocent lives must never be encouraged and leaves the Kasimui village swearing in his head never to allow any of his children step foot in that village again.
He says in his head that it is better to keep them in limbo than to make the whereabouts of his daughter known, because that will rekindle their superstition and ruin the life of his innocent child.
THE END.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agbada: An African cloth sewn and worn to cover every part of the body.
Wↄi: A local exclamation of amazement or shock.
Pito: A local drink made of millet in the Northern part of Ghana.
Mum Cee 