Civilian Casualty 1: When Infidelity Strikes

THE MOTHER'S STORY

Most women of this generation believe that first every problem is spiritual and any physical solutions are possible only by consulting spiritual for help. As a result, they have oftentimes found themselves beholden to some spiritual figure that provides them with guidance and gradually milks them of the little monies their husbands would deign to give them.

None of these issues mattered to them as long as nightmares and ‘spiritual’ troubles were kept at bay and their husband spent all of hi9s money for the household.

It thus comes as a shock to them sometimes when in spite of their constant bowing and scraping to spiritual figures; all three calamities befall them at once making even the unbelieving person convinced that there really must be some truth to this evil in the world.

Take Solape for example, a real-life woman, in a bid to help her little cousin who was in need of spiritual referral discovered that the three calamities was paying a visit to her and had in fact paid many of such visits to her.

Unwittingly confident in her babalawo’s power to save her cousin from her latest misfortune and confident in the ‘personal’ nature of her relationship with him, she took no thought of informing her husband where she was headed believing foolishly that he was out doing ‘business’.

(And yes, he was out doing business, just not one of a nature that would please his wife)

It thus came as a shock to her when she discovered exactly what kind of business he was doing on her arrival at the babalawo’s place.

(Now, when I say shock here, I mean the kind of shock that renders a Yoruba woman completely and absolutely dumb. Nothing to say: No insults and no noise. Nothing. Just absolute silence and stillness because the only explanation for the visuals before her is a bad Nollywood movie which she must endure to see the bad people eventually get their comeuppance).

There was her busy business man husband with his mistress seated on his laps and obviously consulting their family’s personal spiritual helper. 

Distressed, Solape headed home instead of the family business place for which she had resigned her bank job, to help him build. She spent the rest of the day crying in the sanctuary of her room. Her cousin of course became automatically healed of whatever spiritual ailment that had befallen her and headed back home. 

Late that night, her husband returns and says he had lost his keys and he needed to sleep in her room. Like a good wife she permitted him and didn’t make any noises to alert everyone in the house which included her mother-in-law. 

Then the reality of what had happened struck her and she starts to think of how much jeopardy her husband had put her in. Now if this were in the Western World, the woman would probably be upset at the cheating and the fact that her husband could have opened her up to sexual infection. But this is Africa, Nigeria and particularly a Yoruba family.

You see it bothered her to no end that her husband had exposed her to the above stated ills of cheating and sexual infection. However her mind and her body were literally clawing theirselves apart at the thought that her husband had taken his mistress (who must no doubt be trying to eliminate her) to the major spiritual haven she had. Whilst she considered the babalawo a friend, she was well aware that his powers were sold to the person with the highest pay which was not her. She became convinced that the mistress now had a very good spiritual sword to hack her to pieces.]

And that is when the screaming began.

This Yoruba Woman finally woke up from her early morning listless state and mind imposed slumber and so did the entire household of 12 people, the neighbors and basically any one with ears for a mile around them as her inner Yoruba troublemaker started to cook enough trouble to last the entire neighborhood for a year.

THE FATHER's STORY

This generation of men consider themselves above certain things, one in particular in fact: Petty arguments or what they consider pointless squabbles with their wives. (They were going to do what-they-were-going-to-do) 

Now some were not averse to using violence to achieve that oh-so-sweet silence that most men say they desire but do little to earn. 

Some others just walk away and find alternative lodgings for the night or afternoon, or even morning. 

Some rare ones would try to make a joke and settle with the wife fast and if that didn’t work, will choose one of the other options. 

Then there are those who would seek the tripartite company of alcohol, cigarettes and friends… the three jeopardies as I like to call them

(Just so we are clear, whilst friends might seem the least harmful of these panaceas, they’re more often than not the worst option. What kind of friends are always available NO MATTER WHEN you call on them? Or who are already waiting on you to go the beer parlor for drinks, smoke and whatever trouble the day has cooked up in the likeness of a willing woman?) 

These men love the strong exterior even if they were falling apart atom by atom. Johnny at the office was stealing the glory for their work or maybe they were being passed over for a promotion or they were worried about being fired because the company had just hired someone with better qualifications than theirs. (These they are well known for solving with the three jeopardies).

There were also mouths to be fed, wives to be pacified and extended relations who would not stop badgering them for money for food, rent, school fees, weddings and of course money to bury every aged corpse in the village. (These set of problems, they grumbled to their wives about after paying the money should she unfortunately ask for money within a week of that oh-so-nice relative’s departure)

There was also their father’s house that constantly needed fixing or renovating; and on top of all that they also HAD to build houses in the village, which would pay a testament to their state of financial well being. (Apparently, even if you have a thousand houses in the city worth millions, your kinsmen will always judge you by the ownership of a house in your village on land that was worth much less than the value of the property on it. Especially because you can highly value the financial genius of kinsmen who depend on you for their own financial stability! But I digress… not my point.)

My point is, their lives were complicated and there were always situations to be dealt with and more often than not, they were willing to put in the work. Of all of these the one they considered the worst were:

1.    A Nagging woman

2.    An Angry Nagging Woman

3.    A Loud Angry Nagging Woman.

King Solomon himself though not of this generation or of this culture but a man put it this way: Better to live in a desert, than with a quarreling and angry woman. 

Take Lanre for example, as he lay down on the bed perplexed and unsure of what his next action should be, seeing as how his wife had caught him with his mistress. The events of the previous day to him could be described in one word: Shameful. He didn’t feel bad to have cheated, heck, he didn’t even mind being caught. It was his wife’s tirade that had him in a bind plus the fact that there was no earthly way he could escape it. He lay half-naked on the bed and stared intently at the white ceiling of his wife’s bedroom.

If only I did not misplace my keys… He thought to himself.

He was unbothered that he was caught, after all it was his wife’s fault that she was unable to meet his sexual needs and this had made him source for it elsewhere. What should he have done anyway; His mistress had needed some ‘spiritual’ help and there was only one place he knew. It was women who knew such things; therefore it went without saying that he should take her to the place he was sure of. 

It was just as important to him to keep his mistress satisfied as it was to keep his wife happy. He needed extra action on the side…  Especially now that he had been caught, it was unlikely that he would find the sweet bliss that could only be found with a woman at home anytime soon. On a good day it was tough to convince her but now it would be worse… (Apparently, this was the most important thing that stood in the way of their marriage)

It really was a good thing that he had taken him mistress home afterwards and not left her stranded, he would be needing her a lot in the days to come.

In his head, there were three things he had to worry about now and in exactly this order:

1.    His Missing Keys:

He believed that if he had been in his room he could lock his door and stay away from his wife’s lousiness. As it stood, his presence in her room, lying half-clothed on her bed, completely at her mercy and with nowhere to go gave her all the passion she needed to yell till the carpenter deigned it fit to arrive.

2.    The Neighbours:

Lanre minded his business to a fault and made sure that his family’s business stayed its business. Now the entire neighbourhood would know what was going on and look at him as an adulterous man instead of the cool headed and stern business man image that he projected all of the time. There was also the fact that his religious Mother who lived with them could now hear the sordid details of his affairs from basically any location in the house.

3.    The Children:

To say he was a stern moral figure for his children was to say an egg was a chicken. Lanre was the epitome of the ultimate disciplinarian who knew exactly how to instil fear in his kids to get the results he wanted. He also insisted that they live morally pious lives even though they were hardly out of their early childhood, now even the youngest at 7 could hear their mother’s rant about him. After which he had no doubt she would ask what the meaning of agbaya and onisekuse, from any of the older ones whom he suspected knew the meaning.

He sighed very deeply and braced himself to hear the rest of her discontent with his behaviour throughout the months and the years to come. He wasn’t too far from the truth. In fact, I would say that he was precise in his prediction.

THE MOTHER-IN-LAW'S STORY

Old age I am told is a very difficult thing. Nothing works the way it is meant to but that was just alright once you had pushed past the 95years old mark. Most your friends are either dead or dying and as it if wasn’t already bad that all of your senses including your mental faculties are slowly shutting down, the world gets more and more complicated and difficult to understand.

For example, why was upstairs better to live than downstairs, particularly when your knee joints sing songs of protest as you go upstairs? Why do young people all talk all over each other and yell when conversing, what was wrong with regular speech. Regular speech itself was garbled unless you tilted your head to hear it and now people were talking all over themselves.

This generation of women were the very epitome of modest behavior, modesty in eating, modesty in talking and forms of address, modesty in dressing, modesty in fashion, modesty in walking, modesty in well… everything. 

To them there were certain things wives do not do, they do not shout at their husbands or call him by name. There were also certain things that they do not talk about, certain things that women should ignore. Things like the fact that a man was in town but had not come home, or that a titled man came home everyday to sleep with the junior wife (at least you didn’t mention it if you did not want your kids to suddenly develop a stomach ache in the morning). 

Of course you were also not supposed to notice that your husband was sleeping with a strange woman or has children by a strange woman and if you do, you teach yourself to know that it wasn’t your business. 

All of these things should not be talked about and they considered it shameful to talk about their husbands’ philandering because it meant that they were not good enough. (They were fine with owning the shame of a cheating husband and they did so their entire lives). It therefore comes as a shock when their daughter-in-law would mention their son’s infidelity and Mama Lanre was no different.

Mama Lanre had just finished with her early morning bible study and was getting ready to have her breakfast when she noticed that her daughter in law was storming up and down the house. There was nothing particularly troubling about this. The woman stormed through the house whenever all the meat in the pot had suddenly developed legs and walked out of the pot with no witnesses. She stormed whenever her children had their bath and left the bathroom in a mess. She stormed whenever someone burnt food and even when people threw their food away without eating it and sometimes when she felt they had eaten too much.

To be frank, her neck joints and her heart could not bear to respond to any form of storming that woman did but she simply could not mind her own business if something was amiss.

(This is just my way of saying that she was a nosey person. She knew everything that happened around her and they were the highlight of her day, particularly when she was  able to chip in an opinion.)

She hurriedly stood up to go see the reason for the thunder that was hitting the decking of the house repeatedly (When I say hurriedly here, I refer to what a young man with no clue as to the difficulties of old age and arthritis might call shuffling). 

She needn’t have hurried as her recalcitrant daughter-in-law stormed past her on her way from the room to the kitchen. Mama puzzled as to what the issue was and just as she was about to follow her to find out what the problem was. The stubborn woman walked by her again on the way to her room with a murderous look on her face as she went into her room and this time around, she brushed forcefully against her as she passed.

Mama stood in contemplation once again worrying as to what the problem was; she needn’t have worried or bothered herself. The reason became apparently obvious as Solape started to shout and clap her hands at her husband as she cursed at him.

She used these words;

Ika - Meaning Wicked  (This insult was for exposing her and the children to evil magic from an ill-meaning mistress )

Were - Meaning Mad Person (This was for placing a potentially dangerous source of evil magic in the hands of someone that might enchant him for the family’s money)

Agbaya – Meaning Useless Elder (This was for not thinking right and leading the family right as well as abusing his power as the head of the family and also for misappropriating the family’s resources money and magic source inclusive)

Oni ‘Sekuse – Meaning One that does rubbish, technically in this scenario it would mean someone that delight in doing immoral lustful things (This one was for cheating on her but particularly she meant his addiction to cheating on her)

Oloju kokoro – Meaning Greedy person (This one I believe she meant to stand for the fact that he just couldn’t keep it in his pants)

Alai ni’tiju – Meaning Shameless person (Combined with the word Agbaya, for Solape, she was basically saying he was a shameless man who was not beyond chasing girls in their 20s while he was in his 50s. It also referred to the fact that he did not even hide his affairs from close acquaintances, in this case, the Babalawo)

Once she heard all of this, she didn’t even bother to ask for the details, she knew it meant that her son had gone fishing again and whilst she did not support the act due to her religious leanings, she was more mortified that Solape would be shouting about it. Women did not shout about their husband’s affair, they waived it off as one of the foolishness of men.

She then proceeded to raise her voice too, telling Solape to stop making noise, or didn’t she know that the children were also listening as well as any neighbor with a half functioning ear?

THE CHILD'S STORY

Children born in this era, have one fact straight in their head. Especially if they are born and bred in Nigeria and live in Yoruba Land. They have learned that whilst their father’s beating will usually involve grabbing a belt, wire, cane or whip giving you enough time to prepare yourself, a mother’s beating requires no such implements and come with no warnings attached. 

So if you mess up… you take a step back and raise your hands to protect cover your head and thus protect your face which is usually the target. (The back was also a target but at least if the beating leaves a mark, none of your nosey naighbours will notice and ask what you did wrong. You will thus have saved yourself from a lot of unnecessary correction and medicine after the fact.).

However, you don’t just get ‘corrected’ and repaired when you mess up big time. You can also find yourself a victim of a fall out amongst the adults: Usually when mummy and daddy were fighting. Therefore any smart child of this era tends to unconsciously watch out for trouble and make themselves scarce for it.

This brings me to Bimbola’s story. Although she had woken up that morning was slightly groggy and enjoying her languid state as was normal for a Sunday Morning. Something about the air in the house cut through it.

She made her way to her mother’s room to get out new tins of milk and was startled to find her father lying on her mother’s bed. This was extremely odd; what’s more he was looking pensive as he lay there. Whilst she was no soothsayer something told her trouble was afoot and no one was going to Church that morning and if they were it would be wise to opt out of going. 

Being that her Sunday Morning chores basically revolved around preparing eggs for breakfast, she hurried to the kitchen to do just that. The requests were as follows:

1.    Poached eggs with Onion and corned beef for daddy – (Thanks to his bad eyes)

2.    Poached eggs with corned beef for mummy, with a slightly orange yolk (Apparently if it was all yellow, you have infact burnt the eggs?!!!)

3.    Fried eggs with tomatoes, onions and heavy on the pepper for mama – (Thanks to aged taste buds)

4.    Plainly fried eggs with just salt for one sibling – (It’s disgusting otherwise)

5.    Fried eggs with tomatoes, onions and light pepper for the rest of the household – (This consisting of six people)

6.    Finally, Fried Egg with spices for herself (Egg should be plain but there should always be spices in them)

As at 7:30pm, she had concluded tasks 1 to 3 and was commencing task 4 – this was no mean feat as her mum had started storming around the house at 7pm, darting into the kitchen and out doing nothing in particular. Then, the real trouble started.

Anytime there was trouble particularly when it was between her mum and dad, she knew she was going to get the brunt of it (This usually involved a lot of yelling at her for any and all mistakes). Sensing some of the trouble might be coming her way, she stopped being perplexed and started running around the kitchen to complete her tasks and get her ass out of the kitchen and generally make herself scarce.

Her mum comes around and asks if she is done with the breakfast, and she started out to tell her that she was halfway through and ready to pour the eggs in with the tomato on the fire. That is when the tirade began.

‘So you haven’t fried the eggs yet?! What have you been doing since morning?!’ She asked Bimbo at the very top of her voice.

‘I’ve already made you daddy and mama’s eggs, it is only -’

‘Shut up!!!’ Her mum cut in.

‘Shut up your dirty mouth, you don’t know you are a girl abi?! I’ve been saying it, you are not smart. Always slow. You can’t do anything smartly!’ 

At this point, her mum snatched the frying pan from Bimbo as she started to shudder, wondering if there was a slap coming in her foreseeable future. Just in case, Bimbo stepped back as her mum started to take charge of the frying and proceeded to make a fine mess of the kitchen. Throwing things around as she prepared the eggs.

‘You are too slow. Always acting foolish, letting people take advantage of you. I don’t know what is wrong with you, I have told you several times to be smart and-’

Her mum cut in on herself.

‘Ni suru – meaning Be Patient or technically in this scenario, ‘Wait’ - Why are you standing like that?! You can’t stand upright abi and raise your head? If I should leave this egg and come and meet you there, mo ma na sege si e lara! - Meaning I will beat  some sense into you. – (This was a warning to Bimbo to avoid being a scape goat and a popular way by which most Yoruba mothers of this era warn their kids )’ All this she said as she waved the spoon she was using to fry the eggs at Bimbo threatingly.

‘So ara e o! So ara e, ko jeki Olorun so e o! -Meaning warn yourself o! Warn yourself o, and let God Guard you’ (Meaning that Bimbo was still provoking her by the way she was still standing. This is also another popular way children know their parents are getting ready to slap them silly) She said to Bimbo who was now cowering and had her arms ready to guard her head from random slaps.

‘You better be smart, I don’t know where you will end up with this attitude of yours. Even those of us that are still smart ehn! See how I am being cheated.’ 

Bimbo’s mum burst into tears at this proclamation and started crying in earnest as she retreated and stormed out of the kitchen towards her room.

Breathing a sigh of relief and still trembling in fear, Bimbo finished frying the eggs in a rush and rushed through the other tasks in a similar fashion, as she kept her ear out for sounds of her mother returning. After which she proceeded to wait out the rest of the trouble in the Visitor’s toilet and she imagined that the rest of her siblings were also doing the same in their little safe corners in the house.