Civilian Casualty 2: Whose Children?!!!

THE MOTHER-IN-LAW

I believe that I have mentioned earlier in this retelling how important children were to women of this generation. Like I said earlier, most of them lost more children than they have left alive. In fact there are stories of women who would lose two children in a day in what even the most learned and experienced physicians in the world would call the most peculiar of circumstances.

(I say peculiar here because, deeply entrenched in the African and Yoruba tradition is the existence of malicious spiritual forces – mostly rival wives - that come awake at night in the form of birds. There is even a Yoruba saying that literally translates as ‘The Witch cried last night and a child died today. Who does not know that the witch killed the child?’ 

Of course this belief is often a matter of argument for those who do not believe in the existence of malevolent spiritual forces yet: I find it hard to believe that anyone truly grounded in African tradition and values could confidently discountenance the existence of such forces except of course you were born in the 90s: in which case non-belief is somewhat excused)

Therefore, to the women of this generation their children could do no wrong and if they did, it was their responsibility to hide evidence of that wrong-doing. This was especially so in the case of a male child. Besides, what was so shameful about extra-marital affairs? Their fathers engaged in it, so did every other male that they knew growing up; it was only shameful and punishable for women.

(The ultimate punishment meted out to a man caught in adultery with another man’s wife being largely in the form of lethal traditional medicine laced sex infamously known as ‘Magun’ which often than not resulted in men dying during sex, immediately after or three days after, depending on the fancy of the person who set out the charms. Now if a woman were unlucky enough to not have been cheating and has this toxic charm used on her she was fated to die if no one man slept with her during the charm’s incubation period. Either way, women ultimately bore the price of adultery.) 

Sure a husband’s extra-marital affairs could be disconcerting if it meant the man favored the mistress more than the wife. But that was hardly the case here, Mama Tola thought to herself. 

In this age, women seemed to believe that they had a right to their husband’s money instead of seeing it as a gift or reward for pleasing the husband as it used to be back in the day. Mama Tola in had shared her husband with 15 other women and her husband had divorced and renounced all of them for a young new wife when he was 80 years and found a new faith and no one had gone crying to the relatives.

So what if their sons had extramarital affairs that led to children… especially male children? (This basically meant that her daughter-in-law had failed to produce male grand children. Unfortunately Mama Tola like other women of her generation never realized that the sex of a child was ultimately decided by the man and not the woman and thus did several generation of women who produced only female children pass away thinking there was something wrong with them). 

Although she felt secretly guilty for her son’s actions due to her current religious beliefs, Mama Tola stubbornly stood by her son’s misdemeanor as she rationalized the problem to herself. It is not as if her daughter-in-law was denied any other thing or had to prepare elaborately just to get the husband to restock the kitchen. (Marital Fidelity was of no consequence to her, of course.)

 Young wives were now spoiled creatures living pampered lives that they had not worked for. Their son did ALL the work and the wife did most of the spending. That was not the way it used to be. Back then, you had to work on farms to earn your keep and satisfy your husband in bed and with your cooking to get money out of him. Yet the women complained and still talked about their husband’s infidelity.

As far as Mama Tola was concerned, her son had given her male grand children and there was no way she was going to refuse them. Thus when the entire family organized to have a family meeting to talk about those children, she didn’t object even though she felt slight pangs of guilt. Her conscience was eased a little when she saw the pictures of the children.

She in fact felt a little more justified in supporting her son’s decision to bring them home when she heard the fate that had befallen the children’s mother. She believed that in the circumstance, children of the same father should grow under the same roof. When the decision was reached at the meeting, two cities away from home, she was fully in support.

The plan was simple, the children were to be brought home in the middle of the night when his wife would be too ashamed to make noise and when it was dawn, she would pretend she had no knowledge of it. She would in fact act as though she was on the side of the Iya Folashade who had only managed to produce two female children thus far. 

It was the ultimate set-up and a lot of noise would be generated but the noise would be after the fact. Her grandchildren would have come home.

THE FATHER

It is human nature to justify their wrong doing when they cannot find a good defense for what they had done wrong. Particularly when there are others to be blamed and their intention was or is noble. The men of this generation are especially skilled at doing this, when it came to their inability to control their urges around women.

Their triggers ranged from smooth legs to cleavages, to alluring eyes, the walk, the talk… qualities which upon an assessment of one in three women (albeit in extreme cases) they were bound to find. 

Now, triggers aside, there were certain circumstances that could not be avoided. Such as when a woman blatantly threw herself at you or engages you in seductive talk or pandered so much to your ego that you felt invincible. (And of course became immediately gifted with the ‘ability’ of being impervious to any form of harm that could result from philandering…Even your wife’s rage).

Thus it is hardly shocking to find a married man of this generation straying in so called ‘extenuating circumstances’. For example, if your job kept you constantly on the road and you were born with natural fire in your loins, it made little sense for you to ignore or turn away the attentions of a woman who you might never meet again. After all, your wife was unlikely to find out. 

What about when the woman lived in a completely different city from your wife and you were constantly on official assignment to that city? Did it not in fact, make sense to find one mistress and stick to her; thus protecting yourself and by extension your wife as well from nasty infections. (Of course let us not forget that men could not control their body’s normal physical reaction to a woman. At the same time, one must not forget a woman’s natural physical reaction to her husband’s adultery which often results in real threats to the man’s offending organs)

These were Tola’s thoughts as he pondered what approach to use on his wife that would make her, understand and accept his ‘mistake’. Now, you can call Tola randy or say he couldn’t keep it in his pants; Call him a philandering fool if you will but, all of these names meant absolutely nothing to him. So he had played two women at the same time, big whoop and both women had given birth around the same time… both times. Well, this was why a mistake was called a mistake after all. 

Although Tola was aware that not everyone would have the same cavalier attitude that he had towards the matter: His wife in particular: It would probably be impossible to get her to see things from his own point of view. The constant travelling around for his job had opened him up to understandable temptations. Besides, he held the view that as long as he slept at home every night whenever he was in his home city, he wasn’t technically doing anything wrong.

(Yes. Shocking as it may sound. Tola believed that faithfulness to your wife was embodied in deigning to sleep in your own bed, which was in your room which was in the house you paid for.)

However, he knew that whilst some may consider his excuse understandable in the circumstances and whilst one child out of wedlock may be called a grave mistake. How was he to explain away two sons by the same woman: One born two months ahead of his first child and the second two months after his second child. Although he still had doubts that the second child really was his but in the circumstances it was hard to ascertain. 

The mistress had apparently dabbled in some traditional medicine meant to run his legal wife mad. No one had been able to explain to him what she had done wrong exactly. But for some reason, his mistress had herself, become the victim of the concoction she had paid for. She had run mad and as a result her two boys aged 6 and 4 were living on the streets with her.

Tola was sure that at least one of the children belonged to him and it became important that he do something about it. Everyone in that city knew he had been cavorting with the woman and the older boy looked exactly like him. It was nothing short of embarrassing. 

Therefore, once he had the backing of his mother and his extended family relations, he made a decision and it went as follows:

1.    They are my children and my responsibility - doubts of paternity of the second child aside.

2.    My children should live with me: They deserve the same treatment as my other children.

It thus happened that on the day he was to bring them home, he took a journey to their mother’s city and after wrestling with her and then with the children, was able to gain custody of them. Leaving their mother to her relatives care, he bribed the children with snacks and stuffed them in his air-conditioned company car.

Now had it been in today’s world, the police would probably have stopped him several times on the 2 hour 30 minutes journey as it was highly suspicious for an upstanding citizen to have custody of such dirty looking children in his car. But the world was much more innocent then and no one really cared.

Once Tola entered his home city around 11pm, he was at a loss on what to do and in what manner to take the children to his home. After one and a half hour of driving aimlessly through the city, he decided on a bold and brash move.

The Yorubas have a saying: Ibi to ba tile, la man’ ba omokurin – Meaning You meet real men in tough places. This means that a man is made up of the difficult endeavors to which he puts his hands. I guess you could say this definitely described Tola’s situation. He was a man, and he would handle matters as a man. (Then again, only a man could have found himself with two illegitimate children he had never told his wife about in his car and still home to his wife feeling brave)

He drove up to the gate of the house till about 12: 54. There was light. This was a major setback, it meant his wife was probably still awake. This was bound to cause some noise. So he backed away from the gate and bided his time one house away.

The clock turned 1am and he hit his horn as he drove to his gate. At every 2 second interval, he would depress it again, causing everyone in the house jump in fear which was his intention. Everyone knew he hit the horns hard whenever he was in a mood and that usually heralded trouble for everyone (You See, Tola was quite the bully).

The gateman ran to open the gate for him and hurriedly jumped out of the way as Tola drove in as though he were being chased. Trembling the gateman locked the gate and greeted him hesitantly before opening the backdoors to help him with his briefcase.

Nothing could have prepared the poor man for the sight that greeted him: Two young boys dressed in dirty rags and covered with dirt, not to mention the awful dreadlocks they both sported filled with leaves and twigs. The boys got out of the car and looked up at the house that they had been brought to. In that moment, their gaze was caught by a little girl looking out of one of the house’s window at them before she darted away hurriedly.

Thus did a twenty-year chaos erupt in his home but he would never know until years later just how devastating his philandering was to become on his family.

THE MOTHER

Often times, women of this generation can appear both immensely foolish and wise at the same time. Sometimes that is one and the same thing for anyone observing them. Yet even this assessment can be misleading. (The book She stoops to conquer comes to mind)

Their husband with all their education and fancy business suits and language could not outsmart them, primarily because they talked stupid around him and became rational once he departed. To put it in a word, they were extremely cunning. (They had to be if they were going to overcome the limitations that society had placed on them and which they were learning didn’t have to be the norm. A move championed by women such as Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti)

Labake was no exception to this rule. In terms of formal education, she had gone as far as obtaining a diploma in secretarial studies 

So when she was jarred upright by the angry noise of her husband’s car horn, she flopped back on the bed grumbling about wicked and inconsiderate men who called themselves husbands and came home at one am. Knowing that her husband was bound to be demanding his food soon, she dragged herself sluggishly from her bed. 

She had barely put on her kaftan when Folashade her eldest daughter burst into the room and declared earnestly to her that daddy had returned and brought home two Tayos. Alaba happened to be the name of her male cousin who had stayed with them for a while.

Labake smiled, sure that her child was confused because she had not yet gone to bed. Her husband had not told her he was bringing anyone home. By the time she was ready to come out of her room, she could hear the jangle of keys telling her that Tola was ready to enter his room. She hurried out of her room as that meant his food needed to be on the table within 10 minutes.

(Another thing you needed to note about these women was that their husbands demanded a grand presentation for their meals and dinners were especially important. The table needed to be set as though a King was coming to dinner. Most times when the meal was over, you needed at least two people to clean up.) 

She greeted him and started to walk by him and set his food out when he called out her name.

‘Labake’ he said gruffly and with some false bravado in his voice.

‘The children in the sitting room are mine.’ He declared as though challenging her to contest it or confront him. 

Upon his bold declaration, he rushed quickly into the safe haven of his room and locked the door behind him. He wouldn’t eat tonight was his wife’s first thought as he locked the door behind him. He never locked the door if he was going to have dinner.

 It later on occurred to Labake, when the reality of the words he had just spoken began to sink in, that the man must have thought she would sprinkle his dinner with the indocide used to kill the rats that. As wonderful a thought as that might have been, that wasn’t how she would handle this situation.

As though in a daze, Labake stumbled into the sitting room to discover that not only must she be in a nightmare but that the nightmare smelled really badly. There were infact two little boys in the sitting room and they were sitting on the upholstery looking as though someone had taken the time to drag them through a rubbish heap. There were leaves and twigs entwined in a tango with the horrid dreadlocks they were both spotting.

Even through the dirt and rags they were covered in, she could see clearly that they had her husband’s faces even the light toned one. Labake felt swarmed by an urge to cry but she was still trying to decide if to cry about the fact that her husband had an affair that led to kids or the fact that those kids had now covered the shinning new upholstery with the entire content of their bowels as though marking their entrance into her somewhat happy home.

(If you could call a home happy when your husband made a point of keeping late nights and carrying on with various mistresses)

Leaving her six year old daughter staring in disgust at the two kids (who were most definitely not her beloved cousin Tayo), Labake ran back to the room. She gave herself two minutes to cry silently before leaving her room once again to wake her younger sister.

‘Temitope, abukun kan kanmi l’ale yi. Jo, please help me.’ (Which in essesnce translates to the fact that someone had brought huge disrespect and shame to her that night and she needed her sister to take charge of the situation)

Being the loving sister she was, her sister rose and went to the sitting room. Immediately she saw the situation, she didn’t say a word as she dragged the two boys off to the nearest bathroom and washed off the poop and as much of the dirt as she could using the strongest disinfectants that she could. 

Labake watched as her sister without complaining took charge of the situation and even washed the upholstery without a single word of complaint. In that moment, she realized just how much of a treasure her sister was, the kind of treasure, that you never let go of. It would be dawn soon, Labake thought to herself. I will surely get an explanation. 

She never got that explanation, only a directive from her husband in the morning to enroll the kids in school, perhaps the nearest Public school. Perhaps it was because her fears about her husband’s extramarital affairs were now staring her in the face. But she couldn’t fight her husband on the matter, the will to fight was sucked right out of her. 

All that was left of that feeling over the next 21 years she raised the children; was a reflection of how her husband never gave her any further explanation than that they were his sons.

Therefore, the moment she heard the public school option for the kids, alarm bells rang in her head and she in that moment made a decision that changed the entire dynamics in the house. The decision gave her a power and leverage she had never had before and eventually caused her husband and his relatives in constant fear of her. A fear that never ended till she was forced out of her husband’s home 27 years into her marriage.

So he wants to put my children in public school, Labake thought as she left his room. She knew enough to know that, it was only a matter of time, before her husband would decide to withdraw her children, from the cushy private school they were enrolled in to a public school too. 

Her husband believed in fairness and she had no doubt that the so called fairness will be to her children’s disadvantage. There was also the family member who would talk about how the children were being treated badly. Yes, she decided, she would raise the children as though they were hers. After all, her mother had also raised her own father’s bastards. She would treat the children as hers and no one would ever be able to raise eyeballs at her in this family.

Tola is not smart enough. She thought to herself. 

That Monday, she got them a haircut and dressed the boys up in her daughters’ clothes as they had no clothes of their own and went to enroll them. The English headmistress of the school stared long and hard at the kids wondering if they were male or female and eventually asked.

Labake looked at the children and at the white woman and said with as straight a face as possible that they were her husband’s kids and so hers too. In shock, the headmistress called the attention of the proprietress who was Nigerian to attend to the situation. 

And finally, Labake could cry openly and she did as she told her story to the two women who cried along with her and comforted her. Perhaps then, it was not all that shocking that after two years, one of the boys with his limited English called the white headmistress ‘foolish’; leading to his expulsion and the eventual withdrawal of the three other kids from that school.

THE CHILDREN

The one basic flaw all children are irrespective of the generation, race or gender they are born is the inability to keep malice with other children. As long as that other child was someone they could have fun with, it didn’t matter whether their mothers were bickering out back and tearing each other apart in the backyard over a man. 

The fact is children are born with no awareness of gender, racial or class difference, we teach it to them. Those lessons taught by several fathers, mothers, aunts, uncles, teachers, neighbors and basically everyone around them forms an individual’s disposition towards our perceived differences. It is these lessons that lead to bullying and the hazing seen amongst the young and in the end, everywhere in society. 

Another difference that stood in the way of free play amongst kids of this generation was the polygamous situation prevalent in those times. Most Step wives hated each other and taught their children to hate each other. This meant essentially that since the friends of my friends were my friends, the friends of my enemy were my enemy. 

(Thus children eventually choose sides in fights within polygamous home they were not a part of. In fact the whole polygamous situation and its interlocking issues with culture, westernization, gender and intergenerational differences are another kind of drama that cannot be fully explored here. Back to the issue on hand…)

This generation of children were no different in choosing their early playmates as well (I mean prior to the reorientation). Every child was a valid playmate for them. It usually took constant drumming in the ear by their mothers and corrective slaps for them to realize that the other child was an enemy that could potentially poison them. After several beatings and warnings the child eventually learns to steer clear of the other child. This more often than not, led to the children harboring deep rooted hatreds for one another. 

(You couldn’t in fact blame the child that learns to steer clear: Several beatings by moms, aunts and nosy neighbors have ensured this and on some rare occasion by their father when the issue was tribal difference. Neither could you blame the other child that grew to hate because he was been treated like an outcast by the other child that should have been his comrade in mischief. )

Several African literature books have been written around the concept of, one child eating the poisoned food of another, due to the over-familiarity between half-siblings. (Of course it was usually the mother of the child that was eventually poisoned that was the culprit of the poison.). This of course have not helped matters, one book of this theme would not have hurt, maybe not even twenty, but we are not talking about twenty, we are talking a hundred at least. 

However, remember that demand promotes supply, it was a staple solid theme that was sure of generating income and Nollywood cannot also be held harmless in this regard. People wanted these stories and they got it. We are only now beginning to see a change in this. I could go on and on about this ill in society but my point is this: Children start out accepting each other unconditionally until they are taught otherwise.

Folashade and her sister Omolola were no different. They were still at an age where the only people of their age they related with were children of their parent’s friends (all Yoruba), children of relatives (all Yoruba) and children they went to the same school with (not all Yoruba but mostly of the same social class – roughly speaking). It could thus be said that they were not prepared for the days to come in their home.

It all started when Folashade had spotted her soon to be brothers from the lookout window. Although they were not her cousins but they were children like her and for some reason, she assumed that they were here to spend some time and play with her. But as she observed the physical state of the children, the only thing on her little mind was wonder as to the fact that they were allowed to sit on the chairs looking as they did.

For ten minutes she watched them, and when they pooed on the upholstery, she took the trouble to move as far away from them as possible. She kept assessing them till her aunt shooed her to bed. When she awoke in the morning she tried very hard to convince her 4 year old sister as to their existence and they went hunting the huge house for the kids. 

The next few days were very confusing for her and her sister as everyone in the house kept them far away from the two boys who they had been told were their brothers by one of their uncles. They kept wishing the adults away but there always seemed to be one of them around the children.

Although they went to school together, they were allowed no conversations with the boys and soon the two of them began to resent them as everyone’s attention was on the boys. The envy however stopped when her father started to give the boys lessons every night as though someone was torturing him to do it. Whilst the older boy picked it up pretty fast, the younger one insisted that he had no interest in learning.

Eventually everyone started to dread evenings in the house and there was not much opportunity to play as their father came home early every night and with a cane in his hand tried to force the boy to attend his learning. It eventually became a struggle in which the cane was used copiously and the boy cried every night and was punished repeatedly because he refused to learn. 

For weeks, this went on, until finally the boy broke and agreed to attend to his studies. The girls later learned that they were kept away from the boys because they did not speak a word of English. It took a while but the boys eventually learned and became superstars at school. The older one however whilst brilliant had a bad habit of pooing in his school shorts and brought a very bad reputation to the family name in the school. A name that few knew before. Every morning, he was either being paraded as the dirtiest boy in school or sometimes in the afternoon he would be walking around with no shorts because he had messed up his shorts again.

As though this was not bad enough, both boys had a knack for breaking toys or misplacing them which was very annoying and would have turned their new sisters completely against them until the boys started to tell them stories of their former life. In wonder, the girls would listen to stories of how they used to eat cake everyday and never had to go to school and how wonderful their lives used to be.

In spite of the inconveniences, the boys were accepted unconditionally by the girls and no longer saw them as step brothers but as full bonafide brothers. This was what their mother taught them and they never questioned it. The only annoying thing was that they constantly faced ridicule because of the misdemeanours of the boys at school. Whilst this was annoying they could brush it off.

Folashade and her sister loved their school, the teaching program was amazing, they had sewing rooms, music rooms, art rooms etc. It wasn’t just in your class learning, they got to move around. There was also a French room and club to which she belonged as well as a reading club. Thus it was difficult for her to understand when her father pulled them out of the school for no just cause.

It was a pain she never forgot but had chalked down to the expense by the time she was twenty-six until her mother explained to her that her brother had called the headmistress stupid and got himself expelled. Although they had pleaded, the school had insisted on expelling him as he had done it several times before. As a result, their father had withdrawn all of them because he wanted them to go to the same school.

This information upset Folashade at twenty-six and she cursed the day that the boys had been accepted into their home. That school would have molded her future perfectly and her French, music and art studies would never have suffered as they did at the new school which did not have enough of those programs.

However, what was done was done.