Maame (Mother) by Elizabeth Allua Vaah

Author:Elizabeth Allua Vaah
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mawenzi House Publishers
Published: 2020-11-26T20:02:35+00:00

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1 Egya is the Nzema word for “Mr.” Aakonu is a village in Nzema.

Ahu: Love and Loss

ANOTHER JOLT OF PAIN THROUGH my lower body brought me out of my daydream back to reality. My fourth delivery was proving more difficult than I had thought possible. Nana had yet to return from her visit to Priestess Yaba. From the two women attending to me I had heard that the Priestess had requested a bottle of perfume and twenty-five shillings in addition to the initial list of items. Twenty-five shillings was the equivalent of one American dollar. As the pain tapered off, my mind wandered again to the time when I got married to my first husband. After what seemed like a long time following Ebela’s and my puberty rites, Homiah, a young man from Sanvoma, some fifty kilometres west of Aakonu, came to ask for my hand. He was about twenty-two years old, of medium height, rather slim but athletic looking and with a calm demeanor. I would have preferred to have married someone in Aakonu. Sanvoma was not too bad either, except that girls in Aakonu did not like to marry “strangers.”

Who in Aakonu did not know the story of the young woman who went away with a stranger and almost never made it? She was a very beautiful girl and refused all suitors from her own village and even the neighbouring ones. Simple and learned, rich and poor, young and old, she refused them all. Neither her parents nor anyone else could convince her to accept someone. She became known as a snob. It turned out that a python heard about her and decided to teach her a lesson. It changed itself into a handsome young man and visited her village. He met the girl at the edge of the river as she was drawing water. She was so smitten by his looks that she accepted to marry him right away. She could not wait for him to pay her bride price. Her parents advised her to wait until she knew more about him but she refused. When they would not accept her bride price, which he finally offered, because it was too low, she threw the money at them and ran off with him. As they journeyed through the forest, the path kept closing behind them. They walked for three days, during which the nice and handsome stranger changed completely in his behaviour. He would not wait for her to catch up and only responded to her with grunts and monosyllables. The farther they journeyed, the more irritable he became. On the third day, he stopped by a small stream and asked her to wait for him. When he emerged, he was not the handsome young man she had followed but a mean-looking python. She was terrified, but there was nowhere for her to go. The python started to swallow her. She begged and screamed for help, but there was no one else around.

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